Bolivia

Guatemala’s protest movement goes national; Latin America’s meddlesome ex-presidents; U.S. border crisis and geopolitical turmoil are taking the pressure off Maduro.

Latin America’s anti-incumbency wave rolls through Argentina; Governments look to lithium to spur industrialization; assassination of Ecuadorian presidential candidate reveals state capture by organized crime.

The Amazon Rainforest plays a critical role in global climate health, but accelerating deforestation continues to raise alarm. How are the region’s governments responding?

Exit polls indicate socialist candidate Luis Arce will become Bolivia’s next president. The peaceful vote signaled an end to a year of electoral uncertainty, but the victor will now confront social upheaval and economic hardship intensified by the coronavirus pandemic. 

Interim President Jeanine Áñez’s decision to postpone Bolivia’s election twice has sparked protests, revealing the threat COVID-19 poses to democratic governance worldwide.

Election fraud allegations have prompted President Evo Morales to resign with no clear successor, plunging Bolivia into political uncertainty.

This is a guest blog post by Dr. Richard Messick, an anticorruption specialist. It is based on a talk he gave at a CFR roundtable on March 24 hosted by Matthew M. Taylor, adjunct senior fellow for Latin America Studies. One of the most promising developments in U.S. foreign relations is the all-out war on corruption being waged across Latin America. From “Operation Car Wash” in Brazil to investigations of presidential wrongdoing in Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Panama, across the region independent, tenacious prosecutors and investigators are out to end the massive theft of state resources that for so long has hobbled political development and throttled economic growth. The United States should be cheering for these corruption warriors, for we have much to gain if they succeed. Less corruption translates into more stable, reliable political allies; it means faster, more equitable growth and that means shared prosperity and less northward migration. Finally, less corruption in government will offer U.S. firms new opportunities. Think what the end of corruption in Brazilian public works would mean for U.S. engineering and construction companies. But given the stakes in Latin America’s corruption war, the United States should be doing more than cheering from the sidelines. It should be doing everything it can—without infringing the sovereignty or sensibilities of Latin American neighbors—to see its corruption warriors succeed. Here are five things to start with: Fund the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs (OIA) budget request. If a Latin American investigator learns an official he or she is investigating has a bank account in the United States, the investigator can ask the OIA to obtain the account’s records to see if corrupt money is being parked there. But the office had at latest count more than 11,000 requests pending and was receiving 3,000 plus new ones each year. Unless the investigator gets lucky and the request finds its way to the top of the pile, he or she will be long retired, and the suspect long dead, before the OIA responds. For years the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked Congress, without success, for funds to hire more staff to speed requests. This year it has requested $10 millionto add 97 positions, 54 attorneys, and 43 paralegals and support staff. Isn’t it time Congress said yes to this modest request? Name a single focal point to help Latin American law enforcement agencies. When looking to the United States for assistance, Latin Americans face a bewildering number of agencies, bureaus, and offices: the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Secret Service, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the 92 U.S. Attorney’s offices, and these are just at the federal level. There are hundreds, if not thousands, at the state and local level. It takes experienced U.S. law enforcement officers years to figure out where to go for information. Why not make it easy for Latin Americans who don’t have years to decipher the complex and bewildering U.S. system? Create one office, staffed with personnel fluent in Spanish and Portuguese from across the federal and state governments who can serve as a “one-stop shop” for Latin American police, prosecutors, and judges needing information from their U.S. counterparts. Create an interagency task force to work with Latin American counterparts to target corrupt Latin American officials. Whenever a corrupt Latin American official uses the proceeds of a bribe to buy an apartment in Miami or open a bank account in Houston or Los Angeles, he or she has violated U.S. antimoney laundering laws. Depending upon whether they traveled in the United States, used U.S. mail services, or U.S. email servers, they may have also committed wire fraud or violated the laws forbidding travel across state lines in furtherance of fraud or corruption. A task force of U.S. personnel drawn from ICE’s Foreign Corruption Investigations Group, DOJ’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) unit, the U.S. Attorney’s offices in Miami, the FBI’s international corruption squads, DOJ’s kleptocracy unit, and other relevant agencies should be available to work with Latin American counterparts on possible violations of U.S. law committed by corrupt Latin American officials. Greater intelligence sharing and joint investigations in association with Latin American anticorruption agencies and prosecutors would enhance both regional and domestic efforts against corruption and ill-gotten gains. Enact the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act. Introduced by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and colleagues in the House of Representatives and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and colleagues in the Senate, this would end the ability of corrupt officials, as well as drug traffickers and other unsavory individuals, to keep investigators from learning how much money they have and where it came from. Under current law, a corrupt Latin American official can open a bank account in the United States in the name of a Delaware limited liability company. He or she can own the company anonymously, that is, without anyone, in Delaware or elsewhere, knowing his or her identity. If Global Witness’ expose of U.S. lawyers counseling an investigator posing as the agent of a corrupt minister weren’t enough to persuade lawmakers of the need for the legislation, the April 3 revelations of massive abuses in the use of anonymous shell companies by the International Center for Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) should lay to rest any lingering doubts about how critical this legislation is to the fight against not only corruption but terrorism and organized crime as well. End secrecy in the U.S. real estate market. Thanks to gaps in U.S. antimoney laundering regulations, corrupt officials in Latin America (and elsewhere) can use the proceeds of corruption to secretly buy property in the United States. Requiring real estate agents, title insurance companies, and others involved in the purchase and sale of condominiums, houses, and other U.S. real estate to comply with the antimoney laundering rules will expose attempts by corrupt officials to create a “safe haven” for when they leave office. The U.S. Department of the Treasury took a small, first step in this direction in January when it issued an emergency order (in response to a New York Times’ expose) requiring title insurance companies in Manhattan and Miami-Dade Country to apply antimoney laundering rules to all real estate purchases over $1 million in cash for the next six months. The rule should be made permanent and extended to all regions. Since 2002 the Treasury Department has given real estate brokers a “temporary” exemption from the antimoney laundering rules while it studies their situation. The time for study is over. The Treasury Department should follow the European Union’s lead and require brokers to comply with the antimoney laundering rules. The burden of ridding Latin America of the corruption that infests so many of its governments remains first and foremost the responsibility of its governments. But the United States has much to gain if they succeed, and there is much it can do to help them. The steps above are a modest beginning; it should move on them expeditiously. This piece also appeared on the Global Anticorruption Blog.

