Brazil and Spain Express Concern over Increase of U.S. Troops in Colombia

Brazil and Spain Express Concern Over Increase of U.S. Troops in Colombia
The recent agreement to put more U.S. troops in Colombia is raising concerns beyond just Venezuela:

Spain’s Miguel Angel Moratinos and Brazilian counterpart Celso Amorim expressed their reservations about the effects the military program could have at a press conference within the framework of the Spanish official’s visit to Brazil.

The two ministers also called for dialogue between Venezuela and Colombia and agreed to work “to avoid a spiral of misunderstandings” between those two countries.

This is a good diplomatic move that gives greater weight to regional concerns than Chavez's opposition alone could ever achieve. However, I don't know how much it will actually accomplish.

To be clear, I think the U.S.'s decision is a bad one, for a number of reasons. The "war on drugs" is pretty ineffective in its focus on the supply side rather than the demand side, and basing more troops in Colombia isn't going to solve this problem. What is more, it is clear that this will add to regional suspicion and tension in South America. While Obama's diplomatic efforts in the hemisphere thus far have been admirable in comparison to past administrations (dating to about, oh, 1848), the presence of more U.S. troops on any country's soil is a legitimate cause for concern, regardless of who is president of the United States. For these reasons, I think it's important that Brazil and Spain, who are far from antagonistic towards the U.S., raise these concerns. Again, I'm not sure it will result in any real change in the decision to move troops to Colombia when the Ecuadoran bases close (rather than, you know, having the troops actually come back to the U.S. when the bases close). But Brazil's and Spain's questions and objections should at least make the U.S. stop and take notice, and give the opposition to such a move much greater legitimacy than Chavez's opposition alone could accomplish.

And, on a side note, can we please stop referring to Daniel Ortega as part of some "leftist" "alliance?" Firstly, as I've noted before, these notions in the American media of "leftist alliances" in Latin America are false and lazy. Just because countries are friendly with each other, or from relatively similar political ideologies, does not mean they are some new axis, and American journalists' inability to look at Latin America with a view that is more complex than "leftist" is just shameful. Secondly, and more directly related to Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega has hardly been "leftist." If you want to refer to the Sandinistas as leftist, fine - it's still probably a lazy categorization on the part of the media, but at least it's fairly accurate. But when the actual major "leftist" political group in a country disowns the president as not representing leftist goals, ideals, and missions, could we at least respect that country's political spectrum, and agree that just because a leader isn't as "conservative" as America would like does not mean he/she's some radical "leftist" political force?

The U.S.....beat Spain? In SOCCER?

It's true.

Others commented on the sheer miracle of the U.S. even getting to the semi-finals of the Confederations cup (to summarize: after losing 3-0 to Brazil and 3-1 to Italy, they were able to go on only after Egypt beat Italy 1-0, and the U.S. beat Egypt 3-0, and Brazil beat Italy 3-0 ). But this victory outdoes even that previous unlikelihood. Spain hadn't lost in thirty-five international matches straight, tying the all-time record. This game was virtually a foregone conclusion in Spain's favor. Sure, they were due for a loss sooner or later, but the way the U.S. had played, it didn't seem like it would be this game.

But the U.S. played ridiculously well, and Spain did not. Sure, we didn't have as many shots, but our defense was lights out, and when we shot the ball, it went in the goal. It's as simple as that.

I don't want to bet against the U.S. in the final (most likely against Brazil, though at this point, who knows?), but the loss of Bradley at midfield for the next game due to a (ridiculous) red-card (though he may have merited yellow, which would have forced him to miss the next game anyways) will really cause problems. Plus, Brazil is just really, really good. But so is Spain, and look how that turned out.

If only the U.S. could play like they did against Egypt and Spain all the time....

Greatest. Sports Promotion. Ever.

As great as the independent baseball leagues are is, this may be the greatest promo for game attendance ever. The Amoeiro Clube de Futbol [Soccer] in Spain has divided its field into 6000 parcels available for sale at 10 Euros per parcel. Amoeiro then releases Rubia, the cow (vaca) onto the field. Whichever parcel she ends up defecating on, the owner wins a prize, ranging from cars to travel packages to motorcycles to a 32-inch TV. So if the cow craps on your square, you win! Even better, the contest is poetically called "Caca de la Vaca" (Crap of the Cow), and the webpage even has an animated, mooing cow that craps, revealing what the prizes are. Awesome.

(Via Randy).

Growing Tensions over Spain's Treatment of Brazilians

In early March, tensions between Brazil and Spain flared up over tourism. It began with Spain's sudden refusal to admit 452 Brazilians into the country at Madrid's airport in February. Brazil has a system of reciprocity in terms of visas and tourism; hence, if you live in the U.S., you pay $110 for a tourist visa to Brazil because the U.S. makes Brazilians pay the same to try to obtain a tourist visa to the U.S.* (and if you don't like that, call your local congressman/woman and senator to complain about the U.S.'s policy). Since Spain had begun turning away Brazilian tourists, in early March, Brazil turned away 8 Spaniards for "irregular papers" (which appears to have been the case - Brazil has been trying to crack down on European sex tourism for some time, and part of that crackdown has been an insistence on having your papers in order. (And that's not to say the 8 Spaniards expelled were sex tourists.)

