The LatinNews Podcast

Lucía Dammert is a Professor of International Relations at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile and a leading expert on public security, criminal organisations and public policy in Latin America. Born in Peru, she holds a Ph.D. in political science and has written extensively on crime, governance and state-society relations across the region.

Dammert has held advisory roles in Chile and elsewhere in the Americas, served on international policy bodies, and been a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Latin American studies centre. Her work combines academic research with practical insights into security, institutional reform and political dynamics in contemporary Latin America.

Lucas Perelló is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University. He holds a PhD in political science and specialises in Latin American politics, with a particular focus on Central America. His research examines democratic backsliding, corruption, organised crime, electoral politics and the political economy of illicit networks.

He has published academic work on governance and security in the region and regularly provides expert analysis on elections, institutional weakness and US–Central America relations.

Carlos Gervasoni is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Notre Dame and master’s degrees in political science and Latin American studies from Stanford University. His work focuses on democracy, federalism, sub-national politics, public opinion, and research methodology. He is the author of "Hybrid Regimes within Democracies", a study of how Argentina’s fiscal and institutional structure shapes political outcomes, and he serves as a regional manager for the Varieties of Democracy project.

Recognized as a top economist and advisor on the Caribbean, Marla has led discussions and published reports on the Caribbean implications of EU Blacklisting, COVID-19, BREXIT, and changing US and Chinese policies, among other geopolitical developments. Marla has taken a firm stance on resolving the constraints and the injustices that the Caribbean faces that directly hinder growth and constrain the region from achieving its socio-economic potential.

Her monthly Caribbean Economic Report has become a critical input for regional monitoring, closely following risks, vulnerabilities, and opportunities for growth.

As a highly sought-after keynote speaker internationally on Caribbean issues, she regularly advises private sector executives and multinationals to support their strategic decisions in the region. Marla served on the Government of Barbados Jobs and Investment Council, is a Member of the Advisory Board to the UNDP's Regional Bureau for Latin America, and Board member for the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI). She sits on the Board of Directors of RF Holdings and of Goddard Enterprises Limited.

Martín Mendoza-Botelho is Professor of Political Science and Assistant Department Chair at Eastern Connecticut State University. With a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, his research focuses on political economy, institutional reform, and democratic processes in developing countries, with a particular emphasis on Latin America and his home country of Bolivia.

Before entering academia, he worked for the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Washington, D.C.

He serves as Chair of the Bolivia Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) and previously held the role of Editor-in-Chief of the Bolivian Research Review journal.

In this episode, Mendoza-Botelho helps unpack the election of Rodrigo Paz, the declining influence of the MAS party, and the pragmatic shift in Bolivian politics as the country grapples with an economic downturn, lithium ambitions, and evolving ties with the United States.

Dr. Evan Ellis is a research professor of Latin American Studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, with a focus on the region’s relationships with China and other non-Western Hemisphere actors, as well as transnational organized crime and populism in the region.

Dr. Ellis has published over 400 works, including five books: the 2009 book "China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores", the 2013 book "The Strategic Dimension of Chinese Engagement with Latin America", the 2014 book, "China on the Ground in Latin America", the 2018 book, "Transnational Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean", and the 2022 book, "China Engages Latin America: Distorting Development and Democracy?"

He has given testimony on Latin America security issues to the US Congress on various occasions, has discussed his work regarding China and other external actors in Latin America on a broad range of radio and television programs, and is cited regularly in the print media in both the US and Latin America for his work in this area.

Dr. Ellis has also been awarded the Order of Military Merit José María Córdova by the Colombian government for his scholarship on security issues in the region.

Anand Persaud is Editor-in-chief of Stabroek News, an independent daily newspaper in Guyana founded in 1986. Mr. Persaud joined the newspaper in 1989 and became Editor in 1993. He has been editor-in-chief since 2008.

In 2022 he was awarded the European Union Delegation Human Rights Award in Guyana in recognition of his work in promoting the values of the EU and playing a role in highlighting international issues through his publications. He continues to advocate for independent journalism, urging the government to facilitate easy access to information for journalists and the need to revise the current Access to Information Act.

Benjamin Lessing is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago whose research centers on criminal conflict — organized violence carried out by armed groups that don’t seek formal state power, such as prison gangs, drug cartels, and paramilitaries.

His first book, "Making Peace in Drug Wars: Crackdowns and Cartels in Latin America", examines conflicts involving drug trafficking organizations and state forces in Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil. It was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and reviewed in leading journals.

His forthcoming book, "Criminal Leviathans: How Gangs Govern, Organize Crime, and Challenge the State from Behind Bars", explores how mass-incarceration policies can unintentionally empower criminal groups and reshape coercive power in society.

Benjamin holds a PhD in political science and an MA in economics from UC Berkeley, and a BA in economics and philosophy from Kenyon College. Before entering academia, he worked with NGOs in Latin America, including as founder of Viva Rio’s Drugs and Human Security program, and conducted field research for international institutions.

Intro: Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogota, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is The LatinNews Podcast. I am your host, Richard McColl. Here in Bogota, Colombia, we have very special guests, Benjamin Lessing, associate professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He's on the line. And we're going to be discussing this week organized crime in the Americas, focusing obviously on the key regions, the key countries, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, but also dipping into Venezuela, Ecuador, El Salvador and anywhere else that is pertinent to this conversation. So, Benjamin, thank you so much for coming on The LatinNews Podcast.

Professor Benjamin Lessing: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Richard McColl: You're most welcome. Your most recent book that will be coming out in 2026 Criminal Leviathans: How Gangs Govern from Behind Bars. I've had an opportunity to look at some of the chapters or a part of the chapters, and it's very interesting indeed. And of course, I think we probably should start, we should probably start by saying, look at the fact around and surrounding criminal gangs and criminal organizations within Latin America. I read, researching for this, that between 77 and 101 million people are living with some sort of criminal governance. And that means one in nine in Latin America. Does this sound right?

Professor Benjamin Lessing: Yeah, that's a figure that my colleagues and I came up with. It's an estimate. It's obviously a very imprecise estimate. You know, 77 to 101 million is already pretty imprecise, but it's based off of survey data that was taken under, that came out in 2020 from Latinobarómetro, which is a regional, a region wide opinion survey that's done every year. And they asked people this year or in 2020, they asked people, among many other questions, they asked, is there a criminal gang organization where you live? And then if you said yes, they asked what that organization did and they gave you some options. And among the options were that criminal organization provides order or improves safety or reduces crime. And so if you said any of those things, we counted that as living with criminal governance. And yeah, that's, those are the figures. You know, the, a lot of people said that there was a gang that provided order or reduced or increased security where they live. And you know, we, I think a lot more than anything, that figure calls for more research. It calls for those kinds of questions being included in more surveys. It's not a, it's an, it's a beginning, not an end, but it just gives You a sense of the scale of the problem. We detected at least 5 to 6% of the population reporting criminal governance in every country, even in countries like Argentina, Uruguay, you know, Costa Rica, countries that were sort of previously thought of as Chile countries thought of as not having these kind of problems. And in many countries rates, you know, in the, in double digits, including countries like Costa Rica in Ecuador, which you know, sort of at first surprised us, but then with recent events, doesn't really surprise us anymore as we've seen organized crime in those countries getting more organized, getting more powerful and then going all the way up to Brazil, where one in four people said that there was a criminal organization, you know, making them safer or providing order where they lived, which is part of what's driving that huge region wide number is Brazil is the largest country in Latin America and it's got the highest rate of criminal governance. So that's just sort of 50 million people in Brazil alone by that estimate.

Richard McColl: Is it staggering? Staggering numbers, but not something that surprises me. Obviously as a longtime resident here, I think very interesting that you said 5 to 6%. And of course you mentioned Costa Rica, Uruguay and Chile, places that we don't ordinarily, you know, consider as places as countries suffering from organized crime. But this is, these are subjects and topics that we've addressed on this PODCast. And of course we talked about the issues of organized crime in Costa Rica, that was now a trafficking country and of course corruption, political corruption there in Uruguay being a major transshipment place, a location for cocaine to Europe, I believe Chile with Tren de Aragua as well. To what can you attribute this increase? I mean, do we look at the policies of, or the state policies of trying to combat with repressive measures? Is this also increasing the organized crime and their power? How do we explain this growth? I would say.

Professor Benjamin Lessing: Well, I mean, first of all, I think you want to situate a little bit what we're talking about here. The numbers were just discussing are about criminal governance over civilians. And there's a lot of organized crime, a lot of crime. And organized crime that isn't about governing civilians. Right? There's a lot going on in the world. You know, people are trafficking organs and people are trafficking human beings and people are doing all kinds of, you know, and there's all kinds of illicit, you know, contracting with governments. We think about the world of the universe of organized crime, of course, and then there's the international drug trade and you know, think about that giant sort of circle. And then criminal governance overlaps with that circle, but it's not the same thing. Right. So I want to make sure we're talking about, you know, sort of what we're talking about and not all, even many powerful organized crime groups, you know, may not really be in the business of governing civilians, or they may govern, you know, some Mafia groups in New York City might govern their little neighborhood or something like that, but they're not really in the business of taking over favelas and governing, you know, millions of people, urban peripheries of slums and stuff like that. Even in Mexico, the kind of. The big cartels in Mexico, their approach to criminal governance seems a little different than what we see in Brazil or places like Medellin, Colombia or El Salvador or Central America in general. Right. The big Internet international cartels. They're trying to get drugs across the border. They're not necessarily trying to govern millions of people living in urban slums. You know, organized criminal organizations need a reason to govern civilians because it's costly. It gets them involved in all kinds of things. So why do criminal organizations govern civilians? Well, it's often because they are, in one way or another, sort of from those neighborhoods or have some connection to that neighborhood, or are trying to kind of monopolize or aggregate up local retail drug trading across a lot of neighborhoods, across urban peripheries within a given context. Or in the case of the maras in El Salvador and the rest of Central America, they were operating with extortion, right? So they didn't really have access to retail drug markets, but they were knitting together, you know, these extortion networks that were, you know, it started off as very small gangs in many different communities. And then these mara groups were able to kind of aggregate them together into larger criminal structures. So what I'm trying to say is that there's a kind of. I don't want to overgeneralize, but there's a kind of form of organized crime that I think hasn't really drawn as much attention as the big flashy international drug cartels or the big mafias who get involved in, you know, sacking government contracts and things like that, which are these. I think of them as kind of bottom up criminal organizations that are able to sort of bring together organize little tiny street crews from different neighborhoods into larger structures. And so we see that take different forms. Like I just said, the maras of Central America, they, from prison built up these organizations that were made up of little cliques in different neighborhoods throughout these countries, but that, you know, they were able to kind of aggregate them up together into much larger and more sophisticated organizations based out of prison. If you look at Medellin, Colombia as a different model, but it's structurally very similar. You've got these little combos in every neighborhood in Medellin. And over the decades they've been organized into larger structures. Now, those structures aren't prison gangs, you know, they are, they were, you know, Don Berna and, you know, militias from the civil war coming in and organizing these little street gangs into groups that were, in a sense fighting, you know, initially sort of fighting the civil war. And then in the last 10 or 15 years with the demobilizations, they stayed on. They still exist there. And those are these groups that the Paz Total peace process is dealing with. These very structured groups that, you know, that control organ, they control crime in all these neighborhoods around Medellin. And we see similar structures now sprouting up in other places. I think that's what we're seeing in Ecuador. Well, I should, before I get to Ecuador, I should just say. And Brazil is the kind of granddaddy of them all. Brazil has had these prison based organizations now for going in Rio de Janeiro going back almost 50 years to the 1970s and late 70s, early 80s when the Comando Vermelho, you know, sort of does this for the first time, right? It starts off in prison, grows, it spreads through the prison system and then it begins spreading out into the favelas and bringing together organizations, local, you know, local gangs and local drug trafficking organizations in different favelas and tying them together into this sort of networked prison based structure which is the Comando Vermelho. And then, you know, from there it spread to São Paulo with the Primeiro Comando da Capital. And then in the last 10 years, it's really spread across the whole country. So Brazil today is a country where almost anywhere you go any big city and you go to, you know, favela free neighborhoods, those neighborhoods are almost always sort of the, within that neighborhood, the. There won't be lots of tiny little gangs. They'll just be. Everybody will be one faction or another faction or it'll be a local faction and that faction will be controlled from prison and that faction will control multiple favela neighborhoods in that city, you know, whatever state it may be in. So that model of sort of, I sometimes think of it as sort of bottom up organized crime or that model of organizing street crews into these larger structures. You know, Brazil's the, has sort of taken it to the, you know, has taken it to the max where that's the way the entire country is structured. I think what you're seeing in places like Ecuador and maybe even, you know, Uruguay, Chile and these places with lower levels where it's incipient is I think you're seeing that model sort of starting to come together, starting to begin to happen where some kind of criminal organization is realizing it can bring together these street crews in lots of different neighborhoods, exert territorial control and get something out of it, whether that be extort the local population or whether that be running local drug retailing or you know, but they find some angle where it's worth their while to kind of control peripheral neighborhoods and bring the local criminal, you know, sometimes they're not even criminal, they're just small little gangs. But to bring them together and in that way have territorial control across a city or even a country.

Richard McColl: So in Ecuador's case, obviously, I guess it was January last year when it was made all the headlines and of course has dropped off with the increase of violence in the country and the gang Los Choneros obviously organized out of prison as well, if I'm not mistaken. So that Brazilian model has been successfully exported across the region and much in the news at the moment, Tren de Aragua from Venezuela, which I believe had its initial stages in the Tocorón prison in Venezuela as well. So how do the authorities even address the situation of this, let's say bottom up, criminal organizations that then become controlled from prison?

Professor Benjamin Lessing: I mean, I don't think authorities, you know, address it very well. I think, you know, so what I've, what I'm sort of trying to argue in my new book is that this process, there's sort of two aspects to it and both of the aspects and you know, again, really looking at Brazil as a model, so maybe other countries kind of approximate that model. So if, you know, you're listening in and you're from Ecuador, you said it doesn't quite match up with what, you know, what Ben is saying. Well, maybe it's, you know, again, I think of the Brazil case as very extreme and, but it's very illustrative even if other cases don't 100 match up with it. But what you had in Brazil, you know, over and over again, first in Rio, then in São Paulo, then across the country, is these prison based organizations again reaching into neighborhoods. And in those neighborhoods, in the status quo ante, you've got a lot of skirmishes between small gangs, small little groups. Maybe they're running a local drug retailing and they're fighting over turf. Maybe they're just local gangs. It's kind of anomic, you know, violence with kids, nothing really left to lose or whatever. When the, when the prison gangs come in and start organizing and they sort of bite community by community, they're like, okay, everyone in this community were all Comando Vermelho. And you have to, you know, whatever your beef with the other guy, whatever your revenge thing, whatever who's killing you, it's over. And they. And in that process of agglutinating the local gangs together with it and unifying that territory, it has a pacifying quality, right? It often brings local pacification to favela neighborhoods. Even if between neighborhoods, even if the gangs are now you've got three or four big gangs and they're fighting for the whole city. And so now you've got invasions and things are getting kind of more violent. You know, you've got now a level of inter gang war that can be extremely violent. They've got a lot more, you know, they're able to concentrate force. And so you get spectacular violence. Or now they're able to do the kind of orchestrated prison attacks that you mentioned in Ecuador. Right now they've got enough people on the street that they can burn a bunch of buses or whatever, cause chaos. So the violence can get more extreme and concentrated. But within each community there, they sort of, you know, they create a single organization where there used to be many. And so that creates a kind of local pacification. That's kind of step one, that once they've got that, you know, new level of organization, they are able to streamline their criminal activity, right? So they can make the retail drug trade much more effective. They've got centralized supply. They might have a centralized sort of, you know, packaging or whatever and not. And they monopolize that neighborhood. So like one organization now controls all of the retail points of sale in that neighborhood. It's more profitable, it's more, they're able to sell more because it's safer, right? The neighborhood's now safe. There's not a bunch of gangs fighting, so customers feel better about going there. And then I think kicks in the next phase of this criminal governance dynamic, which is, and this is, I think particularly true of drug retail, right? I think with context, where the local gang is living off of extortion maybe there's no drug profits or for whatever reason, the retail drug trade isn't a factor. This, what I'm about to say is less salient. But when that's your business, when your business is selling, you know, retail drugs on street corner, it suddenly be. And you know, you start the. There's a, there's a kind of logic that kicks in of like, well, we should make this place safe. We don't want people calling the police for their day to day problems. So let's us start solving people's problems for them because we don't want them to go to the police. So we'll do dispute resolution, we'll recover their stolen. You know, somebody steals something, we'll make sure they get it back. We'll become the local authority. And. And then I think another logic kicks in which is, all right, so now we've kind of, you know, the favela is safe, nobody's talking, nobody's robbing in the neighborhood, no one's calling the cops. But the cops are coming in anyway because they're fighting a drug war. Right? They're, the cops like to come in and bust our, you know, whatever. Whether they're coming in to bust us or to shake us down for bribes, they like to come in. And so we need to have a defensive posture. Even if, even if we stop everybody from calling the cops are going to come in. So what are we going to happen then? We need residents to help us, to be willing to help us when the cops come in. And that means we need residents to feel loyal to us. Us. Right. And so then you get this logic and this kind of began with the Comando Vermelho, but I think it's developed since then. I'm not just going to govern here. I'm not just going to, you know, prohibit, you know, tell people they can't call the cops or even prohibit street crime. I'm going to actually try to win people's loyalty. I'm not saying this happens all the time or that the drug gangs are wonderful people or anything like that. I don't want to paint overly rosy picture, but there's definitely evidence that gangs understand the need to win over residents and so they make efforts to do so. That can be welfare provision, right? It can be throwing parties, helping out the poorest of the, of the people. It can be providing entertainment, it can be listening, right. And actually kind of trying to be a good authority figure and hear their complaints and be flexible and things like that. Again, not saying it happens all the time, but there's this incentive to not just govern the periphery, but to govern it well, because you're trying to win the loyalty, you know, you want these people when the cops come in to say, all right, between the cops and the gang, we prefer the gang because at least the gang listens to us, okay? At least the gang doesn't, you know, isn't violent against us or discriminates against us or whatever. They understand us or they're, you know. So once that's in place, the gangs are providing pretty thorough going governance. And again, I want to overestimate, I don't want to say umbrellas aren't dangerous places, but it's a pretty well known fact, and you and I were just talking about this, that in many favela communities in Brazil, it's actually pretty safe. There's violence when there's a police invasion, there's violence when one gang tries to invade another. But on a day to day basis, there's not a lot of property crime, nobody's pickpocketing anybody. There's. The gangs are adamant about sexual violence, right? So they punish, they find and punish and lynch, you know, rapists and pedophiles and things like that. And you know, quite often the gangs are, you know, you see these communities, again, there's huge variation, right, but some other communities are quite vibrant economically, right? They have bustling streets with stuff going on and it's actually a pretty safe environment. And so there's these street sellers selling things and you know, a lot of people live there. And so once that's happening, right, and you said this is going back to your question about what does the state do about this. My feeling, my finding, you know, one of my core findings in this book is that once this governance is in place, you know, once the state, once these gangs have started doing this and you know they're doing it in response to state repression, they're doing it because the state is coming in and busting their drug points of sale. They're doing it because they want people to not call the cops, right? They're doing it to keep some area free of the state because the state is threatening to come in. So that's why they do it in the first place. But once they do it, once they establish this kind of criminal governance, the state rarely actually says, hey, wait, no, you can't govern here. That's our job. We're the state, get out of here. We're going to be in charge. You know, we're going to set up shop here and make sure that residents know that the state is the, you know, has a kind of a monopoly on the legitimate use of force or whatever. The state rarely does that, but it mostly just keeps doing what it was. It just mostly keeps fighting drug war, arresting people, build mass incarceration, building new prisons, increasing the incarceration rate, trying to get longer sentences, harshening sentences, but it rarely doesn't say, you know, we need to stop these gangs from governing civilians. That's a red line for us. In fact, it isn't a red line for most governments. And it ends up being, in my argument, actually something that the state benefits from. So the state's going to keep fighting crime. It's going to keep locking people up, it's going to keep capturing kingpins or doing big busts and okay, we caught all these drugs and, you know, but they sort of conspicuously don't occupy a perm on a permanent basis and provide thoroughgoing governance in these communities. They let the gangs continue to do that. And my argument is because it's, you know, it saves the money. It saves money, it saves resources. It's. It's a good deal for the state. Right now you've got your. Now you've got your urban periphery being pretty well governed by some criminal organization, and you don't have to do it yourself. They're doing a better job than you would have done.

Richard McColl: So the government and the state can focus on the big, let's say, optics. You catch a major drug runner couple, etc. But as you say, on the low level, on these barrios, favelas, comunas, whatever, that have always been stigmatized as being lawless places and have, I would say, little state interest in them. Therefore, it's of use to the state to have these criminal gangs in there. So, I mean, I recall in. I was living in Brazil and I think it was 2006 when there was a huge amount of incursions into the favelas. And the people knew when it was going to come because the helicopters would hover over them, the upset and the violence, you know, resulting from this. But as you mentioned earlier, the state doesn't then occupy it then retires back to its, you know, its region. So, you know, they go in, but they'll go out again. And this doesn't, as you. As I was sort of saying, there's nothing. It's. It's optics at the end of it. It doesn't it doesn't change a situation within these areas. And what I found incredibly interesting in the text that I read that you sent me, of course, is you state that these are misguided state policies. You know, trying to, trying to do mass incarceration and repression because these then strengthen the criminal groups that they're aiming to contain. So can we talk about any possibilities that where the state has tried to do this and it may have been, you know, can we see. I mean, I think at the easiest place to look at is El Salvador in this moment. Obviously the Bukele model that everybody so many sort of, I would say strong on law and order candidates or potential candidates, especially here in Colombia or elsewhere in Ecuador. I know, you know, they talk about the Bukele model, let's lock everybody up. But what, you know, I have to ask you this as an expert. What's going to happen in the Bukele model? They've got everyone jailed. A huge percentage of that, let's say young men are jailed in I don't know how any many years are they going to let these people out? I mean, we don't even, I couldn't even hazard a guess. But give us some of your feelings about this.

Professor Benjamin Lessing: Sure. Yeah. So. Well, I think the short answer is we don't know what's going to happen in El Salvador. Right. We don't know. It raises a lot of questions. But let's take a step back because I think, you know, I think people, you know, people have heard about the Bukele model. It's in the news. I've worked not with Trump. I mean, you know, sending deportees there. So it's kind of hit the big time. And. But I think you really need to take a step back in two senses to make sense of what's happening in El Salvador. The first is just what you mentioned very briefly is this idea that many forms of state repression or crackdowns or mano dura have at least historically ended up strengthening gangs. I think that's a really important thing to realize and it's something that I talk about at length in this book project. I try to kind of catalog all these different mechanisms by which state repression and crackdowns can strengthen gangs. And there's many mechanisms. There's not just one mechanism. Right. There's lots of different ways that this happens and it's not. And I also don't want to claim that's the only thing that state repression does when the state comes in and they, you know, extradite El Chapo, that hurts the cartel. I'm not saying that is made the cartel stronger, but there's a lot of counterintuitive and sort of effects that we don't always realize are going to happen. And so I think if I could just highlight a few of those that are super central. I mean the first is quite obvious. When you crack down on the drug trade, you make it more profitable, right? I mean this is just obvious that the international drug trade is worth tens of billions of dollars a year. And you know, if it were all legal, it would still be a very valuable drug trade, but it would not be as valuable. So the very cracking down on something for which there's enormous demand and inelastic demand, people will pay any price for drugs makes it more profitable. And that's an Economics 101 finding. But it's important to bear in mind another thing we already talked about. When you start to police retail drug trafficking in the periphery, right in slums, you give the gangs who run that retail drug trade incentives to govern around the points of sale because it makes it safer, because they can win the loyalty of people. So the very fact that the state is trying to police those areas is giving gangs incentives to govern. And you know, otherwise they would not have any reason to govern civilians. That wouldn't be, wouldn't make sense for them. They wouldn't waste their time doing that. Another mechanism we haven't talked about yet is mass incarceration. And mass incarceration has a lot of effects on gangs, sort of ways that, in which mass incarceration can strengthen the gang or strengthen gangs. But I'll just highlight, I mean, you know, two, one is just by creating many of these gangs were born in overcrowded, violent prisons because they're, you know, just for self survival. They kind of bounded banded together in these places where there was, you know, rampant violence, often sexual violence, theft, you know, there's predation. And some of these gangs like the Comando Vermelho and PCC are born in prison, often in response to not only inmate on inmate violence, but really abusive state violence against inmates, you know, murder, prison massacres and things like that. So that's a main way in which these gangs get started. Once they get started, there's another really critical mechanism which is incarceration rates. If these gangs are kind of controlling the prison, right, which is often the case, they start to govern in the prison. And this Again, the state's like, all right, you want to govern in the prison? Great. Now there's no more violence because there's this gang that's kind of, you know, running the prison. And so I. Yeah, sure, go ahead, run the prison. 1. One thing less for me to do, right? But then anybody on the street is going to get sent to that prison, knows that the gang is in charge and has reason to obey the gang even before they go to prison, right? Because, okay, if I ever go to prison, I'm going to be in a PCC prison. And so I want to make sure that I'm, you know, I'm in good with the PCC or if the PCC tells me, you know, sends out a message to everybody, okay, you know, we want you to do xyz. Maybe I'll do xyz, because then they're gonna know. And when I eventually go to prison, you know, I'm gonna be in. I'll be in better. You know, I'll have to answer for my behavior on the street when I go to prison. Now, how likely am I going to go to prison? Well, if the incarceration rate is low, I'm not very likely. But if you have these gang sweeps, right, and you're just locking up everybody who even looks like a gang member, then even if I look like a gang, even if I'm not a gang member, I just look like a gang member. Well, I better obey the gang, because I'm going to get swept up. I'm going to go to prison, right? And so these mechanisms, these mass incarceration kind of gang sweep mechanisms, where you're taking lots of people from all over the city, right? From all over the country, and you're bringing them physically to places where the gang has power, you're helping that gang extend its power outward. And I think this mechanism is just very clearly on display in that not only with the expansion of. In Brazil, where you have, I mean, the entire criminal underworld is organized from prison, but also in the. In the cases of the maras in Central America, the Maras in El Salvador grew strong during mano dura and super mano dura, which included gang sweeps that, you know, would go and take thousands of kids off the street and put them in prison. And many of them turned out to not even be gang members. But once they got to prison and they were enjoying the protection of, you know, whatever mata they were put, you know, if you're from a Barrio 18 neighborhood, they put you in a Barrio 18 of prison. If you're from a MS-13 neighborhood, they put you in MS-13 prison. All of a sudden you're getting socialized into the gang. You know, you know, you have a good chance of getting sent to that prison. So you're kind of starting to obey them anyway. This is how those mara organizations were able to build kind of nationwide networks, in their case, extortion networks, and sophisticated sort of governance institutions, starting in prison, but also on the outside and then reaching out into all these different neighborhoods.

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Professor Benjamin Lessing: So I don't think. I think it's just a consensus that the mara phenomenon that Bukele inherited grew strong through mano dura kind of crackdowns in the past, right? So. So I think that's when I say you have to step back. You have to step back, not only conceptually, across the whole of Latin America and understand that there's all these ways in which repression can strengthen gangs, but also very specifically in the case of El Salvador, that's how the gangs got strong in El Salvador. They got strong in part through mass incarceration. And El Salvador was, even before Bukele, like, among the very most highest incarceration rates of any country was already very high incarceration country before Bukele's big crackdown. So when we're so all so. And another thing I'll say about El Salvador that I think often gets missed is that it became very violent around 2015, a kind of an open conflict between the state and the gangs. But very soon after, in 2016, the violence began to decline. And it began to decline because the gangs began to, between themselves, pact and understand that they could reduce violence, and they could then use that as a bargaining chip with the state, right? With different political parties, with different leaders, they could make deals that said, look, we're in control of violence here. We can keep violence coming down, but we want concessions from you. And so a series of different political parties and different political leaders from 2016 onward negotiated with the gangs different forms of benefits that they were able to give to the gangs in exchange for violence reduction. And those negotiations include Bukele, right? He negotiated with those gangs both as mayor of San Salvador and as president in 2019. It's only in 2022 that he does this flip, right? That he flips over to this super extra hyper mano dura crackdown network that is now called the Bukele model. Right? So the Bukele, again, it's very important to contextualize that the Bukele model is, it's, it starts in 2022. I mean, you know, you can date things from prior. He already took a very hard line publicly with the maras, but he was negotiating with them right up until 2022. And then he kind of breaks that negotiation, locks everybody up. Incarceration rates double to the, to levels unheard of, right? 1.6% Of the population. He builds CECOT and so on and so forth. And then you get this kind of Bukele model where everyone says, oh, he ended violence, he broke the gangs, there's no more violence. But if you look at the trend line, you know, most of the reduction in violence happens before that 2022 breakdown crackdown. It does continue to drop after the, after that crackdown. Now all of that is to say, what do we make of this Bukele model? Well, you know, there's no doubt that if we're being intellectually honest, we have to say, okay, maybe there's a level of state repression beyond which the gangs just can't even function, right? Maybe there's a level of the state deploying, not only deploying armed force, but revoking civil rights, right? Revoking due process where you're allowed to just literally seize anybody for as long as you want without accusing them of a crime, without letting them talk to lawyers, without letting them have any contact with the family, and without any idea when they'll ever be let out of prison, if they'll be let out of prison, right? Maybe there's a level of repression that is not gang strengthening, right? That is, that in fact is, you know, just the gangs can't operate. And I think that's something we all have to, as scholars that we do have to be intellectually honest about. We have to admit that's possible. At the same time, I think we have to be clear eyed about a couple of things. First of all, these very specific ways in which that happened in El Salvador right after he had negotiated with the gangs, after he had kind of already had a couple of rounds of, okay, they're gonna kill a couple people, then we're gonna put them back, and then we're gonna go back to our pact, right? So it's not clear that you just come out of the gate locking up everybody that's gonna work, right? He'd already, in many ways, sort of softened up the gangs. And it's also not clear that's really even true. Right. We know there's these. Some of these mara leaders are in the US and he's trying to get Trump to deport them because he doesn't want them to tell what they know. And so we don't really totally know what's going on. The data on homicide rates in El Salvador are no longer trustworthy. There's. There's been very limited access for journalists and things like that. So we also don't totally know 100 what to believe. And then I think the ultimate thing we need to bear. Well, two more things we need to bear in mind. One is that we don't know what's going to happen. So these processes I described, where there were crackdowns or gangs got locked up, or there was some, you know, kind of crackdown, and then, you know, they emerged stronger. Those processes take a long time over and over again. If you look at the history of the maras or you look at the history of Comando Vermelho or the PCC over and over again. It's like everyone thinks their gang has been shut down. You know, oh, we put in place all these new harsh measures. You know, there's nothing. The gang's been totally neutralized. You know, we haven't heard anything. Haven't heard a peep from them. Right. I mean, if you permit me a quick example, right. Just to convey, like, you know, maybe. What else? Maybe the Bukele model is working. But just bear with me for a second, and let's think about São Paulo in 2001. In 2001, the PCC launches a mega rebellion in 26 prisons. And it was the first time where authorities were forced to admit that this group existed. They kind of been denying that this group existed. They do this massive prison riot at 26 prisons, and suddenly they're on the TV and they. Their statute all over the place. And so it makes a big, you know, big scandal. Oh, this gang's been, you know, has now controls half the prisons in São Paulo. And in the intervening years, the state really cracked down. They did gang sweeps. They. They did all these new solitary confinement regimes. They transferred the leaders to other states to try to break up the gang. And you didn't hear about the PCC for like three or four years. And officials started saying, that worked. We did it. We broke them. You know, we put them in solitary confinement. We put the Cell phone blockers, whatever, you know. And then all of a sudden in 2006, they launched this, the second rebellion that's much bigger now, prisons in São Paulo and all these attacks on the street that brought the city to a standstill in May of 2006. So that was five years, right? Five years during which everybody thought that the PCC had been neutralized and that this crackdown had really, you know, dealt them a severe blow and blah. Not only did it not develop, dealt the most a severe blow, they had gotten much stronger in the interim. Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen in El Salvador. I'm not predicting that. I'm just saying you would be stupid not to at least think that something like that could happen, right? That 10 years, from five, 10 years from or you know, from the beginning of his crackdown, some new, even more powerful organization arises, right? The mod has come together and form some new or who knows, right? Again, I'm not predicting that. I'm just saying if we're going to be intellectually honest and say maybe this Bukele crackdown did make, did get, make the maras go away, we also need to be intellectually honest and recognize the history of Mano Dura has had these gang strengthening effects. And those gangster effects often occur under the waterline, right? You don't notice them right away. They're slow, they're difficult to detect. And you know, five, 10 years later, suddenly there's this very powerful criminal organization that nobody was expecting. So I think we need to be. So we need to think about that as well. And the last thing I'll just say is yeah, maybe it worked, right? Maybe if this was again, a level of state repression that is so extreme that it's supplant, it's breaking the gangs and in some ways supplanting them in the urban peripheries of El Salvador. But we should also be very clear that was only possible by suspending the democratic rule of law. People are not, they have no habeas corpus, they have no right to remain silent. They have no right to non incrimination. They're just being held. Many people are being held, not just without a trial, but they don't even know what they're accused of. They're just held and you know, just being held. So, you know, it's totally possible that an authoritarian crackdown, you know, can, if nothing else, displays gangs. And the other piece that I think is critical to Note, there is, if, you know, Bukele really does seem to have kind of. In terms of criminal governance, he does seem to have taken over those communities. And people in those communities do seem happy because they're now able to move around, you know. And so in many ways, I think Bukele did what the gangs in Brazil did earlier, which was sort of, he. He stopped all this internecine violence where it used to be these invisible borders and people couldn't cross. Now they can cross and they're loyal. People are happy. They're just like the gangs in Brazil were like, people in the favelas are like, oh, well, the gang did something good for us. People in El Salvador saying, okay, Bukele did something good for us. So I. So I do think that is, you know, that's real and possible. But again, he. He. Part of what made it possible for him to do that is being able to use the same kind of freedom from due process that. That the gangs have. Right. He can use violence without legal limit or constraint just the way that the gangs are. Are able to do as well, which makes imposing order a lot easier.

Richard McColl: Yeah, but. And also, I think at the end of it, gangs are nothing if. If not flexible and resourceful as well. I mean, you know. Okay, you sort of. The whack a mole theory. Okay, well, let's crack down on this side of it. They'll pop up doing another thing. I mean, look at Tren de Aragua. Really, it's almost like a criminal enterprise of sort of franchising different illicit activities. It's just where they're very clever and they go where the money is in terms of this. So I wonder how you sort of stop that. But I'm curious, though. I'm curious. And we have to raise it. Where's this gray area when we talk about criminal organizations, but then sort official, legitimate criminal. I would say legitimate state actors within criminality. So the corruption of the police, where does this fit into all of these different equations that we've discussed? Because there is a. There is a fear in. In, I would say most communities in this part of the world that the police also have a certain degree of corruption and. Well, that is criminal, of course.

Professor Benjamin Lessing: Sure. And, you know, we, I mean, it's a huge issue, obviously. And it's also, you know, we don't have. It's. There's. I would say there's a lot of variation in how high up corruption goes. Right. And so you sort of have places where it's a local Police battalion or it's a local police, you know, who in some kind of collusion. You have places where the police aren't really very, the gangs are, you know, they're just getting a small bribe and kind of looking the other way. You have places where the police are more involved in it. You know, in Argentina you, there's this whole sort of line of research on how the police actually in many ways sort of structure the drug trade, right? They have a more active role in making partnerships with local. And they've been kind of given that job by the political system. Just make sure that the local drug trade is not violent and you kind of manage it and you can take whatever cut of the profits you want. So then you have like the old Mexican system back in the day under the PRI, where they at the national level were kind of, you know, these sort of state sponsored protection rackets where the corruption goes all the way to the very top. I think you have a lot of variation in how corruption works and, but I think there's an important point to be made here that's often missed and it's one of the claims I make in my book. And you know, I think it'll in some ways be controversial when we're talking about drug trafficking, right. Or, and I think there's some other criminal activities as well. Obviously corruption is a huge issue, right. There's a lot of money there. And the, and every time you send a police officer to go, you know, seize a bunch of cocaine, and if he's, you know, got the cocaine right there and he can seize it, the drug trafficker has an incentive to give that police officer a huge bribe to let him keep the cocaine. Right? So, or whatever, you know, and so the very fact that it's such a lucrative activity and you're sending cops out to destroy some of that value, it creates opportunities for corruption. I wouldn't deny that. But with respect to criminal governance, right. With respect to gangs governing inside of prisons or governing urban peripheries, right. Governing civilians as part of this strategy to keep the state out, I think corruption is in some ways sort of orthogonal to that. It's, it's not, I mean, it might be a part of it, but it's not really so central to the story. Gangs don't bribe officials to let them resolve disputes among neighbors, right? Gangs don't bribe officials to let them decide who's going to sleep where inside of a prison cell. Right. They don't have to bribe officials. The fact that the Gang takes care of property crime inside the favela. The cops like, great, do it. We'll be out here waiting on the outside of the perimeter, you know, and they don't. There doesn't need to be a corrupt transaction around criminal governance because. Precisely because it benefits both at the same time. Right. If the, if the gang is keep making the favela place where nobody's pickpocketing, you know, the police aren't going to go in and say, hey, you got to give me a share of what? Of the, you know, there's not, there's no share of anything to demand. Now, they may still go in and demand a share from the drug trade. Right. Happens all the time. But the whole point of providing the criminal governance is, well, the cops now have a little bit less power to extract a bribe because they know if they go in and try to bust the drug traffickers can hide in the, in the houses of the, of the civilians because they've won the loyalty of the civilians. So it's not clear that the criminal governance is increasing corruption. And in some ways it's making corruption a little bit on the margins, maybe a little bit more difficult. So I think that's an important point. I think what, I'm not trying to say corruption doesn't happen or it doesn't have important role, but there's this sort of sense of like, oh, if the gut, if the gangs are governing in the slums, it must because the state is corrupt. And I think that's a little bit of a misreading. I think, I think that the state is benefiting from criminal governance, but not necessarily in a corrupt way. It's just, it's benefiting because it doesn't have to do the job itself. And I don't think that depends on, you know, it might involve bribes, but I don't think it critically depends on bribes in the same way where, if you're just strictly looking at the drug trade, you know. Yeah. Then you're really talking about corruption is a pretty important factor.

Richard McColl: I think we need to wind this down a bit, and we've been tapping your profound knowledge on the subject. If you were, again, in a perfect world, everything was working as you expect it to work, what would be your recommendations for not combating or minimizing organized crime within Latin America? I realize it's a huge question, but I mean, would you just say it needs to be a greater access to basic human rights, you know, education, health care, potable water, things like that, democratic process, fair elections. What would you say that would be something to. Let's, let's draw Latin America as a whole out of this stigma of being a place where one in nine live in some kind of criminal governance?

Professor Benjamin Lessing: Sure. Well, again, I think, you know, there's organized crime, there's drug trafficking, there's a lot, there's other criminal activities like human trafficking and then there's criminal governance. Right. And these are some, these are related phenomenon but they're not the same thing. And so there's one thing isn't going to solve all those problems at once. I do think that a hu. And again, if you look at the cases of El Salvador where there was a lot of criminal or the rest of Central America, the maras that was, there was a lot of criminal governance and it wasn't particularly about drug retailing. Right. So criminal governance can also be a story of extortion. And then when it is an, a story of extortion, it's in some ways even more perverse because now you've got poor people, you know, living in marginalized peripheral communities. They're already on the outs. They're already not, you know, in many ways being neglected. And now they have to also pay extortion to some local, you know, gang. It's pretty bad. So, but I do nonetheless, I do think that, you know, moves towards legalization, legalizing drugs are, you know, let me put it the other way because I don't think there's like a, I don't think drugs are going to get legalized anytime soon. Not cocaine, not trafficking cocaine, which is what's driving so much of this. But let me put it the other way with, if you don't do that, you've got this, you know, just engine of not only criminal activity, but criminal governance. Not only, you know, international drug trafficking generating billions and billions of dollars and funding and corrupting high level officials and all that stuff, but you've also got low level retail markets and that's driving these processes of bottom up crime and criminal governance throughout the hemisphere. And so, and giving them incentives to do that kind of criminal governance and giving them resources to do that kind of criminal government. So as long as, you know, illicit drugs and popular illicit drugs with inelastic demand, especially cocaine are illegal and there's repression, there's a drug war, I don't, you know, I think this Process of. I think. I think criminal governance will continue to grow. I do think that if you want to target criminal governance, if you want to reduce criminal governance, there's there. I think there's evidence that it can be done. It's just, in my view, very expensive. So we look at the UPP pacification program that happened in Rio around 2008. That was a program that. A very rare program that explicitly said, look, we're not going to try to end the drug trade per se. We're not going to try to eliminate every criminal organization, but we are going to establish something like a, you know, what I would call a Weberian monopoly, right? A monopoly on the legitimate use of force. We're going to come into these neighborhoods, occupy these neighborhoods, and we're going to tell the traffickers, look, if you're selling drugs, you know, whatever, we're not going to, you know, we catch you selling drugs, we're still going to bust you. But our priority isn't to stop every single drug trade. Our priority is you're not going to be walking around patrolling anymore with machine guns. We are going to be walking around patrolling. We're going to have the territorial control here. And, you know, that's just how it is. The state's going to govern here, and you guys can do your whatever, criminal activities. You know, just like in the US where you see, sure, there's street corner gangs selling drugs, but they're not governing civilians. And that program, although, you know, when as it was rolling out and being kind of tweaked and experimented with in the first few favelas that they occupied, it worked. You know, the gangs adapted and they're all right, well, we'll sell drugs out of little backpacks and we won't have territorial control. We'll hide from the cops, and the cops will be the local governing authority. And, you know, it worked so well that it was. They rapidly expanded it to, you know, hundreds of favelas because it was. The World cup was coming and the Games, you know, Olympic Games were coming. And then the program kind of bogged down. It didn't. They ran out of money, they ran out of. They didn't have enough of these specialized police, so they started using regular police. Then there was an economic recession. You know, people disagree about why that program failed, but in my view, it didn't fail because the state was unable to establish something like, you know, a Weberian monopoly on the use of. For. It did. I think it failed because that proved to be very expensive, especially when you Tried to replicate it out, not just four communities, but 200 communities, you know. Sure. And so to me, that proves my point, which is you have, in a place like Rio, you have the illicit retail drug trade funding the governance of an urban periphery where millions of people live. The state is not, is. Is getting let off the hook for providing governance in for millions of people. And that governance is being paid for out of the illicit drug trade by. And it's being executed by, carried out by criminal organizations. So until something in that equation changes, you know, you're not going to really make progress on criminal governance. There's going to be a huge fiscal gap if you try to. If the state tries to take it all on by itself, it probably won't do as good of a job as the gangs. And so, you know, for that very reason, there's no silver bullet. I can't say, like, oh, yeah, the state should just take. Take over everything. Not at all clear. Even Bukele has fiscal issues. I mean, he's constantly talking about how he doesn't have enough money to. To maintain CECOT prison, and he's constantly, you know, he's gone out for IMF loans. So even Bukele, who did maybe successfully monopolize, faces these fiscal constraints. So I think it's a real issue for. It's not something that's going to be fixed in the short run, but it is. And in a sense, there's an underlying political issue, which is like, why were these areas allowed to be dominated by gangs and the first place? Well, because they're marginalized, they're poor, they're people who aren't really hooked into the political system, don't have political influence. Then you don't see criminal governance in the wealthy areas. Right. You don't see gangs ruling over, you know, Brazilian Wall street or, you know, the, you know, in El Poblado, in Medellin, you don't like, the gangs rule other. And so that's partly because those rich neighborhoods have more money and they have more resources. But it's also really kind of a political question because they have. If gangs tried to rule there, those people have access to politicians who would make, you know, everybody knows that wouldn't fly. And so in a certain sense, I've come to believe this criminal governance occurs in places where there's, for one reason or another, people sort of think, well, yeah, you know, different rules apply in those neighborhoods. Those are poor neighborhoods, those are favelas. And until that changes, until that political question changes, right, where it's like, no, this isn't okay anywhere, Right. We're going to do whatever it takes, and the state's going to have to make transfers, and maybe we're going to have to cut some resources in the wealthier areas to bring those resources. It's a mass. It would be a, you know, it would be a massive redistribution over time. And so for that very reason, I think we're talking about very slow processes. If it took 20 or 30 years to build criminal governance in these places, then it's going to take that long to kind of wind it down. And that's going to be very hard to do because you're going to need constant political pressure to do so. So I'm a bit of a pessimist on this changing anytime soon. And I think if you actually look at the, if you look at some of these cases, like São Paulo or Medellin, it's not. No, it's not even on the table to reduce criminal government. On the contrary. Right. What people. Those, you know, people are. No one's saying in São Paulo, let's retake control over the urban periphery from the PCC. The PCC is doing a great job. Who would want to step in and contest their authority where. If they've reduced violence? So, yeah, I don't see, in the short run, I don't see that. I think the capacity is there, but I just don't see the political will or the resources.

Richard McColl: Well, I think that's a perfect place to bring this to a close. Let me take this moment to say thank you so much to Benjamin Lessing, Associate professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Do keep an eye out for his book in 2026, Criminal Leviathans: How Gangs Govern from Behind Bars. I will certainly be purchasing a copy because obviously living down here and being involved and having lived in many of the regions mentioned, I'm fascinated by it also. Benjamin, thank you so much for your time.

Professor Benjamin Lessing: My pleasure. Great to talk to you.

Richard McColl: This has been The LatinNews Podcast. I've been your host, Richard McColl, here in Bogota, Colombia. As I said, we've been talking to Benjamin Lessing, Associate professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. We will be back in a fortnight discussing further issues and topics of interest from the region. Thank you again for listening and please share and subscribe to the podcast. Goodbye.

Outro: You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.latinnews.com.

Angus is an interdisciplinary scholar interested the politics of transformative change and twenty-first century capitalism.

He joined the Department of International Development at King’s College London from the University of Greenwich in 2024. His research examines the Left in Power, state-social movement relations, the political economy of development in Latin America, natural resource-led development and extraction and energy transitions.

His first monograph, "Now We Are in Power: The Politics of Passive Revolution in Twenty-First Century Bolivia", was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2023. He is currently writing a book on the economic history of Bolivia and has three research projects addressing meat planes in Bolivia, finance, extraction and the green transition and the politics of knowledge production across postcolonial spaces respectively.

Intro: Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogotá, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is The LatinNews Podcast. I am your host, Richard McColl, here in Bogotá, Colombia. This week's very special guest is Dr. Angus McNelly. He's a lecturer in international development at King's College London. And his most recent book is Now We Are in Power: The Politics of Passive Revolution in Twenty-First-Century Bolivia. And we're going to be talking about Bolivia because it's. Well, we've just had the first round of the presidential elections. They took place on the 17th of August. And, well, I don't think it was a surprise anything that happened, but the manner in which it happened perhaps took some people by surprise. So, Angus, welcome on The LatinNews Podcast.

Dr Angus McNelly: Thanks for having me, Richard.

Richard McColl: It's an absolute pleasure. And Bolivia, of course, makes the headlines probably for all the wrong reasons all too often. Perhaps we could start by this. Just take an overview of this first round that took place. The first round of the presidential elections.

Dr Angus McNelly: So the first round of the presidential elections which happened last month, took some by surprise because the candidate that won the most votes was a guy called Rodrigo Paz. He's a Christian Democrat and he kind of came from nowhere. Right. People were talking about other candidates, particularly Tuto Quiroga, who won second place in the vote, and Samuel Doria Medina, who came third. Right. These were kind of the two names that people were talking about, along with the Movement Towards Socialism candidate, the MAS candidate.

Richard McColl: So the MAS candidate, Eduardo del Castillo was, I mean, we could say trounced.