Earlier this week, Salvadorans headed to the polls to cast their ballots in a presidential runoff election, since on February 2 the candidates failed to reach the 50 percent threshold to avoid a second round. In the runoff’s lead up, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a former guerrilla commander and the current vice president from the ruling party, looked poised for an easy win over his closest opponent Norman Quijano from the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). But with the final ballot count separating the candidates by some 0.2 percent of the votes and with allegations of fraud, it seems that the protests and debates surrounding this election are far from over. The Costa Rican elections were also held on February 2 and similarly, were pushed into a run-off scheduled for April 6. With second place finisher Johnny Araya’s (from the ruling National Liberation Party) recent exit from the race, Leftist Luis Guillermo Solís’s (from the Citizens’ Action Party) victory is all but assured. While neither of these two elections are yet resolved, there are others on the horizon in Latin America. On May 4, Panamanians will elect their president for the next five years. Current President Ricardo Martinelli’s time in office is coming to an end, at least for now, given Panama’s restriction that presidents must wait two terms before trying again for office. Though Martinelli and his conservative Democratic Change (CD) party led Panama through a period of extraordinary 8 percent (on average) economic growth and declining crime, the country’s stark income inequality (which I talk about in this blog post) combined with shifting political alliances, could provide headwinds for the party’s candidate José Domingo Arias. On May 25, Colombians will head to the ballot boxes to decide whether or not to reelect President Juan Manuel Santos. As of now, Santos’s odds look fairly good—garnering 26 percent of the vote in a hypothetical “next-day election” scenario; 19 percent more than his nearest rival, Óscar Iván Zuluaga of the Democratic Center party, 18 percent more than Enrique Peñalosa of the Green Alliance party, and far above the more recent entrant to the race, Marta Lucía Ramírez from the Conservative Party. Santos  is staking much of his campaign on the peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (even as Colombians become increasingly pessimistic over its success), and he will also face tough questioning over his economic policies and subsequent handling of rural protests (that pushed his approval ratings down to 25 percent last August). Still, his popular support has rebounded—up to near 40 percent in March—and this momentum, without a strong challenger, will likely take him back to the Casa de Nariño. October brings presidential elections in Brazil, Bolivia, and Uruguay. In Brazil, most expect President Dilma Rousseff of the Worker’s Party (PT) to win reelection against Aecio Neves (from the PSBD party) and Eduardo Campos (from the PSB party). Still, with economic growth faltering, worries about the coming World Cup (with latest reports questioning both the sporting event’s expense and the country’s readiness), and still vivid memories of last summer’s widespread protests, a unified challenger could make the race interesting. That same day Bolivians will also be casting their ballots. Evo Morales is up for his third term, after a constitutional amendment in 2009 allowed for reelection and a 2013 constitutional court decision decided that his first term did not count toward the two term limit (since it began before the new Constitution). With twelve parties and a crowded race, no serious challenger has emerged to take on Morales. Still, questions remain whether the president’s Movement for Socialism (MAS) can gain an absolute majority—potentially frustrating any major policy changes. Uruguay’s famously spartan President Jose Mujica will bid goodbye to a presidential palace in which he never lived. The frontrunner for his position is former president and Broad Front colleague Tabaré Vázquez, who left office in 2010 with an approval rating of over 60 percent. A Vázquez victory would mean continuity for the country and a continuation of Mujica’s policies, such as the country’s marijuana regulation and renewable energy promotion.