No remittances without representation!

The June 8 news article "In Guatemala, Harris offers stern words on corruption" reported extensively on Vice President Harris's travel to Guatemala, where the United States, by offering financial cooperation, hopes to reduce the flow of illegal migration from Central America and stimulate better behaviors, e.g., less corruption.

Though those financial contributions are indeed important, they are peanuts when compared with the remittances sent home by the migrant workers. The reality is that what the migrant workers from many Central American nations earn abroad is often much more than the gross domestic product of their home countries. The sad reality is that their remittances help to keep in power those ineffective governments that made them immigrate and that keeps them from going home.

If the United States really wants to help, then look to politically empower as much as possible those migrants in their homelands. For instance, should they not have an important direct representation in their respective congresses? No remittances without representation!

http://theamericanunion.blogspot.com/

A letter published in the Washington Post 

About Zamorano and the use of country systems

I posted this because today World Economic Forum @wef posted a tweet that said "Denmark is building a school where students have to grow their own food". I already saw such a school, way back, in Honduras, in Zamorano.

This is a copy of an informal memo sent to my colleagues Executive Directors at the World Bank in 2004, as extracted from my Voice and Noise of 2006.

About Zamorano and the use of country systems

Dear colleagues,

Traveling in Honduras recently, I heard on the radio the old rock band Enanitos Verdes singing about having to run the risk of getting up, in order to keep on falling, and it reminded me of our recent discussions about “use-of-country-systems” where I gave you my mumbo jumbo about having to let them go, since this is the only way they could learn how to ride a bike. 

I was on my way to visit the agricultural school Zamorano, cajoled (with no major effort needed) by one of its graduates—a friend of ours, Jorge Wong, and little did I know I was heading into true learning-how-to-bike land. The motto of this most amazing school is “learning while doing” and … Boy, do they! Boy, do they learn!

In Zamorano, kids have a school year of 11 months and are rigorously awakened every morning at 5 am—hellish but I tell you that it has been a long time since I’ve seen such a group of enthusiastic, happy, and feeling-good-about-the-future young faces. There are about eight hundred boarding students, of whom more than two hundred are girls. They come from many Latin American countries, from all backgrounds, and any differences are neutralized with education, companionship, and uniforms. 

Along with their formal academic classroom studies, the kids, from seventeen to twenty-three, are taught about every imaginable (and also some you-do-not-want-to-imagine) agricultural and farm chore there is, by being handled full responsibility for doing them. They grow crops, milk cows and in the industrial installations where they produce cheeses, juices, marmalades, sausages, and much more that they sell in Honduran supermarkets, the managers are the students from senior grades and the workers their younger friends. 

And Zamorano goes way beyond teaching knowledge. When I heard some kids explain to me about the biologic pesticides they develop and market all over Central America, could it be to make it the “Green Subcontinent”? It became clear that besides algebra, they must have gotten lectures on confidence building, communication skills, and character formation too.

Although I was told that in the dry season the landscape changes somewhat, El Zamorano as I saw it lay snuggled in a beautiful valley, where it has about 10,000 acres of land and great and functional facilities. This Zamorano seed effort is more than ready for some heavy-duty scaling-up, and they have already started doing so with some interesting and substantial extension programs, reaching out to their neighboring communities. Envying their tremendous educational expertise, I am already on my knees, begging them to branch out into my favorite Central American growth program—you bet, those who know me: educating doctors specialized in geriatric ailments and bilingual nurses, certified by schools and health authorities of developed nations.

In the last couple of weeks we have been reminded of some of Ronald Reagan’s “one-liners” (slogans), among them, “trust but verify.” It is clear that we face serious challenges when monitoring or verifying the results of our projects, but, frankly, after having been in Zamorano, I am convinced that it is exactly in the trusting department where we really are in the backwaters. We need not worry, though. Zamorano was founded three years before the World Bank, and so we still have a chance to catch up. 

Back in D.C., on my radio, Joan Manuel Serrat was singing about Africa—something about the world not letting it go, yet not holding onto it.

Here you find Wikipedia information on Zamorano

I suggest you scroll down and read: Enterprises 

The OAS botched it!

The OAS botched and is making much more serious the already Honduras case. Should they be sued for irresponsible behavior?

Amazingly, knowing that there was an open confrontation between the Executive Power, the Congress and the Supreme Justice in Honduras, the OAS sided with Zelaya without even giving the other powers a fair hearing.

In order to understand why this re-election issue is almost an existential issue in Honduras let me point to article 42 in their Constitution that though a bit crazy nonetheless clearly states that you will “lose your conditions as a citizen if inciting, promoting or supporting continuance or the re-election of the President.”

Honduras Constitution Art 42 you “lose your conditions as a citizen if inciting, promoting or supporting the re-election of the President.”

In a democracy is a congressman less elected than a president?

In a democracy is the Supreme Court less is than a president?

It is truly sad to see international organizations circling two school boys shouting for two of them to fight till death, and enjoying it

After Zelaya, how many consecutive elections must be held in Honduras before a new Government is legitimate?