Dr Angus McNelly: Yeah. And I don't think it was particularly his fault. We can turn to the MAS more in more detail in a minute. And then the other candidate that everyone was talking about was another person that has come through the ranks of the MAS, Andrónico Rodríguez, who was the head of the cocaleros. He was for a long time seen as the former President Evo Morales successor, but for various different reasons, to do with the internal politics of the MAS and to do with the geographical divisions within Bolivia itself. You had the conditions which enabled Rodrigo Paz to come from nowhere and to trouncing the elections a little bit about Rodrigo Paz. He's really interesting because although he came from nowhere, he is by no means a break with the political elite in the country. Right. He's the son of former President Jaime Paz Zamora and has been in politics for a good 20, 25 years and actually kind of got his first Break under the government of Hugo Banzer, the former dictator who was succeeded by his vice president, Tuto Quiroga, who's the other person who's in the running for the second round in October. Right. So we have a whole bunch of old faces who've been around the block for a long time. That's not to say that the results weren't surprising, because no one was expecting the Christian Democrats to do so.

Richard McColl: Well, there's an interesting one because you get again, Rodrigo Paz Pereira and of course, Jorge Quiroga. These two. These two characters that they have face and name recognition, of course, in within Bolivia. So why, you know, Evo Morales, obviously, famously very popular figure and obviously under investigation or the sentencing for statutory rape and being pulled up in his. in Chapare. But he ran the country between 2006 and 2019, before there was that sort of hiccup with Jeanine Áñez. And then of course, we had the government of Arce, another MAS president. What happened that brings us to this stage?

Dr Angus McNelly: So I think this is the time to talk about the story of the MAS. Right. The MAS was a political party, an instrument, they called it, that came from the peasant movement that really kind of emerged in the 1990s. It was a very young party in 1997 when it first participated in national elections. And it really took everyone by surprise in 2002, where it came second in national elections. And from that moment, it moved from being a party of the peasant confederation centered around the coca growers. Evo Morales is a former coca grower. This is why he's holed up in the Chapare. This is the main coca growing region of the country. And they needed to build a political apparatus capable of governing. Right. And so what they did was they invited loads of people, former politicians from other political parties, lawyers, academics, economists, into the party, the so called invitados or invited in order to help. Right. The most famous of these was Álvaro García Linera, who was the vice president for many years. Okay. And this enabled a social composition of the party that was a mixture of social movement leaders, namely, kind of Evo Morales that came from the peasant confederation and kind of the intellectual milieu, particularly from La Paz and Cochabamba. And this party was able to build Support in the 2006 elections after violent protests against the privatization of water, against proposals to export gas from Chilean seaports, and demanding the nationalization of gas into a national political force that won votes across the urban regions, in the major cities, but also amongst middle classes, class Voters, right? And they were able to carry this success through the 2009 elections and the 2014 elections, right? The first 10 years of the MAS power, they were incredibly popular. The first period was a period of consolidation where they took movement demands, most notably the nationalization of gas, the refounding of the country as a plurinational state through a constituent assembly and agrarian reform. And they implemented them. Right? And this was a very contested period where you had right wing mobilizations against the first Ray Morales that were then defeated in 2008. And so you had a period after that where you had a legislative process where these reforms were embedded. Throughout this period between, say 2002 and 2013, you had very high global commodity prices. You also had the coming online of a export pipeline that linked Bolivian gas fields to Brazil and the coming online of three mega campos, the three mega gas fields in the south of the country, which led to a gas bonanza, right? Bolivia had record international reserves. They had dollars, which meant that they could actually fund a radical political project, which is what they did over the first course of the first two morale presidencies. The wheels started to come off in 2014, 2015, when global commodity prices started to fall. Morales then made, in my opinion, an error in trying to eliminate presidential term limits in the the constitution it says you can only run for two terms. In the 2014 election, the Constitutional Court ruled that Morales first term didn't count because it was before the inauguration of the new constitution. So he was allowed to run for a third term, which was technically his second in 2016. There was a referendum in February to try and change the term limits. And the opposition flew through the kitchen sink at the MAS, right? And they said, they were saying fraud. They dug up a legitimate love child that didn't exist. They used a mixture of corruption, but also kind of mismanagement and difficulties in the indigenous fund. And they threw that amoralis in the MAS all in the week running up to the 2016 referendum results. And then they won. They won very narrowly, but they won. And it was quite funny because in that moment they realized that fraud is in a particular kind of very powerful way to go against the MAS and the Morales. It was the first time the MAS had lost a popular vote in 10 years. And this marked the beginning of kind of disarticulation of the MAS political project. The other thing which is really important to note as a kind of. As a part of this story is what happened to social movements. So the MAS came from the peasant movement, which was really strong, thanks to a literal warfare against the Bolivian State and the DEA in the 1980s against coca eradication programs. This radicalized a lot of coca growers who themselves were ex miners and brought in the previous kind of radicalism of miners unions into the Chapare. You then had this period of social movement kind of revolt that I've talked about between 2000 and 2005. And so you had a very strong indigenous, working class, neighborhood, kind of like territorial based set of movements that were able to kind of direct and dictate government policy until 2009, 2010 in that period, and this is why my book is called now we are in Power is the idea was these movements found in the MAS an articulation of themselves, right? The first couple of MAS cabinets, the majority were from social organizations, the majority had four in social movements. And so there was a real sense that kind of Morales and that his cabinet were from these movements, right? And that these movements were the ones who were calling the shots. And in the face of right wing destabilization attempts, and it attempts to kind of start a quote unquote civil war to divide the country between the highlands, the lowlands and this blitz. We're going to talk about more in a minute because it's still really important. Movements then position themselves as defenders of the MAS, defenders of Morales government. Right? And the MAS enabled this to happen through various institutional reforms, the creation of a vice ministry of social movements and civil society. And this, the, this articulating umbrella organization called CONALCAM, right, Which is like the kind of articulator of social movements in the state. And what happened was, intentionally or not, many of the movements became kind of empty shells. The leaders became orientated towards building political frizz through social movements. And people lost their horizons of struggle because gas had been nationalized, because they won the plurinational state. And so there was no reason to stay mobilized. And so by 2016, 2017, you've got these movements on paper by name that really didn't have any social content. And because you had at the same time the recycling of hydrocarbon rents throughout the country, particularly through higher minimum wages, conditional cash transfers, you had a boom in the popular economy, right? This is where ordinary people were spending their money. And so you have a kind of like paradoxical situation where a left wing government that's called socialist is also overseeing a expansion and deepening of kind of capitalist social relations and capitalist logics, particularly within rural areas, right. And this is really visible, say if you go to Oruro and drive along the new the highway there. You can see by the sides of the roads that people have built walls around plots that used to be collective plots. But all of a sudden people have money and started buying plots in their community and building walls around it to mark that this is their private property. A complete transformation of social relations. And this means that the collective ideals, collective relationships that underpinned movements started to kind of like disappear. And they call it at tejido social, like the social weaving kind of started to dissipate. Right. And this is the major challenge that we face now in the the country, right. Is that social movements that were super powerful before because of these collective ways of organizing no longer have the same social relations, the same social practices underpinning them. Which means that social movements are no longer the force that they once were. Right. This is despite the fact the country is going currently through a major economic crisis that we can talk about in a little bit.

Richard McColl: I find that fascinating, this idea and obviously this truth that the collective has changed obviously to more, I would say a capitalist economic model. As you said, walls being built around plots that previously were the collective plots of an area. And you mentioned just now there is an absolutely precarious inheritance of economic, legal and political disorder for the next government. Do you think that there might be a swing back then towards the collective from these grassroots? And I would say the sort of the working class indigenous communities, when they see how the economy progresses,.

Dr Angus McNelly: It's difficult to say. What I can say is that the collective relationships that the people depended upon, which were kinship networks, built through what is called compadrazgo, it's just kind of fictitious, kind of like godparenthood is less powerful than it once was. There are more people who migrate, particularly to Argentina, Brazil, but also to Santa Cruz. And in these spaces you have indigenous people who are forced to go to the market to get everything they need. They can no longer survive on using the practices in agriculture, in organizing social life they did before. And this has been a theme within Bolivian kind of political debate for a long time. Right. Is that like how to understand the persistence of other forms of being or of other kind of life worlds? The importance of indigenous movements? And that's not to say indigenous identity isn't still really important. It is but just the practices that people used in order to survive and people's capacity to survive outside markets has been diminished, which means that it's very difficult to think of political forms that would mirror that's not to say that we can't imagine a new left formation. The really interesting thing about the vote is I said at the start, Samuel Doria Medina won, came third in the vote. That's if we exclude null on spoiled ballot papers, which were like a quarter of the vote. Right. They won more votes than Doria Medina's. This is a protest vote. Evo Morales was encouraging people to do this, but it reflects a widespread rejection of the political consensus and the fact that you had a set of right wing candidates that basically came from the neoliberal period and they have very different political programs. Like Rodrigo Paz and Tuto Quiroga have very different programs. And that's worth recognizing. Tuto Quiroga basically wants to privatize everything, including the central bank, along the lines of Milei, the Argentine president. Whereas Paz is much more of a kind of centrist, a kind of moderate reformer. He wants to have judicial reforms, which definitely need to happen. But in terms of a definite policy that's going to mark a rupture with the status quo, you're not going to get that with him, whereas with Tuto you definitely are. And so I think that there is the space for a new political formation to emerge. The reason it's not going to be the MAS is the MAS was the terrain over which a power struggle occurred between Arce and Morales. Yeah. And this power struggle, in my mind we need to read through the lens of social movements. We can think about it as the cocalero, the coca growers thinking, hang on a minute, this is our political instrument, we created this, we voted for this in the 1990s and all of a sudden it's in the hands of a technocrat and we don't have any say in how it's run. Right. And this is the arguments of the Evo support base. It's not really about Evo Morales or that he's the figurehead of this. It's also about the fact that the kind of, this is their political instrument that they've lost control over. Arce, for his part, represented the kind of invited experts and the kind of middle class, urban and popular kind of classes that have definitely seen their lives improved under the MAS and they saw kind of real material gains. They may or may not consider themselves indigenous, but they don't see why the MAS is the party of Morales. And so this battle could, because of the weakness of the right, was basically a battle within Bolivian politics that occurred over the terrain of the MAS and ended up kind of engulfing the whole party and destroying it. Right. And so what you saw this is why like you don't have either of those two political figures as the MAS candidate in the first round in 2025. Right. You have Castillo who's a. He's a known figure within the party, but he's a relative out political outsider. He had a very kind of sound political platform, but he was never going to be popular because it was easy to discredit him because it was easy to lump the MAS either with the crisis and corruption that is associated with Arce or the crisis, corruption, pedophilia associated with Morales.

Richard McColl: So yeah, a blanket, I would say rejection of anything MAS there. You raised a couple of items in that last intervention there. And talking about the differences between Rodrigo Paz and of course Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga. Jorge Quiroga, as you suggest, looking to pursue a kind of Milei model, privatize everything in as in Argentina. And Rodrigo Paz a little bit more centrist. So it seems to me they are, they're not going to be able to work together the two final candidates in the second round, which will be on the 19th of October, these two candidates will not come together and will not cross the aisle to be able to work together.

Dr Angus McNelly: I don't think so. I don't think I have to. And the really interesting thing is if you look at the electoral map from the 2025 elections, it maps pretty neatly onto the 2021 electoral map when Arce won power because Tuto Karoga, his support base is Santa Cruz. It's the lowlands. It's people who view Santa Cruz as an economic center, as a powerhouse because of entrepreneurialism, because of links to global capital, hence the kind of like turn towards Milei. Right. The former dictator who was Tuto Karogo's boss in the early noughties, he comes from Santa Cruz and very much kind of embodies the kind of rise of the eastern lowlands as an economic force from the 1970s onwards. And so it's no surprise that the Tuto won in Santa Cruz and in Pando, which is like other is an Amazonian kind of department to the north. If you look at where Rodrigo Paz won, he won in the highlands in the altiplano, right? And his electoral map mats pretty neatly onto where the MAS won votes in 2021. And so what you see is actually kind of the old political lines which really hardened in the period following the social movement uprisings where you saw kind of this idea of quote unquote, 2 Bolivia's emerging east and west kind of like capitalist and indigenous or whatever kind of. However it was framed, these kind of schisms still exist. Right. Which is why it's not difficult to kind of see like how it's going to play out over the second round. The interesting thing is kind of Samuel Doria Medina won, Beni and Tarija. It's not inconceivable that kind of. Much of that boat goes toward Tuto Querogo, given their affinity to kind of lowland regional politics. But it's difficult to say, right. And because it's the second round, because there are two candidates, we will have a winner in October. So there is really kind of no reason for either candidate to win. And I think Rodrigo Paz will very much be leaning on a. His father's political legacy. His father is a really interesting character. Came from the kind of revolutionary leftist movement, the MIR. All of the political parties in Bolivia have these fantastic revolutionary names. That doesn't mean they're necessarily revolutionary political parties. And he came to power because Banzer won the 1988 elections and said to. As a compromise, like we'll do a pact and you can be President Right. In 89, 93, which is in the end what happened. But Jaime Paz Zamora was an important political figure in the fights against the dictatorships and in the political kind of terrain that you had in the 60s and 70s where he was sometimes in bed with dictatorships, other times a critical outsider. But he was seen as very much kind of someone on the political scene who was sometimes a friend, sometimes not, of kind of leftist movement, of mining unions and of indigenous movements. And I think that kind of like Rodrigo Paz will very much play up that alongside his credentials as a. As a moderate, which I think is important given popular rejection of the MAS for various different reasons. But is. I think it's. It's an easy to see why he would present himself as a moderate candidate in that context.

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Richard McColl: So I mean, looking at that and looking at, as you said, the Tarija and the Beni and this division between East West Bolivia. I mean, it's highly uncertain who might win that second round. It's highly uncertain. I mean, you wouldn't. You wouldn't put money on it, would you?

Dr Angus McNelly: No, you wouldn't. And my worry before the elections, I didn't think there was going to be any kind of political violence in the first round in August. My worry is October, where you have two kind of center right to far right candidates, kind of no real expression for certain important groups, and a very big spoiled ballot paper vote in the first round that if is big enough in the second might kind of delegitimize the election results in the eyes of the Bolivian populace. The kind of major positive of the first round was that the free and fair elections. It's been a problem in the past in actually kind of the institutions around elections. They were formed as part of the reforms. So the plurinational state came into being through the new constitution in 2009. But the constitution is a constitution. It doesn't mean anything. It needs a legal structure to actualize the constitution in practice. And this happened majorly through the five foundation laws which were implemented in 2010, one of which was electoral reform, which implemented new electoral bodies that were. Have been criticized and they were heavily criticized in the run up to the 2019 elections where electoral houses were burned, where they turned to the European Union. One of the electoral observers two days before the elections were like, we have no legitimacy in the eyes of the Bolivian people. Right. So this is one of the positives that the institutions seem to be stronger in the eyes of the people this time around. Whether that remains when you just have right wing candidates and you have possible belligerent intervention from Evo Morales and the cocaleros remains to be seen.

Richard McColl: Yeah, I think that's the thing, isn't it? Evo Morales still controls and commands a significant populace. As you were talking about the Chapare and his Evo pueblo there, he's still an outspoken voice. He could definitely, I wouldn't say swing an election, but cause problems.

Dr Angus McNelly: Yeah, but let's not get this wrong. That doesn't mean that he has the power to stage a coup or to stage political violence across the country in such a way that will disrupt or nullify the elections. This was a discourse that I heard quite a lot when I was last in Bolivia in July. I just don't think that he has the capacity in the Chapare. Yes, right. In certain MAS strongholds that even there. So places like El Alto, where he had. Where the MAS had a really strong support base in Oruro. I just don't see it. Right. And there are people who might be frustrated that MAS aren't on the ballot. Right. And you might see some sort of kind of disorder around that. But to say that Evo Morales has the power to say, well, we're going to have an insurrection, which is kind of one of the fears of the. Particularly the kind of like, elite Bolivians. This fear is very much linked to fears around La Paz being sieged by Túpac Katari back in the 18th century. In Santa Cruz's case, it's kind of like indigenous hordes through this kind of very racist stereotypes and tropes they have about indigenous social movements. And so, yes, there are kind of psychological fears that the elites have. That doesn't mean that they will actually be realized.

Richard McColl: Okay, I'm sure that that's. It's being used by the candidates as well. Of course, there's a. Jorge Quiroga, of course, is using this as the hordes. I'm sure there's an interesting concept, the how the party composition for the new congress is. So how can we ask how that might play into anything across the country?

Dr Angus McNelly: The. So we know what the distribution of votes in the congress is. It's fairly split, which is not surprising given that there wasn't, before October's August election, a major political force big enough to win a majority. And so there will be compromise, but what you will also see is the emergence of voting blocks and political blocks within Parliament itself, which isn't hard to see how that will happen. The key thing is what people coalesce around, right? And this depends on who wins. But the major thing that needs to be confronted in Bolivian society today is the economic crisis. The economic crisis stems from a collapse in the country's ability to earn international reserve currencies, basically because the major export from the prior period, gas has been curtailed through lower prices, lower production because some of the gas fields have been exhausted and lower demand from their two export markets. The thing about gas is you need pipelines to export it. You either export it to Argentina, they found loads of gas in 2010. They don't want Bolivian gas. And Brazil kind of wants Argentinian gas, right, because it's cheaper. And so what you're seeing is actually a proposal from Argentina to pay a lease to export Argentine gas through Bolivian pipelines to Brazil, which stems from the ability of the Bolivians not only to supply gas at a reasonable price, but also to meet their export contracts. Right. There have been times when particularly the Brazilians have been angry with the Bolivians because of the stop start nature of production here, which means that they missed their export quotas. Right. So this is part of the reason why Brazil is keen to have Argentine gas instead of Bolivian. The other promise was lithium. And lithium never really got off the ground for various different reasons. Politically, the MAS tried to position it as a strategic resource. It's written into the constitution as a strategic resource. This means that private capital cannot be involved in any of the extraction process. This became a barrier when you needed direct extraction technology to get the 99.9% lithium grade, sorry, battery grade lithium demanded for export. Issues around the price of production. The chemical composition of the big salt flats, particularly the Salar de Uyuni, which is the MASive salt flats, which are tourist attraction, they're very famous, but there's a lot of potassium in those salt flats and it's actually really difficult to produce lithium at the same price as some of the other salares in the region. Right. And the major competition comes from Argentina and Chile, which have better kind of geological conditions to enable this to happen. And you've seen a, an inability of successive governments to build a long term national strategy around lithium. The one person who tried to do this is a guy called Carlos Montenegro, who is the head of the YLB who passed away very sadly under suspicious circumstances last year, I think, and he was the one person who was really trying to build a coherent strategy around lithium. But it's proved to be incredibly difficult because of these economic factors, on top of the attempts by the MAS in order to break free of foreign control over natural resources in conditions where maybe this wasn't going to be possible because of the technology needed for extraction. And so this has caused a major issue. The other side of the equation is what the country is spending dollars on. And you got this kind of paradox that Bolivia spends lots of its foreign reserves, one from hydrocarbons, on importing hydrocarbons. Part of the reason for this is they tried, but it's incredibly difficult and expensive to get diesel and heavier hydrocarbon derivatives from gas, much cheaper just to get it from other forms of crude oil. The other reason is that in the 1990s there wasn't really a big domestic market for particularly petroleum and diesel. And so as part of the neoliberal reforms, what actually the government of Tuto did last time he was in power was they introduced a hydrocarbon subsidy. The hydrocarbon subsidy was designed to make a domestic market in petroleum and diesel. Its price was set in 2002, then altered in 2004 and it hasn't changed since, despite record high gas prices and oil prices globally. And what this means is that the Bolivian state spends a lot of its hard earned dollars either paying the people who import gasoline and diesel into the country or to the refiners who bring in oil and refine in the country. Either way, they're burning through lots and lots of dollars in order to try and get gasoline and diesel. Gasoline we all know is for transportation. Diesel is a particular sticking point, right? Diesel is heavier. You use it in tractors, in trucks. And so what you see around the politics of the hydrocarbon subsidy is a very weird, powerful social coalition that says you cannot remove this subsidy. In this coalition you have the agro industrial elite who are basically have their production subsidized by diesel from the state for tractors and heavy machinery. The people who control heavy transport, who are largely Aymara traders who are very important in the popular economy. They import anything and everything, right? From used cars to electronics, much of which now comes from China. The transport sector, the Bolivia doesn't really have a public transport sector. It's all privatized in La Paz and El Alto famously is minibuses. But if you go to Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, it's the micros, these are incredibly expensive. The people who control these cooperatives. I spoke to one of the leaders of the confederation. They had just taken out a 200 million dollar loan to buy micros in 2016. And this is a trade union, confederation of drivers, right? They are kind of petty, kind of like capitalists or capitalists who are very powerful in the urban sector. And then you have all of the people who use that transportation every day, which is most Bolivians, right? So you have this cross class, cross country, cross society coalition of forces that do not want the hydrocarbon subsidy removed. The last government that tried to do it was the government of Evo Morales in 2010. And he almost, that government almost fell, right? Morales wasn't in the country. He left Garcia to announce to the people. There were four days of riots called the gasolinazo until Morales came back and said, I've listened to the people, we've heard, we're not going to do it. This is the major issue that needs to be resolved, right? And whether you go to the IMF, it's the first thing the IMF is going to say is remove the subsidies. Or you have a reform package that tries to stem the flow of dollars in it and kind of build up international reserves in another way. This doesn't change the fact that you need to solve the problem of how to remove the hydrocarbon subsidy. Because whoever does it, and whenever it is done, that is when you will see the largest and most powerful protests. And it's the interesting thing is it's not even a progressive taxation. It's not something or a progressive subsidy, sorry, it's not something that just benefits working class people. Most of it goes to big multinational agro industrial producers. But it's the optics around it and what it means for people that is really important.

Richard McColl: I mean I've seen this across the region, various places indeed here in Colombia these subsidies and openly no government can afford to continue on these subsidies. But as you said, it's a cross societal issue. We're talking about everyone. So this is where all of Bolivia could end up being united on this one front. As you said, the gasolinazo, you could see that something of that nature occurring again. I think it's time now to look also. I mean we know who are in the second round. We know these people. Tuto Quiroga, Rodrigo Paz Pereira. But in 2026 we have the subnational elections and we need to just look at those and see well, how can we expect those potentially to play out with all the aforementioned items that you have talked about.

Dr Angus McNelly: That's the beauty of the subnational elections in Bolivia is nobody knows. And the really interesting thing about the subnational election is they are no, by no means a barometer for national politics. It's really interesting. So even at the height of Morales's power when in national elections the MAS was winning 65% at the ballot boxes is unprecedented. No one before and since has done it. They were still losing subnational elections. Part of the reason for this is it's a way for people to express discontent with the national government without actually costing inflicting a change of government. Quite often it's linked to the distribution of resources locally. So after the Law of Popular Participation which was implemented in 1996 as part of the kind of decentralizing neoliberal reforms, municipalities had lots of power in the control of resources for infrastructure, for education. And so often what you see is people voting because of more immediate political expediencies, right? So people want a school or people want a bridge. People want their road paved so they will vote a particular way in the local elections. And so what you see is a very different political map emerging. The kind of administration of municipalities in parts of Bolivia is known impossible. I think that the mayoral job in El Alto is the hardest job in politics globally because I think that you have an incredibly powerful and well organized city that is part every neighbor is part of a neighborhood council. Right. Every parent is part of a parent's council. And all of these different social movements who have the capacity to mobilize are pushing for resources and the municipality doesn't have any. Yeah. So whoever's in power is universally hated by the entirety of the city. If you look at Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz, well we've just seen this week actually Percy Fernandez, who was the ex mayor of Santa Cruz has just passed away. Percy Fernandez was a loathsome man. He had horrific political views, he was a horrible racist. Everybody in Santa Cruz loved him. And the reason they loved him was he was an architect and he had the capacity to deliver, particularly schools. Right. He built schools, he built roads, he built bridges. And so people were able to look past the fact that they didn't agree with his political views of the world or the political picture that he painted because the material needs were met. Right. And this is a very good example for how we think the sub elections are going to play out. Right. Because I don't think these big ideological questions or these big party divides are as important in the subnational elections. More important is what do particular places actually need in that moment in time? What are local kind of organizing groups, particularly the neighborhood councils doing? And who are the kind of local forces on the ground knocking on doors, seeing what people actually kind of want and need. And I think that's much more important in determining the outlook in the subnational elections in 2026.

Richard McColl: So these are a response to let's say grassroots campaigns. What do we need and what do we need now? Schools, roads, bridges, etc of that kind of thing. Infrastructure, which of course. Yeah, fascinating. So they can be protest votes against the again the bigger ideological issues or not even include the ideological questions. But it's also about how are we going to benefit from this? How very interesting. So I think it's time to wind this down. I think we've covered just about everything here and I'm really grateful for such an in depth conversation. You're not a betting man, so I'm not going to ask you whether or not which one. So I wouldn't stake your academic prowess on that and so please don't do so. I expect my listeners here to well to have their favorites or their preferred candidates. It is a fascinating time in Bolivia. But this precarious situation, as you say again, the oil, the subsidies, the precarious economic situation, the subnational elections, the fact that these two parties will unlikely they'll work together. Bolivia is potentially I would say again, it's a shaky or an unstable future.

Dr Angus McNelly: Immediate future, as always in Bolivia.

Richard McColl: Well, yeah, I didn't want to say it, but it's true. But thank you so much. I've been speaking to Dr Angus McNelly. He's a lecturer in international development in King's College London. Of course, his most recent book was Now We Are in Power: The Politics of Passive Revolution in Twenty-First-Century Bolivia, check it out and well, thank you, Dr. Angus, for your time.

Dr Angus McNelly: Thanks, Richard. It's been a real pleasure.

Richard McColl: Pleasure has been all mine. Here I am your host, Richard McColl for The LatinNews Podcast based in Bogotá, Colombia. Be sure to check back in a fortnight's time and we'll be talking about more issues and items from the region. Thank you again. Bye bye.

Outro: You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.latinnews.com.

Julio Ríos-Figueroa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law at ITAM (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México) in Mexico City. He is a leading scholar in comparative judicial politics, the rule of law, and constitutional design, with a particular focus on Latin America. His work examines the role of courts in democratic governance, judicial independence, and the interaction between legal institutions and political actors. Ríos-Figueroa has published extensively in international journals and is the author of Constitutional Courts as Mediators (Cambridge University Press, 2016). He also contributes regularly to discussions on constitutional reform and democratic backsliding in the region, making him one of Mexico’s most authoritative voices on the intersection of law and politics.

Intro: Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogotá, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is The LatinNews Podcast. I am your host, Richard McColl, here in Bogotá, Colombia. This week we're going to be discussing the pressing issue of the judicial reforms that have taken place in Mexico. Well, of course, they were voted in last year, 2024, but now the dust has settled a little bit. It's good to take a look back of what this means, what took place and how this can, how we can look at it in the long term. So we've got Julio Ríos-Figueroa on the line from Mexico. He is an associate professor at the Department of Law in ITAM in Mexico City. He received his PhD in politics from NYU and he's an expert in comparative judicial politics, the rule of law, and empirical legal studies focusing on the Latin American region. So it's a great honor to have you on the LatinNews Podcast, Julio.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Thank you, Richard. Thanks for having me.

Richard McColl: No, I think this is a very important episode. All of them are important, but this is a very important episode, especially when we've got so much movement in North America, Mexico, North America, United States and Canada and so on. And we'll get to that towards the end. But let's talk about these judicial elections that took place. They took place at the very tail end of Andrés Manuel López Obrador tenure as president, and they were approved in September 2024. Perhaps you could give us an overview of what took place, please.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Yeah. As you say so in his last month in the presidency, Andrés Manuel López Obrador managed to get approved two very important constitutional reforms. The first one is the one that is the motive of our conversation here today. That is the judicial reform in which we will elect all judges in the country. We already started a month ago and we will talk about that in more detail. The second reform was a reform that militarized public security and other areas in Mexico by transferring the National Guard to the Secretariat of National Defense to the Ministry of Defense. It was quite interesting because in his last month as a president, these reforms were approved by a Congress elected like a couple of months before that in an election, in the election in which our current president, Claudia Sheinbaum was also elected. So López Obrador kind of took advantage of the superb electoral results of his party and the newly elected President Sheinbaum because they got like a super majority of legislators in both houses of Congress. And with that super majority, he got these two reforms approved even before the new president took office on September 1st.

Richard McColl: So it was a situation that lent itself perfectly to push through his agenda to then just be picked up by President Sheinbaum when she came into power.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Absolutely. So, you know, when she was elected as the candidate of Morena López Obrador’s party in power, she was trying to distance a little bit in order to create a political campaign that was slightly different from what he had in mind. But López Obrador, on February 2024, launched a big package of constitutional reforms. Actually like a package of 18 constitutional reforms that he used to call the Plan C. And he also said, it's C for Claudia. Like, Claudia Sheinbaum the candidate of his party. And then that became really. That Plan C became the campaign. I mean, it took over Claudia Sheinbaum's idea of what, like, she wanted to run on, like, the platform she wanted to run on. She embraced this Plan C. And López Obrador was very successful. I mean, the people bought it. They won. Claudia Sheinbaum won a lot of votes. I mean, 60% of the votes, and Morena and its allies about 55% of votes for the legislative branch. However, due to a a constitutional interpretation by the electoral tribunal, with those 55% of the votes, they managed to get 66% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and also the Senate. And it was with this super majority that López Obrador, before handing power to Claudia Sheinbaum, passed these two reforms. And then Claudia Sheinbaum has been approving or pushing for the approval of other reforms within that Plan C.

Richard McColl: I mean, we can say then that despite. Well, as she was on campaign Sheinbaum's decision and wish to distance herself, she didn't. She was almost uncompromisingly pushed back towards López Obrador's, you know, his package.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Yeah, she did. And I can tell you that for sure. In the case of the judicial reform, for instance, López Obrador wanted to have every single judge in the country elected. However, she publicly said, well, you know, I mean, it's okay to elect judges, but probably let's just keep it to the Supreme Court and probably another high court, and we can have the rest of the judges in the country just, you know, be selected through a judicial career, as we. She said that, and her advisor in judicial affairs, a former justice in the Supreme Court, said that also. But then López Obrador launched his plan with the judicial reform, saying, every single judge in the country will be elected and Then she kind of said, you know, she was a politician in campaign. So she said, I want Biden, I will go with it in the campaign. But surprisingly, López Obrador had this reform passed before he handed over power. And then Claudia Sheinbaum just she has pushed the reform through. And that is true for other details as well in her initial platform.

Richard McColl: Which other details can we, as you say you were mentioning there.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Well, you know, in the case of the security strategy, for instance, that's also super important for Mexico. So Claudia Sheinbaum is very Mexico. She was the mayor of Mexico City for six years. And Mexico City has a very different security scheme, security strategy. Mexico City has actual police that is kind of, it's one of the most efficient police bodies in the country. And crime rates in Mexico City are under control, I mean are high as a big city, but it's are under control. And all drug related issues are also under, let's say not as out of control as in other states in the country. So López Obrador, on the contrary, pushed for using the military to control public security and to fight cartels. So she had an idea of public security that was different in the sense that she didn't want the military to play such an important role as López Obrador have pushed for. That is another reform that López Obrador just passed beef held in power. So she, López Obrador kind of crystallized his public security strategy. He put the National Guard in the hands of the military before handing power to Claudia Sheinbaum. And so she was forced to accept that Claudia Sheinbaum's minister of public Security, he is trying now, especially because of the Trump administration's pressures to do something related regarding drug cartels. She has been using a slightly different strategy than López Obrador because she's fighting more head to head the drug cartels, something that López Obrador avoided. And she's trying to build a more civilian or civilian ish strategy for public security. But still, I mean she inherited López Obrador big scheme of public security that has the military front and center.

Richard McColl: And so when you say public security, we're talking about the police forces. And so the police forces being put under the Ministry of Defense, which is it takes them away from being slightly, let's say socially minded. It takes, it makes them an armed actor within the country. It would suggest in that situation, the only other times I can think of this, I'm sure there are other. But in Colombia, for example, the police force is part of the military Ministry of Defense because of course, of the internal conflict this would suggest in Mexico, then there's an acceptance of, well, let's say inverted commas, internal conflict with organized crime and narco trafficking.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Yeah, absolutely. And not only that, I mean the direct exposure of the military to like the potential corrupt potential of the criminal organizations. So right now in Mexico, we no longer have a federal police force. What we do have is a National Guard that is under control of the Secretariat of National Defense and that is populated by military personnel that has military and that has like military jurisdiction. They are. So the National Guard is under the armed forces, is like the third leg of the armed forces after the army and the marine and the marines. So some states in Mexico still have like a civilian police. In some states, even the chiefs of the civilian police are for military or military men in service. In others, as in Mexico City, we still have civilian police, but at the federal level, security is militarized.

Richard McColl: So I mean, it brings me to asking, I know we're sort of veering off, but these are all the reforms that were pushed through. But I have to ask, what does, or did López Obrador stand to gain, or his circle, I guess, stand to gain from militarizing the police and these judicial reforms? Because they don't sound like this is a, this does seem to move towards a degree of autocracy.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Well, I think, you know, Mexico has been in the process of what scholars call democratic backsliding. That since López Obrador won the presidency, he very explicitly launched a campaign against the public media, the universities, NGOs, the autonomous constitutional organs, the judiciary. And he concentrated power in the executive branch than the army, the armed forces. So that lasted for like six years. It was a process of backsliding. In a sense, it culminated in the success of his strategy because we did have elections in 2024. And as you mentioned, López Obrador’s party did very well. And his pick for president, that was Claudia Sheinbaum, also did very well. So the Mexican voters approved of this process of concentration of power in the executive branch and militarization. And also, you know, the judicial elections, I mean, they did some things, for instance, the way how they got the super majority in the elections, the legislative supermajority enabled them to push these constitutional reforms. That was not, let's say, kosher. They really, because they won 55% of the legislative vote. But then with these tricks in accounting and with the help of the electoral court that they had co opted beforehand, like a year before, then they got the super majority in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. So, yes, it is part of, as López Obrador openly says, I mean, he conceives his project as the big fourth transformation in Mexico's history. I mean, he's not humble about. He says, he mentions the independence from Spain, the war between liberals and conservatives in the 19th century, the Mexican Social Revolution in the 1910s, and then his period. So he conceives his project as this big event in Mexico's history. So he pushed for the consolidation of his power that comes hand in hand with the erosion of the democratic institutions that Mexico had been built in the previous 30 years.

Richard McColl: So, yeah, López Obrador’s, humility aside, or lack of humility aside, if we could move on a little bit and just say, well, who are, when we go back to the judicial reforms, who are some of the key new magistrates? And in particular, I'm looking at Hugo Aguilar. What does he represent?

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Yeah, so Hugo Aguilar will become the next chief justice. He will assume office September 1st. So, like days, he was the most voted candidate for the Supreme Court, which makes him the chief justice. I mean, that was the reform set. So let me just put in context what this means. So in Mexico, we will elect every single judge in the country. Mexico is a federal country. We have 32 states which has. Each state has a state judiciary. All judges in all states will be elected. But we also have, like, federal judiciary. It's very similar to the US last June 1st. We hold the elections at the federal level. We elected only half of the federal judges, and only half of the states also elected their judges. The next half or the second half of the federal judiciary will be elected in 2027. And in 2027, the other half of the states will elect their judges too. We elected nine judges for the Supreme Court. Out of 64 candidates that registered for that position, the candidate with the most votes was, Hugo Aguilar, who won the most votes and will become the chief justice. He is. He's an interesting character. I don't know him much, but people who know him say that he's like a good lawyer. I mean, he has been a lawyer who defends causes for the indigenous communities for a long time. At some point he even worked for the, or consulted for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, you know, in Chiapas, this movement in 1994. So he has zero judicial experience. So he's a good lawyer. He has been a litigant, like a kind of legal mobilization, if we can say that, but no experience as a judge. So he will become chief justice. And he hasn't worked a single day in a court as a judge. He has been in front of judges, but not being a judge, however, you know, he got elected in part or probably mainly because he worked in the last six years with López Obrador. He was the lawyer for López Obrador, especially in charge of, you know, organizing the consultations with the indigenous communities that didn't want some of the main infrastructure projects of López Obrador to be built in their communities, such as the Maya Train that went through the jungle, the Maya jungle and lost a lot of communities, Mayan communities in the south of the country or the transoceanic train that also, you know, so a lot of the communities didn't want their land to be expropriated for these projects. And in Mexico, we had. They. These communities have what it is called the right of prior consultation. I mean, they have to be consulted whether they want these projects to be built on their lands they didn't want. So Hugo Aguilar was the lawyer working this time, not for the communities, but for the government who managed to get the consultations done and approved and get the projects approved. So he worked closely with López Obrador. The projects were approved. They were pushed through the communities. The army was in charge of building part of this project. So these projects were not done by civilian contractors. They, López Obrador considered these projects like key for national security and national development and handed big portions of this project to the military to be built. So Hugo Aguilar was working for the government in getting, you know, these communities to accept the projects. And so a lot of people say it kind of, I mean, they were not proper consultations. They were done very quickly by hand in the public square. But he was effective for López Obrador's government and then he got this promotion by the government in the judicial elections and finally will become the chief justice.

Richard McColl: So we can suggest that Hugo Aguilar understood how these communities worked, having worked as a litigator for them and having been an activist. But let's say left wing extremism. If we want to talk about the EZLN in Subcomandante Marcos, and it sounds like an incredibly savvy move by López Obrador to bring Hugo Aguilar in, obviously promise him, obviously the payment there is the return on his work is his position today. It's quite concerning, in truth. And you've got a guy who's never spent any time let's say sitting in the. Sitting in the main seat in a court. I'm a little bit. I'm a little bit short of words on this one. I think perhaps the Mexican public should be concerned.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Well, I mean, yes and no. So López Obrador government was the first government from the left, the ideological left to win elections in Mexico. So that is also important since the transition to democracy in Mexico at the end of the 90s. And surely, like clearly in the 2000, when the PRI, The party that governed Mexico for 70 years lost the presidential election for the first time, we had the right of center party called the PAN, winning elections, and then the former PRI winning election. So we had like three sections, three administrations of six years with parties from the center right governing. So in 2018, when López Obrador won the election, it was the first time like a government from the left won election. So a lot of people whose left leaning in the country was very happy with the outcome. López Obrador is a very charismatic man. I mean, he enjoyed a huge approval rate during his six years. So, yes, I mean, they did these reforms and they did these projects, you know, with little consideration for details such as the right to private consultation and some communities, but also with the approval of all huge chunks of the population also in the south of the country. So it is not as black and white. Now, what happened at the end, the approval of the judicial election, the militarization of public security, also other reforms of the militarization reform, also other reforms that rid of the autonomous constitutional organs and concentrate more power in the executive room. That is, that becomes more worrisome because as you say, I mean, the new chief justice, and I can say the entire Supreme Court is very close to the new government. It's very close to the governing party, Morena. They got elected because they were promoted on cheat sheets in the election, because, you know, we had 64 candidates for the Supreme Court, but in the election there were 3,400 candidates. It was really impossible for people to learn, like who was in the election, who was competing. And also campaigns were not prohibited by law. It was a really poorly designed reform. But what happened is that the government, Claudia Sheinbaum's government and people close to her party Morena, distributed lists of people that the voters had to choose from. And these, so we call them in Mexico, acordeones. It's like a cheat sheet. And so Hugo Aguilar was in those. In order to be present in those lists, you had to be close to the governing party, to the governors to the executive branch. So he was listed in these cheat sheets and he won and so did the other eight members of the Supreme Court. So it is concerning. At the same time, I had to say it in surveys after the election, a majority of people accept the reform and 50 something percent of the population say, well, it's fine. A little less than half of the people surveyed say that they expected justice and the justice system in Mexico to better after the reform. I don't think that will be the case, but that is what the people perceives in answering to your question. So it is concerning. Yes. However, this has been done not directly regarding the legal procedures and the institutional limitations, but yes, with the approval of the majority of the people, or at least tacit approval of the majority of the people.

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Richard McColl: Tacit approval I mean, obviously the big concern that jumps out at me here is the issue of checks and balances. And I find it fascinating as well that the Morena party, led of course by President Sheinbaum, I mean, she says that these reforms and this voting and so on is essential to tackle corruption, which again, you can argue both ways, I guess.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Well, I mean, you know, as I mentioned, the reform, the judicial reform in particular, was very poorly designed from the very beginning. I mean, it was a campaign tool for López Obrador, the judicial reform and the other 18 reforms. And then it became a reality. The reform in the legislative process per se was not amended at all. It was approved without changing a single comma from what López Obrador presented during the campaign. Why? Because if it was changed and he wouldn't have had enough time to pass the reform before leaving office. The result is that the reform, you know, had, for instance, in the, there were some selection committees to pick up the candidates and they had only one month to check whether the 20,000 plus aspirants to candidates were eligible or not. In a month, they couldn't do it. Well, so we had a lot of problems. Another thing is related to you mentioned. I mean, whether this reform will tackle corruption. It will not, Richard. I mean, I can say that confidently the justice system in Mexico is corrupt. I mean, we know that we have really good diagnoses and we have had them for a lot of years, like 10 or more years. But the main determinant of corruption in the justice system in Mexico are the prosecutorial organs, both at the state and the federal levels. This judicial reform does not touch the prosecutorial organs. It goes directly to the judges and the federal judges in particular. And the federal judges in Mexico were kind of the best part of the justice system because the federal judges had been undergoing a reform, a meritocracy reform in the democracy years since 1994. So really the reform was also. This judicial reform was a campaign issue for López Obrador, who took advantage of the perception in the population that the justice system as such is corrupt. That is true. But instead of going after the institution that produces this corruption, that is the prosecutors that are under executive control, he did go for the judges and especially the federal judges that were becoming and were in his government, a check on what the government could do. So it is. This reform amounts to an undermining of judicial independence and the system of checks and balances in the country.

Richard McColl: So yes, as you said, the implications for judicial independence are troubling and it's certainly a politicization of the courts. I don't see this then being. Well, I mean, could it be effective in the fight against organized crime if you've got everyone on side, or is it going to be something that just sort of. I mean, you know, López Obrador didn't want to tackle this head on, they organized crime. So how will President Sheinbaum fare in this?

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: So, I mean, she won't have a check on her government coming from the judiciary, that is for sure. So in the cases that matter for the government, she won't have a limit. Yeah. And I am thinking about, for instance, some fiscal cases that are very important for the government, some security cases that the government in Mexico wants. And her government, Claudia Sheinbaum's government, has been promoting the detention of people without a sentence, like what we call the automatic preventive detention on automatic terms. So if you are charged with a crime and the list of those crimes are like 20 crimes, about 20 crimes, then you are automatically detained, go to jail, and you will be investigated while in jail to see if there is enough evidence to keep you there. So it's like a kind of mano dura ironist policy regarding crime that will be good for her. In her perspective, the judiciary will not be a check on that. The previous Supreme Court was about to declare unconstitutional this preventive, automatic preventive detention that Claudia Sheinbaum openly came publicly said, you know, I don't want that. We do want the automatic preventive detention Even though it goes against the Mexican Constitution, it goes against the Inter-American human rights framework. She wants that because they consider that this is effective to fight crime. So in that sense it will be good, I mean, good for her, but for, I think bad for public security in the long term. And you know, in other cases that are important for the government, the judiciary won't be a problem. Either the Supreme Court and the judges will decide in favor of the government. And if they don't, the reform includes a Tribunal of Judicial Discipline that is an invention of this reform, that is a kind of ex post check. So if some judges make an incorrect decision, there will be complaints against them before the Tribunal of Judicial Discipline. And this Tribunal of Judicial Discipline, whose members were also elected and also are very close to Lopez, so they will make sure that the judges are kind of corrected and their sentences corrected. Because this tribunal of Judicial discipline has a lot of powers to check judges not only for procedural mistakes, but also for substantive interpretations that the tribunal consider that are not correct.

Richard McColl: So the long term effect of this could be so very impacting for Mexico.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: And I can see.

Richard McColl: The populist side of things. You know, if there's a public or publicly announced drop in crime and major figures who are perceived to have committed crimes are taken down and imprisoned, I can see that being popular to the Sheinbaum loyalists and of course to a great deal of the public as well. It's, you know, a lot about public perception, isn't it? But it is an erosion of democracy. I mean, we've talked a lot about checks and balances and so on, but there is the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement and it's coming up for review. And I wonder what your thoughts on this are.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Yeah, that's interesting. So there are some analysts that say that the judicial reform violates some of the terms of the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, commercial agreement, and that will be on the table for sure when Mexico sits with the US and Canada for the renegotiation of the treaty. We already know that the reform has created a lot of uncertainty for business people, that this uncertainty comes on top of the uncertainty that President Trump has already exerted in the relationship between the three countries to the tariffs and his policies. So what happens then is these are so essentially, I think the business people will kind of adapt in the sense of just charging a higher interest rate or lending Mexico money and for higher risks in how the cases will be decided or not more certainty that they will lose the case if they go against the Government there will, whenever they can avoid the judicial system, they will avoid it. So, for instance, private arbitration, I think, is going to go up. We are already seeing that a lot of new arbitration firms are opening up. And the end result, we don't know. I think the government in Mexico and the judiciary will have to adapt. I mean, at least to be able to separate efficiently the cases that are important for government from the cases that are, quote, unquote, regular cases that need to be resolved with efficiency and expediency, because the people, the Mexican citizens that have to go to court to solve their conflicts and also the business community will want that. I don't know how Mexico will do that for sure, but eventually they will have to do it. Otherwise we will have a period of chaos. Because the learning curve of the new judges will be steep. They lack experience, not only the members of the Supreme Court and the chief justice, as I mentioned in general, the elected judges with some colleagues. I did this calculation. In average, the elected judges have 20 years less experience as lawyers than the judges that are leaving. They are younger than. They don't have experience in the judiciary. They don't have legal experience, period. Like 20 years less of legal experience measured in terms of the years since they. That have passed, since they got their law degree until 2025. So on average, 20 years less. So it will be a very steep learning curve. Is it?

Richard McColl: I can see a positive for the government of President Sheinbaum when she needs to sort of push back on President Trump's threats to, you know, send in the military to get the cartels and indeed about the whole militarization of the border and stop the migrants and the PANdits from crossing, where she will be able to hold up judicial successes and say, but look what we've done. I can see her playing a long game in this. Is this a potential outcome?

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: That's interesting, and I think you are right for some cases. But there is also the other side of the coin. Sometimes governments benefit for having, I mean, for pointing the finger to another actor. So when they do not want to do something, they can say, oh, you know, I would love to, but, you know, judges won't let it's unconstitutional. I cannot do that is no longer available in Mexico because the judiciary is very close to the government's preferences. Yes, they will have some victories, but then they will also no longer have the option to point to the judges and say, I would love to do that part. I cannot. No, because the US government is saying why not? Actually, we have seen that, Richard, Mexico, President Trump has been really pressuring Mexico for fighting up the cartels. And Mexico has delivered to the US close to 50 people, and I use the word carefully delivered, not extradited. So Mexico has delivered to the U.S. 50 persons that were imprisoned in Mexico with no process. Just as President Trump sent people to El Salvador and to other countries without due process, Mexico is doing that with members of the cartels that the US wants without the process. So that is. Yeah, it's. That is, yeah. I mean, so they don't have the option to say, oh, you know, I would like to hand them, but the judges require me to go through the proper extradition process. They just do it.

Richard McColl: So herein l the automatic preventive detention coming through for the Sheinbaum administration. If, as we wind this down, Julio, if we say that the Mexican government can no longer blame the judiciary, who will they blame?

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Well, so that's a great question.

Richard McColl: Because they have to, I mean, you know, there's always someone to blame, surely.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Yeah. And you know, actually, like the analysts, some of the analysts that are, that favor the government, that are close to the government, they are actually saying, so we need an opposition. We need, so the government needs someone to blame. It's very. Having a lot of power, concentrating a lot of power is not always good. So you need to point the finger at someone. They are still blaming the opposition, even though the opposition is a minority in Congress. Lost all the state. I mean, almost all the states are governed by Morena. But you know, the bad reputation of the PRI and the PAN has still, I mean, it's still useful. It's so deep, this bad reputation, that the government is still using it. They are kind of blaming also the US And Trump. But that's tricky because we are partners in this international agreement, commercial agreement. So, yeah, they do need some villain in the movie to blame for the mistakes. That's an open question, Richard. I don't know. Right now there are strong tensions within Morena, within the governing coalition. Strong tensions. There are different groups in that movement. Actually. Morena stands for Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, like Movement of National Regeneration. It is not a political party, it's a movement. And in it, there are many very different groups. Former priests, people from, I mean, unions. And they are now blaming each other because they are trying to see who's going to become the most important group within the party. So that is like a really interesting thing to watch in Mexico politics in the near future, whether Morena will become like a political party that can discipline the different groups within it. If they can, they will have to find a villain and do these two things. They will probably rule for a quite long.