*(Even so, the reciprocity is not complete, because Americans applying for a tourist visa to Brazil are almost guaranteed to get it, and do not have to go through an interview. Brazilians, on the other hand, have to be interviewed at one of the American consulates in Brazil, and if you are refused the visa, you don't even get your $110 back).

Last week, Foreign Policy Blogs had a post up contextualizing the situation a bit more. I think its generally right about Brazil's historical acceptance of immigrants, and Brazilian emigration has been on the rise in the last 40 years or so. I think the one weakness in the post's article, though, is the implicit presumption that the Brazilians who Spain turned away were part of this wave of illegal immigrants. Many of those turned away from Spain in February were middle- and upper-middle class tourists and professionals who were traveling to Spain either for professional duties like international congresses, or to sightsee and escape Brazil during Carnaval (not everybody loves Carnaval, after all).

I understand that Spain may be struggling with illegal immigration, but that in no way excuses Spain's terrible treatment of those who were detained, where Brazilians were "'treated like dogs,' and complained of being held for several days in crowded rooms, receiving insults and bad treatment, or being left for hours without any information about their status, and without food and water or access to their luggage." Compared to this treatment of Brazilians, and the fact that Brazil politely and expediently turned away 8 (and not 452) Spaniards seems more than fair. If Spain really is concerned about illegal immigration, from Brazilians or anybody else, that's within its rights, but there are better and more productive ways to deal with the issue than to just turn away people en masse from the airports, which solves nothing and just leads to diplomatic tensions and travel boycotts from Brazil (I actually knew 2 people who cancelled their trips to Spain to boycott the treatment of Brazilians).

As the post points out, it is essential that both Brazil and Spain work together on this. Spain needs to deal with people more professionally and humanely, be they illegal immigrants or legal tourists. And the possibility of brain-drain as Brazil's talented scientists and businesspeople leave is a threat, though not as great as it was years ago, given how well Brazil's economy is doing and how the government is giving incentive to public university graduates to stay in Brazil.
Still, it's good that both sides sat down last week to start discussing this, and hopefully things will improve, particularly for those Brazilians traveling to Spain legally.

Dealing with Memorials to Franco in Spain

I'm not really sure what to make of this. At issue is a law Spain has passed that removes monuments to Francisco Franco.

On the one hand, I think it's undeniable that Francisco Franco was one of the worst criminals of the 20th century, at the same level as Jorge Videla or Augusto Pinochet. I fully agree with Paloma Aguilar, who said "seventy years after the civil war we cannot allow these monuments that perpetuate discrimination against the victims.’ ” Franco's regime was one of the most brutal of the 20th century, setting a paradigm for other dictators, from his bombing of Guernica to his execution of political prisoners to the nation-building monuments under attack. In the human-rights sense, I agree with Aguilar that such monuments are discriminatory against the victims.

However, the historian in me is far more ambivalent. Removing the memorials removes the public reminders that such a monster existed in the first place, and in some ways helps to forget exactly how horrible the Franco regime was. Without the daily reminders of his existence, the daily reminders of the brutality and repression disappear. As Michael Kimmelman says in the article, “Legislating monuments doesn’t rectify injustices of the past. It just fumbles around with the symbols of history."

While this is true, Kimmelman is ignoring a very important component of the "symbols of history" here. The monuments don't and never did mark some universally true aspect of "Spain" in symbolic forms. The existence of such monuments "fumbled around" with the "symbols of history" in the first place. After all, when the monuments were created, they were designed to celebrate Franco and the Nationalists and forget (or damn) the Republicans, appealing to one particular vision of what Spain's politics, culture, and nation should have been while erasing other, competing visions. As cliché and often wrong-headed the idea that "the victors write history" may be, at least in the case of the use of history in public space in Franco's Spain, that was the case, and they used these monuments to "fumble around" with the history of the Civil War and the Franco regime itself.

Yet the first half of Kimmelman's statement that "Legislating monuments doesn’t rectify injustices of the past" is still relevant here. So is Charles Powell's observation that "public declarations [against Franco] are one thing. In many villages where neighbors betrayed one another, and even husbands and wives don’t easily talk about the war, a common policy is still don’t ask, don’t tell.” Whether intentional or not, these suggestions in one way lend weight to those opposed to the law (be it because they support the Franco regime, or because they don't want the reminders of the atrocities to disappear). Getting rid of the monuments, resulting in one more way in which discussion of the Civil War and the Franco regime are silenced, won't make it easier for Spain to reconcile their past; it will just make it easier to forget everything.

One Spaniard in the article complains of being made to feel guilty for having "led our lives", and the article cites Powell again as saying, "National reconciliation really took place during the 1960s and ’70s, when Franco was still in power, through a natural process, not by government edict, but because of a collective feeling that the war had been horrible and that Spain had to move on."

Here, I think an important distinction needs to be made. I agree that the Spaniards reconciled the Civil War in the 1960s and 1970s, but I disagree with Powell's implication that this means they reconciled the Franco regime. I think in a large way Spain still struggles with the issue of the regime itself, and this battle over the monuments is a great example of this ongoing struggle, thirty-plus years after Franco's death.