Place us next to something profitable …

I recently visited a country here in the Americas where I flew over a valley that appeared very fertile—a vast, thick green carpet beautifully woven by plantations of African palm trees. I was enthusiastic, thinking that at last I had discovered development in action—that is, until I landed.

The contrast between the wonderful view from above and the misery below screamed out that the African palm, far from being a motor of development, could be the mother of all poverty traps. By contrast, take, for example, a coffee bean. It may be worth very little in the field, but at least it lets us dream of the chance of capturing a bit more of the value suggested by the fact that some people pay four dollars or more for a cup of it at Starbucks. But in the case of the African palm, no dreams seem possible. Just for a starter, its saturated fats are considered undesirable.

In this sense, the difficult cultivation of the African palm would seem to be doomed to mark the borderline of lowest overall marginal cost, that is, where the least is paid to farmers for their labor. Palm farming now has such a small margin of profit that it does not even cover the costs of registering a union, and so, Mr. Planner, just in case, don’t place us next to the palms, please place us next to something profitable.

When analyzing agricultural margins of profit, we must not forget that in most cases in which farmers’ margins allow them to maintain a decent standard of living, this is due to some kind of subsidy, protection, or market interference. So, of course, if we’re offered the chance to grow African palms in France, we might just consider it. 

It is one thing to be a marginal agricultural producer and it is another very different thing to be an agricultural margin capturer. In a supermarket in the United States I came across 11 kinds of eggs, ranging in price from 95 cents a dozen for caged, industrial production to $3.99 a dozen for eggs certified as coming from organically-fed free-range hens.

For countries whose hopes focus on Cancun and on agricultural opening, I hope that the above leads them to stop, think, and realize that opening in itself does not work miracles if farmers do not also receive other kinds of aid, such as those offered in many developed countries.

Friends, as I have said many times before, if we let globalization simply pursue the lowest marginal cost of labor, then Great Bad Deflation will inevitably come.

From El Universal, Caracas, July 2003

And as published in Voice and Noise of 2006

A comparative look at Venezuela, Honduras

I have just returned from a few days of work in Honduras, which as everyone knows has been ravaged by Hurricane Mitch. During this trip I had the chance to jot down some observations about our own country.

On volunteerism: I saw young men and women of the Peace Corp arriving at the airport in Honduras, ready to cooperate as best they can by helping poor communities combat hunger, educate their children and fight AIDS among many other things. These young North Americans, all graduated, will work in a strange country for two years without remuneration of any sort and under immensely difficult circumstances given the comfort they leave behind at home.

In Venezuela, on the other hand, we have had to set aside a budget of Bs. 2.4 billion to entice our local “volunteers” to come forward to supervise what is to be an event of immense import for our country, i.e. the referendum calling for its own Constituent Assembly. 

When I think that our heroes of independence sacrificed their lives I can’t help but feel that it is a sad state of affairs when today we cannot even contemplate giving away one free day for our country.

On the evidence of crisis: I had the opportunity to visit many public offices in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in which I found that most officials had to work in truly uncomfortable conditions in any small space or cubby-hole they we able to find.

God knows it is not my purpose to compare a crisis such as the financial one we are going through in Venezuela with the type of emergency, misery and loss of human life that nature has saddled Honduras with. In spite of this, I cannot help observing that in Venezuela, in which the financial crisis also created economic conditions that in turn created hunger (much of it due to the mishandling of the situation), many of the public offices today work in brand new offices which were recuperated during and after the collapse of the banking system, like the spoils of a war.

On information about the administration of government: I also had the chance of reviewing the Management Information System which allows Minister Manuel Zelaya Rosales, President of the Honduran Social Investment Fund (FIHS) to have exact information, day after day, about all the projects being undertaken by his office.

According to the information I have, the portable computer carried by the Minister wherever he goes contains information on at least 1,000 projects, schools, bridges, etc. that are currently under construction. 

On top of this, there is historical information about over 5,000 finished projects. 

The cost of a similar system is not very high today. Since the capture of the original information occurs only once and the system serves multiple purposes such as control, accounting, statistics, etc., it also has the potential of providing great operational savings.

In contrast, I recently read in the local press in Venezuela that it is impossible to find actual and up to date information as to how many employees are on the public payroll today. 

Having seen how the FIHS system works in Honduras, the only thing I can think of is that this level of information should be absolutely obligatory in any democracy worth its salt. One of the principal innovations our Constituent Assembly should produce is the right to total and instantaneous information about our government, something technically quite feasible today.

On gas stations: One clear coincidence between the two countries is the existence of a great number of sparkling new gasoline stations that offer, one way or another, to satisfy the consumers’ other needs. 

It is difficult for me to understand and accept that countries such as ours, with unattended basic needs such as food, education, health, transportation, water, electricity, etc., can develop models of economic development which offer this type of infrastructure as “evidence” of their success and potential.

I can perfectly understand that some of the up-scale neighborhoods have luxury gasoline stations for those who can and wish to pay more for service. Nobody can convince me that the recent epidemic in investment in gasoline stations responds to local free market decisions. 

“Someone’s” hand is manipulating the market in the name of free markets, and that must and will be paid for. For the moment, it seems that PDVSA will have to pay a part of the requirements for subsidies it has itself created.