Richard McColl: I could see the government looking around and then doing a sort of purge of those former priests and other parties who are easy to blame for the past and let's say, the present situation. But so very interesting and certainly something to watch. I will be watching closely the situation. Truly fascinating to see this. It's a concentration of power and authority, definitely. So let me take this moment to say thank you so much to Julio Ríos-Figueroa, associate professor at the Department of Law at ITAM in Mexico City. It has been a truly fascinating conversation with plenty of things to consider. So thank you again for coming on The LatinNews Podcast and hopefully we can have you on again in the future, perhaps talking about less democratic backsliding and maybe some positive moves in the judicial system.

Professor Ríos-Figueroa: Yes, of course. Thank you, Richard.

Richard McColl: Well, I've been Richard McColl, your host here for The LatinNews Podcast. We come back every two weeks discussing issues from the region and important to the region of Latin America. Be sure to subscribe. We are on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes and everywhere else. Thank you again and goodbye.

Outro: You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.LatinNews.com.

Elizabeth Dickinson is the Senior Analyst for Colombia at International Crisis Group, a role she has held since 2019. She leads in-depth research and analysis on Colombia’s security dynamics, armed group activity, and the implementation of the 2016 peace accord. Her work examines the intersection of conflict, governance, and illicit economies, with a focus on solutions to reduce violence and strengthen state presence in historically neglected regions.

Prior to joining Crisis Group, Elizabeth spent over a decade as an international journalist, reporting extensively on Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. She has covered topics ranging from political transitions and peace processes to organised crime and socio-economic development. Elizabeth holds a degree in African and International Studies from Yale University.

Intro: Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogotá, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is The LatinNews Podcast. I am your host, Richard McColl, here in Bogotá, Colombia. Our very special guest this week is Elizabeth Dickinson. She's the Crisis Group's senior analyst for the Andes region. She's also the senior analyst for Colombia since 2019. So I can think of no one better to have here on The LatinNews Podcast to discuss, well, political violence in Colombia, especially as we lead into a crucial election year ahead. Elizabeth, welcome on The LatinNews Podcast.

Elizabeth Dickinson: Thanks so much for having me. It's great to chat.

Richard McColl: It is always great to chat. We've chatted in other places about Colombia and so on and the violence and the various complexities. And this is your day to day fodder because there's so much going on. Perhaps we could start by taking an overview of the current situation here in Colombia with regard to violence and political violence.

Elizabeth Dickinson: Sure. So I think really over the last more than half a decade, Colombia has seen a consistent deterioration in security conditions. And we're really talking since the incredible gains that were made after the 2016 peace accord when the then-largest rebel movement, the former FARC, was demobilized. At that moment, we saw this incredible window of security that really opened up new parts of the country. And in the years since, I think what we've witnessed is really a scramble to fill spaces. The former FARC, when they demobilized, controlled up to a quarter of the country's territory. And the idea of the peace agreement was, of course, that the state would go in and enter those areas not just with military force, but also with services, institutional capabilities, development, all the sort of recipes that we know are necessary to redress the root causes of conflict in Colombia. Essentially what we found in the years since is that while the state has moved slowly, armed and criminal groups have moved very quickly. And so they've had a strong interest, ability and clearly an agility that has permitted them to enter these areas. So really since the signing of the peace accord, every year we see a slow and steady whittling away of state control in these areas, particularly the most distant, far-flung places that never really had a consolidated state presence and to this day continue to experience conflict under criminal governance. So the trends really all point in a very negative direction. We just had a report that came out this week that armed groups have grown in size about 45% under this government. That's after previously growing under the prior government of Iván Duque. So these are trends that really are, again, pointing in the wrong direction. I think the challenge for the Colombian state, not just any one government, is really to find a formula that can reverse and stop those trends. And I think we have clues based on what's happened so far, what's worked, and what seems to have accelerated violence. And one of the key lessons, I think, that we've learned from this government is the importance of coordinating a strategy of dialogue with the defense strategy. So throughout the Petro administration, what we've seen is this oscillation between a total reliance on dialogue and now we're almost in a moment of the other extreme of a very strong reliance, again, on military operations to control the security situation. Probably what's needed is a combination of those two things that in a very strategic and intentional way, are putting pressure on armed criminal groups who are not coming to the negotiating table in good faith, while simultaneously safeguarding the mechanism of dialogue as a key tool to unravel conflict. There has never been a military defeat of an armed or criminal group in Colombia. There won't be. And I think we have to remember that dialogue remains a tool, but clearly there needs to be some updates in the strategy.

Richard McColl: Yes, the Petro government came in with the idea of total peace, negotiating simultaneously with all the different groups in the country, but without, I would say, maintaining the military strategy, the defense strategy, which, as we have seen, has given an opportunity for the groups, as you said, this rapid expansion, quite terrifyingly so. And you get out into these areas, and I know that you've been in Nariño and you've been in Arauca and places such as these, which have always been flashpoints. How could you. Can you tell us a little bit about these outlying areas and what is taking place?

Elizabeth Dickinson: So, just as context, I think it's worth remembering why the government started this strategy. And actually, in many ways, their analysis of the problem was accurate. So they looked at the 2016 agreement and said, hey, if we demobilize just one armed or criminal group, what it does is create opportunities and vacuums for others to fill. So what we need to do is essentially negotiate on all fronts, talk to everyone so that we don't have this space for spoilers. Again, in practice, that has really proven far more challenging than anticipated. And today, after discussions with more than a dozen armed and criminal groups, I think that the number of conversations that appear to be advancing is very limited. Having said that, now sort of parallel to that strategy in the countryside, as you've said, armed and criminal groups have their eye on primarily one thing, which is the illicit economy, their ability to sustain themselves economically. And that what that looks like is of course, the historic connection to drug trafficking, but also increasingly connections to illegal mining, human smuggling and extortion. What do those economies require? They require territorial control. You can't grow coca, export it and send it along trafficking routes if you don't control the area. You can't extort the population if you don't control the area. And so what we've seen is that the strategy of territorial control has been the driving motivation of these groups under the Petro administration. Enter new municipalities, control municipalities. And how are they doing this? It's not by confronting the state, they are not clashing with the military. Instead, I think this new generation of criminal actors has learned that the cheapest way to dominate space is to dominate the civilian population. So that means intimidating, co-opting coming to the community with a whole range of strategies that range from, you know, targeted executions to payoffs to try to ensure that the armed group can maintain a stable presence in the area. And in areas where, as you mentioned, for example, in Arauca, where the ELN, for example, has a very strong permanence in certain areas, they maintain very strict rules, governance at every level. They are deciding how the economy functions, what the tax rate is in the form of extortion, who can run to be a candidate in local elections, who sits on the town council when there's a problem in the society. And I'm talking about, you know, disputes between neighbors or domestic violence. Citizens aren't going to the state for help because there is no state, as such, that can help. They're going to the armed group who then will lay down a set of penalties and fines and sort of organize the situation. What we have today in many of these far-flung areas and conflict affected zones is a form of governance by these groups that again is in the service of their access to the illicit economy. But for civilians, affects really every aspect of daily life.

Richard McColl: That is actually fascinating. That is, you know, they're involved in placing who is who in the town council, who is, who can run for, let's say, political office. This almost harks back to a period in the 90s, you know, when the FARC would do this in sort of Guaviare, Caquetá and stuff. We have, it almost feels like we haven't moved forwards on that in many ways.

Elizabeth Dickinson: The historical vestiges of that political infiltration do date back for decades. This was a strategy that was really first pioneered by Pablo Escobar to infiltrate local authorities, ensure that he had a space in the political conversation. I think what's different today and really reflects how the conflict itself has changed is that these groups are really not focused on the national level. They are focused on local governments. They are focused on controlling local mayor's offices, town councils, specific individuals in local administrations who can facilitate their business, ensure that the police look the other way and so forth. So we don't have ambitions here for national control. Nobody wants topple the Congress in Bogotá and install any sort of ideology. What we're talking about is a infiltration and takeover, hostile takeover of the local state in a way that facilitates access to the economy. Essentially uninhibited.

Richard McColl: Incredible that. And of course, as you said, no designs on toppling Bogotá, no designs on toppling the, let's say, the political establishment in Bogotá. Well, this brings us in there into the 7th of June and the tragic assassination attempt on presidential candidate Miguel Uribe, 39-year-old Conservative, well Centro Democrático, but a conservative senator, definitely going to run for president, of course, shot several times by a 15-year-old contract killer. And this brought back memories of the 1990s in Colombia when political violence was very present on the streets. How do you see this, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Dickinson: So there's a few really important aspects about what happened that I think tell us something about why this happened and how it could affect the situation going forward. The first is I want to really remind listeners who Miguel Uribe is. Miguel Uribe has grown up in the political space and his entire life has been shaped by political violence. Because when he was just a young boy, his own mother was kidnapped and killed by Pablo Escobar. He grew up in the shadow of that experience and in a moment of Colombia where assassinations of candidates at a very high level were a strategy in politics. So the fact that he himself was personally targeted, that now we have a full generational cycle of political violence in the electoral system is very symbolic and I don't think it was an accident. This clearly sends a message about the moment that we are in Colombia. The second thing to say about what happened is that this is an attack that has a clear message, but it has no clear author. Whoever orchestrated this attempt clearly wanted to influence the electoral debate. The shape of the electoral politics going into 2026 for presidential elections. That's what we know. What we don't know is who had that goal, whose purposes it serves and why they did it. And it's very interesting that it's not, it's that it's an unsigned message. This is not a show of strength by the ELN or by the FARC dissidents or by, you know, any other CRIM group. This is a message that everyone understands, but no one knows who sent the message. I think it's incumbent now upon the political class in Colombia to rise above this, to not let this, not let that message win the day. It's very clear that polarization is a serious challenge for Colombia. Charged narratives, political accusations, all of this has fueled, I think, a level of political violence that again has escalated and culminated in the attack against Uribe. The last thing that I want to say is really about the way that this killing was orchestrated. As you mentioned, it was a 15-year-old child who shot the senator several times. He appears to have been contracted through an entire web of intermediaries. Why would a criminal organization or a criminal intent hire a child to do a job like this? I think first of all because they understand that he doesn't under. He was incapable of providing evidence to authorities. So when he was, when he was arrested, his ability to explain what had happened was almost null. Yeah, he could connect police perhaps to the first level of the long chain of criminal intermediaries who eventually led to the organizing of this attack. But this is increasingly a common pattern of how attacks and assassinations are carried out. Extreme levels of distance between the intellectual author and the material author make it enormously difficult for Colombian authorities to understand who's driving these waves of violence. I mean the fact that a child was used really points to a broader dynamic of child recruitment that we can discuss more if you like, but is an escalating dynamic that we're very concerned about across the country, both in rural and urban areas.

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Richard McColl: Incredible concern as well as they sort of peel back each level of this multilayered issue of contracts and you know, they get back again, the way they phrase things here in Colombia is: who is the intellectual author behind this? I doubt we're ever likely to know. I mean the real, it's, it's. So far we've got as far, you know, as today, as they said, you Know, one of the top guys, but it seems like it's. It's been totally outsourced with the capture of El Costeño. That was right in, if I'm not mistaken, in Bogotá. But this is. This is someone who's just been hired down the way. No political ideology, none whatsoever, criminal organization, someone has thrown some cash around.

Elizabeth Dickinson: I mean, what this demonstrates and really reveals and sort of pulls the curtain back on for all of us to see is the deep architecture of violence that is now very organized across Colombia, in cities, in rural areas. Hiring a contract killer is cheap, easy, and the systems and organizations are there, ready to provide those services. I think that should alarm all of us because we're not just talking about armed group or criminal interests that are behind these attacks, but personal interests, individual animosity. These are structures that can be set into motion by any series of motivations. And the criminal architecture is very sophisticated to leave no fingerprints on this type of crime.

Richard McColl: And you mentioned, and you mentioned, as we said, these very aggressive, inflammatory narratives that are taking place and the polarization. You. I mean, your call is for politicians to rise above this. Is there a probability of them rising above this? I see this descending into further, let's say, war of words between left and right. How do you feel on this?

Elizabeth Dickinson: What has been interesting is, and I think very important is after the assassination attempt, presidential candidates from across the political spectrum came out and immediately and unequivocally denounced this attack. So that is a very positive first step. I think a second step that's very important is that the Attorney General's office, who is responsible for investigating this attack, has been very cautious about providing information to the public, which is correct. I think that's the right approach to avoid rumors and sort of half stories, making it into the media and being able to spun into certain political agendas. So the professionalism of the Attorney General's office, I think, is paramount in moving forward in this case. I think another step that's very concrete, that certainly authorities could take and I believe should be contemplating, is a really strong look at the protection office, the National Protection Unit, the UNP, as it's known here. Just days before the attack, Uribe had mentioned concern about his bodyguards and the level of protection that he had given, the threats that he faced. This is a common challenge, and we have heard increasing concerns about bodyguards being either infiltrated or perhaps being part of these criminal structures on certain occasions. It's a very dramatic situation, and I think that institution requires a close look because heading into the election, we do have a field of candidates who will be exposed to threats as they visit Colombian, canvas voters about their political opinion and they need protection if this vote is going to move forward in a credible way.

Richard McColl: And of course, you talk about the infiltration. There has to be something in, you know, there was something was awry in the, around Miguel Uribecause it was a non scheduled stop that he made in that area of Modelia. It was non scheduled. And how they, how he was found, he was followed. He was followed clearly. What kind of, I mean, talking of an incredibly negative outlook, but is it possible for further political violence at this level to occur between now and the first round of elections next year? Because, amigo, this is a very high-profile assassination attempt. Do you see perhaps this expanding to include others?

Elizabeth Dickinson: What I hope that this attack does is draw attention to the many incidents of political violence that happen on a daily, weekly basis in Colombia that are often not reported in the media at the same level, but have a very deep effect on the political system. Just in this year, in the time for the beginning of the year leading up to the day when the assassination attempt happened, we're talking about almost 60 individuals who had links to political parties or former officials, current officials, announced future candidates who have been targeted with some type of violence. This is a pronounced widespread phenomenon. The fact that it reached a national level, what I hope that does is open a conversation about what is happening in the deterioration of political culture. This is not a new problem, of course. For decades, Colombia has experienced violence around elections and around politics, but the trends really improved with the 2016 Peace Agreement and we had reached, I think, a better position again, as we talked with security, that the movements are in the wrong direction at the moment. And again, you know, this political violence, what is it intending to do? Think at a national level? Again, it's intending to shape fear, instill fear, raise questions about the political process and scramble the field at a local level. Frankly, the intentions are pretty similar. It's the intimidation of certain voices, it's the instilling of terror throughout different communities and really a limitation of the way that a vote can be freely expressed, not in an overt way of blocking elections, but in a way that sends quiet messages to voters in communities across Colombia about who criminal interests believe are acceptable candidates or not, what voices are allowed to be heard. So this is a systematic problem that we need to start talking about more openly now more than ever. In the run up to the presidential vote.

Richard McColl: And of course, the fear is that this one massive attempt shrouds, you know, everything. And the debate only surrounds Miguel Uribe, as opposed to, as you say, the hundreds, if not thousands of people under threat in all of the regions around Colombia. Because, I mean, this is something that we've been watching since the previous administration, I'd say, is social and community leaders, people who speak out for the rights of the people in the land, people who speak out for the Afro Colombian traditional communities, the indigenous women's rights, LGBTQ rights. These have all been targeted. These are all political actors in Colombia society. And this isn't going away at all, is it?

Elizabeth Dickinson: Well, part of this goes back to what we discussed initially about the motivations and the manners in which armed and criminal interests are seeking to control territory. And again, one of the critical ways here is the intimidation of the community, so making very clear what is allowed and what's not allowed. And the second is really this permeation of the state. So when a candidate is indebted to or threatened by an armed group, they would be more inclined to, for example, tell the police to look the other way for a shipment or, you know, utilize policies that are more permissive, let's say, to criminal activity. So I think that the long term incentives in the criminal market are towards penetration of the state, whether those are civil servants, soldiers, police, or finally political candidates.

Richard McColl: Just make it an impossible situation for the country if it's controlled entirely by people at the, you know, the beck and call of criminal groups. And so if we could look at the different criminal groups here at the moment, I mean, you know, we know obviously there's the Clan del Golfo. Huge influence. So huge influence across the country, involved in just about everything, I would say. And then of course, you've got groups like the ELN or a former. Well, I would say it's still a leftist group or known as a leftist group, the National Liberation Army. One of the. It's the old hold out from the 1960s. They formed with the idea of, let's say, trying topple the state. They're not still trying topple the state though, now.

Elizabeth Dickinson: No. The ELN publicly renounced its interest in toppling the state in Bogotá almost a decade ago. However, what they are interested in, and this very much goes back to what we've discussed, is local government.

Richard McColl: Yeah. So grassroots, everything grassroots. But I mean, the political violence that's coming in. When we talk about the Clan del Golfo, the dissidencias and the [unclear group name], these, again, it's all about territorial control. This is what we come back to each time.

Elizabeth Dickinson: I think it's about territorial control, which then has lots of layers. So it's about controlling, you know, controlling territory. What does that mean? It means that you have an ability to make decisions about people's lives. It means that you have an ability to access certain resources, to impose your own rules on the society. And it means that you have impunity. And here is, I think, real key is the impunity factor that when local institutions, local authorities, local security forces are penetrated, it is very hard for the state to respond to this challenge. And I think this is actually a broader trend that we see throughout the region and a sort of alarming example of criminal learning that today it's a fundamental piece of the criminal business model to have state penetration officials on your payroll. That's what makes a group successful. And I think what really worries us about that is this strategy is undermining the very instruments and institutions that we need in order to respond to this dynamic. Right. So they're sort of robbing us of the only toolkit available, which is the state itself.

Richard McColl: Elizabeth, how do you feel going into this election? Election, you know, the run in now, as more the field becomes clearer, although it's not at all, but as in this run. And how do you feel that things are going to develop into 2026?

Elizabeth Dickinson: So I do think that we are entering a very volatile period in terms of security, in terms of politics. And here I think it's very important to flag one particular dimension, which is US Policy toward Colombia. The Colombia and the United States have what can only be described as what can only be described as the single closest relationship between the United States and any country in Latin America. That's militarily, it's economically, it's politically. The United States was a disproportionately large donor to Colombia. 70% of all humanitarian financing, for example, $1.5 billion to the peace accord, making the US not just the largest donor, but by far the overwhelming donor to peace accord implementation. With the gutting of USAID, those funds have disappeared in a way that was almost literally overnight. So we have hundreds and hundreds of development projects and humanitarian initiatives that were literally shut down in the span of a week. Humanitarians have very limited resources to respond to the very alarming security dynamics that we have. So, you know, mass displacements, whether there's a massacre or any sort of other emergency that happens, the ability of the state to respond to that and to provide support to victims going forward, at least for the rest of the year, is very limited. Added to that, I think the US is considering a policy decision that they make every year, but this year could have very dire effects for Colombia, which is to certify, quote, unquote, whether Colombia is a consistent ally in the war on drugs. Colombia has been certified in this fight and works with the United States very closely for decades, but they've been certified every single year that law has existed since, except for one in 1996. Should the United States decide to decertify Colombia, which, let's be clear, would be a political decision not reflective of the very real operational coordination that happens every single day between the United States and Colombia on security issues. If they decertify Colombia, that could mean a catastrophic loss of security assistance. Colombia is by far the single largest recipient of military support in the region from the United States. And these are forces that are just integrated. This is like pulling apart two pieces of Velcro. You can't make a list of the ways that this would affect the Colombian security apparatus because it would be everything. And I think that is a very alarming possibility that could really destabilize the situation further, should that happen. And if we really do move into those worst case scenarios, I worry about the capacity of the state to keep a lid on what is a boiling cauldron. And clearly that would have spillover effects into the electoral debate.

Richard McColl: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it would be, as you said, the word is catastrophic. It'd be almost impossible to define every single way that Colombia would be affected. I think you just say every way in every shape and form. And the relationship between the Petro government or President Petro and President Trump or Secretary Marco Rubio, I think at best we could say it's tense and based upon, I mean, a certain degree of fragility here at the moment, accusations of a proposed coup, which, you know, we don't. I mean, there's a lot of debate around this, of course, the possibility of decertification. The spat that Petro had earlier in the year, was it January? With the first spat, international spat basically, that President Trump had was with President Petro about the return of migrants, illegal migrants from the United States back to Colombia. It's a tough one to predict because it's just not looking great right now. And the way that the chaos of the political dynamic at the moment, you just couldn't say. You just couldn't say. But you do worry of Course you worry. This said, this said, we're again, we're coming back into the political, let's come back into this political run in to the elections in 2026. One thing that has often been touted, it's often been thrown around, obviously by the opposition to this government is that there's a suspicion, whether it's just a suggestion or whether it's just throwing out sort of idle accusations. There's a suspicion that Gustavo Petro, the president, might not want to willingly relinquish power. What do you think of on this front there, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Dickinson: I think that this is a fantasy that we can't let ourselves indulge in the sense that we have to trust and believe and support Colombian institutions to maintain the institutional order. I mean, I personally have confidence that will happen. Colombia has a history of presidents trying to stay longer than they are constitutionally allowed to do, and it has been stopped by the past. I believe today that Colombia's institutions are adequately strong to prevent any such attempt. And again, I also think that here we have to be cautious about fueling that political polarization. The evidence of what this accusation, what this sort of the substance behind this accusation, I see is very limited. And I think it's very important to sort of pull that out. What is the evidence that we're drawing on to raise this concern, which has a spiral effect in and of itself, suggesting that someone wants to stay longer in office and not and not respect a constitutional electoral process can take on its own momentum. And because of that, I think we have to be very cautious about even entertaining this idea.

Richard McColl: Yeah, I would say so, too. So would you say when we come in as the argument, the discussion, basically the number one issue for all political parties as they come into this election, it will be, the dominating factor will be that of security.

Elizabeth Dickinson: So according to recent polls, security comes second only to health care. And I think here is an interesting point to flag, which is that I think there is great frustration with the deterioration, broadly speaking, of services provided by the state in Colombia. And the health system is case in point. Colombia has a system that has done a relatively good job, particularly in an international context, of providing close to universal care. And I think that it's debilitation. You know, we're talking about people having to wait in lines for eight hours and not receiving their medications for weeks later than they should be taking them. This has really startled, I think, society in terms of the state's ability to continue those basic services. Security comes second and so this is the context in which we are going into this electoral cycle is deep concern about social inequality and access to critical daily services. And second, the very real concerns about what the security situation means for voters. And here I think key type of violence that we tend to underestimate, but I actually think is very important to draw out is extortion. Levels of extortion in Colombia and across the region, frankly, but in Colombia particularly have risen dramatically over the last four years. And you know, I think there's a lot of theories to explain this, but I am more and more convinced that armed and criminal groups today, in the day to day sort of liquidity of a crisis criminal organization, are living off of extortion. You know, the big profits, the mining, the drugs, those are enriching a very small, limited number of individuals. But the guys who are doing the day to day, the rank and file, they are living off extortion. Which means that in big cities, in small towns, in rural areas, almost everyone today is receiving a request to pay at least one extortion, often many more, particularly when there's a presence of more than one group in the area.

Richard McColl: So if you've got the two groups, if you're talking about an area like in Nariño, for example, where the Comuneros del Sur are located, and there are reasonably positive talks taking place with this group, but of course, their big fear is the vacuum, the power vacuum of which we spoke right at the beginning, where the state somehow doesn't see fit to fill the space. And this would mean, yes, this would mean a crisscross of groups moving into that strategic area. And then of course, you'd see an uptick in extortion, obviously it takes place, as you say, in the cities, in the small towns, in the countryside. I don't know how you push that back because it's such an effective way of manipulating and of course, controlling. Dominating a community.

Elizabeth Dickinson: Yeah, absolutely. It's not just about extracting rents. It's about, you know, this is a daily interaction, a weekly interaction with an armed group. So it's just somebody coming to your house, your business, your place of work, and reminding you who's in charge every week. And it is an extremely effective way to instill fear and also ensure compliance, you know, for the rules that are being installed. You know, regarding this issue of vacuums and sort of, how do we prevent this from repeating? Remarkably, I think this is one area where this government really has failed to do the planning. And you know, having lived through this experience now multiple times in Colombia, not just after 2016, a similar phenomenon happened after the demobilization of the paramilitary groups. I think this is still an area where there's a lot of weakness. You know, we think about demobilization and the day after. The planning is done the day after. Whereas really, in order to even reach an agreement, we need to do the planning for the day after. I think this is actually also a good lesson when we come back to discussing extortion for the few areas of Colombia now that are not exposed to this, now's the time to lock down that state control and prevent this map from closing further.

Richard McColl: Yes, I'd see that. So to close this out, Elizabeth, because it's been absolutely fascinating to hear this, we expect a continuation of political violence in the coming months. It's, there's no way that this is going to minimize over time.

Elizabeth Dickinson: I think that's right. I think we're heading into a very volatile year. Again, I think that a lot depends on how candidates themselves respond to these incentives. And here again, I would just, I think our message to candidates would be to think about the repercussions of what's being said in the campaign, think about the way that communities are experiencing so many pressures from, you know, criminal interests, from economic pressures, social pressures. And I think that the priority really here going forward has to be a do-no-harm campaign that does no further harm to the political polarization in the country, but can also really open a debate about the many issues that are very urgent on voters minds, not least among them, of course, the security situation.

Richard McColl: Well, there you have it, very much our message there at the end. Thank you for that. Thank you. We've been talking to Elizabeth Dickinson, who is the senior analyst for the Andean region and has of course, been the senior analyst for Colombia since 2019 for Crisis Group. It has been a revealing and if not a very concerning conversation. But of course, we need to address these things and have them out in the open and discussed if, of course, the dialogues are going to continue. So let me take this moment to say thank you so much for your time, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Dickinson: Really a pleasure. Thanks so much.

Richard McColl: I've been Richard McColl speaking to Elizabeth Dickinson here in Bogotá for The LatinNews Podcast. Remember to tune in every fortnight for more episodes about issues in the region. And of course, subscribe if you like the podcast. Thank you again and goodbye.

Outro: You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast for more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.LatinNews.com.

Professor Andrew Nickson is Honorary Reader in Public Management and Latin American Studies at the University of Birmingham.

He is an internationally recognized expert on governance, public administration, and development in Latin America, with extensive field research experience across Paraguay, Bolivia, and Central America. His work examines the intersection of public sector reform, decentralization, and anti-corruption efforts in emerging democracies.

Professor Nickson has served as an advisor and consultant to a range of international organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).

He is also widely published on Latin American politics, local government, and state modernization, and has been a frequent contributor to discussions on Paraguay’s governance, political culture, and economic development.

Richard McColl: This is The LatinNews Podcast. I'm your host, Richard McColl, currently in London, England. This week we're going to be discussing Paraguay and recent events in that country. Our very special guest is Andrew Nickson, who is an honorary reader in public management and Latin American studies at the University of Birmingham. He has been on the podcast before. He has a profound knowledge of Paraguay and that part of the world. And it's a great pleasure to have him back on The LatinNews Podcast. So welcome again, Andrew.

Professor Andrew Nickson: Thank you. Thank you, Richard. Good to be with you again.

Richard McColl: It's an absolute pleasure and always fascinating to discuss Paraguay, perhaps one of the least known countries in South America. It's landlocked status down there and of course, all of the international controversies, I would say, that surround it. And well, the president was just over in London. Peña, he was just giving a talk at Canning House. I'm sure you tuned in and saw what he had to say. But how do you feel about this? Let's go into, let's go into the politics right now and Peña's. Well, let's talk about his successes.

Professor Andrew Nickson: Well, his successes are the successes of the macro economy. There's no doubt that Paraguay's economic growth in recent years has been above the Latin American average. It's forecast at 4.4% for this year. It's got good fiscal management, an exchange rate that's stable. In fact, it's appreciating against the dollar at the moment, which is rather unusual in Latin America. And the rate of inflation, the overall rate of inflation is fairly acceptable. It's less than 4%. The big issue in Paraguay today, without any doubt the prime political issue is this disparity between the macroeconomic performance, which one cannot deny. It's not that people are saying that these figures have been made up. And the reality as felt by the vast majority of the population as being very increasingly difficult. And that is for the first time, for a long time, that is leading to a kind of bubbling up of anti-government sentiment amongst what I would say ordinary people who are not normally politically active. It's going beyond the traditional opposition critique. The opposition in Paraguay formerly relatively limited to urban middle-class Asunción residents. It's penetrating the rural areas in a way that for me is quite interesting and unusual. And it's come out as a result of statements that have been made in the past couple of weeks by leading members of the Cartes faction. Cartes is the former president of Paraguay who is without any doubt the current political leader of the country. Santiago Peña is the government president. He travels very widely. He came to London, as you said, Richard, on his 48th overseas visit in less than two years since taking office. He must be one of the most well-travelled president in office anywhere in the world. And that has led to increasing criticism. Why are you abroad so often and not at home sorting out the country's problems particularly of the vast majority of the population. So it's come out in two particular. Might seem almost rather simplistic statements, but they've had a major impact. One was a Colorado deputy, a woman called Rocío Abed, whose husband is one of Paraguay's directors of the big Itaipú binational hydroelectric project on a very high salary. And she said, what's everyone complaining about in Paraguay? You know, if you want, you can go to. You can go and see people eating cheesecake and latte cafe. You know, what's all this talk about, you know, people suffering. And that led to a really quite surprising outburst of. On social media, of criticism of him with not just the traditional opposition. This was coming from people living in rural areas. These were, these were memes which were passed on and passed on. I thought that was very interesting there. A few days later, one of the richest men in Paraguay, the top 10 richest men, who owns one of the meat packing plants, frigorífico, called Pettengill, He said, he said, well, yes, it's true that the people aren't eating. Aren't eating the top quality meat, because that's the meat that we export to the rest of the world. They should be satis. Eating meat on the bone. Puchero, meat on the bone. And again, that received enormous criticism across the country as a kind of looking down on ordinary people. And that, to me, is something new in the political culture of the country. I'm not seeing that to the same extent as before. So that's the sort of superficial display of this discontent. But behind that, of course, is the fact that although the macroeconomic indicators are clearly good, cannot deny that. And the quality of life of the vast majority, 80 to 85% of the population, has not reflected that macroeconomic performance. And that's why many of the commentators are talking about this. One particular commentator talks about the heladera vacía, the empty fridge that people cannot get to the end of the month on such low salaries. The fridges are empty. The public transport in and around Asunción is chaotic. People go to work. Two and A half hours commuting like sardines in buses. The health service is highly critical, particularly for people who've got chronic diseases like cancer for which the medicines are grossly inadequate. The education system is even the government recognizes one of the worst in the world, the PISA studies. The famous PISA studies that compare knowledge of seven- and 14-year-olds revealed last year that Paraguay's students knowledge of mathematics was the second worst in the world after Cameroon in West Africa. So these are things that are now kind of bubbling up to the surface and it's affecting Peña's popularity. His popularity has declined. He's a very eloquent, bilingual, very handsome, young, confident president. But what's been happening in the past six months is a quite rapid decline in his popularity and it's reflecting this disparity between, as it were, the two worlds of Paraguay. Now we know that in Latin America this is not something that's just confined to Paraguay, that this ambivalence between because of the gross inequality and income of distribution and wealth distribution. But it's particularly pronounced in Paraguay because the economy is so highly based on natural resource extraction, soybean and meat and increasingly rice by the way. And they don't employ lots of people, to put it crudely, they're not labor intensive. So you've got at least 60, I mean government figures came out two months ago. 65% Of the labor force are working in what they call the informal sector. What that means is people working on the street or in very small and little business units. And these people are on extremely low wages. Most, only 50% of the population receive the salary, the minimum salary. So that's the background to what's happening in Paraguay today.

Richard McColl: So those two events, the two statements made are the 'let them eat cake' statements.

Professor Andrew Nickson: Exactly. Yes, one of the comments did make that comparison. It's like, it's like during the, prior to the French Revolution. Although I don't think we're at that stage yet.

Richard McColl: We're not there yet. But it's these set dangerous precedents that the, what would you say? The lack of awareness of the ultra wealthy, those who continue to obviously garner more riches. And then of course the have nots that never a good thing. Obviously very present in Latin America. Of course when, you know, when President Santiago Peña is over in London, he's talking of course about the positives, the economic stability, the fastest growth in Latin America, the lowest debt to GDP ratio in the region, stable currency and the award of for the first time ever investment grade status. These are fantastic. But. So you're saying really that what we see in that, what I've just said, it doesn't reach the countryside and the people in let's say middle and then lower classes.

Professor Andrew Nickson: Exactly. It certainly doesn't. The government at the moment has what like conventional economics would call a very neutered conception of economic development. This over emphasis on the purely factual macroeconomic indicators was something that was reminiscent of the kind of language economic that one got used to in the 70s and 80s. But frankly economics, to be fair, has moved on from that. And there's this widespread recognition now in the economics profession itself amongst governance experts that the quality of life is not reflected simply by the growth rate of GDP, but it's almost like Santiago Peña and the Minister of Economy and Finance Valdovinos.

Professor Andrew Nickson: They don't get it. They don't get it. I don't know where their education as economists seems to have stopped frozen in the 1980s. I mean to put it crudely, they're. They're rather backward in their understanding or the perception of the relationship between economic growth and economic development and sustainability.

Richard McColl: That's the huge difference. And of course you mentioned previously as well is that you said Cartes former president, he's the man pulling the strings.

Professor Andrew Nickson: He certainly is. There's absolutely no doubt about it. I mean one indicator of that is every year in Paraguay on the 15th of August, it is a requirement. A 15th requirement. 14th of May. Sorry. It's a requirement for the President to give a statement to Congress on its performance the day or two days before he went to the House of Horacio Cartes to give his statement to the leading members of the Cartesta faction that dominates the Colorado Party at the moment. And that was seen, quite rightly as very indicative of where the power lies. And then he went a couple of days later and gave the same speech in Congress. There's absolutely no doubt that Cartes is the power behind the throne. Extremely information. Probably now the richest man in Paraguay. I mean. Yes. And he's under sanctions still from the United States. They have not been removed. This arose from an investigation carried out some years ago which was sent to a private. Well, it wasn't a private investigation. It was carried out by a government body. then head of the Anti Drugs Agency Senad sent to the money laundering agency Seprelad a report detailing allegations of Cartes’s involvement in organized crime, money laundering, international terrorism. And that report was leaked to the press. And it is believed, rightly or wrongly, I mean, the timing suggests that there might be some truth in this. That was January 2022. In July of 2022, the US government introduced the first sanctions against Cartes and declared him a significantly corrupt individual.

Richard McColl: Significant.

Professor Andrew Nickson: And then the sanctions against him and his tobacco, his cigarette empire widened over the years with further sanctions. There was. And that required that the leaking of that required report required the state to institute a formal investigation into Cartes. But during the intervening period, the government of Abdo Benítez, who during the time when this report went into the public domain, was replaced by the current government of Peña, who was beholden, absolutely beholden to Cartes. And so what happened to that investigation? It got stalled and stalled. And then just a few weeks ago, I think on the 9th of June, the public prosecution Service said, well, you know, actually we've looked at the evidence and we can't find that there's any truth in this. And we're dropping any charges against Cartes coming, bringing the investigation to an end. And that was perceived by the Cartesta faction as a confirmation that all these accusations had been made up. Now, the assumption was that if these accusations have been made up, then surely the US would have switched its position on Cartes and said, well, you know, we're dropping these sanctions. They have done, by the way, under the Magnitsky Act, they have done with some other people who are formally sanctioned, but they haven't, they've retained them, they've retained the sanctions. What Cartes has done in the intervening period, and I think unsuccessfully when Peña came to power was to strengthen relations with the US under the misconceived belief that the Trump administration, if we got closer to them, would drop these sanctions. And consequently, they've been extremely close to the US policy in the Middle East. They were one of only 10 countries in the world which voted against a ceasefire in Gaza, voted against the ceasefire in Gaza in June this year. They're still one of only nine or so countries around the world, the only one in South America that has formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. And I think they thought that the strengthening of ties with the Trump administration would lead to the dropping of sanctions. But as we speak, those sanctions have not been dropped. If anything, they've been tightened. They've been tightened against his cigarette empire company called Tabesa on the grounds that Tabesa had been illegally under the table funding money back to Cartes because Cartes was sanctioned in terms of financial resources coming from Tabesa. That was the argument. But what the US authorities found out rightly wrong was that despite this, TABESA had been funneling money back to him and his family in a surreptitious manner. So they took, last year they took further sanctions against TABESA itself is not allowed to operate any longer in the US and any companies that have links to Tabesa around Latin America can be sanctioned. And the background to this is, as everybody knows, in paradise. Why Tabesa and Cartes is the largest smuggler of cigarettes in the region. Increasingly now in parts of Europe as well, part of Eastern Europe. It's a massive enterprise. But that's the background to the sanctions against Cartes. But he still remains an extremely powerful person inside the country.

Richard McColl: This makes for tremendously uneasy listening, especially the Cartistas and the Cartes clan out there. Santiago Peña, I guess he's. He basically ended up taking the State of the Union address or the Paraguayan version of it over to Cartes's house for approval. And I copy editing, I would have a copy approval and so on. That's, it's. It again very uneasy.

Professor Andrew Nickson: We don't know.

Richard McColl: Let's suggest allegedly. But yes, it certainly points in that way and yes, it's quite possible. So yes, the investigations that you were mentioning of course by. Done by Osmar Legal.

Professor Andrew Nickson: No, that's separate. Osmar, by the way, is a rather controversial figure because he was one, he was one of the investigators. This is before he became. He was one of the investigators who was involved in the, in delving into the accuracy of this report that had been presented to the money laundering agency. But he and another public prosecutor investigator were removed from the case and during the Peña government he was promoted and became a judge. Okay, so he was removed from the case and the view inside Paraguay is that it basically he was paid off. So the question arises, this gets a bit complicated. Why is it that Legal was the person who was involved in another, in another shocking case that happened in August last year, August 2024 when a Colorado Party member of Congress called Eulalio Gomes was killed in his house by Paraguay. The official argument was that they went to him for accusations of being involved, but the independent press said that's not proven, that he didn't fire first at the police, that they shot him. And we don't really know what was happened. But what we do know is that after the. After the cell phone of Gomes was. The content was released to the press by Legal. By the way, we do know that he had extensive contracts with military leaders, judges, public prosecutors, members of Congress and leading known narcotics dealers in the area that he comes from the northeast of the country, very close to the Brazilian border. So the killing of Gomes revealed in a kind of. Well, I was going to say in a microcosm, but it wasn't a microcosm because he was a very important kingpin in the narcotic business between Paraguay and Brazil. Because I forgot to mention his main contact was with Ximenes Cabeça Branca, who is one of the leading PCC operatives that operates across the border in the southern Mato Grosso state of Brazil. So he was very important. So it begs the question, why was he killed? You know, the order to arrest him apparently had only been approved an hour or so before the shootout. It all looked like not a botched operatione interpretation was that it was not a botched operation. It was this guy, for whatever reason, he was a bit of a maverick figure as a politician, was perhaps going to 10. What was the Queen's evidence or going to reveal something that there was some. That it was the result of some major internal conflict within the narco clans the. That dominate that. That region of the country. So yeah, one hour. Well, I think it was less than an hour. I think it was less than an hour. Yes.

Richard McColl: It sounds like an incredibly efficient operation if it were that.

Professor Andrew Nickson: Yes, extremely efficient. Yeah. It's too efficient, in fact. Too efficient.

Richard McColl: Too efficient.

Professor Andrew Nickson: I mean, the family are still pursuing a legal case, claiming that he was illegally killed by the Paraguayan police to shut him up. That's what they're saying. But shutting up because of what? Because of why? Because they cannot deny. Because of the content of the cell phone. They cannot deny that this guy was such an influential figure in the narcotics. There were judges and public prosecutors and fiscales asking for approval from him and help from him to carry out illegal activities because of his position in Congress that he strings. And his case is a kind of dramatic example of how. Whereas if were here 10 or 15 years ago, we would say, as has happened in many countries in Latin America, that the narcotics clans are influencing the political system. But what's happened now in Paraguay in the past five years or so is the narcotics clans are operating within. In the formal political system. They hold office, particularly at the municipal and regional, the governorships level. In the country. There are 17 regions in Paraguay, but also inside the national legislature. And he is a dramatic evidence of this.

Richard McColl: So when Santiago Peña was addressing, you know, the audience there in London, here in London, Canning House, obviously he was painting the rosy and very positive portrait of Paraguay's successes. And, but the elephant in the room as we see it is, you know, what is his government doing to combat corruption and organized crime? What are they doing? Anything at all?

Professor Andrew Nickson: Yeah, firstly, you're right, no mention whatsoever of these issues. No mention whatsoever. He just paints an extremely rosy picture based on these macroeconomic indicators. But what is he doing to criticize, to counter, organize? Very little. Very little indeed. His hands are tied. And the commentators inside Paraguay, if you ask them, rather than me as a foreigner, they say, of course, because he's beholden to Cartes, he cannot do anything. He's formally the president. But he is, as they say in Paraguay, is the presidente itinerante, the traveling president. That's his job is travel around the world to encourage foreign investment and give a very rosy picture. No, there is no marked evidence of a structural change in the approach to public policy making. Because it would require, I mean, this is the deep irony here. Well, not irony, a deep structural issue. It would require cleansing the public administration of the endemic corruption and clientelism that is associated with links to the Colorado Party. What you have in Paraguay is, with some exceptions, you have a situation where at least 75% of the state employers in ministries, state companies, state bodies are members of the Colorado Party. In the electoral commission, the same. In the public Product Prosecution Service. In the Ministry of Justice, the same. You have, even the share is even greater. And by and large, these people want to keep their jobs and are paid relatively good by Paraguayan standards, relatively good salaries with lots of benefits. In the teaching profession, you can retire by the age of 50 if you've carried out 30 or 25 or 30 years service. There are all sorts of benefits that dull. Reduce the criticism from within the state with regard to inefficiency and corruption. So, but the downside of that, of course, is that you have a very lackadaisical educational system because of the poor quality and the poor performance of teachers. And similarly in the health sectors, right across the board in most ministries. So carrying out structural reform would require introducing the basis for a meritocratic system of public administration. Selection on the basis of merit, promotion on the basis of performance, and removal on the basis of proven corruption. Those mechanisms do not apply in Paraguay, you have a civil service law, which is a good law, that was passed in the year 2000. It's just been updated, it just came into force, a revised version, which is basically the same law. There's hardly any changes whatsoever, but it doesn't make any difference because it is simply not implemented. On the question of selection by merit, what's happened is by presidential decree has overridden the provisions of the law, the previous and the new law, and saying, yeah, for another year or so, we can appoint people without concurso de méritos, because we need to appoint people for whatever reason. So there are ways of bypassing these laws. And in some cases, even when those attempts to bypass the law are not used, the law itself is simply not implemented. The law is broken. And the provisions of the law that require already performance management of staff are simply not implemented. And until that is addressed, we are going to get this two track Paraguay, you know, you've got macroeconomic performance very good. You've got a bloated, even by Latin American standards, an extremely bloated public sector in terms of staff numbers. And there is a kind of an agreement, a tacit agreement between the leaders of the soybean production and exporters and the meat production, the cattle ranchers and exporters not to interfere with this. Now, one might have thought, as this happened in many other parts of Latin America, it's the business sector which complains every day to the government. Why on earth are you kind of cleaning up the state, the bureaucracy? Why are you not sorting things out so we have a more efficient state? They don't do this. They don't do this. My interpretations, the reason they don't do this, because it's almost like this is the price we have to pay. This is the price we have to pay for paying virtually no taxes on the export of soybean and meat, and minimal personal income tax, all sorts of fiscal benefits for that sector of the economy which is the powerhouse that produces these good macroeconomic indicators based on the export of raw material of agricultural products. And until that changes, we're not going to see any improvement in the quality of life of the majority of the population.

Richard McColl: So your success, you're a Paraguayan citizen, your success rests and I mean is entirely due to you being affiliated to the Colorado Party.

Professor Andrew Nickson: Not entirely. I don't want to exaggerate that point. There are certainly private sector businesses that have very few links, but the successful private companies are companies that win contracts with the state. The corruption inside the Colorado Party penetrates the private sector through this unfair system of bidding for contracts and awarding of contracts which are sometimes outrageously unfair. And it's that, by the way, which keeps foreign investors away. Foreign investors aren't stupid. Their foreign investors aren't stupid. Some of them are. And they do look beyond the macroeconomic data. Macroeconomic data is important. Fiscal stability, of course, is important. But they also look at things like the rule of law and governance, about which the Minister of Economy seems to have no concern whatsoever.

Richard McColl: So, we have. Santiago Peña has, you know, it's completed two years. He's got another three years. Is it too early to say whether the

Professor Andrew Nickson: He has completed two years.

Richard McColl: Okay, so is there, is it too early to ask whether the Colorado Party will stay in power in 2028?

Professor Andrew Nickson: This is the big question. You know, having addressed what's happening in the country, the only way out of this will be if that discontent begins to bubble above the surface and produce political change. Now, before the 2028 general election, we've got, in November next year, we got local government elections. Yeah. And here we see the astute behavior of the Colorado Party, which is one of the most, in a way, most efficient as a political machine. It's one of the most efficient parties in Latin America, one of the oldest as well, which has a sort of life of its own beyond Cartes. That's the important thing to remember, just a life of its own, beyond. If Cartes and Peña were to disappear tomorrow, the Colorado Party, I'm afraid, is not going to implode. But under the leadership of the current leadership, they are carrying out very clever maneuvers. They have removed the most outspoken and one of the most intelligent opposition leaders who was a senator, a woman called Kattya González, on ridiculous grounds of corruption the grounds that one of her assessores went on holiday and didn't sign the sheet saying that she would be away for a couple of weeks. And she said, well, I took my laptop with me and I still did.

Richard McColl: Right.

Professor Andrew Nickson: Even if one accepted that as as an error, administrative misdemeanor, it is surely not a reason for removing her boss, as it were, the Kattya González from the Senate, which they did last year, and it did provoke an outcry, provoked an outcry from the European Union, I think even the US Ambassador. But she's been removed. And she is hoping, by the way, to stand as the opposition candidate in the local government elections in November of next year. But more importantly, they are now attacking the leadership of the two, the second and third largest cities in the country outside Asunción, Ciudad del Este on the Brazilian border, where an opposition mayor won the last local government and has carried out a fairly interesting, less corruption kind of management. His name is Miguel Prieto and they have now removed him from office on the grounds of corruption. The Audit Commission has done an investigation and has come up with some administrative misdemeanors which were probably accurate, but again, hardly grounds for removal. But under the Paraguayan law, all it requires is a majority vote in Congress and they can be. So he's kind of suspended from office. They're hoping to regain control in the local government elections next year. And my strong belief, if I were betting man, is they are going to do the same thing in Encarnación, which is the third largest city on the border with Argentina, opposite Posadas, where the mayor has a man called Luis Yd, which is spelled yd Luis Yd, I think it's pronounced. And they are going to attack him with administrative misdemeanors to remove him or suspend him from office so that they. That they can regain political control in the second and third largest cities. To dampen the possibility of a growing opposition in the run up to the elections in 2028. Many people say in Paraguay, and there's some truth in it, that political conflict in Paraguay doesn't take place between one party and another. So strong is the domination of the Colorado Party, that political debate and conflict and takes place within the Colorado Party and the. And the opposition. The role of the opposition is to align itself with one or other factions inside the party. There's some truth in that. There's some truth in that. And that could well happen. That could well happen. What we could see is a resurgence of an independent faction in the Colorado Party under the present system that came in with Peñthere's never been one faction, I don't think ever been a faction, except during the dictatorship prior to 89, under the democratic period, where one faction has had such total domination of the party. But that I feel is beginning to be questionable. There are signs of fractures even within the faction. Despite the enormous money that he uses to keep people on board, paying under the table salaries to. Even to members of Congress. That could happen. And of course the big problem for the opposition is with the exception of this man Prieto and maybe Yd in Encarnación and Kattya González, there is no outstanding opposition leader coming to the surface in Paraguay. The opposition traditionally linked to the former Bishop Fernando Lugo did very badly in the last national elections. They're very weak, their representation in Congress is very weak. And they were grossly overtaken by a right-wing populist called Cubas, Payo Cubas, who did extremely well. I think he got around 23% of the vote which is unheard of in Paraguay. Now many people would say that vote, the people who voted for Payo Cubas, who later imploded because of all sorts of questionable behaviors by his members of parliament, who many of them switched, one of them switched within two weeks to the Colorado Party when Cartes offered her money. I'm not exaggerating that. Nevertheless, that is sign, an incipient Sign in 2018 of, sorry, 2023 when Ben Peña came into office. That is sign of an incipient broader opposition or discontent inside the country. But I've monitored events in Paraguay long enough to know that one should never underestimate the capacity of the Colorado Party to overcome these kind of issues. I think they're going to be there for a long time and we're not seeing the death knell of the Colorado Party yet. Despite the lack of popularity of Peña, despite the endemic corruption, despite the possibility of growing conflict within the party itself, I think they're going to be there for a long time.

Richard McColl: And so let's move on as we come towards the end of our conversation. But let's address this. The issue of ongoing cyber security attacks in Paraguay, to what can we attribute these attacks which have really, you know, they brought things to a halt?

Professor Andrew Nickson: Well, yeah, I mean to be perfectly honest, I don't know an awful lot about this myself, but there have been 30 state bodies that have been attacked, 30 in the past two months. And the general consensus is the ability of the cyber hackers to penetrate these is because Paraguayan, the Paraguayan state is particularly weak in having a shield against cyber attacks compared to many countries, Latin America. Again one could look at this sort of from a distance and say well what do you suspect this is? This is not surprising where you've got such a corrupt clientelistic kind of shambolic state that's the last thing that they're going to be taking seriously. The need to kind of modernize and protect state bodies. And what's interestingly is the company or sorry, the hackers, the team is called Cyber Team. And they have said publicly on their, on the X on their Twitter profile or somewhere they said, well we Only really did this, you know, for division. We're not doing this to get money. We're doing this to show how weak the. It's almost like there's a kind of political motive and nobody seems to know who they are. But they're saying we're doing this to show how weak the state is in protecting personal data. As you said, lots of personal data have gone into the public domain and that compromised many people because this information can be used by organized by criminals to.

Professor Andrew Nickson: To get numbers of people's identity card and addresses and bank statements and so on. And that's where we are now. That's where we are now. I understand that the three laws currently being considered in parliament to tackle this, but I haven't seen any strong evidence of any strong action being taken by the state so far. It's. There's a kind of paralysis that in the past week or so, there haven't been any more, as far as I know, any more attacks. But over the past two months, yes, there have been 30 state bodies have been attacked. Yeah.

Richard McColl: And finally, let's get to the final issue here. What about the renegotiation of the Itaipú treaty?

Professor Andrew Nickson: Well, this is without any doubt the most important public policy should be the most important public policy issue for any president of Paraguay. The treaty was signed with Brazil by two military dictatorships in 1973 for 50 years in which the energy from what was at the time that it was built the largest hydro project in the world and is still the second largest after Three Gorges in Chinthe energy is shared 50 between the two countries. But if one country doesn't use all of its 50% share domestically, it is required to pass. I don't use this. I use this word advisedly because in the early years I got this wrong. I was going to say to sell it at a low price. The wording doesn't even use the word sale or price. To transfer the energy and receive compensation based on its cost of production to the other country if it wants to buy it. Well, obviously we're talking about Paraguay selling, passing it to Brazil. And for many decades, Itaipú energy coming from Brazil's own 50% share and another 40% which came from Paraguay. Around that sort of figure fueled industrial development, particularly in the São Paulo areand was responsible at its peak for around 22% of all the energy produced in the Brazilian economy. That share has gone down. That share has gone down. And the key issue for renegotiation is that that Paraguay should have the freedom to sell. I'm not being pedantic here. To sell its energy share if it wants to, firstly to third party countries, to other countries, Chile, Argentina, wherever, or to Brazil at a price that reflects the regional market price for energy. And if it did that, it would get a lot more income, not more foreign exchange, massively more foreign exchange. There's Paraguayan academic Miguel Cart, who's done a study on this most revealing study of the. of how Paraguay has been dramatically abused by the Itaipú treaty. And the book is going to come out shortly in Paraguay and hopefully many people read it, will read it anyhow. The treaty expired in August 2023, around the time Peña came into power. And before he came into power, said yes, we're going to renegotiate the Paraguayan Treaty. Nothing happened. It was delayed and delayed. And then earlier this year, in March this year, it was revealed that the Brazilian government's intelligence service, Abin, the Agência Brasileira de Inteligência now had been spying on the Paraguayan negotiators. And in. And this was revealed in the Brazilian press, by the way, not the Paraguayan press, when whistleblowers from Abin revealed this and it had been carried out during the Bolsonaro government. And then the same newspaper a couple of months later revealed that it had gone on during the early years of the Lula government, that it actually continued the spying operation. And in response, the Paraguayan government removed its ambassador, brought its ambassador back to Asunción, but has not taken further measures. There we are. And that's the situation. The latest postponement, I mean you don't go back into history, it's going to be boring. But it was postponed for a year, then six months. The latest postponement theoretically aspired, expired on 30 May this year. And it's still. Renegotiations have not continued. And many people in Paraguay, observers, people who follow, who've been tracking this sometimes for decades, are fearful that once again the Paraguayan leadership is going to sell out to Brazil. I. We don't know that. But the continual postponement, yeah. Suggests it raises question marks. Why on earth hasn't Paraguay been pressing for these negotiations to be pursued and fulfilled in a manner which defends the sovereignty, the energy sovereignty of the country? And that isn't happening. It's. Everything's still in abeyance. It's up in the air. We don't know that's where we are now on the 21st of July, several weeks after the last postponement expired about this. The government says nothing when Peña goes abroad. Nothing about what is the most important policy, public policy issue in the country. Absolutely no doubt about that.

Richard McColl: So he's very careful on what he mentions and very explicit on what he fails to mention. As always, it's been an absolute pleasure to discuss Paraguay with you. Your knowledge goes far beyond that of anything I could hope for because really we have had such a fantastic overview of what is going on in Paraguay at the present. In spite of the positives being sold and of course that exists being sold by the government out there and the in President Peña's 48 and counting trips outside of the country in almost two years, there are still many very concerning issues to be addressed in Paraguay. Can I say thank you so much to Andrew Nickson who's an honorary reader in public management and Latin American studies at the University of Birmingham in England. Thank you so much for your time here on The LatinNews Podcast. Well, I've been Richard McColl, your host here. You're most welcome. I've been Richard McColl here, your host in London. We'll be back in two weeks time discussing political violence in Colombia with Elizabeth Dickinson of International Crisis Group in Colombia as well. She is the country lead on Colombia and of course the Andean region. This has been The LatinNews Podcast. I've been Richard McColl. Thank you very much for listening and goodbye.

Walter Spurrier is a prominent Ecuadorian economic analyst and political commentator, known for his deep insights into Ecuador’s evolving political economy. He holds a master’s degree in Political Science from UCLA, and serves as the director of Análisis Semanal, along with its English-language version, Weekly Analysis, both flagship publications of Grupo Spurrier, which he heads.

A respected editorialist for Diario El Universo and El Comercio, Walter regularly writes opinion pieces on fiscal policy, energy, governance, and broader national trends. He also works as an advisor to the Guayaquil Chamber of Industry and is a Regent at Universidad Casa Grande.

Under his leadership, Weekly Analysis has provided strategic economic and political intelligence since 1971. It initially served international oil firms and later expanded into multi-sector consultancy and analysis for business leaders, government agencies, and multinational clients.

Intro: Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogotá, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is The LatinNews Podcast. I am your host, Richard McColl here in Colombia. Our very special guest this week is Walter Spurrier, who is on the line from Guayaquil in Ecuador. Walter is the president of Grupo Spurrier and an editorialist in El Universo in Ecuador. He's also the director of the political economic publication Weekly Analysis, also known in Spanish as Análisis Semanal. Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, Walter.

Walter Spurrier: Oh, thank you, Richard. I'm very pleased to be on The LatinNews Podcast.

Richard McColl: No, it's an absolute pleasure because it's been a while since we discussed Ecuador on the podcast, but so much has been going on and, you know, we haven't talked about it since the elections, and I think it's a good place to start before we get into all of the issues of insecurity and power outages and the economy. But if we address that second round of the presidential elections in which Noboa won by a larger margin than many of us had expected.

Walter Spurrier: Yes, Richard, actually, there are two surprises. The first surprise was in the first round, it was a tie between him and the candidate from Correísmo. And it was a surprise because polls gave him a victory or at least an important advantage to ease his way into the runoff. And he didn't. And actually he took it very badly. He didn't make any statements afterwards. And the polls suggested that González was going to win in the runoff. However, there were a couple of things he did, and other things that the other side did which shifted the situation. First of all, he was acting president, so he approved a series of social programmes with immediate application that essentially put some money in the pocket of everybody from the lower middle class down who was not enrolled in Social Security. These were people who did not have a regular income, and he spent quite a bit of money on that. And then on the other side, information start pouring in that Correa and his team considered González just a puppet. They referred to her as the heir to the throne on their podcast, and the government got hold of that information. In addition, Correa chose González as a candidate because he was absolutely sure she would be loyal to him. But in his party, in his movement, there are lots of people with a very good curriculum who were really expected to be the chosen candidate for the presidency, and they were very disappointed at being passed over. Some of them probably did not campaign as hard as they were supposed to do. And in addition, in the middle class, The middle class, which is particularly strong. In Quito, they dislike Correa very much because of his authoritarianism and his way of having no control on his activities, who already analyzed things in Ecuador at the time of the military government, this was much more authoritarian than the military government we had in the 70s. So they disliked that type of government. And also, since he was a very strong president during the decade he was in power, he did not tolerate people making protests, making demonstrations in the streets. So he cracked down very heavily on indigenous movements complaints. And therefore the indigenous felt that with Correa they were going to be repressed. If González was president, all of the things added up. And frankly, Richard, when the results of the elections started pouring in, first I said, well, probably Noboa is ahead because the Quito votes are being pulled first, are coming out of the system first, but then this is going to change in time. And it didn’t. And I was also surprised no polls were predicting at that time that he was going to win by such a margin. So I think these are the two factors that had more influence on the result. On the one hand, Noboa's spending freely. To get support from the population, and on the other, mistakes made by the Correa side and resistance on the middle classes and indigenous people they had regarding a new Correa administration.

Richard McColl: Actually fascinating that again, we should all stand corrected. But then that's the way these things work out. It does seem to me very interesting. Of course, the indigenous communities have that suspicion of Correísmo and the authoritarian, let's say, management employed by Correísmo. But it's a huge step for them to get behind Noboa because you'd see them as a bit more allied perhaps to González's politics in that one. Even after what you said. I mean, ideologically they're more aligned, wouldn't you say, with Luisa González?

Walter Spurrier: Well, the indigenous movement is not homogeneous. On the one hand, you have the guy who took control of the indigenous movement as of late, which is Leonidas Iza, who has staged very strong challenges to constitutional governments with the last three constitutional governments and, as a leftist, he advocates Andean Marxism, which was started by a Peruvian indigenous political philosopher. But then most of the indigenous people are not that ideologically oriented and Noboa. You have to realise that, first of all, the Noboa’s have been in politics for some time, since the father of Daniel Noboa, Álvaro was a candidate for president several times and on three occasions, he won in the first round and lost in the runoff against Jamil Mahuad and against Lucio Gutiérrez and also against Correa. And also there were all the time that Álvaro Noboa was running for president, his wife Annabella, who's a doctor, and her father was Italian, she's tall and blonde. She worked as a doctor and had all of these social services, medical services in communities. She would go with her with ambulances and doctors and nurses and give medical services to poor people in the highlands and also the coast. And they loved them. I mean, the Noboa’s always did well. In the indigenous communities because of that. So, among indigenous communities, you have on the one side the people that voted. With ESA in the first round, not necessarily in the second round. And then you have the other people who said, Noboa, his mother has been very kind to us, and I think this would be a very pleasant government. Then the Correa side of a very repressive regime. We should not see it only on the negative side. He tried to put order. And what the oil companies told me at the time was that before Correa, if they were sending supplies to an oil field, to the workers in an oil field, people would attack the cars, the convoys, and take away the supplies. This was the Wild West. This was the Wild west. And Correa put order. So that's the other side of it. It's not only it was an abuse, it was also putting order. And people felt they were being repressed because they could not do as they wanted. So there's two sides to Correa’s repression, the positive side and the negative side. But also, as I said, the social programmes from Noboa, Annabella Noboa's wife, helped her son win the presidency.

Richard McColl: It's very interesting that, again, the memory runs that far back as politics tends to be so ever present in the countries in which we are located. One concern, I believe that's coming up at the moment and of course is threatening to undermine. Would you call it the friendship or the, as you say, sort of marriage of convenience between the indigenous groups and the Noboa government is that of the National Solidarity Bill and it's the human rights concerns. Perhaps you could give us a little bit of background on this National Solidarity Bill.

Walter Spurrier: Well, we always have here in Ecuador, and I notice in other countries too, every government comes, we are concerned whether it's too authoritarian or too weak. In the case the previous government we had, which is the Lasso administration who tried to follow the rules and try to understand and give space to all other powers of the state, all the other branches of the state. In the end he had to resign because it's going to be impeached for invalid reasons. The Constitutional Court and the assembly were both against him. And Noboa tilts to the other side. So there is some concern, yes, that he is above the law because he's controlling the courts. He's moving to control the courts and to reduce the rights to tighten his control over rights. And that's true. But on the other hand, perhaps this tilt to a slightly stronger government is necessary. Now the constitution that we had under Correa. Well actually that constitution that Correa set in 2008 and it's still the valid constitution in Ecuador. Now of course what constitution said at the time, it didn't matter at all because we really had a dictatorship. But it tilts too much towards rights, in the sense that judges close to, or being bought by, criminal gangs would easily decide that criminals. Could be given substitute measures and go home and behave and have to show up before the judges once a month and would not take any time in jail. So sometimes you get a criminal being caught in the morning and in the evening he's shooting the police who caught him in the first place. So we have gone too much towards that side. My particular concern, I'm really not that much concerned regarding abusers of civil rights under administration. I think once he puts some order on crime, reins crime in, I think it would be a time to start pressing for relaxing his control over the courts. Perhaps it's going to be too late. But right now we're a very violent country with criminals being not controlled at all. And the things has to change. He has to change the judges who are close to the criminal gangs and this law allows him to do that. But of course there's always a danger that he would just put his men and then he. Could violate civil rights.

Richard McColl: Yeah, as you said, I mean the weakened judicial institutions and the weakened I guess security institutions and so on keep this very much on the fore. I mean it seems like a time, a good moment to jump into the ever present topic right now in Ecuador of course of that of security and insecurity. As you mentioned the criminal groups, their links to the drug business and their infiltration of the security forces. How can Ecuador possibly or how can Noboa address this at the same time with trying to improve public security. It's all connected. But from what I've been reading and listening to, murder rates continue to be high, even despite the, let's say, almost militarization of much of the country. What is the situation right now in Guayaquil where you are?

Walter Spurrier: Well, it's very dangerous. And in general, with Noboa's claim to solve that, he's going to be able to solve the violence situation pretty soon. In a short period of time with his campaign of having the armed forces engaged in the fight against crime. I think it's going to be very difficult for him to meet this goal. Because the violence has not been solved in Colombia, has not been solved in Mexico, has not been solved in Rio de Janeiro. And I mentioned Rio, not Brazil, because in Brazil security matters are handled by states that it really works like a federal country, Brazil, which it is. And the reason we have so much crime in Ecuador is that Ecuador is the world's largest exporter of bananas. Bananas are a cheap product and makes a huge volume of exports to the point that the Guayaquil ports handle as much cargo, as much containerized cargo as Lima's ports, Peru more than double the size of Ecuador. And so it's very easy to hide drugs inside the banana shipments. So that's the reason why Mexican and Colombian cartels agreed to send some of their connections through Ecuadorian ports. In addition, this was helped by Correa, Who brought in FARC into Ecuador and brought the local gangs, brought them into his government. And so right now to do away with criminal activities, it's going to be very difficult. Criminal activity has very different compartments. One is fight between cartels for control. And we do have that. And a lot of the people who died were involved in fights, inter-gang fights and also the innocent bystanders, like if you go in and shoot people at a cafe, some people get killed or kill somebody who's walking on the street. They also hit bystanders. That's one crime. Also, the clampdown on the drug trade means that these local gangs that have been organized by the Colombian and Mexican cartels also try to get more money out of the local population and start extortion rackets. And it's spreading and that's very difficult to control. It's not only extortion rackets regarding big business, extortion rackets regarding poor people. For instance, a taxi driver, I used to take his, get his services whenever. I had to go someplace where there was too much traffic to go there and. I didn't want to be driving and seeing where to park and so forth. He was shot a month ago while he was waiting for his wife to come out from a medical facility. And the reason is that he had not accepted to be extorted. They were asking him to pay so much a week to them for as an extortion. The gangs that looked for him, he refused, so they shot him. And so we do also have that other crime. So things are very dangerous in Guayaquil and people tend to restrain themselves to go out in areas which they feel comfortable in. And yes, it's one of the most dangerous cities in Latin America right now. And we're all very concerned and. We don't see yet how the government is. Going to be to control that. And it's very hard for us to evaluate what the government is doing to know how successful it's going to be. Now with this new law. And if this means that now he's going to be able to grab criminals. And put them in jail and he's building a higher security jail to be. Able to have these criminals to stop these people from controlling their gangs from jail as they do presently, perhaps he's going to have some success. But so far I don't think. He has had much success. This year is more violent than last year.

Richard McColl: It is his first full term, it's his first full term. There's still a significant period of time. But again the figures are very much a concern the day to day life for everyone. Guayaquil, Ecuador, very much concern. And when we talk about the successful nature of militarization and campaigns, it's all. There are so many different factors to bring in. And you'd say that the recent capture of the leader Fito was it. He escaped in January 2024 and was captured, I guess it was a couple of weeks ago, you know, sort of so late June or early July 2025. I mean that was. It was billed as a huge success. But of course it was an embarrassment that he got out and this event overshadowed of course the escape of the leader Fede from Litoral Prison. So we sort of three steps forwards, two steps back it and then we come back to that issue of the deep penetration of the illegal groups and the gangs into all of the different institutions. So nobody is, I mean President Noboa is facing some serious challenges on this front. I mean talk about a need to overhaul and really weed out Corrupt, you know, elements within this. Do we even see this as possible?

Walter Spurrier: Well, we have two goals which are sometimes at odds. One is fighting crime and the other have support for his policy against crime. And at first, it may seem to be two things that go together, and that's not so. For instance, capturing Fito is a success for the president in terms of the support of the population. He's doing something. He's catching this big fish. He caught him and he's probably going. To deport him to the U.S. But I mean, these people are not the geniuses behind crime. They are just cogs in a wheel. And Fito got there because his predecessors were shot. And there are other people that are ready to get into his shoes. And in addition, probably there are two or three people who want that position within Los Choneros, which he headed. And therefore we're going to have more violence inter-gang within a gang between factions of the gang to see who gets control of the network and gets all the money Fito was getting. So in terms of actual success against gangs, I don't think. This is much of a victory. It's mainly a public relations victory. And in addition, there is. Well, I cover very many different topics, but I'm not necessarily an expert on them. There is a political scientist, Benjamin Lessing, who has studied the case of Colombia, Mexico. And Rio, in particular, the three cases. And he claims that there are three. Goals which are very difficult to have success in simultaneously. One is to end violence, second to end corruption, and third, to end the drug business. He says it's impossible. You have to settle for one, and the first one you have to settle for is to control violence. And he says what you should do is have a conditional policy towards gang, saying if you get into violence, we are going to repress you. But others that are just into drug dealings, we're going to be more lenient of those because our first goal is to control crime, control violence. But that's not necessarily popular because people would say they're doing nothing. They're not getting people in jail, they're not killing criminals. And in the end, the policy governments have used that policy, had to abandon it. So I think this is going to take a long time to solve. And this, yes, as you surmise, if he really does not clamp down in violence enough and this keeps dragging on, that may mean that he would lose his popularity. So I think, yes, it's a big challenge. He's Facing towards his success in this administration.

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Richard McColl: That's right. He stands or falls on the security issue. Let's talk about other things that are occurring in Ecuador and we focus a lot on the indigenous issues. We focused a lot obviously on security. All of these things do tether in together with everything that's going on in Ecuador. A major concern to the people are these massive power outages taking place. Perhaps you could explain a little what's going on there, please.

Walter Spurrier: Yes, the first point is that ever since the military came to power in the early 1970s, at the time, the economic policy that was the consensus in Latin America was import substitution and a huge role for the state. At the time, a lot of people around the world felt that communism, socialism was going to be what was coming next in the world, that everybody was moving into that situation. And then we've had a very dominant situation of the state in the economy. And of course the military took over. In the early 70s we started producing oil and then when Correa came in, which is very much the same viewpoints, we also had a new increase in oil production. So he came out of a constitution that essentially say the state is going to build power generations and it's going to do it out of its own revenues and costs of power generation are going to be passed to the public. So as if we're going to be live forever on an economy running on our revenues. And that stopped 10 years after, less than 10 years after the constitution was approved. So what he did at the time is spent a lot of money, I mean actually took a lot of debt with China to have power stations built. And most are on the Amazon range. In other words, at the end is looking sorts the Amazon. And so he would say Ecuador is one of the countries of the world that needs less thermal electricity. It's mostly hydropower. We're being green now. First of all those hydro plants, many of them have huge problems. Secondly, looking towards the Amazon, it has a rain system in which for six months of the year they have very heavy rains. In the other six months they don't have rain at all. So when they don't have rain at all, these are not power stations that have huge dams, huge reservoirs. They mainly administrate the water that flows on the river. So when you have a dry season, generation falls terribly. And when you are in the high season, when you have a lot of rains, it rains so much that water becomes murky; muddy water clogs the power generation. So they have to stop generation to clean the station so the muddy waters won't hurt the engine. So it was a very bad idea to depend on this kind of electricity. So that's the situation we have now. And all thermal power that we had at the time, they didn't build any new thermal units. So thermal units were built in the 70s. So very obsolete thermal units in very bad shape. So Ecuador has been trying to solve this problem but then they cannot ask for power generation companies to come in and build power stations as they do have in Colombia, for instance, Because the law requires that this station, That private generator has to sell to the state. Now the state power company, also the utilities. And the utilities have tariffs that are very low for low income consumers so that they work at a loss. And so they don't pay to the state power generation company. So if a power generate, private power generation comes in, they have to sell to clients that won't pay them back. So you don't have private investment because of that. They say we need some kind of guarantee from the government that we're going to get paid. The government would pay if the utilities would pay. So they haven't solved that problem yet. So it all depends on the government contracting new power units. And the government procurement process is slow, it's inefficient and so we are running behind installing enough power generation to meet our needs. What the government has decided on the one hand is because the government says we're not going to have blackouts anymore, which I think we're going to have blackouts. But what the government is going to do, first of all, is relying that the needs for new power generation have partially been met. Where we don't have as much, the problems are going to be as serious as it was last year. But what he's going to do is going to cut energy supply to businesses. It's going to be basically to manufacturing companies, to huge consumers. He's not going to cut energy to residential users. So it won't affect him on his popularity front. He would still remain popular, but it's. Going to hurt the economy. So this is an issue we have right now. And he Wants business to build their own generating plants, but that's a huge problem because he wants them to build generating plants for their own use, which. They can only use whenever they're not. Being sold energy by the state, not being supplied energy by the state, which is a very inefficient system. So we still have a huge problem, which is. But it's now more concentrated on business. More than on residential consumers.

Richard McColl: It's hard for me to get my head around all of that you just said and the complications of trying to untangle this. This is a multigenerational issue that will need to be addressed not just by President Noboa, but several successors to President Noboa. And him cutting back, I can understand the popularity side of things. You know, it's great optics, not cutting power to people, but cutting to business and affecting the economy. You know, there are major challenges presently and ahead for Ecuador. They've got a big budget deficit, huge debt obligations, fiscal austerity measures have been agreed with the IMF. This issue with the power generation doesn't look entirely positive.

Walter Spurrier: Yes, it doesn't. What they have to do this, what I've been arguing is they have to repeal this idea of a state monopoly on the energy sector, which is not only on power sector, it's also in oil. And because then you're going to have. Multinational power companies coming into Ecuador, talking to businesses, signing contracts, securing a market and building new power units and you could have solved the problem in a couple of years that way. But you have to have that solution. And the government still has not moved in that direction. He's been addressing other matters such as security issues, has not addressed the problem of how to allow private investment in power generation and transmission. He has to address that issue. He still hasn't. And the other side of the problem is that this government. Doesn't give much information out. This is the time in which I have been the fewest sources within the administration of what they're. Really thinking they're going to do. So in that sense, we don't know. If he is ready to open up power generation for private investment. If he does, he can solve the problem pretty easily. Relatively few years, but otherwise this is. Going to continue and drag on for a long time.

Richard McColl: This is where I see it all coming together and sadly, the power generation not being resolved. There's no information from the government. Maybe they don't have a plan. Hopefully there is some sort of plan. The power generation failing to be solved, the economy due to businesses being hit by this, leading to an instability socially and that feeding more into the insecurity in the country. All of these points do come together. Walter, how do you see the next six months to a year in Ecuador?

Walter Spurrier: Well, we're going to have a short-lived improvement on the economy. On the one hand, business is much relieved by the fact that Noboa won the election. After all, his family owns one of the largest business groups in Ecuador. Noboa definitely is not going to follow anti-business policies. They may follow policies or take measures that business won't like, but not anti-business by any means. And so they may be looking towards increasing investment, private investment in their businesses, whatever they need in their businesses. If González had won the election, we would have a substantial capital flight. And this is not happening. Since the banks were ready towards the possibility of González winning the election and starting to issue fake dollars, which is. What they planned to do and also. Shutting down the economy. Banks were building who were building reserves that were trying to remain very liquid just in case you had a run on deposits. And therefore they could stand an adverse economic political situation. Right now banks find themselves with a lot of funds on which they're paying interest on and which they have sitting in their coffers. And they don't need to have so much liquidity at the time. So they are searching for businesses and consumers to take loans. So, if you want to invest, banks will. Come to you and offer you money to invest. In other words, we do not have a financial problem. From that standpoint, the money that the government spread among lower income people, They went out. And started buying foodstuffs, buying cheap goods and services and that has come into the economy. And also private exports are doing quite well. Of course, most of all the cocoa business, Which is very high cocoa prices. Ecuador is the third largest exporter of cocoa in the world, which is far behind the two African countries that are first and second. But still cocoa exports now are on. The same level as banana exports. And also we had a boom in shrimp exports. So Ecuador's non-oil exports are doing quite well and that money has come into the economy. We have substantial reserves in the banks for all the money from oil exports. So this is going to get into the economy. We're going to have some improvement in the economy in the short time, in the short while. But we're still missing an economic growth policy. In terms of the government. The government is still trying to be on good terms with IMF because the IMF has been supporting the economic program with the loans. And so all economic measures so far have been geared to improving the budget situation. So, either measures to improve tax control to tax payments but they're also about to issue a new tax legislation. So we're going to have an increase in taxes. Probably. This will be sent this year to Congress, which the president controls totally. And this is going to be new tax measures for next year. So that's. And what the government is aiming is for country risk to fall far enough so that he could issue new bonds in international markets. New bonds not so much to increase. Debt but to be able to roll over our debt international markets. Our debt chief debt problem is that the bonds are coming due and the international markets don't want more Ecuadorian bonds. So he has to do something similar. To what similar in its aims, not on its policies. What Milei is doing in Argentina to get Argentina back in the international market. That is what he is striving for now but so far he's improving the. The government's budget situation. But it's mainly at the expense of business expenditures which is growing and therefore this is not helping the government to. Grow because essentially the budget problem, the. Long term solution is having economic growth and you have economic growth, you're going to be able to have more revenues without increasing taxes. And this we're not achieving. We're so far achieving more money coming into the government from the economy so we can service our public debt. Mainly it's external debt and that means essentially taking money out of the local economy to pay foreigners. So this doesn't help economic growth. So it's a current situation and we still this is a new administration after all. He was just preparing for this new period during the time he was finishing Lasso's period. But. The midterm goal Ecuadorian economy's prospects in the midterm are not much more than 2–2.5% of economic growth a year which is too low. But in the short term, in the next six months we could have slightly better because of the conditions I just mentioned.

Richard McColl: Short term positive, long term concern. I think we could put it that way. Walter, thank you so much for your time. I think we'll bring this to an end here. We've covered so much of what's going on in Ecuador and looking at the obviously the key issues of the economy, power outages, the indigenous concerns and of course insecurity and security in Ecuador. This has been The LatinNews Podcast I've been Richard McColl talking to Walter Spurrier, who is an economic analyst. He's got a background in political science. Director of the Political Economic Report Weekly Analysis or Análisis Semanal is also an editorialist for the diario El Universo in Ecuador. Thank you so much for your time and sharing what seems to be a well of knowledge without end on Ecuador.

Walter Spurrier: Thank you very much Richard, and hello to everybody linked to The LatinNews Podcast.

Richard McColl: It's been an absolute pleasure. Remember, we'll be back in a couple of weeks time discussing further topics from the region with experts in their fields.

Walter Spurrier: Bye.

Outro: You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.LatinNews.com

Dr. John Crabtree is a distinguished political analyst and scholar specializing in the Andean region, with a particular focus on Peru and Bolivia. He serves as a Research Associate at the Latin American Centre, University of Oxford, and is a senior member of St Antony’s College. Additionally, he is an associate of the Politics Department at Oxford Brookes University and holds the position of Region Head for Latin America at Oxford Analytica.

Dr. Crabtree's academic journey includes an MA from the University of Liverpool and a PhD from Oxford Brookes University. His extensive research and publications delve into the political dynamics of the Andean countries, exploring themes such as elite power structures, state-business relations, and the challenges of democratic governance. Notable works include "Peru: Elite Power and Political Capture" and "Business Power and the State in the Central Andes: Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru in Comparison."

Beyond academia, Dr. Crabtree has contributed to policy analysis and consultancy, offering insights into Latin American politics through various platforms. His expertise is sought after in both scholarly and policy-making circles, making him a leading voice in the study of Latin American political affairs.

Intro: Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogota, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is The LatinNews Podcast. I am your host, Richard McColl here in Bogota, Colombia. With us on The LatinNews Podcast this week is Dr. John Crabtree, research associate at the Latin American Centre at the University of Oxford and associate at the politics department at Oxford Brookes, also in the city of Oxford regional head for Latin America at Oxford Analytica as well. Welcome back. This is not the first time that you've been on The LatinNews Podcast.

Dr. John Crabtree: Nice to see you again.

Richard McColl: It's an absolute pleasure because this time we get to delve into, well, the life and times in the Andean region. This is your expertise, but we're going to discuss. Well, illegal mining and gold exportations in Peru. And of course this is creating great political instability. It's either a cause or an effect of what's going on. But perhaps before we delve into the Americas and South America in particular, John, perhaps you could put us into context, a reason why gold? Why this moment?

Dr. John Crabtree: Well, one of the things I think you have to take into account when discussing the question of informal gold is the price of gold. I mean, the price of gold is sky high at the moment and I don't know, with the political instability that's raging at the worldwide level, it probably go even higher. So I mean, the price of gold has probably doubled in running at roughly about $3,300 a troy ounce, which means that it's hugely attractive for any people who might be able to lay their hands on the natural resource. So I think one of the things that it's cared, we're going to talk about Peru, but this is a worldwide phenomenon. It's worldwide in certainly in Africa. It's, it's certainly a present problem in the rest of many other countries of Latin America where all of which are quite substantial producers of gold. But Peru has always been an important producer of gold and it's actually formal gold represents the second largest mining export. So it's a major world producer and I think sixth or seventh at the world level. So I mean, for countries that produce gold, both the state is, through formal sector mining is doing nicely, but also informal mining is booming as a way in which ordinary people often who have that much other source of income, can make it large, make it big.

Richard McColl: Now, you've recently authored a chapter on informal mining in Peru. Perhaps you could give us a little Bit of an overview of your findings.

Dr. John Crabtree: Well, one of the things this case is particularly notable about Peru is probably all the countries of Latin America. The informal sector as a whole, I mean, it's not just mining, it's many other activities as well, both legal and illegal, is probably larger than just about anywhere in the region. I think According to the ILO, about 70% of the workforce work in one way or another in the informal sector. So it's huge. And this is not something that's new. This has been going on for the last 30, 40 years or so. But I mean, one of the characteristics of informality tends to be low income. I mean, most people who work in the informal sector do not earn a huge amount of money. So when something comes along providing an opportunity, which the case is the case of mining gold, this produces a huge attraction for people. And so a lot of people are looking to leave the other forms of employment and are moving towards places where they can extract gold, as I say, whether informally or illegally. And I think it's important, and perhaps you'll come on to this, is the fact that there's a sort of gray area between what is informal and what is illegal.

Richard McColl: That was actually where I wanted to go with this straight away, because informal isn't necessarily mean illegal. But again, as you say, this fluid gray area, people wishing to move from their industries into the gold industry because of the returns. Perhaps we could talk a little bit about this.

Dr. John Crabtree: Yes, well, I mean, this is certainly the case in impoverished most of the gold, informal gold production, not all, but quite a lot of it is in the south of Peru, which has been typically an area of extreme poverty historically. So, I mean, a lot of people are finding that they are, you know, particularly in peasant economies, you know, a huge amount more money is to be made out of mining gold and trying to eke a living out of the soil, I mean, out of the agricultural soil at least. So I think this, it provides a, you know, a huge. The numbers of people. We don't know with any accuracy how many people are involved informal mining in Peru, but one estimate is, I've seen is about 300,000 or so. So if you think of that in terms of the families as well, I mean, people depend on informal gold mining. We're talking million or upwards of a million people, which is a, you know, a substantial proportion of the population not to be sneezed at. So I mean, there is a large number of people not dealing with a small problem here.

Richard McColl: I mean, I'm looking at figures here that I have in front of me. And there has been an effort of course to formalize some of these informal miners. But it's saying here is that only 2.4% of the 84,000 miners registered to the program have completed the formalization process. That suggests that it's just an incredibly laborious and well, I guess the gain isn't there for the informal miner to formalize.

Dr. John Crabtree: Well, the process was introduced in 2017. In fact, they've been trying to do this for the last 20. It began in 2002. But I mean the REINFO, which is known, as the program is known, began in 2017 as a way to try to encourage people to formalize themselves. And the process that's involved in this is bureaucratic and difficult and hard for people to comply with. So I mean a lot of people have applied to do want to become formalized. Because I mean being formalized means you don't have the law, the threat of the law on your. You may have to pay taxes. But I mean, you know, on balance it's a good thing to be on the right side of the law. So a lot of people have applied to and that's why there's such a large number of applicants for this scheme. But it's actually very difficult for people to comply with the various reasons for that. One of is it's extremely bureaucratic. Secondly, it's very poorly funded. So I mean I was doing research in Arequipa, which is the area of Peru where there's got the highest level of informal mining. There are only three people in the local government which is responsible for registering people doing all the registration so people can spend no years doing it. There is also a lot of people making money out of people trying to shortcut the system. But one of the real difficulties here is that to formalize yourself you have to have an agreement with the person on whose land has the concession. Now mining concessions have grown expanded enormously in Peru in the last 25 years and a large number of mining concessions are not used. I mean the people acquired them for more or less for speculative reasons rather than anything else. And therefore it's very difficult to negotiate with the owners of the concessions. So without this piece of paper you can't do it. So this has been, this is a real sort of obstacle to the whole process. Now one of the reasons that the formal sector is mining in the formal sector is against the whole question of formalization of informal miners is that it runs, it endangers the whole notion of the sanctity of concessions. Now in order to provide concessions people, the concessions that were awarded ran for 30 years, which by any standards, I mean comparatively speaking is a long time and in particularly if those concessions are not being worked properly. So this has been a source of consternation for amongst others the World Bank who have been critical of the way in which, I mean they like the idea of the concession system but they don't like the fact that it's being abused in this way. So I mean one of the reasons that informal miners are formal miners are very much against the whole question of countering informality is precisely that it goes right through the whole sanctity of the notion of concessions and means redrawing the map so far as the original agreements are concerned. So this is a source of considerable concern amongst larger mining companies.

Richard McColl: And the concessions are held by international companies would you say for the most part or no?

Dr. John Crabtree: No, I mean it's a mixture. I mean it's a mixture of Peruvian companies and international companies. I mean there's been a lot of international investment in Peru over the last 25 years, particularly as a result of the kind of liberalizing reforms that took place and under the Fujimori government in the 1990s. So I mean most of the largest mining companies are invested in Peru and in the gold sector. I mean the likes of Barrick, which is, you know, Newmont with big gold producers and of course in other sectors as well. I mean copper mining is probably bigger than gold mining, but gold mining is important.

Richard McColl: Sure. I just see the difficulty of negotiating with the people or the entities that hold the concessions as being just a major impasse. And then you say that the three people in Arequipa responsible formalizing. It also gives rise to obviously you could bumping yourself up on the list through certain degrees of corruption. I can just see everything opening up in the typical almost Latin American bureaucracy here.

Dr. John Crabtree: I can just see, I mean one of the other things, if you want to formalize yourself, you have to comply with environmental standards, which is for small-scale gold producers is difficult. I mean traditionally to purify gold. People use mercury or cyanide to do so. One of the things that you have to sort of swear you won't do is doing that which is difficult because otherwise you have to, you know, you have to have a different sorts of, employ different sorts of technology which Has a cost, of course, involved to it. And also, I mean, there are other restrictions like where you get dynamite from. And actually getting dynamite from officially registered sources is a whole again another bureaucratic procedure. And it's much easier for people in southern Peru, for example, to buy the dynamites from Bolivian traders who are happy to supply Peru with dynamite. So I mean, there are a number of difficulties. But it's not to say that people are not wanting to formalize themselves. I mean, the work, the research I was involved in suggested very strongly that they were happy to do so. Now one of the problems of course is that for the, those who criticize the system of the REINFO, they see it as a way in which illegal miners can legalize themselves by going through this process. Because once you've applied to be a formal miner, you are assumed to, you know, the legal sanctions on you are lifted for the process, for the duration of it. Now, of course, one of the difficulties again is the difficulties that this has been. The system of the REINFO has had to be continually extended. I mean, it was originally supposed to last two or three years. Now the fact that very few people have been able to comply with the restrictions means that it has to be endlessly extended. It's supposed to finish on 30 June next week, but it's probably going to be extended again for another six months. But they are trying to pass legislation through the Congress. It's known as the Ley MAPE on Artisanals and Small Scale Mining which has been the subject of a huge amount of controversy in the legislature and very vigorously opposed by a rather odd coalition of interests, on the one hand by the large scale mining companies who don't like it at all, and of course by environmental pressure groups and NGOs who see informal mining as a major problem in terms of deforestation in particularly in the Amazon area of countries.

Richard McColl: It creates a situation which is so very interesting, obviously very turbulent. But at the same time, you say the government is obviously trying to incentivize a formalization. But of course at the same time there is opposition to this. I can see friction created on all sides here. Are we, are we moving towards, you know, let's say a lack of rule of law, blockades in the roads in the south? I mean, I've seen this a number of occasions where the small mining communities blockade and burn tires on the highways and so on to protest.

Dr. John Crabtree: No, the rule of law is fairly relative in outside major cities, but even within major cities in Peru and the state is not a strong state in terms of its ability to impose the rule of law and the way in which, of course, to have the rule of law, you need to have a judicial system that works. And of course, the Peruvian system is very deficient in many respects. There is a lot of corruption, but it's largely absent outside major urban cities. And even if you can access it tends to be very expensive for people. Yeah, so it's not, you know, the rule of law is. Is. Maybe you're right to say that. I mean, people tend to take matters into their own hands and one of the ways in which they can do that is to organize demonstrations or to block roads or all these things which are, you know, arguable as to whether or not this is sort of, you know, gross breaches of the rule of law. But it's a way of negotiating which is time honored and likely to continue, I think, for lack of any other reasonable ways of resolving problems. Because if you break, if you block a major highway, you create mayhem very quickly. We're just seeing, seen this recently in Bolivia. I mean, you know, Bolivia is a country, it doesn't have many roads and you know, you block them and you've, you know, you've got a. There's a real problem created in terms of the transit transshipment of both goods and people.

Richard McColl: I think in any one of us being observers or present in this part of the world has been at some point or another blocked on a Bolivian road. I certainly have on several occasions had to sort of pay my way through past the boulders and burning tires. Let's talk about, let's talk about President Boluarte in this moment that in February of last year 20, she declared a state of emergency then in the provinces of Trujillo and Pataz in response to illegal mining. Did this actually. I mean, has there been any effect of this measure?

Dr. John Crabtree: No, the measures, I mean, the creation of a state of emergency in itself doesn't resolve much. I mean, it provides the military and the police with legal weapons to try and counteract things. But in the case of Pataz, it's been conspicuous by its lack of success. And the government has been severely criticized for its inability to bring, you know, for what people want, law and order to a particularly lawless part of the country. I mean, this is. Pataz in La Libertad is one of those areas which has the highest productivity of gold mining of anywhere in Peru. I mean the gold seams are much better than they are further south in Arequipa. So there is a lot of pushing and shoving to access the best veins and the best deposits. The company which has suffered the brunt of this is known as Poderosa, which is the second largest gold mining company in Peru. It's a Peruvian company and a very influential organization within these mining the association of. Of Miners. The which is a very important and powerful lobby group in. In in Peru. And one of the reasons of course that the. The whole legislation of the Ley MAPE has been. Has been so severely opposed to. But the whole case of Pataz brought this onto the agenda in a very dramatic way. Thirteen miners. There'd been a sequence of attacks, but particularly the killing of 13 people subcontracted by Poderosa in Pataz. The killing of them and the attempt to try and hide their bodies has created a particular furore over this. And it really was one of the reasons that the legislation that has been the Ley MAPE has been so controversial in the Congress. It's now been sort of pretty much kicked into the long grass in a recent vote and it's not been. Not have been approved as yet. So I mean Pataz particularly was particularly egregious. It's become very violent and here again you know where the frontiers between informal miners, illegal minors, criminality of other kinds. It's also an area of transit of drugs. These have provided a particularly obnoxious cocktail of criminal activities which the state is poorly placed to try and resolve these difficulties.

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Richard McColl: It's so far removed, as you say, from the major cities and therefore of course the rule of law. What brought about. Quickly just to put it into context, what brought about this abduction and murder of the 13 miners at Poderosa mine?

Dr. John Crabtree: How do you mean?

Richard McColl: Why did this happen?

Dr. John Crabtree: Why did this happen? It's the whole circumstances are not very clear but I mean these bodies were. They tried to hide them in. In the mine and eventually they were. They were discovered. The it cost the Prime Minister his job because he denied he thought that this was an. This was an invented story when it was very far from being an invented story. And he was sort of had over the coals for that and was. Was obliged to resign shortly before he was going to be officially censored in. In the Congress. But the. The exact circumstances is. Is not very clear. I mean, the 13 were people who were subcontracted for an organization by Poderosa to. To involve themselves. And whether or not they ran up against what exactly the name of the. Of what. What exactly the nature of the. Of. Of the. Of the dispute was. But most of the disputes have. Are about access to. To, you know, to the mining and the best. The best all sources and like everything into this.

Richard McColl: Into this incredibly highly charged but you know, I would say economically viable industry. We obviously have the huge inroads of organized crime.

Dr. John Crabtree: Yeah. Because the price goes up, the attractions get higher and it's also, I mean it's a. It's an organ, an industry that lends itself to the laundering of. Of other forms of drug money. Basically. Yes, this is the case, I suspect.

Richard McColl: Very much so here. Very much so. The best ways of laundering money, emeralds and gold are really, you know, untouchable in that respect. But what do we know which organized crime groups? I mean a lot is always made of the Tren de Aragua from Venezuela. But do we know who's primarily involved in these areas?

Dr. John Crabtree: No, I don't think that they have quite the same sort of nomenclature as they do in other parts of the world. I mean these are probably smaller organizations. You know, they don't. They're not sort of the Cali Cartel or anything like which actually has a name. You know, I mean I think these are. They probably do have names, but I'm not sure what they are. But they're relative. These are. We're talking about fairly small-scale operations here. Not massive international drug traffickers. So of course I wouldn't be surprised as if you know, both Colombians and Mexicans are involved in one way or another. I don't have any. Any data on that.

Richard McColl: No. But no, again, no surprise.

Dr. John Crabtree: Murky world of crime. It's.

Richard McColl: It's. And very fluid. Of course, again, as you say, it goes where the, where the cash is, where you can launder and so on. If we talk about some of the figures because this is so very interesting and you know that this short podcast does not do justice for everything that we need to cover. But if we talk about some of the figures here as well of talking about the illegal exportations of gold and the Peruvian Institute of Economics saying that in 2024 there were 92 tonnes of gold illegally exported. That's not an official figure, surely. It's much higher.

Dr. John Crabtree: I think that it's difficult to know what the right figures are. I mean, I think people try and put numbers on things which are basically impossible to count in it with any accurate, often with a view to trying to sort of sound dramatic about it. And the IPE, the organization you mentioned, is very closely related to the Society of Miners. So it's, you know, these are the political debates that are going on. I mean, an awful. Quite a lot of what is the gold that is produced is actually exported to Bolivia. And I think that explains partly how Bolivian gold exports have shot up in the last few years. Quite a lot of it is coming from Peru, but quite. Also there's quite a lot across the other side of the frontier because we're talking very porous frontiers and around the Madre de Dios. But they were talking largely about alluvial gold. Okay, but the kind of the gold we're talking about in the Sierra, in Pataz and other places is underground mining. It's not, it's not alluvial gold. And these two things, you know, I think need to be distinguished quite clearly because the interests are different and the technologies are different and even though the end product is much the same.

Richard McColl: Yeah, of course. And the regions being very different.

Dr. John Crabtree: The impact, the impact of gold, illegal gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon is increasingly dramatic. I mean, the Madre de Dios is probably the most egregious case, but it's now everywhere pretty much. And it's a source of a great deal of problems with indigenous peoples whose lands are invaded both by drug traffickers, by coca growers, by illegal timber extractors, you name it. I mean, there are a number of nefarious organizations which are sort of moving in on the Amazon and which have a devastating effect on the ecology of the area. Of course, basically the state is that largely absent?

Richard McColl: Absolutely, of course. And the contamination with the use of mercury in the water.

Dr. John Crabtree: This is terrible for Indigenous peoples. I mean, this is a real problem in Madre de Dios where all the rivers are very contaminated and it not only contaminate, but it's. People live off the rivers. They eat the fish from the rivers and contaminate themselves.

Richard McColl: So it just one effect after another, all for this. And then our. We're looking at the IPE again here. The CEO Carlos Gallardo has said that unless things change, illegal exports will rise a further 40% to 129 tonnes in 2025. This is a huge Jump again, as you said, this sounds dramatic or how close to the reality are we looking at?

Dr. John Crabtree: I'm not. I think that those figures are difficult to be precise about. I mean, a lot of the informal gold, particularly that's from mined, from the, from underground mining in the highlands, is sold to the formal gold producers. I mean, it ends up in the formal channels. So, I mean, a lot of a large chunk of Peru's gold exports comes from the informal sector. It also, I mean, comes from the formal sector as well. I mean, they probably are more productive and more profitable than informal miners, but a large slice of it is being sold. I mean, one of the problems of the concessions is often when you have a concession holder, if you're going to have an agreement with a concession holder, they use it, the concession holders use it to extort a very low price for gold from the informal miners in return for use of their land, or at least the land, not their land, but the land to which they have a legal access.

Richard McColl: I said it again. We just have this complexity that raises its head of the illegal, legal, informal and formal. And until. I don't know how you possibly fully categorize each one, because of course, if you've got informal but legal working with legal concessions, but also on the side, probably illegal, informal working.

Dr. John Crabtree: Exactly. I mean, it's a very confusing area, and it's not one which I think many of the state authorities, and particularly those in Congress who have to legislate on these things, know very much about an issue of concern. And until a few years ago, nobody really could, nobody gave much attention to it. Yeah, the price of gold has gone up and the number of people involved.

Richard McColl: Has gone up, and we expect the price of gold to increase, to continue increasing.

Dr. John Crabtree: Who knows? You know, you never know what. No, these are difficult imponderables. I mean, but certainly looking at sort of the mayhem of the global level at the moment, I mean, it seems quite plausible to think that it will continue to rise.

Richard McColl: Yes, and however many fractured parties in the, you know, Peruvian Congress, and with elections to be called for April next year, you just don't expect people in Lima to understand what's going on in the regions at all.

Dr. John Crabtree: Well, I think one of the problems with the discussion over the Ley MAPE, the law on artisanal and small-scale mining, is precisely that most of the people in Congress don't really know an awful lot about it. So it's very specialist knowledge and therefore tend to respond not because they know much about it. But because there are incentives one way or another to approve or disapprove of it. I mean, having said that, there's pressure from the formal miners also. It's worth pointing out that the informal miners, partly because of the sheer numbers are themselves an increasingly important pressure group and they have. There is a confederation of informal miners who can put a lot of people on the streets, who can block roads, etc. Etc. As we said before, to bring pressure on the mind on the, on the Congress. It might worth noting that the president of Congress is the only legislator from Madre de Dios who is himself is. I mean I don't know whether it's true or not, but is certainly suspected of being sort of, you know, in the hands of. Of. Of mining interests in that part of the world. And you know, there are. The pressures go both ways and often in rather informal manners.

Richard McColl: It's a very nice way of putting that informal manners. I wouldn't be surprised if there were.

Dr. John Crabtree: Some sort of links economic incentives involved.

Richard McColl: As you say, economic incentives. What you do feel that President Boluarte has any, as we said the word as well, incentive to push these, the, any laws through before April of next year or she just going to tread water until the elections?

Dr. John Crabtree: It's treading, I mean she's been treading water pretty much ever since she got the job. But she's not, she does not have power. I mean her problem is that she has no support in the Congress and therefore has been the victim of endless machinations to increase Congressional powers at the expense of the executive. And I think one of the areas that's very clear in this is the way in which the Congress has managed to become increasingly powerful in terms of the whole macroeconomic policy. I mean one of the complaints is that the Ministry of Economy and Finance, which used to be the sort of super ministry in Peru, I mean, you know, it was, you know, they were very powerful in terms of their influence over policy making is no longer the case.

Richard McColl: Yeah.

Dr. John Crabtree: And the Congress has got the numbers and the powers to push ministries around and I think this is one of the deep seated problems at the moment. Yeah.

Richard McColl: So we're in, you know, we're ending of middle of June, beginning of July as this happens. There's no incentive again to force Boluarte out before the elections because of the instability.

Dr. John Crabtree: Well, there are, there have been moves. There are moves that continual moves afoot to try to impeach her I mean that she is the subject of agree a number of sort of investigations by the public prosecution service and but it's unlikely I think on balance that to impeach a president you need to get 87 you to get a 2/3 majority in the Congress. And I think most of the majority of people in the Congress know which side their bread is buttered and reasonably happy exercising the powers they do up until next elections. Our main concern is to. Is to perpetuate those powers beyond next April or next July rather when steps down.

Richard McColl: It seems to me that everyone will be cementing their positions and of course their interests in the month leading up to the elections. Now again we say we don't even know. I mean when we do know 40 plus parties or so on and so forth fragmented coalitions will be required of everyone. We couldn't possibly predict. I don't think anyone being the front runner right now for the elections next year.

Dr. John Crabtree: I think it's. It's difficult. I mean probably among the front one runners is. Is Keiko Fujimori who's. She hasn't actually. We don't know finally whether she's going to. To run herself. It's be a fourth time if she does. She narrowly got narrowly beaten on three. Three occasions. Whether she'll try again, I'm not sure. I mean, but that's probably. I mean the Fujimoristas are one of the more disciplined groups in the present Congress. I mean they're the biggest single party and they do operate in a. In a. In a fairly disciplined way as Whereas the other parties tend to be very fragmented and factionalized. So I mean I. It's. It's, I think reasonable to assume that she will be among. I don't say necessarily get to the second and being one of the front runners, the two front runners. But if she does run, I would think she's probably one of the. One of the possibilities. But I mean one of the problems again is that the level of public dissatisfaction with politics and politicians is so profound in Peru. I mean the Congress is reckoned to have, you know, less than 5% people polled in pony think it, you know, approve of Congress and that's even lower in the case of the President. So I mean it's, there's a level of. Of public dissatisfaction, of disaffection from the whole political system which gives the chance for outsiders to emerge in ways that are difficult to predict. I mean nobody predicted in the last election that Pedro Castillo you know, a rural school teacher that nobody really ever heard. No, if you hadn't been involved in. In education, trade unions, you probably wouldn't have heard of it. And became, you know, a vehicle for this level of dissatisfaction. The dissatisfaction, as anything has grown since then. So it's that. That is a powerful vector, I think, in, of course, in the present circumstances that it makes it all very difficult to predict. I mean, you know, it's quite possible that somebody. I mean, it's rather parallel to circumstances in which Fujimori came. Alberto Fujimori emerged in 1990. I mean, nobody ever heard. No, most people had never heard of him. About three weeks before the election, which he won. You know, remember people saying, fuji who?

Richard McColl: This is very true. I just, I see a situation, as you said, this is major discontent and lack of trust in any of the political class. The political class will remain. And as we've seen, the Peruvian government has extended the REINFO system through December 2025, even though its initial objective has been subverted by illegal miners who use it to shield their activities and spread their influence in the gold and copper sectors. The REINFO was set up in August 2017 and was expected to last until August 2020. But there's. Well, those of those who are now registered face little oversight and there are all sorts of problems. Eliminating the system is complicated by the lack of dialogue between key stakeholders like Congress, the Energy and Mines Ministry and other public entities. So all debates end up being postponed and this makes it impossible to properly regulate the system. Therein lies one of the key issues affecting the REINFO system. Let me take this moment to say thank you very much to Dr. John Crabtree, who is a research associate at the Latin American Centre, the University of Oxford, associate in the Department of Politics at Oxford Brookes University in Oxford, and regional head for Latin America at Oxford Analytica Ltd. I've been Richard McColl here, your host of The LatinNews Podcast here in Bogota. Thank you for listening. Do remember to subscribe and to come back in two weeks for further interviews and conversations about topics from the region. Goodbye.

Outro: You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.latinnews.com.

Mary Fran T. Malone is a Professor of Political Science and Justice Studies at the University of New Hampshire, where she also holds a joint appointment in Women’s and Gender Studies.

She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and has spent her career researching crime, public opinion, democracy, and immigration in Latin America.

Malone is the author of "The Rule of Law in Central America: Citizens’ Reactions to Crime and Punishment" (2012), and co-editor of "Achieving Democracy: Democratization in Theory and Practice" (2011)

Her research blends rigorous empirical analysis with insights into policing, migration, and public trust, making her a leading voice on governance and justice in the region .

Intro: Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here’s your host from Bogotá, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is The LatinNews Podcast. I am Your host, Richard McColl here in Bogota, Colombia. Our very special guest this week is Mary Fran T. Malone. She's a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Hampshire where she teaches classes on democracy, comparative politics and Latin American politics. Her research focuses on a crucial component of democracy and establishing the rule of law. Most recently her book brought out in 2023, Making Police Reform Matter in Latin America. So, of course, very poignant at this time. Welcome on The LatinNews Podcast.

Professor Mary Malone: Oh, well, thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Richard McColl: No, it's an absolute pleasure because we need to talk about Costa Rica, which to so many people, we think of it as the remanso de paz or the calm, peaceful country in Central and obviously South America as well, the country with no armed forces. Well, on the surface at the very least, but it's going through some challenging times. Perhaps you could give us some background on this, Mary Fran 

Professor Mary Malone: Sure, absolutely. So what's really grabbing the headlines these days is kind of the surge in violent crime, especially homicides that have taken place in Costa Rica, especially over the past five years. Right. So we see that, you know, once the, you know, the pandemic ends, we actually see that there's a sharp uptick in homicide rates. I would say that's kind of part of a larger trend. Costa Rica had really low homicide rates throughout the 1990s, pretty much on par with the United States, I would say, which for the region is quite low. And then we actually start to see those increase in the early 2000s. And by 2010, people were already kind of talking about a security Crisis back in 2010. So I would say that what we're seeing right now is a really sharp uptick in violent crimes, homicides, especially those links to organized criminal activity. So those grab a lot of attention. Those are the ones that people talk about. But I would say that the actual uptick in crime kind of goes back to the 2010s, I would say.

Richard McColl: Really? And what do we attribute this rise then so far back? Because we don't think so far back in Costa Rica in this term.

Professor Mary Malone: So I would say there's kind of domestic, kind of long term causes as well as kind of more recent international causes. Right. So when you look at what's happening now and again, it's kind of started in the 2010s. What you see is that there's been a growth in organized criminal activity in Costa Rica, and that's actually kind of out. That's kind of an international factor, right? Costa Rica becomes more important in the global drug trade, for example, as a transit country starting in the 2010s. You also see that there's kind of more organized criminal activity in the region kind of starting to infiltrate Costa Rica starting in the 2010s. And that actually is kind of largely out of Costa Rica's control, right? So as the cocaine market, particularly in Europe, actually increases, Costa Rica is well placed to serve as a major transit area to get that cocaine there. Right? So that doesn't really have as much to do with Costa Rica. It's more its kind of geographical location and what's happening international illicit markets. So I would say that kind of is one factor. I would say that the kind of other kind of key factor that's domestic and kind of structural is that Starting in the 1990s, we start to see rates of inequality increase in Costa Rica. If you remember, 1990s was the decade of neoliberal reforms. Costa Rica actually tried to kind of curb the impact of those neoliberal reforms, probably more than more countries did. But I would say that, you know, by and large, in the 1990s, we see a fundamental restructuring of the Costa Rican economy that really lends itself to high levels of inequality. And I remember kind of reading a lot in the 1990s, early 2000s of policymakers in Costa Rica who kind of warning that if we continue with these economic reforms and we don't address their impact on inequality long term, we're going to have problems like more insecurity, we're going to have more marginalized people. So, you know, so that was kind of already, you know, a warning back in the early 2000s when I was just in Costa Rica last summer. You know, I kind of spoke with some people that had said, you know, were with the people that were saying, if you don't address these levels of inequality, we're going to have more problems, right? We're going to have societal problems, especially in terms of security and crime. And they're kind of frustrated because they're like, you know, this is 30 years in the making. So one hand, you see that there's kind of domestic changes in Costa Rica. I think last time I checked, Costa Rica was the third most unequal country in the hemisphere, right? So really, again, that's not what Costa Rica used to be. Right. Costa Rica was one of the first welfare states in the region. It actually usually had really strong social protections, services for citizens. That starts to get kind of gradually chipped away at in the 1990s, and that's when you also start to see these rates of inequality increase. So now Costa Rica is highly unequal, and some of these kind of problems that we're seeing tend to be focused in countries with higher levels of inequality.

Richard McColl: So, I mean, we don't liken it entirely to sort of countries in the region like Honduras or Guatemala, but it's certainly going down that pathway.

Professor Mary Malone: So I would say Costa Rica is interesting because you don't necessarily see high rates of poverty like you see in Honduras, for example, but what you do see is actually a growing gap between people of socioeconomic status. Right. So you actually do see, in terms of overall inequality, a sharp uptick, even though levels of poverty have been much lower than the kind of regional counterparts.

Richard McColl: This is interesting. I was there in. I think it was 2000, 2001, having spent significant time in other Central American countries, and I think I could recognize that. I always felt that this belief of Costa Rica as entirely inclusive and equal society was somewhat built on very shaky ground. Sadly so. Sadly so. But if you put. You talk about the 2010s when. When this is all kicking off or actually becoming more visible, let's say, to international watchers and of course, the local population, and this plays into inequality. And then later on, of course, we have these perfect storms of. Of what's going on around Costa Rica. Look at Nicaragua, look at El Salvador, look at Honduras. How much does this play into this instability?

Professor Mary Malone: Yeah. So I would say that most certainly, when I think about international factors affecting Costa Rican security, I would say it's more its geographical position in the kind of global drug market. Right. Just that it's a valuable transit station. I would say that when you're looking at kind of the impact of, say, Honduras or Nicaraguan politics on Costa Rica, I would say that tends to be much less anything. Costa Rica has always been a destination country for Nicaraguan migrants. So I think in the 2010s, I think there were, if you counted both the documented undocumented population experts thought that about 10% of the Costa Rican population was originally born in Nicaragua. So you actually see that kind of strong migrant community. And, you know, you did have some, you know, public perception that Nicaraguans were, you know, kind of responsible for the uptick in crime. I would say that over time, though, as that Immigrant community became more at home in Costa Rica, you see far less of that. So there was kind of like a lot of alarm about Nicaraguan migration. Are they leading to more crime in the 2010s? And today you just see far less of that. Right. If anything, as people kind of have more Nicaraguan neighbors, they just kind of say they recognize that this is just, you know, the, you know, not really a problem. Right. So. And I would say that. So in terms of what's happening within Nicaragua, what's interesting is that Nicaragua actually had always been a pretty safe country as well. Right. So you do see some organized criminal activity, but in terms of rates of violent crime and homicide, those, if anything, have been lower than Costa Rica historically. Right. So you don't really see those same problems in the case of Honduras. By and large, the gang problem that really was prevalent in Honduras didn't really have as much of an impact. In Costa Rica, for example, if you look at kind of regional trends, you do see kind of the gang activity that starts in El Salvador spreading to Honduras, but you don't see that same kind of transmission to Costa Rica. And I would just say that, you know, a lot of that had to do with the fact that in the 2010s, it was still kind of hard to gain traction. Right. And those kinds of gang groups, they don't have the same levels of sophistication, as you would say, with an organized criminal group, a cartel, a drug trafficking organization. Those tend to actually be kind of a smaller level of organization. And by and large, they just don't really get much traction in Costa Rica. Right. I think, if anything, Costa Rican institutions were really strong enough to kind of insulate Costa Rica from some of those trends that we saw with the maras in El Salvador and Honduras.

Richard McColl: Well, that's a relief there. And Covid, of course, plays its part when we think of the inequality.

Professor Mary Malone: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And Costa Rica, if anything, didn't have some of the more stringent government restrictions that we saw in places like Chile and Argentina. Right. Where you sometimes needed a pass to be able to walk your dog in the afternoon. Right. Costa Rica, if anything, had far more moderate restrictions during COVID which also meant that the impact on economic activity was less than in some other countries. Right. So you did see some restrictions in terms of how many people could drive into San José, for example. But, you know, by and large, people were able to go to parks, they were able to walk around. You didn't see that same type of severe limitation that then, you know, not only cuts personal movement, but also then of course, has economic implications. Right.

Richard McColl: And of course, this feeds in perfectly when we talk about the virus, the pandemic, and of course, the collapse in law and order in Venezuela. Can we, can we discuss migration from. From that part of the world and indeed the Tren de Aragua, is that affecting Costa Rica?

Professor Mary Malone: Yes. So it depends on who you ask. So some people say yes, some people say not as much. Right. So as I mentioned, Costa Rica had long been a destination country for Nicaraguan migrants. In some cases, those were political migrants. Right. So you do see migration in the 1980s as people are fleeing the Contra war by the 1990s, early 2000s through overwhelmingly economic migrants. Right. So they're coming to Costa Rica to work typically as kind of private security guards, cleaning services, house care, daycare, those types of activities. Right. So I would say that had kind of. And by now I would say that any kind of misgivings about that type of migration really have kind of been subsided in Costa Rica. So you saw kind of, as I mentioned, alarms in 2010s, but not really as much today about that type of migration. The other type of migration, though, is more transitory. Right. When I was interviewing some government officials last summer in Costa Rica, what they said was that we sometimes see problems associated with that kind of transit migration. But by and large, they say typically those migrants don't want to stay in Costa Rica. Right. So they're not seeking to stay here. What they're aiming to do is actually get to the United States. Right. So in terms of Venezuelan migrants, you know, people kind of, you know, passing the Darién Gap and coming through Panama into Costa Rica, officials said, by and large, they don't really stay here. So as long as you have kind of reasonable public security measures, that type of migration ends up not really being long term, particularly problematic. Right. People I spoke with said that, you know, Costa Rica is right now an expensive country to live in. Right. So if you're a migrant, you really don't want to stay in Costa Rica. You actually want to get someplace else where you're just going to have more viable economic prospects. So I would say that there were some concerns that, that kind of open door, that migration could perhaps create problems. But I would say that was, I think people perceive that as being far less of a problem than state trends in organized criminal activity.

Richard McColl: Okay, so we have the government of President Chaves in power, and he came into office in 2022. What has he done? What has his government done to address the rise in homicides and let's say criminal gangs.

Professor Mary Malone: Great question. So I would say that Chaves is another figure that people's perceptions tend to vary quite dramatically depending upon where they sit. Right. So I would say that, you know, objectively, when Chaves comes in, there have been less. There's already. There's already kind of people raising the alarm about security. There had kind of been a dip in 2022 in both the kind of rates of violent crime as well as people's worries about violent crime. So 2022, people really weren't worried about it as much. Economic factors were actually more kind of in the public consciousness as problems. And then I would say that when Chaves comes in, everybody's clear that security is going to be the issue. Right? So I would say that when you kind of think about what he's done, basically a lot of it is rhetoric, right? So I think one of the things that. I think one of the ways Chaves gets appeal, like kind of other pseudo populists, is that he has the rhetoric that resonates with people who are really frustrated by high rates of violent crime. Right? So he comes in and he says, I'm tired of the les de pobrecitos that we always have to think about. You know, oh, the poor people. Those poor people, oh, they had bad lives. That's why they're engaging in crime. They actually need to be just held accountable. Right. We need to hit them firm. Right? So I would say that rhetoric does resonate with a lot of people who are frustrated with high rates of crime. Right. He also kind of is very quick to disparage other institutions that people feel like are getting in the way and kind of elites in Costa Rica. Right. So I think that a lot of the appeal that he has, sometimes it's not so much what he's done. It's actually the way that he kind of frames the rhetoric now in terms of kind of concrete measures of what he's done. The reality is, I mean, not a whole lot, right? So, I mean, that's different, at least, right? Not a whole lot. That's different. So, you know, he talks about being harsher. He wanted to pass laws where you would increase jail time, that you would give, you know, courts greater leeway in trying minors as adults, that you would, you know, build more prisons. Of course, we just see him now talking about having his own mega prison. Right? So these things which you kind of call mano dura iron fist tactics, by and large, I mean, they end up not really having much of an impact. Right? So. And if you kind of Talk with people working in the justice system in Costa Rica, they'll say that, you know, that language kind of resonates with people who were kind of frustrated with, you know, security in Costa Rica. But what citizens don't sometimes realize is that, like penalties in Costa Rica for many of these crimes are already really high. Right. So people who work in the justice system say that Costa Rica has some of the harshest laws about people who sell drugs, even at the lowest level. Right. People who consume drugs. Right. So they said already we kind of have a justice system that tends to penalize people who engage especially in drug related crimes quite severely. So when people say, oh, we should do more, they're like, we don't really know what more we're supposed to do. And I think some of the crimes that people get frustrated with are oftentimes crimes that it is difficult to actually get them successfully through the court system for lack of evidence. Right. So, for example, if you're walking in San José and somebody steals your backpack with your iPhone and your money and all those things in it, that really hurts, Right? Because of course those are valuable items and now someone just stole them. But the reality is that for the police, if there's not active patrolling to prevent those types of crime in the first place, for people to find the exact person that stole your backpack, recover your items, and then have all that proof in place to take that case through the court system, those crimes by nature just tend to be harder to prove than something like a homicide or a house robbery or those types of things. So people are frustrated. That rhetoric kind of appeals to them. They want harsher penalties. But at the end of the day, those things stop not really solving the crime crisis. Right. And people like them in Costa Rica the same way they like them in the United States and other countries. But if you're actually really interested in reducing crime, those types of measures end up usually not really helping a whole lot. Right. So usually things that actually address kind of marginalization resources, those things actually tend to have far more of a long term impact than, you know, we're going to try this child as an adult and we're going to stick them in jail for 15 years.

Richard McColl: Yeah, definitely. I mean, so I can see this rhetoric of tough on crime and obviously strong security measures. It is really a broader trend in the whole region, of course, is talking Chaves, as we know, and this is the moment in our conversation where we have to bring up President Bukele. Chaves has, of course, you know, expressed openly his admiration of President Bukele's. Measures. Any possibility that Chaves might actually bring in some of those measures, or is it, again, more rhetoric?

Professor Mary Malone: So that's a great question, because he gave Bukele the country's highest honor back in. Back in November, Right. He wants to build his own mega prison. He talks about how they're collaborating to get the cost of constructing this mega-prison down. So he's been very open with his admiration of Bukele. Together with my research team, we had conducted a series of focus groups in Costa Rica in May and June of 2024 to see how much this, you know, these measures would actually resonate with people. And when we kind of conducted our focus groups in the San José region, by and large, we saw people in Costa Rica were okay with emulating this idea of incarcerating more people, having stricter laws, giving police and judiciary more discretion, and actually trying crimes and holding, you know, perceive criminals accountable. That type of thing there was a lot of support for. But when you actually start talking about some of the other measures that Bukele has, like suspending due process, sending militarized forces into the streets, that people in Costa Rica were like, that's completely at odds with our identity. Right. So in Costa Rica, you still saw people, if people mentioned, did you want to actually, you know, restart the military, Right. Kind of, you know, have a military, build it from scratch, you know, in 2024. And overwhelmingly, respondents were like, absolutely not. That is so antithetical to Costa Rican national identity, to who we are as Costa Ricans, that they really were never willing to kind of go that far. So I think we kind of talked about, you know, mano dura or iron fist policies in Costa Rica. What we see among the public is that there's support for kind of the legal part of that. So, like, anything you can do with the laws to make them tougher on criminals. Right. But if you start talking about things that are extra legal, like allowing the police to, you know, use indiscriminate force, or kind of looking the other way when we're kind of violating someone's rights, that had zero traction. Right. It was interesting in the focus group. Sometimes you'd see someone say, well, we have to do that, otherwise we'll end up like Ecuador. And the other people in the group, typically there was like a moderating effect where they were like, whoa, well, let's hold it. Let's hold back on that. You know, let's, you know, let's kind of think other things through, because if we start going down that path, you know, basically we're going to, you know, start kind of losing what makes us really important as a democratic nation.

Richard McColl: It's good to hear that Costa Rica retains the identity that seems to be universal. This is a very positive in this moment where not too much positive seems to be coming out. Talk about Chaves, you know, we've got elections coming up next year, February next year. When he got in 2022, what were his policy objectives? I mean, what did he run on? Has he fulfilled them?

Professor Mary Malone: Great question. So, and to give him credit, I mean, he has, in terms of security, he has actually increased port security. Right. So he's actually increased the use of technology to scan packages before they leave ports. So, I mean, those things, you know, I do want to give him credit for, you know, those types of measures that, you know, actually long term could be very effective. But I would say that, you know, when he came in, a lot of it was more kind of. There was concern about security, there was concern about the economy. Economy. But I would say that when you kind of look at people's, the people, especially people who supported Chaves, a lot of it was that they were frustrated with the status quo in Costa Rica. Right. And that's where I think Chaves fits nicely with the other populace that we see that they were really frustrated that there was there perceived to be this kind of group of elites that was a monopolizing power, monopolizing wealth and resources, that this elite class was out of touch with the problems that average Costa Ricans had. There was frustration that social services had declined, the quality of education and health had declined, you know, these types of things. There was frustration that Costa Rica was in decline as opposed to kind of being the beacon in the hemisphere that it used to be, especially in the 1990s. Right. So I would say that, you know, Chaves's victory did reflect kind of people's concerns about basic problems like security in the economy. But I think it also reflected the fact that people were frustrated with this kind of what they perceived to be an out of touch governing class. Right. And they wanted to have change.

Richard McColl: The out of touch governing class is again, is this broader trend through this whole region. I can see this repeating itself over and over. You can transplant the issues and the complaints of the Costa Rican people to almost anywhere. And we talk positively about the economy. We talk positively. You know, the IMF has praised Costa Rica.

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Professor Mary Malone: So that's true. And most certainly we do see that there's been better economic growth in Costa Rica than there has been in other countries. There's been a reduction in deficit, which is what the IMF always wants. Right. A reduction in deficit. Right. So, but the thing, when we talk about those economic indicators, I would just kind of keep going back to this issue of inequality. Right. So, you know, if you have economic growth, but your levels of inequality rise, what that means is that, yes, the country on average is doing better, but a lot of people are being left out of that progress. And I think what we're seeing happening is that if people feel that they're left out of that progress, that they're not getting part of that economic benefit, first of all, they're going to keep voting for populists who are anti elite. Right. Because they're not benefiting from this economic progress. But then also you're just leaving more people marginalized. Right. And if you look at economic indicators at the subnational level, what we see is that there's really sharp pockets of inequality. Right. Especially in poor areas. Right. And I would say that Puntarenas, for example, when you see these kinds of patterns, what it means is that in areas where organized criminal groups are looking to expand their activities, they're encountering more marginalized youth who actually don't have as much access as they used to quality education, to health care, to services like, you know, basic, you know, community infrastructure. And what that means is that yes, there's economic growth, but it's not evenly distributed and it's leaving some people behind. And those people who are left behind are oftentimes easily recruited into organized criminal activity. They're also kind of more likely to vote for populist leaders. Right. So I think that when we talk about economic progress, great. That we want, you know, you have economic growth, great. That we have reduction in debt. But I would just also think that indicator of inequality is one that we really have to have on the radar.

Richard McColl: I think that obviously we would be looking very directly at a town like Le Mans in this situation. I mean, it seems to me that being the perfect example of people being left behind. And let's talk a little bit about the tax reform from the previous government. It seems like Chaves wants to claim credit for this.

Professor Mary Malone: Well, I mean, that is, that tends to be the trend. Right. So. And you know, people tend to, you know, give credit for good Economic indicators to the person who's in power. And they tend to penalize the, you know, and do the opposite as well. Right. When the economy's bad, whoever's in power now gets penalized. So I mean, I think that's how people tend to perceive these things. Right. And if you say, you know, we see this in the United States today, right. Like if you say, oh, hey, this economic reform, if we have it right now, you know, five years from now, it's going to increase the, you know, the debt, it's going to have a series of negative consequences. Five years from now, people are going to say, oh no, it's the person's fault who's in power right now. So I think that's how people kind of attribute economic success and economic failures is that they want to kind of have immediate attribution and sometimes they don't look at these kind of, you know, more, just more long term structural factors.

Richard McColl: Definitely. Let's talk about the elections. 2026. Big year. Big year. Perhaps you could give us a little bit of a rundown on what's going on.

Professor Mary Malone: Great. So when I think about elections in 2026, I guess I see them kind of in kind of a global trend. Right. So I think globally what we're seeing is a rise in more authoritarian style leaders. And I say authoritarian style because sometimes the rhetoric just sounds authoritarian, but in practice, you know, they're not abusing the law. They're not, you know, they're acting legally. So it's not that they're, you know, undermining democracy. So but sometimes their rhetoric just makes them sound more authoritarian. I guess I would put Chaves in that category. Right. So it's true that some of his measures and things he's proposed have kind of, you know, well, the Supreme Court has said they're unconstitutional. Right. But then we see that he respects the Supreme Court's kind of decision there. Right. So I would say his rhetoric tends to be very combative. But in practice, I wouldn't say he's done anything openly authoritarian.

Richard McColl: Right.

Professor Mary Malone: It's just kind of more that rhetoric. And I guess globally that's kind of what we see is that these types of leaders are gaining a lot of trouble traction and they're really kind of building constituencies. Right. And I think people, you know, when you look at, for example, the case United States in 2016, people thought, oh, it's just a one off thing. Right. You know, the ship's gonna write itself. It was kind of a crazy fluke Right. And I think we're seeing now not just within, you know, within countries, but also globally is. It's not a fluke, right, that, you know, globally there's a group of people who feel, you know, disenfranchised and marginalized and they find that this type of rhetoric, these leaders, they're going to be the one to fix these problems. So I guess when I look at Costa Rica, I don't see any changes in terms of people who feel that they've been marginalized or not benefiting from the economic progress we actually see. People are still very afraid of just problems of insecurity. So what I think that's going to do is really create fertile ground for another outsider. Right. So another kind of more populist style figure to actually really kind of try to capitalize on the same kind of discontent that Chaves was able to capitalize on.

Richard McColl: Definitely. I mean, we can see this where I'm located here in Colombia. We're very likely to slide that way. And of course, look at President Noboa in Ecuador. Look, it would be a reason why President Boluarte remains in power in Peru and of course, you know, Bukele in El Salvador, Nicaragua. We know what's going on there. It just seems to repeat itself over and over. And, and we don't think that, I mean, Chaves has been affected by the corruption scandals and anyone can build on that as well. An authoritarian style candidate can also point to the corruption scandals, right?

Professor Mary Malone: Absolutely. And you can actually see kind of one political outsider, you know, pointing at that, you know, that, you know, this political outsider is, you know, being corrupt and doing the same thing as the other elites. Right. You know, I think the, you know, kind of rhetoric that sometimes people use in those political challengers, use in those scenarios is, you know, once he got to power, he was just as bad as the other ones. Right. So, you know, we have to have somebody new in there. So I would say that, you know, the ground is really fertile to kind of have that type of figure be successful in 2026. I think a lot of it's going to have to do with how the traditional political parties reinvent themselves. Right. And part of it, I think is just kind of, you know, human nature. Right. When you have two political parties that kind of share power for, you know, for decades, people get frustrated. Right. And they kind of say they want something new. Right. They don't say. They tend not to view that as, oh, great, we have all the stability. It's that they're like, oh, we need somebody new in there, right? So part of it's kind of, I think, just human nature, but then the other part of it is that those traditional political parties really do need to demonstrate that they have. They're willing to reinvent themselves and kind of respond to the people who feel that they've been left behind. Right. And that's something that I think that political parties and elites did successfully in other parts of Costa Rican history. So, for example, in the 2010s, I actually thought that Costa Rican elites and traditional parties did a great job of, you know, kind of saying, look, this is not our identity. We have to kind of shield ourselves against these kind of rising populace, and we're actually going to be working on your behalf. I feel like that kind of. They were less successful in doing that in the past five years, right? In the past five years, we actually see that the traditional political parties have allowed themselves to kind of be painted as kind of out of touch. And I think that they really need to reinvent themselves to kind of appeal more to kind of average Costa Ricans who are frustrated.

Richard McColl: Well, that's it. It would be, again, appealing to the base, appealing to those, the left out, the marginalized. Not easy for the traditional parties to do so, not easy to breach that gap.

Professor Mary Malone: Well, you know, it's funny, so when I think about. I first started working in Costa Rica in, I think, maybe 2010, you know, around then. And I was actually always really impressed that the kind of elites that I talked to in Costa Rican government, how much they actually thought about average people. So, I mean, this is just one, you know, kind of small example. But I was going to the. The electoral tribunal, and I was actually learning about how that's, you know, Costa Rica, that's a fourth branch of government. And we actually went through, you know, how from getting a national ID card to counting the votes, I was kind of getting a tour of how everything worked there. And it was fascinating. And what amazed me was, I remember went into the lobby and there was all this artwork there, right? And I was like, oh. I was like, well, this is lovely. But, you know, in the US we usually don't think of government institutions this way. And I remember the person who was in charge at the time said, oh, well, we try to do that because, you know, people come here and sometimes they have to wait a really long period of time while they're waiting in line for their ID cards. And a lot of them maybe don't have access to museums and art and stuff. So Isn't it nice that we make it available to the public again? This is just such a small example, but it struck me because I don't think I would ever hear someone in the US Working in government talk about it that way. Right. It just was a very different way of thinking about it. And for me, I was like, wow, it's kind of interesting that whoever's in charge of organizing this particular office was like, hey, let's bring in some artwork so average people have more access to it. And this way they're not going to get frustrated when they wait. Right. So I felt like that very small example kind of illustrated how many Costa Rican elites kind of thought about their jobs. Right. And, you know, they really kind of did try to make sure that even kind of on a larger scale, neoliberal reforms had less of an impact in Costa Rica than they did in other places. Right. They really did try to think about ways in which they could kind of insulate people who were going to be most vulnerable from major, you know, economic change. So I guess I felt like Costa Rica always did that. And I felt the other thing was that they were always very pragmatic. So when you kind of talk with Costa Rican elites about policy, they were, by and large, I mean, I interviewed people and they said, I disagree with him on everything, but at the end of the day, he won. So I have to work with them. So, you know, we're going to just focus on where we agree, and when I disagree, I'm going to find a nice way to try to say it. Right. So I felt like there had always been a pragmatism and kind of an interest investing in people in Costa Rica and your politics. And I can't say that's completely disappeared. Like, I think when I go back and talk to people, still see those trends, but I think that they're not as obvious to people who feel left out. Right. So I feel that when they're looking, they just see this wealthier elite class who actually is benefiting more than they are. I would also say that when you kind of look at the kind of politicians and kind of more elite class in Costa Rica, a lot of times when they compare themselves, they kind of compare themselves to their counterparts in Europe and the United States. Right? So, for example, if they have a high salary, they're like, right, well, that's what people in my job should have. Right. Like, I should, you know, I should have kind of a similar compensation package as we see in other areas. I should have a similar lifestyle as we see in the United States and Europe and those countries. And I think in Costa Rica, especially if you're at the bottom end of the socioeconomic ladder, you just see that they have a lot more than you do, right? Not that this is what, you know, professionals have. It's that they have far more than you do.

Richard McColl: It's that. It's that moment. It's that moment where we have to talk about the. The relationship between the United States government and Costa Rica right now. And obviously, what is an interesting situation, obviously, is Costa Rica moving from Taiwan to China with its, you know, political relationship and how this plays in with the relationship with. With President Trump's government. And. But of course, they've played their hand quite well. They've moved to China, but they are receiving these transfers of migrants on the way south. So would you say this has been, you know, would you say this has been a good play?

Professor Mary Malone: So I would say that's kind of emblematic of kind of Costa Rican pragmatism, right? So, yes, basically. And this is, I think, what the. What the governing class does very well is I think that if you look at kind of Costa Rican ties to the U.S. i mean, a lot of Costa Rican elites have gone to the United States for education. They're actually very well connected in US Circles. So for them, yes, they actually would see that continuing this beneficial relationship with the United States is being great. Right. We see that they've actually been able to press the United States, even as the United States is cutting funds everywhere, press the United States to actually devote more attention to resources for combating organized crime, for working with the FBI, dea. So we actually see more resources kind of going there. I would say that if you kind of juxtapose that with what's happening with China, again, that's a relationship that the Chinese in particular, have been trying to steadily build since the early 2000s. Right. So I remember the first time I was in Costa Rica, they had started construction on the soccer stadium, which was that gift from the Chinese government, right. And people talked about how, oh, wow, it's. I remember people being like, oh, it's so strange. Like, we don't usually have a lot of Chinese people here, right? I mean, they, you know, so they're like, oh, wow, it was something noticeable. And you started to see kind of more Asian supermarkets. And they were like, oh, yeah. Because the people working on the stadium also want to have, you know, okay. And when I was there in July 2024, I remember I walked around Chinatown in Costa Rica. And I was like, wow, this has really expanded a lot because now it's not just, you know, the people that are associated with the stadium the way it was 15 years ago now. It's actually that there's been a real growth in kind of just the visible presence of not just the Chinese government, but people from China living in Costa Rica. Right. So I guess it's been a steady relationship. It's been economically based for the most part, and I think that it's grown over time. And people in Costa Rica are kind of willing to pursue both options. Right. They don't see those things as mutually exclusive. Right. China is actually meeting one particular need, the United States is meeting another. It would actually, I think Costa Rica would seek to continue collaboration with both of those countries by saying, this is how we. This is where our interests overlap in this area and this is where they overlap in another.

Richard McColl: Again, it comes back to that identity. The Costa Ricans are entirely sure of their identity. And this pragmatism is quite refreshing indeed. Forgive my ignorance. Where is Chinatown? In San José.

Professor Mary Malone: Oh, good. So actually, I don't know if it's officially Chinatown, but it's most certainly a concentration of a lot of Asian businesses, restaurants and et cetera. And it is several blocks long. So I'm trying to think if you're in the set. So if you're kind of in the area where the government buildings are, if you're coming from the. From the main park, it's actually to the right hand side. Right. So it's. So, but it was. There was, I remember, this big statue that represented the friendship between the Chinese and Costa Rican peoples. And again, it's a commercial sector that's quite large that I at least don't require, call it being as visible when I first started working in Costa Rica.

Richard McColl: And how, you know, obviously things are not going too great. China and Panama, obviously there's been a little bit of. A little bit of an upset there in that relationship, but Costa Rican politicians must be watching that as well.

Professor Mary Malone: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that they'll just continue to try to figure out where their interests overlap. I also, I mean, Costa Rica has made itself a valuable partner in terms of fighting organized criminal activity as well as migration. And that's actually not just right now. Costa Rica had actually tried to cooperate with the United States on migration and had cooperated. I mean, we're going back easily, you know, seven, eight years. Right. So Costa Rica, you know, had long kind of seen itself as a partner for the United States on those two issues. And I think that, you know, Costa Rica is going to continue to kind of portray itself as we can help you on these two critical issues that are important to you. I think that the fact that the United States, with other allies, has been quick to change course rapidly, I think probably set up alarms in Costa Rica. So Colombia, I feel like, is a great example. Right. So Colombia, you couldn't ask for a better ally for the United States than Colombia, maybe Panama. Right. But I mean, if you think about regional allies, Panama and Colombia have long been kind of the key allies for the United States in the hemisphere. So when the United States, I think it was back in January or February, when the United States announces that if Colombia doesn't do exactly what it wants, it's going to have these tariffs immediately, that, yeah, I mean, that kind of just sends up a bit of an alarm. Right. If you're kind of working in a country in Latin America and you're like, this is how the US Is treating its allies, you're going to think we better actually start looking for more allies. Right. So we're going to start to see Costa Rica thinking about making sure that its relationship with China is strong, also probably seeking to deepen its relationship with other countries. Germany, for example, collaborates with Costa Rica quite a bit on environmental matters. So I think Costa Rica is most likely looking at how the United States is treating its other allies in the region and kind of thinking like we better have a plan B in case all of a sudden we are now in the ire of the US Again. I think it's less likely that they would because they've cooperated so extensively on drug trafficking and migration. But, you know, with this administration, it's been quite unpredictable.

Richard McColl: And of course, Costa Rica is not a country that, you know, creates problems, you know, in comparison to neighbors and so on and so forth. It's not, it doesn't. Doesn't really rock the boat. So hopefully. So as we wind this down, Mary Fran, it seems to me that we are pointing. One thing that comes back, we come back to, obviously, is the identity we come back to, but inequality and marginalizations. Costa Rican institutions remain strong. Then, despite everything this is, this seems to be a success story.

Professor Mary Malone: Yes, yes, absolutely. And when I was interviewing people who worked with both government and civil society in Costa Rica In July of 2024, one thing that they kept repeating was that Costa Rica has invested in strong institutions since 1949. Right. So from the judicial perspective, for example, I was speaking with one Official. And she said, if you go anywhere in Costa Rica, be the most remote area that actually seems to be the most isolated, if that person actually has a problem that they need to report to police or the courts, they will be able to do so officially. Right. So you don't see the same kind of inaccessibility to kind of the key democratic institutions in Costa Rica that you might see in other areas. There's no real part in Costa Rica that's completely cut off from being able to report a crime, being able to take a case to court, those types of things that people rely upon, elections and other kind of, you know, Costa Rica has that as a fourth branch of government. Those elections are designed by a completely nonpartisan entity. Right. So I think that when people think about institutions, it's not just that they're strong institutions that are kind of abstract. It's the institutions that people would use on a daily basis. Right. So people, when they need assistance from police, courts, when they want to go vote, those institutions they recognize are strong and they've been strong. You know, there's been consistent investment with them since 1949. So Costa Rican elites, when they talk about things, are like, this is actually what's paying off, Right? It's paying off because we've invested in making sure our institutions are strong. People can count on them. And that's kind of, you know, making sure that our democracy is protected from some of these other regional trends.

Richard McColl: What a relief. What are. It's nice to. Nice to hear this and end on a. On, let's say, a positive note there. Although I would say that, you know, on the whole, this has been a good conversation. Costa Rica, yes, there are challenges, but again, in the broader context, Costa Rica is still. It's going to be okay, let's say. I think that would be.

Professor Mary Malone: That would be my guess. Yes, absolutely. I was predicting that would be what I would say.

Richard McColl: And we don't expect. We don't expect electoral violence in 2026.

Professor Mary Malone: No, no. I would be shocked if that happens.

Richard McColl: Exactly, exactly. Well, thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolutely, you know, revealing conversation. I'm. I'm happy to talk about Costa Rica in such a manner. We've been talking here on the Latin News podcast to Mary Fran T. Malone, who is the professor in the Department of Political Science, the University of New Hampshire, where she teaches classes on democracy, comparative politics and Latin American politics. Her research focuses on a crucial component of democracy, establishing the rule of law. Check out her 2023 book on security. It's called Making Police Reform Matter in Latin America. Mary, Fran, thank you so much for your time here on The LatinNews Podcast.

Professor Mary Malone: Thank you so much. This was a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

Richard McColl: You're most welcome. I've been Your host, Richard McColl, here in Bogota, Colombia. This has been The LatinNews Podcast. Remember to check back in a fortnight's time for further interviews on subjects from the region. Goodbye. You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast.

Outro: For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.LatinNews.com.

Intro: Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogotá, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is The LatinNews Podcast. I am Your host, Richard McColl here in Bogotá, Colombia. We are taking on a very interesting topic this week, one that as yet, we have not discussed here on the podcast. I'm speaking to Mario Aguilar, who is the professor of religion and politics at University of St Andrews. He's also a papal biographer. At the moment we have him on the line from Santiago, Chile. And we're going to discuss, well, not only Catholicism, the new Pope, the former pope, but we're going to talk about these diplomatic missions and the new role, this role that, let's say, the Catholicism, the Roman Catholic Church has been moving into, and especially with an influence on Latin America. So, Mario, welcome on The LatinNews Podcast.

Professor Mario Aguilar: Thank you, Richard, for having me. Lovely to hear from Bogotá.

Richard McColl: It's an absolute pleasure for me to discuss this with you. Not something that I follow too much, but I am aware and of course, very aware, being based in Bogotá and in Latin America, the importance of the Catholic faith, importance of the Catholic Church. And indeed, when we talk about it and this outpouring of grief at the recent passing of Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope, so one that felt like he belonged to the whole continent, we can say, can't we, that really, Pope Francis, perhaps he represented a region and really brought Latin America back to the fore. It was an important nomination.

Professor Mario Aguilar: Exactly. And Pope Francis made a huge difference. I knew him since he was archbishop, Buenos Aires, and it was fascinating to see how he represented Latin America in a very Latin American way. The way he advanced, for example, dialogue was not. Yes, the dialogue that you learn in political science and so forth. He was a man who sat with people, for example, and solved the problem like he did in Buenos Aires. My image of Pope Francis when he was cardinal in Buenos Aires was the typical image. He was not very keen on the governments of the time, and he wasn't keen at all on the politicians. Therefore, he will have a problem. And instead of roaming over it, because the Archbishop House was just opposite the Presidential palace, he will walk across, go to the gates, speak to the police there and say, I'm the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. I just want a word with the President. And they will say, do you have an appointment? No, I'm afraid I don't. I don't do such a thing. Make an appointment with the secretary. And then somebody else said, Look, Monsignor, just come along with me and then he will make his point and then return and. And write in his diary. Done. Next thing he was really. And he ran the Vatican like that. The criticisms, for example, from Europe towards him is that he was impossible. There was an audience or a meeting. And then I heard this, for example, from the previous British ambassador. And then he was ready to check on are we going to unite the Anglican Church with the Catholic Church? When is going to be your visit? The Queen would like to do this. Are you going to go to Scotland, Northern Ireland or whatever? And then he said, well, we can talk about, would you like some coffee and cakes? You know. And this was a point of irritation because he wasn't a trained diplomat. And as a priest, the difference with the new Pope, he was not a member of a religious order, he was a diocesan priest. And therefore he was always on his own. And yes, he was a Jesuit, but he was a spiritual director. And so therefore he had the sense that the world would be changed by dialogue, by conversation. A very Latin American way. The way in which he represented the interest of indigenous populations, for example, not a topic that is comes naturally to Chile and Argentina, because there are few indigenous populations. The rest were killed. And so therefore, naturally he started looking at Latin American topics, poverty, equality. He wasn't from a generation in which LGBTI and so forth were at the forefront. He was learning. And so he started changing. He changed like any other human being. As pope, when they asked him, for example, or the nation of women, he was very uneasy. He was. He was from another generation. And so therefore Latin America was well represented, which of course represented a huge number of Roman Catholics. The church had been very prominent during the military regimes. When Archbishop Bergoglio, later Pope Francis, was in Buenos Aires. But if one looks now, it's very difficult to speak about Pope Francis without the now. He was a spiritual director. We were. I can speak personally, I was in shock. And I was certainly terribly upset about the pedophiles and all these scandals and so on. And then he was the spiritual director of the Catholic Church, 1.4 billion people. And he certainly gave us dignity over counseling of certain years. That is how I put his papacy. When went to Iraq, for example, I said, okay, I said, you, Holiness, we're going to see the leader of the Shia. So went through these alleyways. The guards were left somewhere else. And I said, this is the moment when in the movies, I said, the submachine guns come up. And even I said, I've Been to Colombia, you know, this is the moment when the submachine comes out of the balconies and that's the end. And then he said, well, we have a mission. And therefore he said, if they take up the submachine guns, we must dialogue with them, we must remain calm. And I said to him, I think we must run and scream help. And then he said, no, that's not what we do. And I. And he went to the Israeli ways, saw the leader of the Shia and came back and the two leaders did not say anything. The leader of the Shia, very prominent with militias, armed, et cetera, during the Iraq conflict. He came to open the door, which was very unusual of his house. And then he said, your Holiness, and brought us into this room and remained in silence. And Pope Francis remained in silence. Both of them were the same age. And. And suddenly I said to him in Spanish, I simply said in your Holiness, are we going to do something? We have a speech and we want to get something done. And he said, no, all people understand each other. You don't. And they remained there for a long time until the leader of the Shia stood up and said, would you like some coffee? And then Pope Francis said, yes, please, that would be lovely. They were like two pensioners in their lives, enjoying themselves. And so at one point tonight, Pope Francis said, well, we must go, but thank you for having us. And it was lovely. And nothing was said, nothing was exchanged. And then I said outside, it was a lovely meeting. And he said, mario, that is life. You dialogue with somebody else by simply don't say anything. You sit, you go to their homes. And that's how we run in a sense, the papacy, very Latin American. Nothing happens without food, nothing happened without music. He will put his tangos from Argentina and drink his mate in the highest of the meetings. If you look at his photographs over many years, he looks completely bored. In a board meeting with embassies, completely gone, simply, it was the one to one and bring me to your family. Is your family here when somebody visited? Yes, please. He began that custom that spouses and children arrived for the audiences in the papacy. So a lovely man. And I think that's why they outpoured is simply people who were not Catholics or even the medium. So in a sense an example of good humanity.

Richard McColl: I think, I think you obviously you know him personally and that's it, isn't it? That Latin American way, You don't go into anyone's house without them offering you something. And I love the idea of no dialogue. But there's plenty of actual unspoken dialogue going on, isn't there, between, as you said, the Shi' and the Pope at that moment. And it's this kind of humility that we saw with Pope Francis that endeared him to people well beyond Catholicism. And that's a reality. And this, the move to elect or a Latin American to obviously the highest position of the Catholic Church. Do you feel that this also was also something to do with. Let's create a buffer zone between what is happening internationally and maybe a rise of evangelical Christianity in the region as well?

Professor Mario Aguilar: That's a very interesting question, actually. I haven't heard about. Yes, because people don't understand Latin America. the rise of evangelicals is huge and very significant. No, he wasn't worried about the others, in a sense. He wasn't worried about anything. the enemies of Pope Francis, if that is a kind word, the very traditionalists, were very concerned that he wasn't using his. He wasn't using his power, inverted commas in order to get the evangelicals out. The history, for example, of Colombia and Chile, more of Colombia and Argentina, is that of course, Colombia has had a concordat until the year 2000 with the Vatican, which meant that until the year 2000, the Vatican authorized names of ministers and Colombians had a say on bishops that were appointed. A complete unity of church and state. So his enemies said he. He should return to the concordats with Latin American countries in order to then made illegal the evangelicals.

Richard McColl: Yeah.

Professor Mario Aguilar: Chile, for example. Evangelicals or anybody else could not exist legally until 1982. And so therefore you could not have, you could not buy a property where people will sing on a Sunday, or you could not go on the street, have collections. You could not be a charity. And therefore the animosity against him was that he did not use his very hard power in order to clear all possibilities that people will only have the. The Catholic Church. That wasn't his way of being in Argentina. He was very close to the Jewish community. There was outrage. I mean, the Argentinian bishops were very conservative when he was there, when he attended the Muslim funeral. And the person who was buried was simply a friend of his where he bought his newspaper every morning. He did not get his newspaper delivered as it was in the old days, but simply he walked in the morning to have coffee somewhere and get his newspaper. And he did that for many years as also bishop with the same man who was a Muslim. And they had conversation not about religion. But how are the Grandchildren. And the man, Pope Francis always said. The man always said. The man was never happy about changes. He said, everything is changing. There is no respect. The president is not the same. And Pope Francis only said, cheer up, man, the world is okay, and brought him a little cake. And so the man dies. The family asked him for prayers, and he went as also bishop, as an individual, as an Argentinian, went to the funeral, and the Catholic bishops were outraged. I mean, this was almost giving up the Catholic faith or something like that. So he wasn't that kind of person. So I never. I mean, as a biographer, I never came across, to be quite honest, a document or a memo in any portfolio regarding evangelicals. Interesting, interesting point. Because if we think, for example, of Guatemala or Honduras or others, the rise was tremendous. I mean, what was expected of Latin America by the time that Sufficient Romero died. Yeah. Was that the militaries will go. Everybody had been so involved, in a way, with the political processes and the Catholic Church that it was unheard that evangelical movements would arrive. Yes. And they were easy for people in a way, rather than the Catholic Church. The scandals came, and that didn't help. But he wasn't worried about that. He was worried about the intensity of the faith in Latin America, that if you're a Roman Catholic, then faith is your life. And therefore any erosion of the faith by secularism, consumerism, capitalism, all the isms. He was very concerned about that, but didn't have answer. His answer was the traditional parish priest who then simply spoke about God in daily life. When, you know, I was. I was knighted by the Vatican in 2013 when I began my work, and all this happened with pomp and circumstance, whatever. Scotland was absolutely delighted about this. It was like the. The Reformation and the Enlightenment were healed finally. And Pope Francis said, okay, we'll skip the meal. There was a buffet or something.

Richard McColl: Yeah.

Professor Mario Aguilar: And then he said, shall we go and get some pizza on the corner? I said, yeah, I want to talk to you. Now that you are knighted, you have the chance to exercise. And he used the word soft power. He said, the soft power of the intellectuals is something I cannot do. He wasn't an intellectual. I always say to my PhDs, he was a failed PhD. He began in Germany, and at one point he couldn't take anymore a PhD on Romano Guardini and the spirituality of the Council and so forth. And that's why he then became a devout man of this lady of the Naz in Germany, because he went and kneeled there in front of Our lady and said, why do I have to do a PhD. And he said the answer came very clear because you are a Jesuit. And most Jesuits have one Ph.D. in philosophy or theology and one in science. The great Latin American liberation theologian Jon Sobrino had a PhD in chemistry from Illinois. They all had two or three PhDs. And there it was this man who could not get down to write anything because he wanted to be a spiritual director. And so therefore, intellectually, he realized his encyclicals and so on were very good, but they were very pastoral. He wanted people to be happy. He wanted people to encounter God. The enemy said, that's not the Pope. It's fascinating that the election of the new pope, that I never thought it will happen in the way it happened. I mean, I am absolutely surprised. The fact is that I was expecting a conclave for weeks because the enemies were there, saying it must be. They don't use traditional, liberal, personal expressions in the Vatican. But a person who upholds doctrine, yes, because we had the excesses, notice the word, the excesses of Pope Francis. And I said, what kind of excesses? I mean, yes, he was a bit overweight, but apart from that, he was an extraordinary Latin American parish priest. Walking down the road and talking to everybody. They didn't like that. They wanted the Benedict. They wanted the Benedict xvi, who will say, truth is truth. You don't have it out. Either you come in or you come out. And the election of Pope Leo is fascinating. I mean, I love him every minute. Every minute I love him more. He can be the pastor who is so warm and then almost cries most of the time. And one gets very unsettled. The Pope. I always imagine the Pope needs to be like Winston Churchill. Command the troops against the heretics. That's what the traditionalists want. Tell the pronuncio to go and talk to Pedro and tell him we're going to excommunicate the whole of Colombia if things don't happen. That's what they want. And then suddenly they are so happy because we're. We are becoming part of a change. We were prepared by the spiritual director. So now I feel this morning we have dignity. We're listening to the great leaders are coming to the Vatican. This is a great change, but I wasn't expectant. We had a pope for years who was in a wheelchair. For a biographer, anybody working intellectually through these periods, you say, okay, he's going to say something in the morning. Then everything will be private. He's going to have his siesta. Nothing is going to happen. Thank God. And then you keep up with the stuff. The moment Leo XIV is elected, then I said, well, he will miss Peru. He's our Peruvian Pope. And therefore, yeah, this is going to be okay. The first day he has only been as pope for seven days and it looks like a full library already. And the first day that he's actually pope and he has that Mass with the cardinals. Okay, I read the homily. This is a tip for any viewer or listener. If you want to understand the Vatican, it's very easy. Do not watch the telly. Look at the homily that is put there in the original text on the Vatican webpage. And that looks very pious. Just dissect the ideas and. And that is Vatican policy. So on that day, he tells the cardinals that he's going to continue with the line of Pope Francis or the radical wing, okay, but he's going to proclaim that the truth of Jesus Christ is our life. The traditionalists are happy. Everybody claps like they have never done it. Everybody happy. There is such a spirit of happiness. But then I thought, he will need like any head of state couple of weeks to get on with. He will make his appointment. He doesn't make new appointments. He keeps everybody in place. How clever. You don't have to worry. I mean, whatever you do in life, whatever you work with, the most difficult thing is when you take a new job and you don't know the people around you very much. Do I change this? And this is where politics begins, corruption, etc. No, he keeps everybody. The machinery is working perfectly all right with the head of the Vatican, which is a woman and is above the Secretary of State. And so therefore it has taken a while to think that if I write about Vatican policy and the press doesn't, the journalists don't, they haven't catch up that you need to look at the sister in charge, Sister Raffaella, because she is the second in command. There was a funny comment, There's a funny comment in the BBC when they were showing the first Mass of. And then the commentator, they're very good. As you know, the BBC is absolutely first class in this. Commentators. But the commentator says a woman is reading the first reading of the Mass. I said that is true, but you missed the point. That is the second in command of the Vatican. This is not just a woman, and this is not just an accident that the first reading was read by the second in command and then the second reading by the third in command. You could see the structure of the Church being realized with the New Pope in the chapel. And therefore the. The sense of what has continued is we have a pasta, we have the bishop of Northern Peru, warm as anything is extraordinary, very un American in a way that the movement of his body are not forward, they are Latin American. He embraces, he shake hands. That great moment in the narration when the President of Ireland comes in with his wife, of course, with his two crutches, very distinguished for the Vatican, not only because he's Ireland, but he's an old man. And because they're old man is like the head of the Shia. Oh, this must be a very important person. And he has problems to move forward. He moves very slowly. And the Pope breaks protocol. Pope Leo and goes to him and takes him again like two old men takes him by the elbow and they chat and they laugh. And he said, how are the dogs? The dogs are very famous.

Richard McColl: Yes, they are.

Professor Mario Aguilar: Whatever else. So it is an extraordinary person. I know every Pope should be extraordinary, but we have an intellectual. He has produced more papers in seven days than Pope Francis a month. I mean, so what I was trying to say, the first month takes place, then I close my computer six hours behind the Vatican here in Santiago. And then I said, okay, that was nice. Yes, we're going well. And then suddenly I'm sitting with some Chileans here who are looking at their social media. He said, how lovely that the Pope is going to a shrine of a different now lady today. And I said, what? He's supposed to have in a siesta or something or playing tennis or. And then he goes to the Augustinian shrine in the afternoon. And then I said, okay, let's note, there's a change of Madonna here. Yeah, that's how I interpret the change of Madonna. So he's going to be close to this one. He. He's not going to go to Santa Maria Maggiore. So I closed my social media again and I said, good, we're getting somewhere. And I started writing some memos. You know, that's the way you construct a biography, simply you do every day. Yeah, some very clear memos. You forget absolutely every detail and. And then you see the possible continuity and whatever. And an hour later he's in Santa Maria Maggiore visiting the tomb of Pope Francis. I said, this man doesn't stop. And he has a meeting in the evening. I'm completely exhausted. And I think everybody. Vatican is completely exhausted. If you think of a normal family, you go to Mass, you have lunch. And then he said, oh, great, everybody's free. Their friends coming or friends Going or you go somewhere, some people have their siesta. And this man, on a normal bank holiday in Italy, has. Has done everything that Pope Francis does in a year. And then, you know, I get the. I get the. The speeches and everything delivered, they are in the web anyhow. There is nothing secret. But I count 62 pages. My God. I mean, not even an academic. That's 62 pages for conference. You know, this is. This accounts more or less to one third of a PhD. And so I start reading, okay, he did that. And then I get the memo saying he's going to address the diplomatic core tomorrow. So I said, nice. He's going to tell them everything is okay, the Vatican loves them. And then I start reading what he wrote, and he says, the Vatican diplomacy will operate in three points. God, this man is going fast. And, you know, probably the cardinal said, we have not been informed, you know, but everybody feels the vibes. This is a man of energy, which, in terms of Catholicism, the Holy Spirit, we're full of the Spirit at the moment. He says, the three ones are peace, justice and truth. He proceeds to explain this not in the philosophical manner of Benedict XVI, but simply. He says, Peace means since 1963. And from Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII. The church has always opposed war, and therefore we will continue opposing war by diplomatic means. And then I get a message saying, your help is needed in the Vatican Academy with the diplomats. And I have my dinner that day. And I said, I came here to rest a little bit, to write. I have things to do. And this man is going 100 kilometers per hour without anybody realizing. Have they realized? Because, you see, the. The cost of. Was. Pope Francis said something on a Wednesday in the general audience. The commentators will digest that, all the journalists. Then days later, they will say, okay, there was a little change. Yeah, it's good continuity, this kind of thing. This morning, for example, the Pope Leo had the general audience for the first time. It wasn't in the Paul VI hall, which you can see 4,000 people. It was in St. Peter's 40,000 people. Yeah. And if you look at what he said this morning about the seed that falls on the ground and how then things grow, you say, lovely, but that was the. That would have been Pope Francis, the parish priest. I just read it before talking to you, Richard. And I said, okay, I need to read that later. There is another message there in the second part. He's dictating the terms of Russia and Ukraine for the talks that begin, not next month. They begin with the Italian government. And this whole list, which is public in the social media because it was published by the Italian government, it begins on Wednesday. And so we are moving. When you were saying previously, the world move fast, the young move fast. This is a younger pope.

Richard McColl: Yes.

Professor Mario Aguilar: There is a lovely picture where somebody put in the social media, the Pope is like us. And I said, what did he do now? And then I see the picture is the Pope in between things. He's sitting beside the fountain near the Vatican there in his white regalia with his iPhone and he's looking at something. Somebody's talking to him and then he's taking a selfie.

Richard McColl: Yes.

Professor Mario Aguilar: So this is going to be a hard papacy for journalists and academics.

Richard McColl: I, it's fascinating to think of Pope Leo and of course, he's been the speed, as you said, he's a young pope and he's already involved in with the Vatican and the Italian government, Russia, Ukraine, as you said, peace, justice and truth. And that really. Well, he's a Peruvian citizen as well. I mean, we know that he spent so long. Can we, could we possibly draw a conclusion that he will also continue in Pope Francis's sort of vein of being Latin American in style and also, let's say this work towards greeting and embracing the most humble, working towards poverty and equality, Something that really needs to be addressed in Latin America because of his knowledge of Peru. And I know he spent time in Colombia and Barranquilla and he's been all over. But when you think of the work done by Pope Francis, the work done to visit Peru and go, obviously he was in Bogotá and Cartagena, but he went also to somewhere that had been really truly impacted by the conflict, like Villavicencio. This was huge in Colombia. You know, this was absolutely a landmark visit because he, okay, he was in major Colombian cities, but somewhere like Villavicencio, this was a hat tip and a direct message place. Yeah, this was a message of peace. So can we feel that Pope Leo will also be addressing Latin America in the same sort of vein?

Professor Mario Aguilar: Yes. One could say, you know, I'm always trying to address the cynics. You know, there is a plot behind that. Was in the speech to the diplomatic corps. I'll take it there to the experience. Basically, he said the Church has been nourished by Pope Francis. The Church has many ties with many countries. He defined in that speech, which I will recommend to anybody. Friday the 16th, the speech to diplomats. He began by defining the world of diplomats as the world of the Church. He's the first Pope. We tend to think diplomats are, you know, they have to be, in a way, they represent countries, interest, etc. And then he said, the Church understands the world of diplomacy because the world of diplomacy is the world of the Church. The Church is a global family in that the Vatican is probably the only state in the world that is respected by every country. And therefore there are citizens of every country who are members of the Catholic Church. So therefore, diplomacy in the Church is not one talking to another, but trying to understand the tensions within a family. It was extraordinary metaphor when you have very powerful embassies in front of you who expect probably policy or expect to say nothing will change and everybody's happy at lunch. And then he said, well, but the Church has. The Church is different in one way, but the same as a family in another. The Church can correct and teach and foresee things because the Church is the longest state in the world, 20th centuries. On the other hand, it's the same in the family. We take care of those who are suffering, those who are sick, the handicapped, the ones who are not really, the ones who need to be close to their mother. At the same time, those who are marginalized within a family who decided maybe not to do what the family want, so they went far away. On the other hand, those who are poor and have to sit at Christmas dinner with the rich, the powerful and the successful of the family who say, why cannot you do that? So the Church does not focus on the ones who are okay, focuses on the poor and the marginalized. And then he talks about Peru. He talks about. And I never thought about that as a Latin American, in a way, he made the point I never had before, that we're all. We all love Peru and Bolivia because simply they have these ancient ruins, Machu Picchu and so on, but that this is all in the mountains and it's all related to the indigenous kingdoms. And then he said, the church focus. And I was looking at the web after. And this is where I'm beginning work in the Moche culture, which precedes the Incas. And it is in the coast which Peruvians feel is dirty, smelly. You don't go there, you go up the mountain to the gods. And so he said the Church made a point in Peru to be present with the indigenous peoples of the Moche culture, where I never heard about it. My ignorance. Where in 1987, the lords of the Moche culture were discovered in 100 tombs which were intact, which is the most important place, ritual place in the whole of Latin America. I mean, I opened my mouth because simply I said I never knew any of this. A man who already relocated Peru and Latin America. And so very quickly the message came, okay, you have worked on. He was involved in cultural reconstruction. If you Google, for example, the Moche culture and his former diocese, you will see his picture supporting all the excavations, going personally and working there and saying to everybody in Peru, the other bishops were not saying that the gods of the past are a continuation of the plan of God and linking with the Vatican Museum at the time, with American aid to excavate. So that is the most successful archaeological excavation in the world, more than Egypt. And so therefore is a man who has such a command of globality that we thought that John Paul II was a global man. But in a way, in a time where communications were different. And yeah, and we saw that globality was about unity. It was about the sameness. At that time, we thought the world will come together with the Internet and will cease war because we will do the same things. Basically, you know what? I contested many times this silly thing because we all drink Coca Cola and use blue jeans. Then we feel together. Then you start discovering that the Internet depends on your provider. Your fiber could be slower or faster. And so we are not united here. We have a man who points to the diversity, but immediately, in seven days, has given the centers of reality for the Catholic Church and it has dislocated. In my case, I mean, I've written about the church for 40 years. I was a political prisoner because I worked for the Church. Suddenly in my copybook and so on, I'm completely dislocated and I need to learn. So basically he said, help us with the diplomacy, but help us. You're anthropologist. And I said, yes, I am, but the joy of being anthropologist. And I said, okay, more work. And then he said, could you. Could you reconnect? Because I'm Pope, I cannot do everything. Would you reconnect the museums with the Vatican? And could you make sure the hospital John Paul II that he opened and then he said a good administrator. He said the Catholic Church was helping there in my Davosis was helping. The regional hospital, which I saw in the web is very confident and good. There's a problem with the land, as in a whole lot in America. The land does not belong to the state. And therefore he said, we need benefactors to buy that and give it back to the state of Peru. Could you put that in your agenda as well? When you go for the Things. Okay, when can I have the first paper on that? Would you write in Spanish, German, French, English? And I said, yeah. And then I thought, the speed is the speed of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit. This is not the Last Supper. Let's. Let's be merry together. It's extraordinary.

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Richard McColl: Do you think I have to bring this in? I mean, the speed that he's working with, obviously, is breathtaking. I hadn't thought of this, of course, but since you have now brought it up, it's like, yes, this is exhausting. It'll be exhausting for you as a, you know, I know you're working on his biography, but. But I wanted to ask as well, is how Pope Francis was incredible again in his work, thinking of migrants, thinking of equality. Obviously, we have the government in the United States shutting, basically shutting the borders and ejecting migrants from North America and sending them back down south. Is this, is this going to cause a rift between the first pope from the United States with, of course, Peruvian citizenship and of course, trying to follow Pope. I would say he's going to continue with Pope Francis's beliefs and theories towards migrants. And the most, how would you say the most affected by this. Do you feel that this will create some sort of frame? I mean, there's a, the vice president is Catholic, J. D. Vance, and he's already had. It was quite a, a, it was quite a outblown Braca online with the British writer, journalist. I can't remember his name at the moment, but there was one about families online and so on. And I wonder how this, you see this relationship evolving, especially in terms of Latin America.

Professor Mario Aguilar: Yeah, my first reaction to what you said, which is absolutely true, is there can only be a rift where there was a relationship, and there is no relationship, neither. There was a relationship with Biden. I was in New York for the visit, and Pope Francis did not attend the meal prepared for him by the New York, more or less a stock exchange, because when he arrived for the prayers before, he was in shock that those who had paid $20,000 were in the first row of the church. So he made very clearly the point that the whole schedule was changed. The following morning he went to a soup place where sisters were working, had lunch there, and he canceled all meals with the United States and scolded The American bishops, in a sense, I want. And he put it very clear at that time, so the ambassadors everywhere, even if you invited me to your home, I want the poor and the marginalized in first place. If you don't comply with that, I'm not coming. So with the US they have been. These are two different worlds. I would not say whatsoever that the American Catholics don't mean well, but their context made them into very different than Latin America.

Richard McColl: Yes.

Professor Mario Aguilar: So if we go back to your question again, you're talking to the papal biographer also, I tend to go immediately. It's like, it's like a lawyer producing the evidence. You know, okay, I give you a document. I cannot work another way because I hear the journalist. And then I said, who said that? That's all now. That doesn't exist. It never happened. And so therefore, I'm so used to follow the documents which are the policy, and then try to compare what happened. He defined himself in the opening Mass, again, go look at the homily. And he has made with that a very clear. He has kept the distance between the Secretary of State, head of the Vatican after the Pope, and the pastor. And while Pope Francis will leave those conversations to him, Secretary of State and others, he has brought the Vatican policy into the Eucharist. These four Catholics is very powerful. So therefore, this is not diplomacy. This is more like a monarch. It's a bit like the opening of the British Parliament. Everything that is said there, if you haven't discovered, you know, I always say to my students from somewhere else, I said, this is not only pomp and circumstance. Listen very carefully. There they are telling you what percentage will be put in health. And so this is the same. Pope Francis used his diplomats and gave them complete independence to keep good relations.

Richard McColl: Yeah.

Professor Mario Aguilar: And now we have an intense man who brought those discussions to the Eucharist and who then said the following before I go into the meeting with the famous vice president and the other, which was very interesting, there are two men, I don't know if you have seen the. The memes, which are absolutely wonderful. And they say the Pope and two school children is called the. He defined himself. Pope Francis never did. And that's why his intellectual beat helps. He tells the world exactly what's going to happen. He says, I am unworthy to be a Pope, and I feel the heavy weight of the Church on my shoulders. Then, of course, he has this unsettling thing for the British public. The king doesn't do that. Then suddenly, it's almost like a tear is going to come up. People clap and love him. Then he continues with the script that hasn't been written by a secretary is himself. He writes at nighttime and he goes to the chapel. I have four in the morning. Those who are with him in the. In the matter of prayer, I find it very difficult. I have four. He's kneeling fully dressed in the chapel until seven. And Pope Francis used to arrive at seven. You know, I needed the coffee before and now, no, he's like a four. So he writes from 9 o' clock and he writes. He's very gifted on writing. I admire him for that. Pages and pages. But this is the thing that maybe people, because of the clap and because of the emotions missed. He says this humble pope who hopefully will do what the good Lord wants, is a son of immigrants in the main inauguration. My father and mother came from Spain and from Italy looking for food and better opportunities. He never uses the United States to North America. And I thank them very much and they're very much in my thoughts and prayers. Crap. Emotions are stinking, you know. He continues with the blow.

Richard McColl: Yeah.

Professor Mario Aguilar: He says, I feel very privileged to. Then he ignores everything else that he started at CTU in Chicago and whatever else, which is a great missionary institute. Then he says, I had the great privilege to serve in Peru as an immigrant. I became an immigrant. Notice the sentence. I wasn't an American missionary like the Maryknoll missionaries coming from New York and hanging on in Chile and the Pinochet and looking for the burgers and the. No, he said as an immigrant, with the experience of my parents, he. He skipped everything in the United States. Yeah. I arrived in Peru and I was welcomed by other immigrants.

Richard McColl: Yeah.

Professor Mario Aguilar: Were displaced many times by the Incas, by the colonizers, by the Peruvian governments. The. The Lady Preston strings at the moment. Yeah. So he says that and people say, how lovely. He acknowledges Latin America. My reading is, this is a Latin American speaking. This is a person who is not. Is not saying, I took nationality. And therefore how lovely to have two national. He has never mentioned the United States in any of the writings in seven days. Not at all. So from there I am moved. I mean, I haven't consumed so much whiskey in the other papacy because simply I said, my God, you know, I'm emotional as well. I haven't lost that. And so then I said, is this for real? Because the beginning, when everybody has the energy marks the papacy. Like when you have a new job and then you mark things are going to happen. Go to your health department, your head of press or whatever. And then simply you say, okay, what I am expecting. And then your boss tells you, okay, this is the line of your job, what you're going to do after you. You execute and you become tired. Tensions happen and so forth. It is so important to follow. For example, the first two weeks or three weeks, in this case, seven days are defined completely new world. So it is unfortunately for the US Government that they decided not to wait for a different kind of meeting. Petro capitalized. I mean, I congratulated him. He was there, the only Latin American who was absolutely welcome the peace process. We want the Vatican to be involved. Colombia loves you. And he even kneeled in a chapel and said, well, I represent Colombia. I'm not a person who has been driven by faith, but my people are. And that's what he said to the Pope. And therefore, I represent Colombia, and Colombia loves you. Holy Father. You must come as soon as possible to sit with my cabinet in order to help us govern better. My God. And they are the two. Rubio and the other one. Come in. Yeah. And it's funny because the vice president seems to be a very charming man, married to a Hindu lady and so forth. So in general, he's. But he's very American. And so if you see the handshake there, Rubio is more back, you know, that kind of thing. But he's a true American. The hands go, you know, touches the Pope, and then the cardinal says he's touching the Pope and so forth. And you can see the movement of the body of Pablo is not unfriendly, but he's like a Latin American who meets other for the first time. But there are no. These expressions of great, exhausting waving of the hands. You go very little. Particularly Peruvians are very different than Colombians or Chileans. And so they have a way of digging into the other person and building friendship in a more. More quiet way. For many of them, Spanish is not their first language. And so therefore, then I discovered that the Pope speak Quechua.

Richard McColl: I did not know.

Professor Mario Aguilar: Yeah, he insisted on learning Quechua when he arrived the first time. And so the discussions that came to the press were discussions about good cooperation and discussions about Catholicism in the United States, which has never been discussed before. But simply, you know, in a way, they are taking for granted by their history. Once they dump the tea, I remember saying Francis, once they dump the tea, this becomes a Protestant nation in. In many different ways. It's very Protestant oriented and so forth. And so therefore, they are confronted here with a man who is not like Pope Francis, who is looking at the streets, but he's looking at the conservatives come from there. 80% Of the Catholics in the United States did not like Pope Francis. They did not. Because simply he was suddenly what they despised. We're talking about Anglo Saxons, East Coast Southerners, etc, those who did not treasure diversity in the same way, but diversity in America rather than in the world. They suddenly got a Latino in and they didn't know what to do. Yeah, because this was the. The epitome of a poor person who. Yes, will not get there. So the real meeting was with the Secretary of State and our wonderful Englishman. You know, never thought I will say this of an Englishman, but, you know, the head of the Vatican policy is this Englishman, which is extraordinary. This Monsignor who. Gallagher, who. Who simply is like Churchill in a way. He. He's a man of. He's a very friendly man, but it's terribly English. And so therefore he remains the distance and he doesn't say very much. But when he responds, this is like if he doesn't like it, he merely said, well, the Vatican does not approve war. Any other question, and he runs the machinery while Parolin is a Secretary of State. He spoke yesterday. If you see how fast this is going of diplomacy and how I need to read and learn more and God is going to be excited. It's simply because I didn't know that Parolin was heading to address the United nations yesterday. I mean, he did. You can see it in YouTube and so on. He addressed the General assembly of the United nations on war seven days after the new administration. And therefore it was a concerted effort in which the United States comes into it or saying, okay, we tell you who we are, and you may like it or not, but we are going for peace at the end of every world. The Congo and everything has been contacted so far. The President, the Congo, the problem with Kagame, the difficulties. Yeah, nobody can solve that. And Publio spoke to the head of M23 yesterday in absolute perfect French and said, I am the Pope. If you come to the Vatican, we're going to solve this problem. The United nations loved the speech. The speech was extraordinary. But Parolin made the point. Yes, we are a kind of associate consultative body, but we are so important for the inauguration. There was the President of European Union. That never happened before. And then they had a huge meeting. So to cut the chase, Parolin opened that meeting in the public moment by simply saying he look at Rubio. I mean, this must be techniques they develop. They are great diplomats. And so instead of saying hello, probably always says, how your family. Oh, yeah, you know, like very Latin American. Wonderful. Richard, you told me about your, you know, your offspring and so on. Yeah, Pablio is the same. Oh, great. And Parolin then smiles and said, well, very welcome. What language is the going. Is the meeting going to be? And then he looks at Rubio and says he would remember he was ambassador in Venezuela. Yes, he's very Latin American. So he said in Spanish, are we going to speak Cubano? Rubio look at the vice president said, I'm afraid, Monsignor, the language we are authorized to use is English. So there is no. There's no confusion. Oh, good. Then we need his Excellency Monsignor Gallagher, who wasn't at the meeting. I think it was all. It was like doing a play. It is a bit pre done. Gallagher comes in if they become difficult. And so Gallagher came and he doesn't shake hands, you know, that's why I think he's a true Englishman. Excellencies. Wonderful. Now and then he took the agenda and simply said, okay, from our point of view, we want to get down to very good relations. We wish President Trump and administration the best. That's what the Catholic population of the United States was. No other pope had talked about that. They talk about Americans now. The language has changed. So the Catholic community in the US who probably elected some of them President Trump, wishes him well. The language changed to a kind of pre Victorian Kingdom of York Civil war language. It wasn't direct.

Richard McColl: Okay.

Professor Mario Aguilar: It was rhetoric.

Richard McColl: Okay.

Professor Mario Aguilar: So they wanted to bring the fact that how we're going to do about. We want to inform you about Russia and Ukraine, because Ukraine particularly, you know, there have been problems with the patriots and so on. Gallagher comes in and says, well, from our point of view, we would like those conversations take place in the Vatican.

Richard McColl: I think that's.

Professor Mario Aguilar: But in which way? And then he suddenly says, it's all in there. Again, second point, it's. And then when he finished, that's why they look like school children, you see, because they're used to it. If you remember how badly they treated the president of Ukraine in public with the. You know, they could have said that if they wanted, but simply. So a line was put very clearly that Americanness is not something that is of importance to Catholicism because we're a global community. Secondly, that war since Pacem in Terris 1963 is not on. I mean, as a child, I was told by my mother, we don't approve world end of the matter. It's very clear in there. And at the same time that Pope Leo will do everything needed to collaborate with the United States for peace. Now, his speech to the diplomats, an opening to buy armament is. Is not done either. So the Vatican does not agree with anything of the policy of the British government. For example, we need to build up the army. You know that. And okay, those are documents. Now, my commentary on that, which is very personal and probably wrong, but what I thought after yesterday, which was exhausting again, that one was in the United nations and the president of Italy then was calling everybody to the Vatican, is that something has moved here in seven days with the new Pope, or of course with the machinery was already there, but with different. Different kind of instructions is that as the UK discussed involvement with the European Union for the first time since Brexit, the Vatican became a key player as an outsider within the European Union. So that everybody was at the inauguration and the president of the commission declared herself for the first time as a Roman Catholic, a practicing one, and even with six children. And how lovely was to work. And somehow the prime minister of Italy is fantastic lady. She has gone to these moments in which she has hated the Vatican and she has gone with the right wing and with the French right wing at the moment. It's a sweetie with the new Pope. And so she was the one who put the position of Italy in the European Union in the last few days, that the Vatican is the solution, because the solution is not how are we going to give or take is to end the war. But all these people didn't want to end the war. I mean, the British prime minister trying to look for peacekeeping forces. Well, we barely have, God knows, 20, 000 soldiers. You know, the chief of staff said very clearly we don't have them. So therefore, the position of the United States in this, if you want to talk politics rather than church in the geopolitics, that was the wrong time to have the meeting. And they have lost power. They have at the moment, I think Trump, I know nobody is fond of him, but somehow, apart from the madness, he's pointing to some things that will have a legacy, you know, to say, for example, I'll talk to Putin and we'll have peace. Nobody thought he would do it. So therefore, will this work or not? I have no idea. These are very complex things. But nobody until now had the will to talk peace with Putin. You know, I mean, a month ago, Poland was acquiring new arms because they could invade and then suddenly you know, if you look at the list published by the Italian government of those. This is not peace talks. This is not a conference. This is a world conference on peace. And the chair of this conference is the Pope. And the European Union put it as a priority. So what he said in the Eucharist and to the ambassadors, that peace was possible, is always possible, and we will fight for peace. Somehow the European Union has changed even their weapons. They put back the weapons yesterday. And therefore. Is there a ceasefire? Is there not a ceasefire? But there was nothing in the news in the last three days that Putin has bombarded towns the soft democracy of a very hard pope. And so the sense that will come with this is that suddenly Latin America has become, from being quite forgotten, has become a center of power. Petro was very clever on this. And the President of Paraguay. I sent a very hard letter to the President of Chile saying that, yes, we could be depleted and pedophiles could still be walking the earth, but we are still more than 50%. With a population of 19 million, it makes 8 or 9 million. Please, we are voters. And I said, I will not vote for you in November. Simply when it was the death of Pope Francis. With all the love of Latin America for Pope Francis, President Boric was in Brazil in a state visit with President Lula. And he said to the press, because myself and others were complaining about this, that simply he needed to be there and couldn't be in Rome. He lost all credibility.

Richard McColl: Yeah.

Professor Mario Aguilar: When they finished their talks, he came back to Santiago and Lula was seen kneeling in the Vatican for the funeral of Pope Francis. That was an excuse. So let me just say just one thing. The movement has been not only on documents. If you look at yesterday in the world without the Church, just the world. We have the Secretary State of the Vatican addressing in a special session with full attendance by everybody, the United nations on the move forward, taken by the Secretary General as something very positive that should be done this week. And secondly, what Parolin said is that we have forgotten international law and decency and that needs to be restored. This morning there was a petition from the European Union and the United nations to the Vatican to increase the involvement of the diplomatic academy on the development of international law. Staggering. Yes, absolutely. And so within that, you know, globally, I do that this as a biographer. I'm sure that journalists do much better than this. I received this morning a very puzzling photograph from Glasgow. The Archbishop Nolan of Glasgow this morning called for an afternoon surrounding of the immigration center in Glasgow.

Richard McColl: Wow.

Professor Mario Aguilar: In the name of the Church. And he addressed those who were there, thousands of not only Glaswegians, but others, by saying that the Catholic Church will not comply with the new laws of immigration. This is the moment to resist. Would he have done that without the impact of that speech by the Pope? And so therefore you can see how different points are responding. What was a very soft spoken sense to who cares about what is said? To. No, it is, it is story. And so will he have bad moments? Yes, he will. Will he disappoint us? In many ways, I'm sure. Oh, my God. This is like a head of state who knows what he's doing and has that leadership. It's not the Vatican. Otherwise Pope Francis will gather more people. Well, he did wonderful things, but he has this possibility of gathering people in the public sphere. Pope Francis was very private person. One to one.

Richard McColl: Yeah.

Professor Mario Aguilar: In that if we look at Europe, Russia and the United States a week ago and we look at it in the newspapers today, I'm going, this is a significant change.

Richard McColl: Yes, it's a fascinating moment. Obviously in time, tragic in many, obviously on many platforms, we have to draw this to an end, unfortunately. Mario, I think I could listen to talk about this for hours, if not days, because it's opening a whole new avenue of understanding where the Vatican is now coming into international soft power. And I should mention that, of course, Joseph Nye, who created that term soft power, has just passed away. And I must mention that when I talked about the journalists with the spat with J. D. Vance was Rory Stewart, of course. But let me just say thank you so much for your time, for your knowledge. It really has been fascinating to scratch the surface, I believe, of what you know, as a papal book biographer and of course a professor of religion and politics at University of St Andrews. So let me take this moment to say, Professor Mario Aguilar, thank you so much for coming on The LatinNews Podcast.

Professor Mario Aguilar: Thank you, Richard, for having me. This is exactly like sitting in Bogotá in Living room. And we shall do that in the future. Wonderful, wonderful time together. Thank you.

Richard McColl: Thank you again. This has been The LatinNews Podcast. I have been your host, Richard McColl here in Bogotá, Colombia, speaking to Professor Mario Aguilar. It has been an absolute pleasure. Please subscribe, tune in and we'll be back in a fortnight with further issues from the region. Bye Bye.

Outro: You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.latinnews.com.

Scott Mainwaring is the Eugene and Helen Conley Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. A leading authority on democratization and party systems in Latin America, he is one of the most cited political scientists globally and the most cited scholar on political institutions in Latin American political science journals.

He is the co-author of "Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America" and co-editor of "Democracy in Hard Places". Mainwaring is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has held academic leadership roles at Harvard and Notre Dame.

Intro: Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogotá, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is The LatinNews Podcast. I am your host, Richard McColl here in Bogotá, Colombia. Our very special guest this week is on the line from, well, South Bend, Indiana. Those of you who know anything about US Universities, that is Notre Dame, we are going to be talking to Scott Mainwaring, who is the Eugene P. And Helen Conley professor of Political Science at Notre Dame. His research interests include political parties, democratic and authoritarian regimes, political institutions in Latin America, amongst other things. Scott, welcome on The LatinNews Podcast. It's going to be a real pleasure to speak to you today about, let's say, this rise in the far right, this rise in what is happening in the Southern cone right now.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Wonderful. Happy to be with you this afternoon.

Richard McColl: It's an absolute pleasure. I think perhaps, obviously we're going to talk about Brazil, we're going to talk about Argentina, but let's plunge straight into something that is so very topical and our listeners will know about, but not as much as you, Chile. Chile is obviously a cornerstone of this issue regarding, well, of course, you had President Allende and then of course, the Pinochet regime, and now we have Boric in power and perhaps an election win for José Antonio Kast. Perhaps we could put some things into context and go back over the history.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Of course. Well, Pinochet was the military dictator from 1973 until 1990. And then we had a period of about, well, roughly 15 years, 20 to 25 years of very successful democracy in Chile, probably the highest rate of economic growth in Latin America during those 25 years, an extraordinary reduction in poverty, dramatic increase in the size of the middle class. And less known, but still very importantly, after about the first 15 years, although growth slowed down, there was some meaningful income redistribution on top of this. And this is something that probably is less well known, but I think also very important. Chile had a very profound process of transitional justice. So that takes us roughly until 2015. Over time, despite many extraordinary successes, there were increasing signs of political disaffection in Chile. So, you know, growing disattachment from political parties. And in survey data in, yeah, across, you know, decreasing trust in parties. And in 2019, there was the famous estallido social Right, these very violent protests in Santiago and other cities. And this led to two failed attempts at new constitutions in 2021. Again, despite the remarkable successes Chile had, the old party system essentially imploded with a new contender on the left, Gabriel Boric, and that is he. Not only was he a new contender, his party was a new contender. He and a new party that outflanked the two authoritarian successor parties on the right. So Renovación Nacional, one of the two parties that grew out of the Pinochet legacy, had elected Sebastián Piñera in 2010 and 2018. And again, it's very remarkable, I think that, you know, and the UDI was the other important authoritarian successor party on the right. Well, José Antonio Kast came along with a discourse that was further to the right of two parties that had sprung directly from the Pinochet legacy. And Boric outflanked the left, the Socialists and the Party for Democracy. So these parties that had been pillars of, I mean, maybe the most successful democracy in the history of Latin America in terms of economic growth and poverty reduction, these parties essentially imploded. Well, to say that they all imploded is an overstatement. But the Christian Democrats aren't going to be a serious contender again. The UDI and Renovación Nacional have a contender this year, Evelyn Matthei, who, she's the front runner. So they are not dead parties. But it is remarkable that in such a successful democracy, the old parties really faded. And in 2021, the two contenders that reached the second round were both newcomers, including Cost's party, which as I said, outflanked the two right wing parties further to the right. To be fair, I mean, I think we would locate Renovación Nacional as a center right party, but the UDI was always pretty located pretty squarely on the right proper. So for a new right wing party to outflank the UDI is quite remarkable.

Richard McColl: To what can we attribute such moves that say, Boric outflanking one and cast out flanking the other? How can we say that this is taking place? Chile always seems to be so polarized. Anytime I visit, it really is. It's all one or the other.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Well, that's an interesting observation. I mean, to me, Chile from, let's say maybe the late 90s through 2010 was less polarized. The right moderated, it adapted to democracy, and of course the left moderated much earlier than that. The left from 1970-73. Many listeners will disagree with me on this, but I think it was, I think it governed very badly and was adopted some fairly irresponsible positions and it became anti democratic left very clearly. That's the case. Most of the left, including all of the Socialist party in the 80s moderated. Most of some of the Communist Party also moderated in the 80s. The Communists split in the 80s, but then in the 90s, pretty much the whole, most, the great majority of the left was moderate and it was too moderate for some people. So you had these massive student protests, pretty much left wing student protests in 2006 and 2011. These were the forerunners to the precursors to the estallido social. In 2019, what happened? I mean, I think it's harder to say in Chile what happened. But Boric famously said during the estallido social and the 2021 electoral campaign, no son 30 pesos, son 30 años. As if, you know, he was. So it was a 30 peso increase in the metro fares that were the immediate trigger. And what he was saying was these 30 years of democracy were bad. It's a perspective that I don't share at all. But that was his perspective and a perspective of the New Left. And so they rejected the moderation of the old Socialists and the Party for Democracy. On the right, I think there was also impatience with, you know, with democratic Chile. Partially on cultural issues. Chile remained culturally very conservative compared to many Latin American countries. But José Antonio Kast, the flag bearer of the new far right, is very conservative on cultural issues such as abortion. And so he was dismissive of the right's willingness to moderate on some issues as well. What we see in Chile is similar to what happened in almost all of Latin America in the last generation or two. That is to say that the old parties faded in most countries. In many countries, they essentially disappeared. The difference between Chile and most of the other countries where that happened is that objectively, Chile's record under democracy looks much, much better in terms of economic growth, social inclusion, public security, you know, subjective indicators such as corruption. Vastly better than all of the rest of Latin America except Costa Rica and Uruguay.

Richard McColl: It's, it's a strange thing to be discussing this and let's say a rise of the far right in particular. As you say, the democracy in Chile was successful. I mean, we can look at it and say, look at Chile being the example that other Latin American countries, they gaze at, you know, salivating at the type, of, the type of progress that has been made. And yet we have someone like Jose, well, someone like Cast, so the Partido Republicano, and he's, he is engaging in some sort, if you'd say, of historical revisionism when it comes to the legacy of Pinochet. And, and this is being consumed by, I would say a large portion of the public. It's dangerous surely to gloss over human rights violations of a dictatorship and dangerous to, so let's say paper over these maybe errors of the past.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Of course it is. I completely agree. I mean, to put this in perspective, however, I mean, it's also true that the fact that Pinochet has many admirers is not a new phenomenon. In the 1988 plebiscite, which would have enabled Pinochet to remain in power for eight more years, he won 43%. And the right was competitive in almost every single presidential election from 1990 on or 1989 on in Chile. And of course, you know, Sebastián Piñera won in 2010 and 2018. Now, Pinera himself was not a Pinochetista, but he was a center. Well, he voted no in the 1988 plebiscite. But that is to say that, you know, always there was a lot of support for conservative positions in Chile. Now most, I think Chile is a case where of the right adapted to democracy. And so most of the right recognized, yes, there were a lot of human rights abuses under Pinochet. Pinochet, of course, also became notorious for corruption scandals. And that really disgraced his personal legacy, I think cost, you know, along with someone like Javier Milei in Argentina, they are glossing over the negative side of dictatorship. Chile's economic legacy under Pinochet was pretty mixed. He inherited an economy in terrible condition and repositioned it very favorably in terms of turning Chile into an export led economy. If you looked just at growth rates under Pinochet In Chile from 1973-90, they were pretty mediocre. But I think part of the appeal of the right in Chile has to do with the fact that there was an economic legacy to reclaim. To say, you know, these were really positive achievements in this respect. Chile has an important similarity with Brazil and is radically different from the situation in Argentina and Uruguay where the dictatorships presided over economic disasters.

Richard McColl: I find it very interesting. Obviously you point to Pinochet and of course his work on free markets and yes, export led. Would you say also some of this swing, right, has to do with the upturn in crime and immigration, let's say affected by, well, this mass immigration from Venezuela and then of course the connections to the Tren de Aragua.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Oh, no question about it. These are issues on which the, you know, the right across many countries really adopts similar banners. Now, if we look at objective data, right, the homicide rate in Chile remains quite low by regional standards and even by Global standards. But if you look at public opinion data, you're absolutely right. Public security has become a much more important issue in Chile. And you're also right that there's a lot of. I don't know any data about this, but there's certainly anecdotal evidence that connects some uptick in violence in Chile to the Tren de Aragua. So yes, I mean, there is a lot of anti immigrant sentiment that cost has capitalized on.

Richard McColl: So I think again, it goes back to something that I end up talking about quite a lot, perception of insecurity. Chile, obviously crime rates have increased, but to put them into context with the rest of the region, it's still, you know, remanso de paz, you know, a peaceful area. But people coming from a country or living in that country that has been so stable, any slight uptick will increase. Xenophobia will increase a perception of insecurity such as in Chile.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Absolutely.

Richard McColl: Yeah. Well, now you mentioned Brazil and similarities there. So let's jump into Brazil. We've got elections, we've got. Well, there's everything on the table for Brazil. Not a very popular president at the moment in Lula. And of course we've got the court case of Bolsonaro and again, he's incredibly popular. Perhaps we could look at what's going on there with the rise of the far right.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Right again, I mean, Brazil also had an important continuity from the dictatorship to the period of democracy. Not at the level of the presidency, but many state governors, a huge number of members of Congress. They trace their lineage back to the two parties that supported, they politically supported the dictatorship during, in 1984, 85. They were called the PDS and the PFL. They've changed names a couple times, but they still are two of the bigger parties in the Brazilian National Congress. So again, I mean, having this powerful presence of conservatives in state governorships at the municipal level and in the National Congress was nothing new. What was new in Brazil was the collapse of the Center Right coalition that governed. So this was Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who himself comes from a Center left heritage. He was president from 1995 until January 1, 2003. Between 1994 and 2018, in every single presidential election, the competition was between Cardoso's Social Democrats and the pt, the Workers Party on the left. Well, what happened in the 2000 and tens? First of all, you had this immense corruption scandal, the Lava Jato right, the world's biggest corruption scandal under democracy. And then the PT mismanaged the economic situation under Dilma Rousseff. So we had a prolonged and pretty steep recession that began in late 2014 and extended through 2017 or 2018, and a massive public security problem. So Brazilians heading into the 2018 elections, they were really sick of a political system that had stopped delivering in terms of growth, personal opportunity, corruption, public security. When the Center Right coalition impeached Dilma Rousseff In 2016, they hoped and expected that they would be able to quickly turn around the economic situation. But they didn't. And on top of that, the new president, Michel Temer himself was implicated in corruption scandals. So first the Left, the Workers Party, and then the Right, the Center Right coalition became massively discredited. No one expected this obscure member of Congress, Jair Bolsonaro, would be competitive in 2018, even though early on, the early polls showed that he could be a potential contender. And of course, he ended up winning quite decisively in both the first and the second rounds. So he ran against the establishment right, especially against the Workers Party. But even he ran as an outsider. He'd been in Congress for 27 years, and it seems weird that someone who'd been in Congress for 27 years could position himself as an outsider. But he truly was an outsider in important ways. He'd never been part of the governing establishment. He'd always been this kind of. He was known above all for his maverick positions, embracing the military dictatorship. So he said famously, for example, or infamously, the mistake that the dictatorship made was torturing and not killing. And he said at one point, this was while Cardoso was president. He said, if I'm ever elected president, the first thing I'll do is close Congress. He openly admired Fujimori in Peru and Pinochet. So this was. It was a new political discourse in Brazil. There'd always been this concept, direita envergonhada, right, the embarrassed right. It's right wing, but it doesn't openly assume a right wing discourse. Bolsonaro openly assumed a right wing discourse and he tapped into something deep in Brazil which was, you know, it was a discourse that was openly misogynistic, openly racist, but with a very tough discourse on crime and punishment. And that was pivotal for his success. And pretty early on, he named Paulo. He said that Paulo Guedes would be his finance minister. And Guedes is a well known economist with a PhD from the University of Chicago, well known as a market oriented economist. And in the midst of an economic crisis, right, this naming an economist who's widely Respected and well known. That too was a difference maker. So middle class and upper class Brazil voted massively for Bolsonaro in 2018.

Richard McColl: I think it your description of him as being a maverick on the fringes, let's say, and being in Congress so long is far more polite than I may have said. I, I, I've read in many places he was even seen as more out there than a maverick. It was always this sort of, you know, outspoken figure. But let's call him a maverick, Jair Bolsonaro. And look, obviously he's still incredibly popular. He's still incredibly popular. We know that he's very unwell right now. But let's talk about the attempted coup because of course he garnered all, well, he would garner all the support or most of the support of the military. Military. Was it a coup? Was it going to happen? I mean, you know, we, it, I guess it depends who's in power and who the judge is.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Well, the information that I have is that the military was divided and enough of the military was not willing to go along with this. I think it is reasonable. I think, yes, it was a coup attempt. I don't have much information about Bolsonaro's own involvement in it, but at a minimum, he was supportive. I have heard, I have not directly seen information. I don't know if there is direct information about this, that some of Biden's team let it be known to the Brazilian military that they adamantly opposed any attempt to overturn the election. I think that's certainly credible information. And one can ask what would have happened if Trump, who admires Bolsonaro, what would have happened if he had been in power? I think it's eminently believable that Bolsonaro's coup attempt could have succeeded. I'm not saying it would have, but it would have certainly created more space for that kind of maneuver. So, yes, I mean, Bolsonaro is, I haven't seen recent survey evidence about his own approval ratings during his presidency. His approval ratings were not great toward the end of his term they were, I'm just estimating based on recall here, but maybe 35%. So Lula ended his term in 2010 with about an 83% approval rating. But then, of course, approval Lula's approval tanked during his trials and during the massive Lava Jato corruption scandal. Many, many Brazilians who admired him became very skeptical of him. And that's why, that's one of the reasons, of course, why Bolsonaro was able to run a highly competitive campaign. Against Lula in 2022. He ended up losing, but I think the margin was 50.9% to 49.1% in the second round. So that's not maybe razor thin, but it's pretty close to razor thin.

Richard McColl: I'd say so, definitely. And we look at, you know, in Chile, people have been. Have been tried for the human rights abuses during the dictatorship and the po. The post dictatorship era. Brazil, not so much. And there has been that recent film, I'm Still Here, which ashamedly, I have yet to see, but it's become one of the, you know, most viewed films in, In Brazilian history. And of course, it's a. The, the director saying that it's good to get this story out there at a time of democratic backsliding and again, collective amnesia. Have you seen the film?

Professor Scott Mainwaring: I have seen it. I thought it was a wonderful movie.

Richard McColl: And important.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: And important. It's so, in a way reminiscent of another excellent movie. Argentina, 1985.

Richard McColl: Yes.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Have you seen it?

Richard McColl: That one I have seen.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: I thought they were both excellent and they, of course, touch on similar themes. I'm Still Here. It's a narrower focus one family as opposed to the broad purview that you get in Argentina, 1985, about the massive human rights abuses that dictatorship committed. Again, I mean, this. I don't know what theme you would like to talk about here, but you're absolutely correct. You know, Chile had a very profound process of transitional justice, a much less visible process than Argentina did, but nevertheless a very profound one that led to, of course, Pinochet famously, you know, being under house arrest for many years. And many other human rights abusers in Chile ended up in jail, as also occurred in Argentina. Brazil, essentially nothing. There was a 1979amnesty law that the military imposed. It is also true that, I mean, I don't want to gloss over the human rights abuses in Brazil by any stretch of the imagination, but if you looked at it on a per capita basis, the atrocities were far fewer than they were in Chile and especially in Argentina and Uruguay. So, you know, and probably it helped gloss over the abuses of the dictatorship that, as was the case in Chile, the Brazilian dictatorship could claim very significant economic achievements. You know, I mean, Brazil had one of the highest rates of economic growth in the world from 1967-74, and then sustained robust growth until 1980. Brazil, at the end of the dictatorship in 1985 was a radically transformed, much more modernized country than it had been in 1964. So I think that great economic success, it was uneven, to be sure. Income inequality increased substantially. It became one of the most unequal countries in the world. And late in the dictatorship there was a very severe recession from 1981-83. But still, people who lived during that time, remember. Oh yes, the Brazilian miracle, right. Which was the term for the period from 67 to 74, that was real. It transformed into small, very profound ways.

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Richard McColl: I think it's a moment there as well, if we keep thinking of this rise of the far right. Brazil, obviously we've discussed Chile, we'll go on to Argentina. But where do the evangelicals fit in Brazil? Because of course it's a massive voting block and in my reading and my knowledge, of course, it seems to slide in behind, well, let's say a party like that of Bolsonaro. But is this the case?

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Yes, it is it. You are correct that it is a massive win voting block. And I, I think it was about a 7030 split in favor of Bolsonaro over Lula in the second round of the 19 of the 2022 election. I, I could be off a little bit on the numbers, but it was huge.

Richard McColl: I, I find it so interesting because it is one that will be traditional in its voting. I don't see that swinging back towards the left and anytime soon.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: No, no. And you know, again, I mean, interestingly in Brazil, cultural issues that became very prominent in Bolsonaro's 2018 campaign, they had never been all that prominent in electoral campaigns. Issues such as abortion, gay rights, they were invisible. They were just not salient issues before Bolsonaro campaigned in 2018. They are now ingrained as one of the battlegrounds in Brazilian elections.

Richard McColl: This, the battleground of the anti. Woke, let's say I phrase it. I was hoping not to have to say, but all the same, it's, it seems to be everywhere. But let's move on to Argentina then, because I mean we're covering this part of, of the, of the continent, the Southern cone and Argentina, I would say stands out. You did mention, of course, the economic crises, because it's plural under the right, under the dictatorships in Argentina. And now we've got Javier, President Javier Milei, who Is, I would say he's sort of downplaying the abuses and crimes committed by the military. Again, we seem to be in a period of, again, collective amnesia towards what has occurred in these countries. I recall, you know, spending significant time in Argentina and seeing the Madres de Plaza de Mayo all the time and hearing the stories. But yes, this seems to be under Milei being pushed slightly to one side. Perhaps we could look at Argentina as a whole.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Well, you're absolutely correct. I mean, Milei certainly has downplayed the atrocities committed by the dictatorship and his vice president even more so. Yes, I think it's also, I mean, I don't want to suggest equivalence, but I think it's. Again, this, my opinion on this will be very unpopular with some of your audience, but I think it's fair to say that, you know, the Left in Argentina from 1969 until 76 also committed a lot of atrocities. And part of the Argent, say, the Kirchner approach to human rights abuses was, I think correctly to call attention to the abuses committed by the military dictatorship and the abuses committed by the Right during the Peron period, 1973-76. But they really glossed over the human rights abuses committed by the Left. And so I think that approach was very unbalanced. I think it was very salutary to, you know, to really decry the grotesque abuses that the dictatorship committed. But I think it was to my mind, a mistake to gloss over the abuses committed by the Left.

Richard McColl: So therein the Vice President, Victoria Villarruel, who of course was the daughter of a military officer during the dictatorship and who has served as a lawyer advocating for soldiers convicted of human rights abuses and calling for compensation for victims of left wing terrorism. So as you are suggesting, she might be onto something.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Well, she is in the limited sense that the Left in Argentina committed abuses far beyond what it did anywhere else in the Southern Cone.

Richard McColl: Okay, okay.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Not to say that, I mean, the Uruguayan Left did commit some abuses, but they were small in number compared to Argentina. And likewise the Left in Chile committed, you know, some abuses, but on a much smaller scale than those committed by the Left in Argentina.

Richard McColl: If we look at, if we look at Argentina's, the official number of murders by the dictatorship, we're looking at something now around 30,000. How many more or less would the Left have been guilty of?

Professor Scott Mainwaring: That data is available, and I don't remember it off the top of my head, but I think it's well into three figures for the period from 1969-76, maybe even more than that. And on top of that, you would have to add the extraordinary number of bombings and kidnappings. And so that was a period of a very violent left in Argentina. The actual numbers in Argentina, I mean, the extraordinary work by the CONADEP Commission recorded, I think 8961. That's an underreporting. Human rights organizations, you're right, they've used, usually use the number 30,000. I don't know where that number comes from. I'm not saying it's wrong, I just don't know that it's correct. So the number, the 8961, if I remember exactly, I might not, but that is certainly an undercount. 30,000 Might be an overcount again. I mean, every human life is sacred. And those are, you know, I mean, beyond the numbers of killed and tortured in Argentina, one would have to add just the misery, right? People lived in terror for many years under that dictatorship. And that's not a trivial thing. It upended many, many times more lives than the 30,000.

Richard McColl: This, this again, as you say, sort of melee, changing the narrative. Vice President Villarruel, very, again, outspoken. How has the public responded to this? Because it's widely agreed that there were egregious cases of human rights abuses. And now we've got President Milei. So how are people from the different political spectrums responding to this in Argentina?

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Yeah, that's a good question, and I cannot give you a good answer. I just don't know the data. What I can tell you is that for a very long time, and this continues to be the case, although with some drop in recent years, Argentines displayed one of the most democratic public opinions in all of Latin America. So if you asked, I mean, the simple and crude way of asking, this is a classic public opinion survey question. Is democracy the always the best form of government? Argentines, along with Uruguayans and Costa Ricans, scored the very top. And which Argentines in particular were most likely to agree that democracy is always the best form of government? It was people who had been directly affected by the dictatorship. It was people who lived under the dictatorship. One of the things that's changed, of course, and that makes it more feasible for Milei to have this discourse, more politically feasible, is 42 years have passed since the end of the dictatorship. So most Argentine voters today did not live under the dictatorship. Argentina on a world scale was a pioneer in creating historical memory. So part of this was through the Human Rights Commission. That Alfonsín commissioned in his first week in office and that issued the extraordinary Nunca Más report. Part of it is through a series of amazing museums. You know, there's a museum now where the. That had been one of the most infamous centers of torture during the dictatorship. Part of it is memorialization through many great works of art. So you know, this wonderful movie, Argentina, 1985, but then the very early movie, The Official Story and the great movie in the first decade of this century, The Secret in Their Eyes. Many, many great movies, great works of social science. But Milei is trying to reconstruct this memory on terms more favorable to the dictatorship, to those who were most responsible for human rights abuses, as you say.

Richard McColl: 42 Years later, and plenty of works of. And acts of reconciliation. And yes, I would. The majority of the population and the youth would never have lived under this. So it seems something very far in the past again for this new round of the voting public, perhaps somewhere that doesn't get enough mention. And you have brought it up as well. Uruguay seems to be buck a trend a little bit and it has this. This weakness in its illiberal far right compared with the other countries we've mentioned. Perhaps we could put Uruguay into context.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Well, Uruguay, it's such an interesting little country. One of the great success stories in the region. That's not to say that it's unblemished success, but again, Uruguay suffered through a dictatorship that not only was very repressive, was also, like Argentina's dictatorship, an economic disaster. In Uruguay, unlike in Argentina, on average, the period of democracy since 1985 has been economically pretty successful. Argentina has had these recurrent severe economic crises. Uruguay has had some economic crises, but I don't exactly know the data. But if you looked at average growth rates, Uruguay has done well since 1985. Argentina has done very badly since 1983. At some point I looked at what were the three deepest, the five deepest recessions under democracy in Latin America. Since the third wave began in 1978, Argentina has had three of the five deepest declines in per capita GDP for the whole region. So you know, the first period under Alfonsíne and then the period from 1998 to 2002 was disastrous. And then the period beginning around 2014 or 2015 through the at least the early Milei years, I don't know about 2024, but they too saw, you know, a cumulative economic decline that was very meaningful. I think that economic. The economic difference between Argentina and Uruguay is certainly one of the reasons why you see the rise of an illiberal right in Argentina and nothing comparable in Uruguay. Uruguay is, I believe, the, this is a remarkable statistic, but it's the only country in Latin America where the party system today is very similar to what it was in the 1990s. Everywhere else, it's just.

Richard McColl: Fascinating this, I, I, Obviously, as we come to this part of our conversation, we need to put it all into context with the government of the United States under President Trump. We know that Javier Milei is obviously very aligned with President Trump and they appear to get along well. President Trump had a, a relationship with Jair Bolsonaro. So what can we expect for the coming months?

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Right. Well, I mean, it seems certain that Trump will continue to be allied with individuals like Milei and Bolsonaro, probably José Antonio Kast in Chile, although I think, you know, Evelyn Matthei, who's the frontrunner in the polls right now, would also be perfectly compatible with Trump. One thing that is clear is that U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, the big priorities are immigration and drugs. Democracy is not a priority. And so you see a close alliance also with Bukele in El Salvador.

Richard McColl: And then potentially Noboa in Ecuador probably will likely. I, we are seen, I say we, I'm based down here, but we are seen through the prism of organized crime and immigration that as you say, democracy is a very much a secondary consideration, if a consideration at all.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: I don't think it's a consideration at all.

Richard McColl: Fascinating times ahead for the Southern Cone. We've been discussing this. The far right, as you say. Well, it looks to be strengthening there in Chile. Who knows what's going to happen in Brazil. Still a long time ahead of us. Milei has a couple of years, doesn't he? And we'll be watching.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Yes, I mean, I think that in Brazil, Bolsonarismo is alive and well, but Bolsonaro is alive but not well to be facing prison. So I think the most likely possibility, the most likely outcome in Brazil is not this intensely illiberal right, but more, you know, more of a traditional right, like the governor of São Paulo. I'm not saying he'll be the next president, but he is not as far on the illiberalism scale as Bolsonaro. And it looks like in probably, I mean, it's hard to know in Chile, but I think also, you know, the more traditional right, which has mostly converted to democracy, is probably going to beat José Antonio Kast this year. Again, that's speculation at this point, but I think that's the, you know, if we had to bet today, that's how I would bet. So it could be that at least in the short term, the tide has turned for the more traditional, more democratic or less anti democratic right than the extremely illiberal right.

Richard McColl: Well, we will we wait and see. I, I will obviously get in touch with you after the upcoming elections and I call you on it or congratulate you, of course. Of course. Thinking of May 2025 rather than the actual date of the elections. You, you know, speculation right now, but let me take this moment to say thank you so much for your time. And we've been talking to Scott Mainwaring, who is the Eugene P. And Helen Conley professor of Political Science at University of Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. It has been a fascinating conversation, obviously charting the rise of the far right in the Southern cone and connecting the countries, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, discussing each one in turn. So thank you so much for being on The LatinNews Podcast.

Professor Scott Mainwaring: Thank you. My great pleasure.

Richard McColl: Mine indeed. Thank you very much everyone for listening to The LatinNews Podcast this week. Remember, we're back in a fortnight's time and we'll be discussing religion in South America and in the Americas because of course, we have a new Pope. So we'll begin discussing Catholicism in a couple of weeks time. A fascinating episode for you in the future. And goodbye.

Outro: You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.latinnews.com.

Nicholas Barr is Professor of Public Economics at the London School of Economics and one of the world’s leading experts on welfare state design. He has written extensively on pensions, social insurance, and higher education finance, including influential books such as The Economics of the Welfare State. Over the course of his career, he has advised the World Bank, the European Commission, and numerous governments on reforming social policy systems. His work has shaped debates on public finance in both developed and emerging economies, and he remains a central voice in global discussions on equitable and sustainable pension reform.

Intro: Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogota, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is The LatinNews Podcast. I am your host, Richard McColl, here in Bogota, Colombia. This week on The LatinNews Podcast, we have a very special guest Nicholas Barr, who is a professor of public economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He holds a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of numerous books and papers on the welfare state, including pensions and higher education finance. So it's an absolute pleasure to have someone of your standing and esteem here, Professor Barr, to talk to us about Chile and Chilean pension reform. And I think perhaps the best way to begin is to ask, how is it that you got involved in this debate surrounding pensions?

Professor Nicholas Barr: Well, thank you, Richard. It's a pleasure to be here. In the early 1990s, I was on leave from the London School of Economics at the World Bank, helping to reform welfare states in Central and Eastern Europe right after the collapse of communism. And at a very early stage, I got into a big fight with the World Bank, with people there who, in my view, were overselling the Chile pension reforms. They were arguing that what Chile had done was the single best reform and that all countries should be doing that. My response was that what Chile did was a reform, not the reform. And in addition, it was a reform that was very demanding administratively. In fact, I've often said to friends in Chile, and I have many good friends in Chile, that in some ways, I don't think Chile did the world a favor with its 1981 reforms, because Chile is a very unusual country. It passes laws, but then it enforces them. And other countries in the region thought, well, if Chile can do it, we can do it. And a whole lot of countries followed, and Chile's one of the, arguably the only country in the region that's managed to carry that off. So that was my argument. Then I continued the argument over the years. Over the last 20 years, I've done it in tandem with Peter Diamond at MIT, an economics Nobel Prize winner, and the bank's view has now moved considerably. It's much less stridently in favour of individual accounts and, you know, has a much more balanced view. So that then led to involvement in Chile. I think I've had over 15 trips to Chile, including work with the Marcel Commission that introduced the Solidarity pension and as a member of the Bravo Commission. And I was back in Chile three weeks ago, and I never refuse an invitation to go.

Richard McColl: A fantastic Place to visit. Of course, obviously when you're looking at these reforms and you say from the 1980s, 1981, we're looking at a Pinochet era in Chile. So this is definitely different to what we're seeing today with Boric. I mean, so, you know, polar opposites indeed. But perhaps we could put it into context of why Chile is important in this world of pensions. You mentioned the way they reform. You mentioned where Latin America looks at Chile as an example. But what is the situation in these surrounding countries then if they look to Chile and don't follow the guidelines?

Professor Nicholas Barr: Well, this is the thing. I mean, Chile first came to global notice because it was the first example of radical privatization of an entire national pension plan. And it was followed by Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, Bolivia, Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Panama in the region. And then about 10 years later in Central and Eastern Europe, in Hungary, Poland, Latvia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Romania. So all those countries followed. But if you say how many of those countries still have that system? The answer is virtually none. I mean, in the region it's probably only Chile and to some extent Mexico. In Central and Eastern Europe, countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania, having gone in for a Chilean type model, were then forced to retreat because they couldn't afford it. And I'm happy to explain why, but they retreated in good order. But there were other countries that backtracked, much less. Well, I mean, in Argentina and Hungary the government in essence expropriated the funds, which is a bad way to wind back if one feels one's over committed to individual funded accounts.

Richard McColl: And why doesn't, I mean, as you mentioned, the cost of course, and expropriation in Argentina. But I mean, at the beginning this must have been huge national pride for Chile that other countries around the world were pursuing the same format. And then as you say, it didn't work. What is the reason for this?

Professor Nicholas Barr: Well, several reasons. First of all, there is a high taxpayer cost of moving from. In a pay as you go system, the contributions of today's workers pay the pensions of today's pensioners. In a funded system, the contributions of today's workers go into their own individual accounts which they can draw on when they reach retirement age. But if you've got a pay as you go system and you want to move to a funded system, then the contributions of workers, that previously paid for the pensions of pensioners now go into their individual accounts. And the question is who pays the pensions of the pensioners and the Answer is it has to be the taxpayer. And these are referred to as transition costs, which makes it sound as though they're small and don't last for a long time. And the reality is they're very large and they go on for a very long time. Chile was able to get away with it because Chile ran a consistent budget surplus. So Chile could afford those fiscal costs other countries couldn't. So that's reason one, Reason two, administering individual funded accounts is requires a lot of administrative capacity. Chile had that a lot of other countries found that they didn't. You need not only to collect the money, you need to attribute it accurately and quickly to each worker's individual accounts. You need to accumulate their records, you need to keep them informed. All that is administratively demanding. And as I said, Chile is an unusual country because it passes laws, but it then enforces them. And other countries, I mean, very often very largely copied the Chile legislation. So it wasn't the legislation that was the problem, it was the implementation. And arguably the biggest lesson I learned during my time at the World Bank is that strategic policy design, the sort of thing that academics like me do is the easy bit, the hard bit is implementation, making things work in practice, both politically and technically. And Chile could do that, and the other countries mostly couldn't.

Richard McColl: And they could do this, as you say, because the budget surplus, and I imagine this is due to the, well, the exportation of the precious metals, the copper and so on that have funded Chile for so long. And of course, then we move on. And if we think of recent years and we think of the, well, the political discontent in Chile, and well, it's a disappointment in the pension scheme, I'd say, overall, and it doesn't live up to what was promised.

Professor Nicholas Barr: That's part of the problem. One source of discontent was exactly disappointment at the level of pensions, which didn't live up to the early promises. The early proponents of the system made very optimistic assumptions. Their arithmetic was fine, but they made assumptions that reality couldn't support. Part of the problem was they assumed everybody would have a full pension contribution record. So people contribute for 40 years. Now, the Chile pension system, for people who do have a full contributions record, works fairly well, but a lot of people don't have a full contributions record because of informality and for other reasons. So one reason for discontent was people got a lower pension than they expected. A second reason for discontent was for some people, it was the origin of the system under the dictatorship. A third reason was continued high charges. It is illegal for me in Britain to give pensions advice because I'm not an accredited independent financial adviser. But what I do say to people is look at the administrative charges of your pension fund. And if your pension fund charges you 1% of your accumulation per year to manage your account, and a lot of funds charge more over a full career, that 1% will mean that your accumulation ends up being 20% smaller just because of that 1% charge than it otherwise would be, and hence your pension is 20% smaller. So administrative charges are deeply boring but incredibly important. Administrative charges in Chile in the early days were very high. The introduction of an auction mechanism in 2008 and reinforced in the recent reforms has led to lower charges. But it's still the case that a lot of AFPs are seen to be making large profits. And that causes a further reason for hostility. And then a fourth and final reason is gender inequity. Given the multiple disadvantages women face. I mean, they have lower pay, they have more part time work, they have more career breaks, and that means women on average have a smaller contribution record, a smaller accumulation than men. But separately, women have an earlier pension age. And women's pensions are priced on the fact that women on average live longer than men, whereas in Europe and most other countries, annuity sellers are obliged to use a single life table when calculating annuities. So all those reasons mean that women in Chile have had a raw deal. And all those were reasons that for different people, in different ways, contributed to the discontent.

Richard McColl: So this discontent, when we look at it overall, as you said, the private pension funds are making huge profits as a result of these exorbitant administrative charges. And then of course, when you look at the ideological issues between the dictatorships, what they have put in and where we are today in Chile. And of course, this is a major source of discontent in the country between who, you know, the how, who supports the regime and who are against the regime. And then if we think about this piling on with high cost of living in Chile, it's always amazing to me, so long in Latin America, the cost of living in Chile, I know it's risen everywhere, but Chile is a, has always consistently been, I would say, more dear than much of other of its neighbors. And then of course, this rise in metro fares, remember when everything kicked off and people didn't understand it as well, it just, it sort of came out. And we're looking at this, that was, you know, we're looking at serious issues taking place In Chile, I mean, these are tapped into an undercurrent of discontent. Perhaps you could elaborate.

Professor Nicholas Barr: Well, partly it is the AFP system. I mean, it's amazing how wide and deep that discontent goes. I have a picture that I took of a bus shelter in the middle of the Atacama Desert and sprayed on the side was no AFP and this was sort of in the middle of the Atacama desert. So it's the pensions themselves. But also Chile is still an unequal society. It's true, it has become less unequal, but inequality is still there and for political purposes, importantly is perceived to be there. So I think those are the sort of deep seated causes of discontent. And like all these things, it's always a question of which small event will trigger the explosion in whatever form it comes. I mean, in the case of the estallido social, it was the metro fares, but you know, in other countries it's been an attempt to raise pension age or raising bread prices or things like that.

Richard McColl: Yeah, I'm thinking about sort of a unrest in Mexico for the increase in tortillas, you know, whatever it is the spark that then sets light this unrest. But did things improve, for example, under the presidency of Michelle Bachelet? One thinks that she would come in, or she came in perhaps with a more altruistic view of these things.

Professor Nicholas Barr: In 2004, I was invited to Chile to talk at a pension seminar organized by the International Labor Organization and at a dinner at someone's house the night before, I got talking to a young Chilean civil servant and he said to me, what are you going to say tomorrow? And I said, what I'm going to say is that Chile has a system of individual accounts that works reasonably well. I said, but individual accounts only do consumption smoothing. In other words, they only help people redistribute from themselves to themselves, from their younger selves to their older selves. They only do consumption smoothing, they don't do poverty relief. So Chile doesn't really have a pension system, it only has part of a pension system only. I said, I'll be more diplomatic. And he put his hand on my shoulder and said, no. He said, not more diplomatic. And that's where I realized that what I was going to propose, namely non contributory pensions, wasn't going to cause a bloodbath in Chile. I was actually pushing at an open door. People in Chile had worked out for themselves that a non contributory pension of some sort was necessary to complete the system. And my role was not to fight the fight, but merely to give some international respectability to what they'd already worked out they were going to do. And that's why in 2008, under President Bachelet, on the recommendation of the Marcel Commission, Chile introduced the Solidarity pension for the bottom 40% of pensioners, subsequently extended to the bottom 60%. And that was the right way to go and it was a very solid foundation. And that was why in 2022, under President Piñera, the Solidarity pension was replaced by the guaranteed universal pension, which was larger and goes to the bottom 90%. So those were, you know, that was a very major step in the right direction. Non contributory pensions have huge advantages in terms of making poverty relief real. And in terms of improving gender balance, given that women have less good contribution records than men.

Richard McColl: Well, I mean, that's very positive indeed to think about the efforts made. Chile seems to be reasonably forward thinking when it comes to this. And then of course, they elected in President Gabriel Boric, you know, on the left obviously of the political spectrum. And we can't say that his presidency up till now has been, you know, a roaring success, but he certainly has come in with the desire to make changes. And he did say, Boric has said that in 2025 the reform will trigger the largest increase in pensions since the creation of the system and will benefit 2.8 million pensioners. What's your reflection on this, on Boric's statements?

Professor Nicholas Barr: Well, you need to look at the different elements of what is a fairly complex reform, but to try to unpack it. First of all, as I've said, there's a larger non contributory pension financed from general taxation, which goes to everybody except people in the top 10% of the income distribution. And as I said, that benefits poverty relief, it improves gender balance. There's a second element in improving gender balance. Because of the new 7% employer contribution, 1% will be used to make sure that a woman aged 65 will get the same monthly pension as a man aged 65 who has the same AFP accumulation. Whereas in the past, if a woman and a man are both aged 65 and have the same accumulation, the woman will get a lower monthly pension because women on average live longer. So that's two ways in which gender balance has been improved. Thirdly, and in many ways, this is the big one, the big drive in Chile was to increase pensions now, not only in the future, but now. And what the reforms bring in is an increase in pensions from December of this year for all pensioners, both those who are currently getting their pension and those workers who retire in and after December. And that's being financed from a new 1.5% employer contribution that's going to be paid back to workers in the form of a bond that they can add to their AFP accumulation. So it's not really undermining the AFP system. It's just bringing in a new element to make sure that pensions rise immediately. And I should say where Chile has been unusual is the 1981 reforms and had a 10% contribution, all paid by the worker. There was no employer contribution. And by bringing in this new 7% employer contribution, Chile is very much coming back into the mainstream of practice in OECD countries.

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Richard McColl: Will employers then in Chile, are they up in arms about this new contribution?

Professor Nicholas Barr: Clearly, if you ask employers how would you like to pay higher taxes, they're going to give you the answer. I mean, the answer is at the margin, it will reduce profitability. In the short run, it might reduce the extent to which employment increases. But remember that the increase in savings that the reforms bring about will lead to an increase in investment, which ought to be increasing the rate of economic growth in Chile. And with the rate increasing growth, there will be increased demand. So employers, businesses will find themselves in a better position. So if you see things in the round, I would be very surprised if, other than in the very short run, there was any bad effects on employment.

Richard McColl: Well, I think that's again, positive. Look at the long term effects, look at the long term possibilities. But of course, as always, it's the informal economy that is a huge challenge for these issues. So, you know, we talk about that. I imagine, again, the ideological breaches between one side and the other in Chile has given rise to all sorts of skepticism regarding Boric's statements on this. And I have to ask quickly, this has gone through Congress. It has been approved. Okay, good.

Professor Nicholas Barr: It was approved about three weeks ago.

Richard McColl: Okay, so the skepticism, what can we say? Why are people doubting this?

Professor Nicholas Barr: People in general don't understand hypotheticals saying you will get a higher pension doesn't cut it. They haven't seen the extra money yet. And as an illustration, people who were very skeptical about the AFP system, that hostility declined significantly after people were allowed early access to some of their pension accumulation during COVID people. Some people have thought, it's all a con, we'll never see the money. And then when they actually got the money, they thought, wow, the money's actually there. So once people see something, they're much more likely to be in favor of it. And once the new pension payments come in later this year and get phased in next year, I think that will make a big difference. A second reason for skepticism is the reforms aren't particularly simple. I mean, it took me a while and some sort of very good tutorials from Professor David Bravo to get my head around them. The reforms aren't simple and in a way it's not necessary for people to understand the mechanics, they just need to understand how it affects them. And the answer is it'll be larger pensions. And a third reason is that there's a reason why the reforms are complicated, because they had to precisely for the reason you indicate. Politics are polarized. So you had one group who wanted to abolish the AFP system altogether, as with the bus shelter in the middle of the Atacama Desert. And you had the other group who said the AFP system is perfect and you shouldn't touch a tiny hair on its head. And the reforms, the way they've been crafted by boosting non contributory pensions and by raising pensions now give people who are not natural friends of the AFP system a reason to claim victory. But since of the 7% employer contribution, 4.5% go into workers' AFP accounts and the 1.5% that pays for the pension uplift immediately will over time also end up being folded into workers' AFP accounts, it represents a significant strengthening of the AFP system which allows people who support that system also to claim victory. So there's good things in it for both sides of the political spectrum. As I understand it, the extreme left and the extreme right voted against and the reforms were supported by the centre left and centre right.

Richard McColl: Of course this makes for interesting debates and arguments in the lead in to the presidential elections later on this year, I believe, scheduled for 16th of November. So you can have Boric obviously lauding what's coming up. And then of course the opposition. Opposition obviously, you know, fear mongering, I would imagine fear mongering about what could happen. But it's a pity that perhaps this increase in pensions couldn't come in before December for a political debate around the positive nature and improvement for pensioners.

Professor Nicholas Barr: Yes, I can't remember whether the. When the increase in the universal, guaranteed universal pension comes, it may be just administratively it wasn't possible to do it Quickly enough, but I, I don't know the details.

Richard McColl: Why, why are these reforms so complicated? You're a, a true global expert, recognized expert in this topic and you required, as you said, tutorials from a Chilean to get your head around them. It does seem to be living here for so long that the bureaucratic tangle created and legalese seems to be rather. Well, no, we know it's complex, but it seems to be the norm rather than the exception. But why in this case in Chile, were they or are they so complex?

Professor Nicholas Barr: Well, pension systems are complex, but there's a distinction because if my car stops working, I take it into a garage and someone knows how to find out what the problem is, take the relevant bits to apart, put in a new part, test it, etc. I don't need to know that. I just need to know how to drive the car. People don't need to understand the details of how the pension system works. I mean, experts do, legislators do, of course, but individual Chileans merely need to know what pension they're going to get or what pension they already are getting. So I don't think that complexity, I think any pension system that is so simple that it's really easy for the population to understand probably has hidden problems because the moment people tend to think of policy in terms of quote, unquote, typical cases, typical families, typical working careers, there is enormous diversity in the population, in lifestyles, in family formation, in how things evolve over time. And if you've got a very simple system, it won't adapt to diversity very well. So I think any pension system, any effective pension system will have its complexities, but that citizens don't need to know the full details, they just need to know how it will affect them.

Richard McColl: Yeah, and at the end, as you said, they just want to see more in their accounts, more availability of their pension in order to aid them through the latter years and so on. It's security and it's a security financial on every level. So how do you feel that things will. Let's speculate a little bit. Not on the elections, but how do you feel that things will proceed in Chile then?

Professor Nicholas Barr: Yes. When I was at the World Bank, I was appalled to see senior officials instructing countries about which they knew very little how to behave, that the joke became Poland must. And I learned a valuable lesson. It's not for me to tell Chile what to do, but if I were a Chilean then, and I've heard Chileans talk about this, the idea of a government AFP that competes with private AFPs. I mean, the Bravo Commission, of which I was a member, did a survey and one of the things they found was 72% of respondents opposed the AFP system, but 66% said that if there was a government AFP, they would move their savings across. Now, my country, the UK, offers the world many valuable lessons in how not to do things, including on some aspects of pensions. But there is one aspect of pensions where we have done something really good. And these are something that's called NEST pensions, the National Employment Savings Trust in the UK. And these are very simple, cheaply administered pension systems. They are designed taking account of the findings of behavioural economics. And they have five elements. Sorry, I am going to start again.

Richard McColl: Automatic enrollment.

Professor Nicholas Barr: I was going to say NEST pensions have five characteristics, but their underlying point is the following, that if a worker wants to make choices about pensions and retirement, the pension system should help them. But, and this is crucial, the pension system should work well for a worker who makes no choice. And the way NEST does that is it has five elements. Automatic enrolment, a good default fund. So a worker who makes no choice goes into the default fund, which is mainly in the stock market, for higher returns when they're young, and automatically moves to less risky assets as the worker approaches retirement. For workers who do want to make a choice, they've got a choice of five funds. it's deliberately restricted to five. There's a higher-risk fund, a lower-risk fund, an ethical fund and a Sharia fund and a pre-retirement fund. So workers can choose. And because those funds are simple, people can understand what they mean. I mean, I would have been, if I were young, I would have gone for the high risk fund. My wife, who's very risk averse, would have chosen the low risk fund. There's nothing complex about that. You can understand what's involved. So that's the choice for workers. Then the question is, what do you do about administrative costs? So the fourth element is that all record keeping is centralized because there are huge economies of scale if you've got a single administrator. So that's the record keeping. A separate element is what does NEST do with the savings of workers? And the answer there is the government doesn't make those choices. The NEST outsources investment choices to private fund managers. So you've got a system that gives workers choice if they want. It doesn't force workers to make choices if they don't, which keeps administrative costs simple, and which makes sure that investment decisions quite rightly are kept in the private sector. And I have pointed that I've drawn that model to people's attentions in numerous countries because we've learned so much since the 1981 reforms. Individual funded accounts can be very useful and very important given declining fertility. But what we've learned is giving workers a lot of choice in an area that's very complex, doesn't work very well. And the multiple Nobel Prizes this century for work on the economics of information and behavioral economics explains why, paradoxically, giving workers less choice is actually good design. And I think that would be a way forward that I would be very happy to see being pursued in Chile.

Richard McColl: So as we wind this down, because there's so much information in this, and of course, taking the example of the NEST pensions in the UK, do you think there's any possibility that Chile will move towards this kind of program?

Professor Nicholas Barr: Well, there are little bits of the reform that move in that direction at the moment. AFPs do their own administration, but there is a bit of central government, a new bit in the reforms that can administer the bits that the government does. And they've said if any AFP wants them to do the administration, they're prepared to do it. And the reason for that is to make it easier for new smaller AFPs to enter the market and increase competition on the grounds that it means a small new AFP doesn't have to pay the high setup costs of putting an administrative mechanism into place. They can simply piggyback on what the government is already doing. And of course they'd have to pay for it, but they're paying on a flow basis, like know, renting a television set rather than buying one. So there are small moves in that direction and, you know, they're moves that, you know, personally, I think are moves in the right direction. I mean, there is so much work being done explaining why giving people choice in complex areas doesn't work well. And the example I always use is, I assume it's the same in Colombia and Chile as it is in the UK. None of us can go into the pharmacy and buy any pharmaceutical drugs we like over the counter, you know, morphine or antibiotics. We need a letter from our doctor, a prescription. And that's precisely because pharmaceutical drugs are highly technical and complex and people, you know, allowing people free choice would work badly. And my view is that pensions, particularly individual accounts, are much more like pharmaceutical drugs than they are like smartphones. And as I've said, multiple Nobel Prizes explain why.

Richard McColl: And then if this doesn't work out in Chile, the likelihood of further unrest, a definite possibility?

Professor Nicholas Barr: I am not close enough to politics in Chile to have an informed view of that. All I can say is I profoundly hope not. I mean, I'm hoping the reforms and as I say, the fact that during the pandemic people were allowed some access to their AFP accounts will act to stabilize things. So, I mean, Chile's a wonderful country and I'm, you know, keeping my fingers tightly crossed.

Richard McColl: Well, I'd be, you know, overall, I'd be definitely positive towards the moves in Chile. They do seem to be far more forward thinking in this circumstance than a lot of other Latin American countries. A quick caveat, quick side note. We can, we can pretty much walk into the pharmacy in Colombia and get anything over the counter. Oh, dear. But that's another story about health reform and what needs to happen because the pharmacists themselves will prescribe you on your symptoms because a lot of people don't have access, of course, to health insurance and so on. So this is you self medicate, but a whole other debate there. And I just digress on this one. I'd like to say thank you so much for your time and profound expertise on this topic. It really has been quite illuminating on what seems like a dry topic, pension reform, but really goes to the heart of a lot of the unrest and instability in what I guess arguably is South America's most stable country.

Professor Nicholas Barr: Pensions really matter for the quality of people's lives. Well, thank you very much for the invitation. I've very much enjoyed our conversation.

Richard McColl: Thank you. I've been talking to Nicholas Barr, Professor of Public Economics at London School of Economics and Political Science. Professor Barr holds a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and he's the author of numerous books and papers on the welfare state, including pensions and higher education finance. It has been an absolutely riveting conversation about pension reform, of course, taking Chile as the centerpiece. This is The LatinNews Podcast after all, and I have been your host, Richard McColl here in Bogota. Thank you again.

Outro: You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.latinnews.com.

Professor Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith is a leading expert on Caribbean security and the originator of the concept of Geonarcotics — the study of how drugs, geography, and politics intersect. A widely published author and former university president, he has advised international organizations, testified before the U.S. Congress, and received the Perry Award for Excellence in Security and Defense Education. He is also a fellow with the Caribbean Policy Consortium and Global Americans.

Intro: Welcome to the The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogota, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is the The LatinNews Podcast. I am your host, Richard McColl in Bogota, Colombia. Our very special guest is on the line from New York, but we're going to be discussing Trinidad and Tobago this week on the The LatinNews Podcast. No less than Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith, a scholar turned writer, retired political scientist who has served as the president of Fort Valley State University, the vice chancellor of the University of Guyana, provost of universities in Virginia and New York, and dean at Florida International University. He's an expert on Caribbean affairs and a prolific author with 10 books to his name. So, Ivelaw, welcome on the The LatinNews Podcast.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Thank you. Thank you, Richard, and delighted to be able to join you.

Richard McColl: No, it's an absolute pleasure for us because obviously we're going to be talking about Trinidad and Tobago, which does not make the headlines as much as we may like, but to get an expert on the show to talk to us in depth about some of the issues taking place on this island so close to the mainland of South America. So we can imagine that it's being also affected by much of what is the problem in South America. Perhaps we should start ivlo with a little bit of background of what we read at the moment. And I just saw a piece out online about the US State Department putting on a warning for kidnapping of US Citizens in Trinidad and Tobago.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: What is going on? Well, you know, I think there are a number of realities, some of which are complicated by misinformation or as one person said a couple of years ago, alternative facts. But there's a harsh reality facing Trinidad and many other Caribbean jurisdictions of a long standing challenge of crime and violence. The crime and violence manifests itself in many ways, including the problem of kidnapping. Periodically, thankfully, Trinidad a decade and a half ago had a much more significant challenge with kidnapping and some of that kidnapping was internal family dynamics. But it's not surprising to see periodic travel advisories by the United States, travel advisories by the United Kingdom, by Canada about circumstances of crime. As a matter of fact, there is some political consternation in Trinidad right now over some action taken by the British government a few weeks ago where the British government has reintroduced visas for any Trinidad and wanted to go to Britain. And that is a result of some immigration challenges resulting from Trinidadians overstaying their visas, but also criminality, which is suspected to be part of a link between Trinidad and Britain. So it's not unexpected, not surprising to me and to others who follow Trinidad and the Caribbean closely to see a travel advisory. Don't go. Sometimes the travel advisories, they don't go to the country, sometimes they say don't go to particular parts of the country. And the reason they give may be invariably related to crime and violence.

Richard McColl: This yes. And in the list that I saw, there's sort of nine or ten different places listed. I imagine that there, a lot of them are urban, May, Port of Spain and so on. I would say probably more humble areas of the city. This is about the visa is very interesting because it does seem to be not just a place like Trinidad. I know it's occurred for Colombia, where I am located. It seems to be very much a practice for the region, a British foreign policy practice. Sadly, as it's going on and you would think with the relationship and the, let's say, the post colonial relationship between Trinidad and Britain, there might be a bit more understanding.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: One would think so.

Richard McColl: One would think so.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: One would think so. But, you know, sometimes national interests trump understandings, at least understandings by people like myself and like you. And this is an unfortunate. I know that the Trinidadians folk, the Trinidad and folks are upset. I would be upset as well if I were in their position. And they're working diplomatically to see if we can have a resumption of that fairly smooth movement of people, business and individuals between Trinidad and Tobago and United Kingdom.

Richard McColl: So this brings me quite neatly to our point that there has been a surge in violent crime in, on the island. This is a gang problem. Can you give me a bit more information? Who are these gangs?

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Let me share with you something I said on another podcast. I recorded a podcast when I was in Grenada last week, a relatively new podcast called Caribbean Tea. Region wide, we're looking at a problem of crime in the region as a whole. And I took the opportunity there to share what my sense is regarding gangs. My sense, as I said, there is that there is some alternative facts about gangs in the region. You hear about these hundreds of gangs and I said to the person who asked me the question, if you can give me a list of 10 gangs in your country. He was from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I give you 100 US dollars if you can, if you, Richard, can identify or get someone in Trinidad to list these 106 gangs that they say exists, I'll give them a thousand US dollars. My suspicion is that you have a media sensationalism about not only the scope of Gangs, but a number of gangs. I suspect you have in Trinidad, as you have in other parts of the world, some wannabe gangsters. You have some small time operators who pray in their neighborhoods. Their operations get now blown out of proportion to be gangs. I remember seeing one report where you must have heard about this Jamaat al Muslimeen, the religious group that perpetrated the coup in 1990, Trinidad Tobago, defined as a gang. I said myself was a gang. So I suspect that although there is a relationship between gang existence and crime and violence, the number of gangs that you often hear about, I suspect they don't exist. I would hazard a conjecture that you maybe have 20, 30 real gangs. And by gangs, I mean organize relationships of individuals who have an intent to prosecute crime, whether the crime is drug related or whether it is simply burglary or whether it is praedial larceny. I think there is criminality around gangs, but I don't think you've got a mass number of hundreds of gangs running around Trinidad and Tobago executing their projects. But I would say this. The current state of emergency, we'll come back to talk a little bit about it just now, I hope is not unprecedented. The book I did that came out last year, Drugs Challenged Sovereignty. I have a chapter where I look at two sets of national strike regional traumas. One was a 10 to 10 experience in Jamaica and that was gang related. A posse shower posse. And I took a look at the state of emergency declared in 2011. That state of emergency was one of the very traumatic experiences of Trinidad and it had to do with gang and other criminal activity. So the state of emergency declared 31 December of last year is not the first experience. And I think it is wise of the government to have gone beyond it from being a 30-day, to extend it until April of this year. April 13th is the time permitted under the constitution, given what The President declared 40 state emergency to exist. But I find it interesting that there is no overlap between the state of emergency period and elections. The state of emergency is likely to end, should end by April 13. Elections will be held two weeks afterwards. So in other words, I think the ruling government elites quite rightly appreciate the severity politically of the impact of the existing state of emergency. Were the state of emergency to continue during elections, you don't want to have state of emergency during elections. I think that's a wise move. But the existence of the state of emergency suggests the significant perennial challenge of criminality. And it rose to the point where Prime Minister Rowley and his cabinet felt that you need to arrest the problem by imposing some restrictions on rights. That is what the state of emergency.

Richard McColl: Amongst what kind of rights are we imposing restrictions on then?

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Well, states of emergency have a number of obligations and limitations. Among the limitations is that sometimes you can't move as freely and at any time as you want. There may be a curfew, periods imposed, travel between X and Y times restricted. You may have limitations of your right to do process limited. You may have limitations on the extent to which you have the right to have representation may be arrested without representation until later on when you have the right to bring an attorney into it. So the number of restrictions and I took the trouble in this book to explain in detail if you go to chapter six, I think it is what states of emergency really mean. The curtail limits but they also extend the authority of the law enforcement agencies. Powers of arrest become a little more robust on the part of the civil and the military authorities. Both the police and the army now have some powers of arrest and ways to conduct themselves that are beyond what their normal course of conduct is outside of a state of emergency.

Richard McColl: Yes. So this is explored in your book Challenged Sovereignty.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: When.

Richard McColl: When we talk. I need touch more on the. On these gangs problem. And now so you say maybe 20 to 30 real gangs as opposed to the 106 that someone is claiming.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: But where.

Richard McColl: Where have they emerged from? Are they related to let's say the Tren de Aragua in Venezuela which of course is so close or is there a relationship with maybe the lawlessness in Haiti or maybe some of the gangs in Jamaica? Is it a is thing?

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: There are regional connectivities and the regional connectivity is invariably have to do with some of the things that Tren de Aragua have been involved in. Drugs. The regional connectivity extends to relationships to people in Jamaica because of the drugs. I don't see. I don't have any evidence of a regional connectivity to Haiti. Okay. One of the interesting realities of Haiti is Haitian and gangs seem to be focused entirely internally. Of course they get the weapons from Miami and they get the weapons from other parts of the United States. But I would not be surprised to see if that. I would not be surprised if there are robust developing relationship with gang operators and elements individual radical entrepreneurs in Venezuela and.

Richard McColl: Go on please.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: I'm hoping we get some time to talk about the mass deportation because I've got some particularly anxious moments because of the mass deportation to Venezuela. I worry about cross border operations becoming enhanced. You know the reality is that everyone who's deported to a country doesn't stay in that country and sometimes they may stay in that country, but they develop relationships to prosecute their criminal enterprise in places beyond the borders of the country they're held to. So I worry about Trinidad even after the state of emergency would have been lifted in April. I worry about people going back to Venezuela given the existing, you know, it's only six miles to separate parts of Venezuela from Trinidad and the movement is fairly robust. The limitations on the part of the security forces of Trinidad, those limitations are there. And criminality moves beyond boundaries, beyond borders.

Richard McColl: It is a, it's a real issue. It's a real issue. This, as you said, to how close Venezuela is. And I can imagine the transshipment or the transnational drugs trade and arms trafficking from Venezuela to Trinidad is key. And then of course, as you say, at the moment, the government in the US claims that every person that they are repatriating to Venezuela is the Tren de Aragua. Of course there will be members of the Tren de Aragua who are deported. And yes, they'll be looking at Trinidad. I would suspect, as you are suggesting that Trinidad is very much in the crosshairs of this kind of thing.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Absolutely.

Richard McColl: This could definitely worsen the situation.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: But let me say, Richard, that I think it's important to worry not only about the criminal gangs sent back to Venezuela, whether they are part of Tren de Aragua or not, as would be the case with other jurisdictions to which people are returned. All the deportees are not necessarily violent criminals. Some people will have been involved in the criminal justice system in the United States for a variety of reasons. Some people overstayed their visa and they had jobs, they were doing things, they built families. I was reading quite sadly a family in Colombia, in California, Colombian family, husband is 59, the wife is 55. They've been here for 35 years, have three kids, first grandchild, never regularized their status. Now they're being returned to Colombia. So a lot of the people who may be sent back to Colombia, to Trinidad and Trinidad, there are a number of Trinidadians on the list, as you know, to be deported are not necessarily violent gang related individuals. But sometimes even if you're not involved in criminal activity, when your economic circumstances force you become inclined to be involved, whether by an act of commission or an act of omission. So I worry about other than the known criminal enterprise operators, whether in the Tren de Aragua or else those other citizens who reported other individuals deported who may not be violent criminal related. But now there are opportunities for Them to do things that are not legal in the country to which they deported. This is true.

Richard McColl: We're talking about this, let's say state of emergency that's being. It will come to an end, as you said, on April 13. Let's just have a little look back. Carnival just took place in Trinidad. Huge events. Was this indeed affected as it affected tourism? The state of emergency for a period that is so important for the country's gdp.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: You know, I had a friend. Who. Died a couple about a decade or so ago and he once said to me, talking about Trinidad and Tobago, so if you know people and if people in Trinidad were to invest a kind of energy and zest for life throughout the year as they do during the time of Carnival, Trinidad would be a wonderful place. And the state of emergency did not stop the fun. Richard, who lives in Miami, where I live for 12 years, he's in his 80s, he went back to Trinidad for the carnival and he is only one of several people who want to be conscious of the realities of the society, State of emergency, conscious of the crime and violence that are there, but did not allow the state of emergency to interrupt the bacchanal, as they say.

Richard McColl: This practice is replicated through the region, I think the importance of carnival, pre carnival, post Carnival and then preparing for Carnival the rest of the year round.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Yes.

Richard McColl: Now the April 13th date, lifting the state of emergency, it allows for obviously the political parties to really get out there and campaign and of course it's going to allow for the freedom of movement. There won't be these restrictions. Perhaps we could talk a little bit about the political parties. We've got the ruling People's National Movement. The Prime Minister, Keith Rowley, he's stepping aside and. Well, it's the current energy Minister, right, Stuart Young, who's leading the party.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Well, he's actually stepped aside already. Rowley. Two Mondays ago I looked at, there was a four hour long political rally where the transition happened from Rowley to Stuart Young and the next day. Stuart Young was formerly appointed by the President as Prime Minister. So he's now actually running the government and he has established a new cabinet, brought in some new people, reshuffled some of his, the chairs in his leadership team. And Stuart Young has brought the kind of dynamism and energy to the party and to the nation, which I anticipate will translate into victory at the polls on 28 April. And particularly in the context of recognizing the realities of the society. Yes, we've got a Problem with crime. Yes, we have a problem with the relationship with Venezuela. One of the big challenges that he will have and will have has begun to have is navigating the relationship with Venezuela and the relationship with the United States. Because, as you know, United States has now taken a heavy hand against Venezuela. And the Dragon Gas project between Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela will be under no scrutiny. But I think all things considered, and given what my assessment of the strength of the opposition of the UNC is all about, I would not be surprised if Mr. Stuart Young is victorious at the polls.

Richard McColl: It's a, it's. I can imagine, I can imagine that. I'm just thinking out loud right now that crossover of Rowley stepping aside, let's say beginning of March or mid March, and then Stuart Young, now Prime Minister, the opposition are furious with this opportunity for the incumbents. Well, I say incumbent party to re. Energize prior to the election. So what kind of reaction is going on with the party, the United National Congress?

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Well, they're outrage, I think sort of word that comes to mind. The prime, the former Prime Minister, head of the unc, Kamla Persad-Bissessar even threatened to sue, said that the PNM is violating the constitution by setting the stage for Rowley to give way to Young in violation of the constitution. So Rowley said, let him sue. Let's, let's let him take up the court. So I think they're caught between a rock and a hard place in one respect. Significantly, notwithstanding the problems of crime and economics and foreign policy that the Trinidadian society is now facing, the PNM has relative greater resonance with the national landscape. I'm told that the UNC is having difficulty in fielding candidates for all four to one constituencies. Well, if you can't get that rally two Sundays ago, the PNM, The PNM, brought up all 41 of their candidates. Here are our people contesting all the constituencies. They say, well, show us what you've got. UNC PM has their folks and I think that one indicator that they're not as strong going in at least two weeks ago last week as we did last week when the Prime Minister formally rally formally gave way to Young. The absence of their declaring, identifying their constituency representatives running in the elections, I think is an indication of the. They've got some challenges within their ranks.

Richard McColl: They haven't been able to pull themselves up. It was Rowley's move unconstitutional in your opinion? No, not at all.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: No.

Richard McColl: Okay.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: And in the context of Commonwealth jurisdictions, you can see the similar thing happening in Canada. Yes. And incidentally, what date did the new Prime Minister of Canada announces elections? Right now, the same date they're having Canadian election, the same date as Trinidad elections. April 28th.

Richard McColl: There'll be Trinidadians voting in Canada over two elections. I am, I find it fascinating this as you work. You're rightly so. The relationship with Canada and that Canadian similarity with the elections. Trinidad obviously being a major player in the Caribbean, will be supporting Guyana, of course, in Guyana's claims and exploration in the petroleum. As you say that the two major issues that the new government will need to deal with. This relationship with Venezuela, relationship with the United States. This is, this is a tricky moment. Can Trinidad position itself as a conduit between the US and Venezuela?

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: I don't know that the current political leadership in the US is disposed to having conduits in a country that the profile of Trinidad and Tobago, by that I mean my sense is that President Trump, if he were to be disposed to having a conduit, will be looking for someone from a bigger country. Yeah. So it is likely that Brazil perhaps can be viewed as an acceptable country, but not little Trinidad or Tobago, those little folks down there. But it's going to be a tightrope to walk because it's a national self interest of Trinidad, both to maintain their relationship with the oil and gas industry. And it's also in their interest to support Guyana. Yes.

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Professor Ivelaw Griffith: In the book that I'm writing in Oil and Climate Change in Guyana, I spent two chapters looking at the Venezuela claim. And in that, in one of the chapters, I think chapter four, I took the trouble to explain Trinidad's role in serving as an interlocutor between Venezuela and Guyana. And that role fell to Prime Minister Eric Williams. Back in the late 60s. Eric Williams was able to ask Guyana and Venezuela to come to Port of Spain. And they assigned something called the Protocol of Port of Spain. And the Protocol said, look, let's freeze this claim for 12 years. Let's let sleeping dogs lie, let's not pursue, let's lower the decibel of jingoism. And at the end of the 12 years, we'll decide either to renew or to access other mechanisms set out under the Geneva agreement. I Tell you, Richard, my first visit to Caracas was in 1980, 1981 as the end of the Protocol of Port of Spain was fast approaching. I did what you. I was a journalist back then and my first two days in Caracas I couldn't understand why the national anthem is being played so frequently. Didn't take me learn to realize that the national anthem's frequency of being played along with the description of Venezuela in Venezuela had to do with the claim against Guyana. It was a kind of a nationalistic, jingoistic thing. But it was a successful intervention by Eric Williams 1970 to get both Caracas and Georgetown to ease it, lower the level of rhetoric, lower the level of anxiety about the dispute. But as you know, things have taken off in dramatic, not so nice ways since then.

Richard McColl: Those were different times as well and obviously Venezuela leading OPEC production or petroleum at that time and so on. It's different times. If we, if we go back to the actual political situation in Trinidad and Tobago. So you're, you're very confident in a Stuart Young victory on April 28. Is there a possibility? Because of course the other term, the other issue that we've been touching on a lot, criminality. Is there a possibility of cross party cooperations between the United National Congress and the People's National Movement regarding security?

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: This book that I produced last year, Challenged Sovereignty Trinidad, hosted a huge book launch. It was sponsored by the Ministry of National Security Trinidad, the Institute of International Relations and the CARICOM IMPACS. Yes, invitations were extended to not only folks in the government but folks in the opposition. Guess how many people from the opposition showed up? 0. Now if you can use that as an indication, yes, it's a book and it's a conversation with national security in Trinidad, but I don't know if it's the fact that the Minister of National Security was giving the keynote or what, but there was no indication of a willingness to mend fences, even if it's in an academic forum. So I suspect you'd get a lot of platitudes about collaboration, but when it comes to practices, I think you're likely to see reservation rather than anxiety to cooperate. So I don't anticipate collaboration across the political aisles on this matter. I see people pulling up their stakes and getting a little more individualistic. I wouldn't be surprised though, talking about crossing if they aren't efforts on the part of one party to get others from, to cross from there for their side of the aisle to the others.

Richard McColl: Is it pretty fluid then? Is it These things happen frequently.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Yeah. People cross, people are enticed across the floor. But I suspect that any crossing will be done. More over to the pnm, of course, than over to the unc.

Richard McColl: You go across to the winning party.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: We had a perceived strength.

Richard McColl: Yes.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Victory exists.

Richard McColl: What an entirely individualistic there thinking of yourself. What do you think then? If Young comes in and wins, will he place another state of emergency on as soon as he gets back in?

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: I don't see the political utility of doing that unless you've got circumstances and have been aggravated. A point where the upsurge is dramatic. Let's say the upsurge has to do with the Venezuela connection. Never say never. But yes, it is not in the political. It's not politically expedient for any new Prime Minister to bring back a state of emergency, especially one that was there when he was in office, even though not fully elected as popular Prime Minister. But Richard, before we go too far, I want to mention that part of the challenge that Trinidad has had on the cross border criminality is not only related to drugs and to guns. There's been a significant human trafficking. Yes. Problem and human trafficking of not only young girls and sometimes not so young girls from Venezuela, but young girls from Colombia and other places looking for economic opportunity beyond their national boundaries. I was telling some folks in the police high command in Grenada last week of something I explained in this book. Trinidad and Tobago pass legislation to deal with human trafficking. The first set of people arrested under this new law. Trinidad and Tobago police officers, they were running, they had a, they were running a trafficking ring of these young girls. So the human trafficking is also something to keep on the radar screen. It's guns, it's drugs, it's humans.

Richard McColl: Is there a possibility of strengthening, let's say the judicial system, the institution, so that this does not occur as, let's say brazenly, as it possibly is now?

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: There is always room for improvement in every jurisdiction, including in the United States, to improve the extent to which the functionality of the various components of the judiciary. Various components of the judicial architecture. Yes. Like so many other jurisdictions, there's a problem of overcrowding jails and prisons. Yeah, the overcrowded jails means sometimes it's a reflection of the lethargy of people who are arrested being moved along the prosecutorial chain and don't have to spend years or even months in the lockups in the jails. Trinidad over the years have built, they have built new prisons, have expanded the Number of judges, but there still is scope to do a little better in very many of those areas of the judicial, of the criminal justice architecture as we.

Richard McColl:As we wind this down, Ivelaw, you've put us at ease a bit about the security issues. Yes, there are issues. Things need to change. There aren't 106 gangs, maybe 20 to 30, as you mentioned. Is Trinidad, in the context of the Caribbean region, any worse than other countries, let's say Jamaica and others? Or is it, as you say, the alternative facts that we're talking about?

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Well, you know, they're. There's an old precept called miles law. Where you stand depends on where you sit. And I think that applies as in any jurisdiction where you stand, if you're standing in the circumstance of the police in Trinidad is the worst place because of the criminals. But if you're in Jamaica, although Jamaica has had a decline as Trinidad in the number of homicides, their circumstances are still worse than Trinidad and Tobago. So I think if you do, it depends upon what you compare Trinidad to. Yeah, it is much better circumstance in Trinidad than it is in Haiti. It's a much better circumstance in Trinidad than it is in Jamaica. So I think it depends on the snapshot you're looking at and what lens you're looking through. Whatever the lens you're looking through, it will be in the interest of Trinidadians to have an improvement of the conditions of criminality, conditions of their economy, and so they can feel less compelled to want to have states of emergency. You know, talking about states of emergency in the Caribbean, there are states of emergency in Jamaica right now, not to the entire island, but in sections of the island. So from the vantage point of where you stand depends on where you sit.

Richard McColl: Well, listen, thank you, Ivelaw. It has been really illuminating to discuss Trinidad in such depth. Of course, there are challenges ahead, but it doesn't seem quite as bad as it is made out with the alternative facts, let's say, from media outlets and so on. So I wish you the best with these new books. I know that you have oil and climate change in Guyana coming out very soon.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Maybe we can talk about that when it comes out. Yeah, why not?

Richard McColl: Why not? Of course, I think it would be highly prescient, given what's going on and Guyana and Venezuela and so on. And I know that you were just on a book tour for your book, Sylvie’s Love and Loss. And, of course, you've mentioned your books Challenged Sovereignty and Of the Quest for Security in the Caribbean. It has been an absolute pleasure to talk to Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith, scholar turned writer, a retired political scientist who has served as president of Fort Valley State University, vice chancellor of the University of Guyana, provost of universities in Virginia and New York, and dean at the Florida International University. Thank you for coming on the provost.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Have a wonderful rest of the day.

Richard McColl: You, too. Thank you again. And bye.

Professor Ivelaw Griffith: Bye.

Outro: You've been listening to the The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.LatinNews.com.

The Executive Director for the Center for Media Integrity of the Americas (CMIA), John Feeley is a former US ambassador dedicated to promoting greater mutual understanding between the United States and Latin America and the Caribbean.  The CMIA is an independent entity that fosters and incentivizes high quality journalism and public interest media in the Western Hemisphere. 

A skilled negotiator, organizational leader and cross-cultural communicator, Ambassador Feeley collaborates with private sector, media, and not-for-profit partners who seek to understand and solve problems found at the intersection of government, business, and culture.  His military and diplomatic experience afford insight into US security and rule of law policy implementation, the resolution of commercial disputes, and human rights, media, and democracy issues. 

During a 28-year State Department career, he served as Ambassador to Panama, Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires in Mexico City, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.  As a Deputy Executive Secretary, he worked on the staffs of Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, in addition to serving in other Latin American assignments both in Washington and at embassies throughout the region.

He was formerly a principal at Gotham Lights LLC, and a political consultant for the Spanish-language media, Univision, providing on-air analysis and publishing opinion columns.  He has appeared on CNN, BBC, CBC, NPR, PBS, MSNBC and in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, among other Spanish and English-language media, as a forceful advocate for a respectful, alliance-based approach to US relationships with Latin American governments and societies.

Prior to his Foreign Service career, he served as a United States Marine officer and helicopter pilot.  He is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a Distinguished Graduate of the National War College.

Intro: Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here’s your host from Bogotá, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.

Richard McColl: This is the LatinNews Podcast. I'm your host, Richard McColl here in Bogotá, Colombia. Very happy to introduce an absolute expert in the field discussing Panama and issues from this region. Former U.S. career diplomat and ambassador John Feeley. Welcome on the LatinNews Podcast.

John Feeley: Thank you so much, Richard. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

Richard McColl: It's an absolute pleasure to talk with someone of your prestige here on the LatinNews Podcast. You are, of course, a 28-year State Department career professional fellow, former Marine officer and helicopter pilot, and indeed former ambassador to Panama. And that's about which we're going to speak today. Panama. And well, of course, the United States have been making the headlines a little bit. And before we launch into maybe some of the more controversial things that have been said by the current president in the United States, perhaps we could take a little bit of historical context between Panama and the United States regarding diplomatic tensions.

John Feeley: Yeah, absolutely. The. Let's start right at the very beginning, 1903, the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty. Panama would not exist if it were not for the United States. At a moment of historical imperialism, the United states under William McKinley decides to revive a centuries. I mean, Hernán Cortés and Balboa, the original Spanish conquistadores, figured out that the easiest way to get by water from the Caribbean to the Pacific was to go through Panama. The small isthmus the French tried in the 1880s and 90s failed. And that idea of expansionism, imperialism is really brought to its fruition in the face of it for the American people and in American history is Teddy Roosevelt. So the canal is built. Roosevelt does some amazing public diplomacy. He's the very first president to travel outside the United States while he's a sitting president. And where does he go?

John Feeley: He goes to Panama. And what's going on in Panama? Well, they're running into real trouble building this canal. And we won't go into the technical details of it, but I'd highly recommend to anybody to read David McCullough’s The Path Between the Seas. And Roosevelt gets into a Pittsburgh steel backhoe and in a white suit and the Panama hat that everybody knows he's working that thing and he's digging out hard stone from the Gaillard Cut and the Canal is finished, 1914. Teddy doesn't get to inaugurate it, but it represents American imperialism at the beginning of the 20th century. From that time on, the United States and Panama have been inextricably linked now for about 60 years, right? About 60, I would say. 60 Years. The canal is not a commercial waterway. It is a strategic waterway.

John Feeley: If you go back and you take a look at what, why Teddy Roosevelt got McKinley and others to push it, he had been Secretary of the Navy. He's very influenced by a guy named Alfred Thayer Mahan who has this whole theory of sea power as national power projection. It was all about US Navy ships going through the canal to get from the shipyards on the east coast of the United States out to the Pacific in the most expeditious fashion. It's a tremendous success. The United States, literally under international law and a treaty is the sovereign governor of a about a 5 mile on either side of the canal path stretch of Panamanian land. And you know, when I was ambassador I used to say this very openly.

John Feeley: It was an apartheid system, apartheid being a purposeful exclusion of one people from an area where those inside that area have exceptional privileges. That was the Canal Zone. But I have to say a lot like Thomas Hobbes Leviathan. It was as far as apartheid go, it was pretty benign. And the Panamanians worked on the canal, but the Americans ran it. But it wasn't run as a commercial venture. It wasn't a highway toll for the sea the way it is today. In 1968, no one less than Henry Kissinger, the grand old man, the hawk of American rail politic, writes a memo to Richard Nixon and he says, hey boss, this Panama Canal thing, it's really kicking our ass. All the Latins hate it, the Panamanians hate it. Everyone else is decolonized.

John Feeley: Great Britain has decolonized in the Caribbean and we're still flying the Stars and Stripes over Ancón Hill in Panama. Nixon says, yeah, you're right, but you know what, it's political suicide here. And he buries it. Fast forward a few more years. Jimmy Carter comes in and Jimmy Carter makes an amazingly brave political decision against popular will in the United States as expressed primarily by the Republican party. Jimmy Carter recognizes that it is in the United States long-term self-interest. It's not charity, it's not Mother Teresa, it's not giving alms to the poor. It's a recognition in 1977 that hey, we have bicoastal fleets. We have the, you know, the sixth Fleet on the east coast, we have the fourth Fleet based out of Louisiana.

John Feeley: We got the seventh Fleet out in Pacom, Pacific Command based off the west coast, we don't need it as much as we did in past years. And on top of it's like this super rating soar of just burbling Panamanian nationalism. And Panamanians are among the least nationalistic people I know in Latin America. But you know, nobody wants a foreign power, a foreign sovereign in their backyard. Least of all dividing the backyard, which is exactly what the Panama Canal does. So the diplomatic history of the United States and Panama I would best describe as required friendship with a lot of tension. And when Jimmy Carter signs the treaty, it really takes off into genuine friendship partnership. Now, let's not make any mistakes. It's a totally asymmetrical power relationship. United States is 335 million people. Panama is 4 million people. The GDP is don't even compare.

John Feeley: I couldn't do the math to figure out the fraction. But Panama remains mostly democratic. Panama remains a staunch US ally in the Cold War. And until Manuel Noriega comes along in the 1980s, Panama is a reliable US friend and partner. That's sort of the history up to Manuel Noriega. Noriega is a five to six year blip, as everybody knows. Noriega starts out life as a young colonel being trained by the Americans. He becomes a CIA asset. And then, as they call him in Panama, El Manuel Antonio Noriega, El man goes bad. And El man is now dealing drugs and letting Pablo Escobar and the Medellín cartel land their planes.

John Feeley: As that enterprising Colombian figures out that the best way to introduce cocaine to the United States is to fly planes low and slow over the Caribbean and launch them into Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport just north of Miami. And we have the 1980s and the cocaine cowboy issues. But Manuel Noriega commits the capital, the, what do we call it, the mortal sin of Latin American dictators. Go back to the rather cynical view that yeah, he's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch, referring to Anastasio Somoza. But he may be a son of a bitch, but he is now an openly non democratic and anti American son of a bitch. And so in 1989, after a lot of provocations, keep in mind that the treaty has been signed 12 years earlier. So the United States and Panama had.

John Feeley: And the people who did it, the negotiator, Ellsworth Bunker, Gabriel Lewis Galindo, these are genuine statesmen. These are people who have a really good understanding of the historical context. They sign a treaty. They actually signed two treaties, one the Neutrality Treaty, the other The Canal Treaty, not only to revert and actually reverts the wrong word because Panama never had sovereign control over the canal, but to transfer. Sovereign, canal, sovereign control over the Canal and the Canal Zone. But what do they do? They give themselves the benefit of time, 22 years. They set the date for the transfer in 1977. And once it's ratified by the U.S. senate by one vote, by the way, it was highly unpopular. And Ronald Reagan always said that he won the 1980 election in part because Jimmy Carter gave the canal back, words that Donald Trump echoes today.

John Feeley: And they. So they're 12 years into this 22 year transition period and now they got this guy who's openly threatening Americans in the Canal Zone. And keep in mind, we still had about 40, 50,000 troops stationed there because the U.S. Southern Command is located in the Canal Zone. And George Herbert Walker Bush 41 makes the decision. We're taking out Noriega. And so we have the December 20, 1989 invasion. It's a fascinating little microcosm of American diplomacy and war diplomacy in a sense, because Colin Powell is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, Brent Scowcroft is the national Security advisor. And again, people that I look to as true visionaries and statesmen and warriors who understood the nature of power, this is the first place we see the Powell doctrine employed.

John Feeley: If you're going to go in with your military, a, it's got to be the last choice. You try everything beforehand and when you go in with overwhelming power, you achieve your clearly delineated military objectives and then you get the hell out of there. You go back home. And that is exactly what they did. So 1989, you have the invasion. 1990, The United States says to Panama, all right guys, you're on your own. See how you can do with your democracy. We stick around, we provide a lot of money. But Panama over the next 30 years becomes a normal country in the sense that there's no canal, there's no sovereign American presence, and it remains an overwhelmingly pro U.S. Society. Culturally, there is nothing like Panama in the region. It looks like Miami.

John Feeley: In Panama City you hear English spoken, although not quite as much as you used to be honest, once you get outside of Panama City. But they play baseball instead of soccer, although their soccer team's getting actually quite good. And just beat the U.S. just beat.

Richard McColl: The U.S. yeah, just beat the U.S.

John Feeley: But there's, there's, they eat turkey on Thanksgiving for goodness sake. I mean, you know, there is a cult If I used to, when I was ambassador there, I would go out and there were Kiwanis, touch football leagues, American football. It's the same as you see, wherever you had a long-term presence of American soldiers, you have two things. You have baseball, you have football, actually three things. You have baseball, you have football, and you have a lot of prostitutes. And so Panama had them too. But it's a very benign environment in which the United States and U.S. business and U.S. military and U.S. diplomatic services work. And Panamanians were the shining star for the first 20 years of this decade in terms of what they did with their own economic growth and things like that.

John Feeley: They weren't without problems, but it was always an exceptionally fluid relationship. Decades of first name basis of ambassadors with assistant secretaries, under secretaries, family friendships that have continued through generations. So it's a really unique place and we'll see if it's come to a parteaguas, a tipping point, as Malcolm Gladwell likes to call them.

Richard McColl: It's certainly, I mean, it's such a fascinating history and such a recent history. And of course, you are so very involved in it, having been what, 2,000, up until 2018, you were ambassador there in Panama. From your, from your position now, looking at what's going on currently and we'll get into this even deeper. But I mean, just that one phrase by President Trump that Panama was a bad deal for the US how did you react to that when you heard it?

John Feeley: Well, I obviously reject that notion, but I understand why Donald Trump says that. Donald Trump, and I think this requires me to, you know, sort of borrow what I've read about him. I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I don't pretend to look into the eyes of Donald Trump and know his soul the way Bush 43 did Vladimir Putin. But Donald Trump's life trajectory indicates to me that he is who he is. He's a real estate guy from an outer borough in New York where I grew up. He is a very literal thinker and he believes that if he can't see it in his checkbook or walk into it with his name on top of it's not a good deal, it's not an asset.

John Feeley: And so what he fundamentally rejects in his own, to the extent he has a concept of foreign affairs is he does not ascribe any value to a longstanding friendship and trust based alliance, which is precisely what we had cultivated with Panama and the Panamanians, with us as willing partners since the Canal was transferred back in 1990 or 1989 on the last day. So he looks at that and he's not alone. Let's be very frank. He's not alone. Ronald Reagan said it was a bad deal. There are lots of people in his MAGA coalition today. I talked with a good friend of mine last night who I went to high school with. He says, well, why the hell did Carter give that thing back? We built it, we owned it.

John Feeley: And again, my answer to it is because in our own enlightened self-interest, we should realize, we should be capable of realizing that instead of a master servant or senior partner, junior partner, power relationship, our interests are better served in if we have a willing, able and capable partner. And that's what we had in Panama. But Trump fundamentally rejects that. And so therefore he says, bad deal. Jimmy Carter was a weak president. You know, Jimmy Carter didn't give that thing up because anybody put a gun to his head. It's because his own advisors and Henry Kissinger had previously said, guys, the Panama Canal is becoming, you know, this bubbling cauldron of seething anti Americanism that ain't good for business in a cold war where we're trying to win hearts and minds and we're trying to play proxy war chess with the Soviets.

John Feeley: And you know, the fact is the Soviets never got a foothold in Panama and that is not true of the neighbors to the north in Central America. So again, it's just fundamentally different concepts as to what constitutes value in your foreign affairs.

Richard McColl: You've mentioned this proxy chess game, obviously in the Cold War. Are we playing a proxy chess game right now? What's going on? China and obviously the US the Panama Canal and so on.

John Feeley: I don't know if we're playing chess, if we're playing checkers or if we just sort of threw the dice, but we're playing a game where there's not a lot of clear strategy behind it, I do believe. Look, be very Frank, Richard. In 2017, when then President Juan Carlos Varela recognized China surprised us, had lied to me directly when I asked him two months earlier, not the first or last time an American ambassador will be lied to and certainly not something to get terribly upset about other than the fact that I said to him, if you guys are thinking of, naturally of recognizing Beijing, you know, as a friend, as a long standing treaty alliance partner, you're a sovereign nation, we're not telling you what to do. But don't surprise us. Friends don't surprise friends. Right? And they did.

John Feeley: And you know, it was a whole caveat emptor sort of scenario. And what I got at that time was Nothing. This is June 2017. The President Trump's first administration is about six months in. And I couldn't get anybody to pay attention because the concern that I had then is the same concern I have today. But it is now a concern that is shared by the Trump team, and that is the nature of Chinese commercial expansion, not just in Panama, but throughout Latin America. And the idea that when the Chinese show up, they show up with a lot of easy money for infrastructure, which is something these nations clearly need and want.

John Feeley: But unlike the Americans, who show up with a whole bunch of pesky human rights, democracy, and, you know, environmental strings attached to the money, the Chinese show up with corrupt business practices, with all kinds of violations of labor and environmental rules. You take a look in Argentina and Neuquén, you know, they got an orbital space station down there and Argentines aren't allowed through the gate. I mean, it's not a good long-term partner, but it is a very good short term transactional partner for individual governments and people who get rich off of their deals, which sadly, tragically, quite frankly, is the way Donald Trump sees the world. So the fact that he's railing against China today, I actually don't have a problem with. I do have a problem with the way in which he's characterized China's involvement in the canal.

John Feeley: And that bears some, you know, a little bit of geek canal sort of explanation. The Panama Canal has five ports. Those ports are concessions. They are not owned. The land is not owned by the companies that run the ports. Of the five, two are. The concessions were granted via international bid process in 1997, when the US was still in charge. Two years or 19. I'm sorry, yeah, 97 US is still in charge. Hutchison Whampoa, subsidiary of CK Hutchison, Hong Kong based company. They get the concession, they run ports. Okay, now, two things you got to keep in mind. In 1997, the Chinese government in Beijing was not what it is today, and Hong Kong was most certainly not what it is today. There really wasn't any concern. Jesse Helms made a little bit of noise.

John Feeley: He was very conservative American senator about the Chinese being down in Panama. And it was almost stereotypical kind of joke thing. And the Panamanians diffused it beautifully. They sent up the first canal administrator, guy named Alberto Alemán. He was an engineer trained in the United States. Went up, testified before the Congress, and he made it very clear that Chinese ain't running the canal. Forward. Fast forward three More ports. One is operated by an American company, one is operated by a Taiwan company, and one is operated by a Singapore port operator. Ports don't control a canal. They don't open the gates. They don't guide the big supertankers in. Those are all Panamanians. They all exclusively work for something called the ACP, the Panama Canal Authority. They are all Panamanian citizens. But what can those ports do?

John Feeley: So Marco Rubio said, well, in wartime they could block the canal. No, sorry, Marco, they can't. But what they can do, what they could do, and I can't go into it here, but trust me, we have an entire ic, we like to call it the intelligence community that watches this stuff pretty closely. They could use those two ports on either ends of the canal, and the other ports are on either end of the canal, too. Let me just stress they're not the only ones out there. There's no point in having a port in the middle of the canal. So they're all on the, either side of the canal. The way it's framed in current discussions with President Trump is, you know, Chinese control both ends of the canal. So they could shut it down. That's just ignorance speaking. That's just logistically impossible.

John Feeley: But what can they do? They could use it to spy industrial espionage. They could put scanners, sensors. They could have individuals in the management structure of the company who are dual use, meaning they are trained spies reporting back to Hong Kong. They could, you know, take images of certain ships as they go through. So it's not completely unfounded. What is completely unfounded and I believe counterproductive is the manner in which Donald Trump has gone about this. And so that's where we are today. And he is saying that we are going to take back the canal.

Richard McColl: Yeah, I, and also the commentary that the Chinese soldiers along the canal in the last three years I've been through a dozen times if at least I don't recall ever seeing a Chinese soldier, you know, along the pipeline here.

John Feeley: I'll say this in my, I'll say this in my native Bronx dialect so that President Trump hopefully understands it. There ain't no goddamn Chinese soldiers marching up and down the canal. Period. There you go.

Richard McColl: But it, I mean, it's really a sign of the times that we have to seriously consider the possibility of President Trump ordering an invasion of a democratic ally. Is there, is there actually sort of a legal case that Panama is in violation of this Carter–Torrijos treaties when it was signed off Is there a legal case?

John Feeley: You know, it's really interesting about, I guess now we're going on. About six weeks ago here in the United States, Senator Ted Cruz held a hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee. And one of the invited witnesses was an Israeli law professor. And this Israeli law professor made what I considered to be, and I'm not a lawyer, but, you know, I spent plenty of time around him and a lot of it is plain English, made this case that because of the potential dual use nature of a port concession, that it could be interpreted under the Neutrality Treaty that Panama had violated the treaty by allowing a Chinese company based in Hong Kong to have the two concessions for the two of the five ports.

John Feeley: Now, if you accept that, then you would buy, in my mind, you would by inference have to assume that there is Singapore influence, Taiwan influence and US Influence because the other three ports are operated by companies from those countries. I found it to be specious, paper thin and absolutely unwarranted as legal analysis. And to the best of my knowledge, this was. He was a very well spoken guy, had a very nice RP accent, He'd obviously been educated in Great Britain. And he went on at deep length about the treaty and codicil number four in paragraph seven. But the bottom line is both the United States and Panama under the Neutrality Treaty have the right and the responsibility to make unilateral decisions.

John Feeley: And there is no treaty stipulation that says they got to sit down, put their heads together and go, okay, is there undue foreign influence in the canal? And it's never happened. And the fact is that we have had presidents from both parties since 1999. Nobody has ever suggested that there is undue foreign influence or preferential treatment given to the ships of any nation in the Canal. And my firm personal belief is that's not occurring today. Having with the caveat that I was concerned in 2017, I am concerned still today about what China might be doing in terms of industrial espionage with those two port concessions. But do I believe that there has been a violation of the Neutrality Treaty? No, not at all.

Richard McColl: And of course, as you said Trump, a literal thinker, everything's a bad deal. The US Is being taken for a ride when it comes to the tariffs or the prices that ships. I'm sure it's a, they're universally priced.

John Feeley: Now, that's one of the biggest fallacies. I think that's a very nice word for fake news. That's one of the biggest fallacies that Donald Trump has put been putting out there. First of all, keep in mind that Donald Trump is, I don't believe he's a very educated man, but he is not without a certain reptilian intelligence. And I think very frequently he uses what is, according to an AI or an AI analysis of his speech, the diction of a fourth grader. He uses it to his advantage. He is a very good communicator to a certain public here in the United States. It includes a lot of echolalia where he repeats things over and over. It includes horrible syntax and grammar, but he knows how to hit certain points that resonate.

John Feeley: So one of the things he says and has said since December 22, I think it was when he first raised the Panama Canal. Keep in mind this is one of really interesting things going on. This guy can keep a secret. He ran an entire campaign and never mentioned Panama.

Richard McColl: Yeah.

John Feeley: He gets elected and all of a sudden we're here in Panama, Greenland. Americans are going to the Google search, go, where the hell are these places? And he's going and repeating this line. And I have heard educated Americans repeat it to me. Well, we're getting ripped off. Our ships are getting ripped off down there, man. The guy's gouging us. Okay, let's stop and deconstruct that. Number one, the world's international commercial shipping fleet is not American. The United States has a merchant marine, meaning ships that fly an American flag on the high SEAS. Of about 60 vessels, there are over 10,000 of these horizontal skyscrapers plying the ocean blue. They're overwhelmingly made in. The ships are made in countries that subsidize a shipping industry. And the flags are flags of convenience. Panama is the largest flag of convenience.

John Feeley: What that means is they simply register their ship. They comply with basic maritime safety and regulatory rules. Rules. Liberia is another one, and the countries make money off them. This has been par for the course, you could argue. Well, that doesn't seem right. Yeah, but it's what maritime shipping has developed over the last 30, 40 years, when it really began to go on steroids at the beginning of modern globalization. So the US doesn't have commercial ships to be ripped off or price gouged in the first place.

John Feeley: What Trump means is that the containers that float on them, the TEUs, the 20-foot equivalent units that are stacked 7,000 high on a ship that can fit through the original locks, stacked 14, 15,000 high on the new locks, which were expanded at Panama's expense between 2008, 2016, when the new locks were inaugurated, 70% of those TEUs, those shipping containers, either originate from or go to are destined to a US port, which means the stuff inside of them is in fact used by Americans or sold by Americans. So we are 70%. We are by far the largest user of the canal in a commercial sense, but not in a strict shipping sense.

John Feeley: And if you were to sort of break down how much extra your iPhone in Philadelphia costs because it floated through the Panama Canal, you are literally talking about fractions of a cent. Yeah. The way the tariffs are established is world class transparency. The board, and this is a really important point for listeners to keep in mind. The Panama Canal is not the Panamanian government. The Panama Canal Authority, by design, set up with the Americans as we plan the transition for 22 years, is a completely independent entity from the Panamanian government. In point of fact, it has become the cash cow of the Panamanian government. In 2023, there were over $5 billion in revenues collected by the Panamanian toll booth. Let's call it 2.5 of it went to the operations and maintenance of the toll booth.

John Feeley: And $2.5 billion in a country of only 4 million people got deposited in the exchequer of the Panamanian government. Not a bad deal. So it has been an amazingly successful commercial venture for Panama. But who are the real beneficiaries of this? Richard, it's me. I live in D.C. on the east Coast. If I bought a large screen TV in the last 10 years, it floated through the Panama Canal and I got it at the lowest cost of transportation possible. Because if they dumped that large screen TV made in Fujian province in California, loaded it onto a train, shipped it on two train cars out to the nearest depot, then put it on a trailer truck for the last tactical mile into my Walmart or Costco, where I went and bought it, the cost would be higher per unit because the transportation costs are higher.

John Feeley: So it's a simple capitalist. I mean, there's one thing Panamanians are good at, they're good capitalists. And this is the most cost efficient way to ship goods from East Asia to the east coast of the United States and to Latin America. I will.

Richard McColl: To Latin America. There's one thing that keeps popping up in my mind and I keep thinking back to 1989 and the invasion and you being a Marine Corps officer and former helicopter. Well, helicopter pilot. What is the reality? I mean, how is it. Is the idea of a second operation just cause, as it was called back in 1989, is it entirely impractical? Impractical? Could you, could you see it happening from a military perspective?

John Feeley: Okay. Let's split the conversation. And I'm going to hold back on the joke as to what we call this operation. I hope they don't plan it on signal. But let's split the notion of is it possible in a strategic military kinetic conversation and is it possible from a political reality conversation first, no question. The United States has such overwhelmingly asymmetrically powerful military that we could easily invade Panama Again. Panama doesn't even have a military. Panama has a relatively professional police force that's divided into three divisions. The police who do the same sort of thing that bobbies in London do and New York City cops do, they keep order with the civilian population. They have a border police called SENAFRONT. That's what mostly looks like an infantry and protects their borders.

John Feeley: Excuse me, they do all of the work down in the Darién, et cetera. And they have a tiny coast guard and it includes an aviation wing. But Panama by its own self determination, it's people's will. After manuel Noriega in 1980, 89, when he finally got removed, they decided they didn't want to have a military service, same as Costa Rica. So could the United States do it? Absolutely, no questions asked. It'd be a weekend's task. However, and this is a big however, when I was the ambassador and even before then, we used to run annual exercise called Panamax, which was to defend the canal. And we would sit down with our Panamanian counterparts and we would invite regional militaries.

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John Feeley: When I was the US Ambassador, I participated in something called the Panamax Annual Exercise. This is an exercise where the United States Southern Command, working with Panama's police force and regional partners as well, would analyze various threats to the canal. And we would look at things like a terrorist attack to sabotage the canal. We would look at things like white powder incidents when those were a thing. And every year there was a new scenario and it was classic military war gaming. Blue Cell, Red Cell, how do you react? Things like that. It was one of the ways that the United States and Panama built this exceptionally good relationship as strategic partners to protect the Canal.

John Feeley: The going in assumption was always that if the United States had to intervene to protect the neutrality of the Canal under the Neutrality Treaty, it would take 100,000 boots on the ground to invade and to hold. Keep in mind, 1989. We already had about 40 to 50,000 troops on the ground there already because Southern Command was still there today. Southern Command is located in Doral, Florida, in the outskirts of Miami. A hundred thousand boots on the ground. So think about this. We have just finished. We, the United States, have just finished a cycle of over 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. 6,000. More than 6,000 dead soldiers, seamen, airmen, Marines, untold dozens of thousands of people with traumatic brain injury.

John Feeley: If you go to a mall inner, in the, on the outskirts of a city where, or a state where there is a large military base, you will see, literally the walking wounded. You will see young women, young men in wheelchairs, quadriplegics with traumatic brain injury, missing eyes. You will see the costs of what war in Afghanistan and Iraq meant and what did we get for it? Not a lot. And most Americans, to include and especially to include MAGA supporters, blamed Washington's Pentagon, State Department, national security authorities for getting us involved in a war in a place few could find on a map. And who fights our wars? I'll be very frank. They are not the Ivy League elites who are protesting against Gaza. They are the sons and daughters of MAGA voters. We have the largest recruitment of young people into our military forces.

John Feeley: Where I once served from seven states, and with the exception of California, they are all red states. So I sort of put it back on Donald Trump, who very wisely is again speaking with that fourth grader's diction and not being specific. He has said, I don't think troops are going to be involved. I don't think we need to do that. But all options are on the table. Military is on the table. I don't think he has the votes. Bottom line, I don't think he's got the MAGA support to start a new war in Panama and to keep 100,000 people in uniform there, patrolling, protecting, because again, Panama, they're not going to be able to resist our overwhelming military force. But wait till we start to see what we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, small guerrilla wars. The first casualty that comes back, who's killed.

John Feeley: This is what triggered 1989, for goodness sakes, when they started to attack us uniformed service members. Manuel Antonio Noriega declared a state of war on the United States and killed a young soldier, Zack Hernández. That's the sort of thing that I think even Donald Trump is capable of understanding. And he has said in his inaugural speech, I want to be known as the peacemaker. I think, I think, and this is not to give him credit, but I Think in a kind of Mafia boss way. He understands that war is bad for business. You don't want to be fighting all the time because you're not making money. And he looks at war as something that you threaten. And he's got the biggest, baddest war machine on the planet right now. So you threaten it, but you don't actually pull that trigger.

Richard McColl: Very interesting. And on the other side, I feel that President Mulino in Panama has been acting very pragmatically towards Marco Rubio and Donald Trump.

John Feeley: You know, I think that Mulino, perhaps inadvertently, is writing the manual on how you deal with this guy. I think. I think there are a lot of leaders throughout Latin America that are sort of sitting there taking notes in the sense that he has said what he's had to say. Just like Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico. Right. The Panama Canal is not for sale. The Panama Canal is not going to be transferred out of Panamanian sovereign control. He has to say that. He has said that repeatedly. But what hasn't he done? He hasn't fought Donald Trump on Donald Trump's preferred battleground, which is in social media. He's issued a couple of statements. He's made a couple of statements. They're usually in response. But, you know, there have been a couple of times where Trump has made some statements and Mulino has chosen to be quiet.

John Feeley: Why? Because back channel there is furious negotiating going on, and the Panamanians are figuring out a way to placate Trump, let him claim victory and not lose sovereign control. That, I think, is a very pragmatic. And, you know, I've said this before, and a couple of friends of mine always sort of laugh at me when I say it. But, you know, you want to figure this out, go back to Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War. The great lesson out of Peloponnesian War is the Melian Dialogue. And I'm not going to go into the whole long thing, but it is a really fascinating vision where Athenian generals showed up on this prosperous little island one day and said, hey, you guys weren't paying tribute onto Sparta. Guess what? We're in charge now. You're going to pay tribute.

John Feeley: Think Tony Soprano shaking down a butcher, you know, and the Melians have all these great arguments why, no, it's not in your interest for us to pay tribute. Because that way, see, we can deliver you the goods at a cheaper price. And they make all these great economic arguments. And the Athenians are like, no, I don't think you're hearing Me, you're going to start paying tribute tomorrow. And so the dialogues end. The Athenians go away, they don't pay tribute. The next day, the Athenians show up, they kill all the men, they rape all the women, they throw the kids in the sea. And from that 2500 year old Thucydides lesson, we get the famous dictum, the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must suffer. And that's what's happening here.

John Feeley: So I think, I don't know if José Raúl Mulino has read Thucydides, but he's clearly internalized the lesson and he knows that he can't fight fire with fire because he ain't got no fire. He doesn't have a big lighter. But what does he have? He has a way to allow Donald Trump to claim victory by investigating the Hutchinson contract extensions in 2021, where it's almost undeniable there was money passed under the table. I will allow his control, the equivalent of their sort of, you know, government watchdog to determine that. But that's pretty much the rumor on the streets in Panama, a couple guys got paid off and in 2021, instead of going to a, an open concession bid the way it had been done in 1997 for 25 years when Hutchinson won the concession. Right. Because ports are big infrastructure.

John Feeley: You don't do this on a year by year basis. This isn't like renting a two bedroom apartment. So what they do is they don't put it up and they just do an amendment to the contract. And there is a case right now in Panamanian courts that says that's unconstitutional. That violated the organic law of the ACP. It violated Panamanian law, contractual law. I'm not the expert on this, so I'll wait and see what happens. But that's Mulino's solution. We're going to get rid of Hutchinson by showing there were irregularities in the extension of that contract. Trump comes back and says, no, that's not good enough because that's going to take too long.

John Feeley: And then, as we now know, as has been reported in the press, Larry Fink of BlackRock puts together a three company consortium, including BlackRock, world's largest private equity fund, a company out of Switzerland that also invests. It's a fund that invests infrastructure called TiL. And then, very importantly, guys who actually know something about running a port, MSC Mediterranean Shipping company. And so they announced, and I guess it's been about two weeks now, they announced for $23.33 billion they announced that they are going to purchase from CK Hutchison the concession for the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal and, oh, by the way, ports around the world to include Felixstowe in Suffolk, England, to include ports that Hutchinson. They basically divest themselves of their port business, except for the ports in Hong Kong and mainland China. And this is, I believe, pretty darn elegant solution.

John Feeley: Now, whether Mulino and Trump both got lucky, I don't know. But remember Jack Nicklaus, the famous golfer, once said, I'd rather be lucky than good any day in a week.

Richard McColl: I think, yes, it does seem to be coming up a lot that not engaging with Trump on social media seems to be the way forward. A lesson perhaps learned by President Petro here in Colombia a few weeks ago in January. But let's not go into that. I. Ambassador JOHN it has been incredible listening to your insights and your profound knowledge of what's going on in Panama and, of course, putting into the context with the current US political arena. And I mean, it must have been so hard to have left Panama in 2018, because where everything I've read is, it shows you had a truly profound affection for the people and for the country in 2018. You brought it to a close. Political differences, I believe. Perhaps you, perhaps you could tell us how that happened.

John Feeley: Yeah, sure. My decision to retire from my professional career as a diplomat, as a career diplomat, an apolitical diplomat. And what that means is, didn't mean that I don't have political leanings. Every human being has their political leanings. But when you join the Foreign Service, you literally sign an oath that says that you will implement the president's policies wherever you are and whatever billet you may be serving to the very best of your ability, and that even if you disagree with them, you have, we do have internal dissent channels that have been used over years, abused as well. And I'd always been able to do it. I'd always. There were policies I didn't like. I thought our Cuba policy was ridiculous and anachronistic, just throwback that was dominated by a small cadre of very dedicated congresspeople in the United States.

John Feeley: But I never questioned their, the motives behind their desired end state, the strategic tactics that they employed, sanctioning diplomatic isolation in Cuba, cutting off all ties, travel restrictions. After 60 years, my entire life, basically, I thought they were counterproductive to continue because. What's that great. You know, I think it's a Ionesco or a Sartre line. The definition. No, maybe It's Einstein. Definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting a different outcome.

Richard McColl: I think it's Einstein.

John Feeley: Maybe Einstein, I don't know. I'm certainly not Einstein. But I can quote him on occasion when it serves my purpose. Kind of like C.S. Lewis once said, the devil can quote square scripture for his own purpose in any event, so. But I, but I never thought that any Republican president, or even the assistant secretaries and secretaries of state who served Republican presidents during my lifetime ever had anything other than a genuine desire to see the Cuban people exercise their right to self determination, hold elections, be reincorporated into democratic community and nations begin to trade again. I just fundamentally disagreed with their tactics. And then conversely, I fundamentally agreed with President Obama's tactic. Didn't mean that were coddling the Castros or Miguel Díaz-Canel or anything like that.

John Feeley: It just meant were using a different tactic, the tactic of engagement, vice, isolation to get what we wanted, which is what foreign policy is all about, getting the other guys to do what you want. In the case of Donald Trump and my own career, my decision to resign and end my career had absolutely nothing to do with Panama. It had to do with my personal and unstated rejection of his campaign rhetoric against migrants. I'd been privileged to spend seven years, almost seven years of my career in two different stays in Mexico. I didn't like the way he talked about migrants. I myself am from migrant stock. My grandparents were immigrants from Italy and Ireland and you know, James Joyce's floor sweepings of Europe in New York, right?

John Feeley: They all meet in the Catholic church and a couple generations later I pop out and I'm nothing more or less than a guy who got on escalators of a advancement. I was privileged. I had, you know, relatively dysfunctional functional family. I got in a decent education and in two generations from a migrant, people who did manual labor, people who then second generation became cops and firemen. You get an American ambassador. That's really rare as a socio cultural experiment. If you look around the world and I buy into it, I still to this day buy into it. Although I know that the, that sort of American dream stuff is very tattered and I get it. But my issue had to do with a culminating issue.

John Feeley: It wasn't one thing, but it was a riot in August of 2017 in the city of Charlottesville where self professed neo Nazis and white supremacists went to protest in something called the Unite the Right rally. And tragically, a self professed American Nazi ran his car purposely into a large crowd of counter protesters, tragically killed a young woman. And when asked about the incident, President Trump in his first administration said there were good people or fine people on both sides. And I know that the spin machine from Jason Miller and Steve Bannon said, well, it's not what he really said. No, he did, because you can't deny what you hear. And I realized at that point, and it actually came at a very uncomfortable moment the day he said that I was at some public event, kissing a baby or cutting a ribbon or doing.

John Feeley: Doing the kind of stuff ambassadors do. And. And, you know, the press asked me what did the president mean when he said there were fine people on both sides. And really, for the first time in my career, I didn't have a talking point. I didn't have anything I could fastly fall back on to dodge. And I recall saying something totally inane like, you know, I believe the President's words speak for themselves. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. You know, exit stage right. And I went home and I made the decision. So I left because I have, and to this day, I still have fundamental values, differences with President Trump. And, yeah, it was very hard because I loved what I did. I had.

John Feeley: One of the great blessings of my life is that I actually did something I was semi competent at, and I had marvelous colleagues. I had. My team in Panama was, you know, kind of like going back to the Mafia reference, you know, on. But I was the good Mafia boss, I'd like to think. You know, I had assembled my crew, were doing lots of stuff, and I just had some great people that I. That I had working with me, and. And it was very difficult to leave.

Richard McColl: Was certainly Panama's loss as well, you leaving? Well, I don't know.

John Feeley: I don't know. I got to be honest, there were some things I had to do that makes me. And I'm very conscious of this in Panama. I have a. I have a bit of a bifurcated reputation. I think there are genuinely some people who appreciated the work that I tried to do, mostly to deepen our friendship, to demystify the American ambassadors, pro consul kind of thing. But, you know, I was still the American ambassador, and I was disciplined, that I implemented a couple of policies, in particular the Waked OFAC sanctions, which were highly unpopular. I, you know, I make light of it, but it was actually pretty serious at the time.

John Feeley: You know, I got burned in effigy a bunch of times outside the gate, which is a strange thing to have happen because first thing you do is you look out at the effigy and you're like, that doesn't look like me. No, they mean some other white guy sitting inside this building. But no. So it's, I don't know if it was Panama's loss. I will say it was certainly my loss. And as a private citizen now, it is one of the great pleasures. I have to go back and hang out with my friends in Panama because like most countries like Colombia, like Mexico, there's just such an amazing cultural vibrancy in Latin America that as a New York born and bred raised American, I just find like catnip. I love it.

Richard McColl: Well, wonderful. What a way to, what a way to end this conversation. It has been a real pleasure speaking to you, Ambassador John Feeley up there in Washington, D.C. i've been, well, speechless most of this conversation. Just wanting to listen to you because I felt letting you run with it was giving us so much more information and insight into what is going on right now, this political arena that's not inside the mind of President Trump, but indeed what his government may end up doing and what his government may up may be thinking at the moment, it seems very. Well, it's nice to know that President Mulino there in Panama is right, is maybe writing the rulebook, the playbook, as you said. I think that's probably the best way of putting it. So let me take this moment to say thank you so much.

Richard McColl: We've been talking to former Ambassador to Panama, US Ambassador to Panama, John Feeley, distinguished 28-year State Department career, former, I mean a diplomat, ambassador, a senior of Western Hemisphere official and expert in this Western Hemisphere affairs, officer, helicopter pilot in the Marine Corps.

John Feeley: All right, I might interrupt. You got to stop.

Outro: You’ve been listening to The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.LatinNews.com.