Political Science 222
Political Science 222 Jim Mahon
Spring 2008 Stetson b22
Wed 10-noon
and by app’t.
(x2236)
THE UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA
This course examines the most important cultural and diplomatic divide in the Western Hemisphere. The first half is historical, covering the period from the early Spanish American independence movements through the end of the Cold War. While following a continuous narrative in our main text, we also learn in greater detail about particularly important events, diplomacy, and personalities. We take a historical approach in order to gain perspective on the post-Cold War period and on the world’s current strategic unipolarity, which has some precedent in the history of this hemisphere. The second half of the course focuses on current issues in hemispheric relations: the new challenge from governments of the Left, economic integration, the drug war, immigration, and border security. The format will vary. Classes in the first half will consist mainly of lectures; in the second half, discussion ought to be more extensive, and there are several in-class debates.
Requirements and Grading. In the first half you have a map quiz and write two short papers, with the second (4 pages), due just before break. In the second half there are four opportunities to write 3-page policy-focused papers (on the new left, economic integration, the drug war, and immigration/ border issues). Here you can choose either of two routes: a) to write two papers and take the regular final exam; or b) to write one paper, do a 12- to 14-page research paper (due the Tuesday of reading period), and take a short (1 hour) exam. The short exam is just the first section of the long one. It consists of ten identification questions selected from a list covering the entire course, passed out on the last day of class. For the long paper, a one-page outline/ bibliography is due on April 28; the only restrictions on the topic are that it relate to the themes of the course and that it not duplicate your work on a short paper.
Evaluation weights are as follows:
Map quiz: 5 percent;
First paper: 10 percent;
Mid-term paper: 15 percent;
3-page policy papers (a-2, b-1), short final exam (b), each: 15 percent;
Long paper (b), long final exam (a), each: 30 percent;
Attendance and participation: 10 percent.
Attendance is required and in the second half, your participation in discussions might be invited from time to time. Honor code guidelines can be found in the Student Handbook (136-37). Give credit for ideas you get from others and put marks around direct quotations; for course readings, short internal citations like this (Gleijeses, 234) are fine.
Readings. These required books and magazine issue are at Water Street Books:
Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States (Harvard, 1998);
Robert Holden and Eric Zolov, eds., Latin America and the United States:
A Documentary History (Oxford, 2000); and
Current History magazine, February 2008 issue.
There is also a packet, sold from the Political Science Department (g18), from 9am to noon and 1 to 4pm. The first part is available now and the rest will come out once enrollment is settled.
SCHEDULE
(* denotes in packet)
1/31 Introduction and overview
“Theories of World Politics,” from Charles Kegley and Eugene Wittkopf, World Politics: Trend and Transformation 10th ed. (Thomson Wadsworth, 2006), Chap. 2.*
Schoultz, Beneath the United States, preface.
The first reading is especially important for those who have not had PSCI 202 and is a useful refresher for those who have. The preface gives you Schoultz’s argument in a nutshell, and it will be useful for us as we evaluate his book later on.
I. A History of U.S.- Latin America Relations
2/4 Sister Republics vs. Manifest Destiny
Schoultz, Beneath the United States, chaps. 1-3.
“The Monroe Doctrine” and “The United States: An Inconceivable Extravaganza,” Documents 3 and 10 from Holden and Zolov.
Simón Bolívar, Address to the Angostura Congress, 15 Feb. 1819 (pp. 33-39 only); Letter to General Juan José Flores, 9 Nov. 1830; both from El Libertador: Writings of Simón Bolívar (Oxford, 2003).*
Before the country was half a century old, the US government faced the problem of what to do about the newly independent states that emerged from former Spanish and Portuguese territories to the south (and west). Out of this came the Monroe Doctrine, a defining moment in early US policy, but one that would become consequential only later. Schoultz emphasizes the condescension behind Manifest Destiny; still, there was also a strong current of idealistic opinion regarding our “sister republics.” By the time of the war with Mexico, condescension ruled the day. The readings from Bolívar show a bit of the mid- and late-career political thought of Spanish America’s most important figure. Both address the question of the appropriate system of government for the new republics (“America” here means Spanish America; in the Flores letter, the “north” is now Venezuela and the “south” is now Ecuador), where the main contests were between federalists and centralists, who also usually differed in the former being liberal republicans and the latter conservative royalists. (Bolívar moved from the former toward the latter by the end of his life.) Apart from their intrinsic interest as the record of a man of action wrestling with the problems of political philosophy, it’s also worth noting that these excerpts show Bolívar sounding similar themes to those articulated by the North Americans Schoultz cites.
2/7 Diverging Paths vs. Pan-Americanism
Schoultz, chaps. 4-5.
Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work (1993), chap. 6 (pp. 163-81 only). *
Stanley Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, “Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth Among New World Economies,” from How Latin America Fell Behind, Stephen Haber, ed. (Stanford, 1997).*
Within two generations of Latin American independence, it was clear that despite similar beginnings under republican constitutions (Brazil is the main exception here, until 1889), Latin American countries developed more slowly economically, with much less stable politics, than did the USA. A growing divergence of income and power then conditioned policy, as US governments came to see themselves as unquestioned leaders of the hemisphere and began to consider cultivating Latin Americans as allies. How should we explain the divergence? Although contemporaries had their own answers (Schoultz), the last two readings offer insights from recent research. Putnam, in a book that aims at a similar puzzle about Italy’s north and south, points to broad cultural factors such as civic engagement and interpersonal trust. Engerman and Sokoloff find a very different explanation by considering much of Latin America as similar to the slave states of the USA. The growing hemispheric economic and power divergence underlies the history and attitudes described by Schoultz.
2/11 The Significance of 1898 and the Panama Canal
Schoultz, chaps. 8-9.
Documents nos. 21, 23-29, and 35 from Holden and Zolov.
Cartoons from U.S. papers on Spain, Cuba, and intervention.*
Luis Martínez F., “Puerto Rico in the Whirlwind of 1898,” OAH Magazine of History 12:3 (Spring 1998).*
1898 is usually considered the watershed that marks the emergence of the USA as a great power. At the time, “great power” meant “imperial power,” but it is evident that the country did not embrace this role the same way in which European or Asian governments did. Realpolitik had a less prominent and idealism a more prominent role, at least in the public justifications of foreign policy. The documents show the mix of aims on Cuba, as well as the beginnings of a Latin American consciousness defining itself in opposition to the USA.
The Canal has been important not only to US commercial and strategic interests, but also—as a triumph of American skill, discipline, and innovation where others had clearly failed--to US national identity.
2/14 Occupations, Interventions, and Dollar Diplomacy
Schoultz, chaps. 10-12.
Documents nos. 39-42, 44, and 50 from Holden and Zolov.
Between the time of the “Roosevelt Corollary” and the “Good Neighbor,” US governments sent Marines and gunboats early and often to the Caribbean and Central America. They did so despite the fact that Republicans and Democrats usually disagreed fundamentally about what ought to justify military occupation. IR realists ascribe this historical pattern to continuities of strategic interest (mainly, defense of the Canal and worries about extra-hemispheric powers), while Schoultz points to pervasive negative attitudes among US policymakers toward Latin America. The documents offer some context for Schoultz’s claims.
2/18 Dictators and the Good Neighbor MAP QUIZ
Schoultz, chaps. 13-16.
Documents nos. 51, 53, 59, and 60 from Holden and Zolov.
As US governments became sensitive to the cost of Caribbean occupations to hemispheric relations, they moved toward what FDR would dub the “Good Neighbor Policy.” As Schoultz and other authors make clear, however, the shift was made more feasible by the rise of new dictators, often backed by US-trained national guards, and a willingness on the part of Washington to ignore their excesses. The documents include two short pieces by Carelton Beals, a critic of US policy from the left, as well as official statements that reflect a sense of the costs of armed intervention.
2/21 Looking Back (Hemispherically) and Forward (Globally)
First paper (3 pages, about 750 words) due at the start of class (1:10pm)
Max Boot, “The Case for American Empire,” Weekly Standard 10/15/2001.*
Joshua Micah Marshall, “Power Rangers,” The New Yorker Feb. 2, 2004 [web ed.].*
Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (2006), introduction and chapter 1 (but skip pp. 42-48).*
These readings suggest parallels between the dominance of the US in its hemisphere early in the 20th century and its dominance globally after 1989. The first article is the short version of Boot’s 2002 book making the imperialist argument. In a later review of books on empire and American power, Marshall raises issues about “hard” and “soft” power that might have seemed relevant to US policymakers in the early 20th century. He does not make the explicit parallel with Latin America, but Grandin (with a similar analytic focus) does.
2/25 The Cold War, I: Guatemala and Bolivia
Schoultz, chap. 17.
Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 (Princeton, 1991) [Chaps. 11 and 15 are more important than 1 and 14--packet includes all four chapters].*
Kenneth Lehman, “Revolutions and Attributions: Making Sense of Eisenhower Administration Policies in Bolivia and Guatemala,” Diplomatic History 21:2 (Spring 1997).*
The onset of the Cold War meant that the United States had to contend with a formidable and (before long) nuclear-armed power outside the hemisphere. Worries about the reliability of Latin American allies and their susceptibility to Communist takeover dominated policy toward the region. Having made pledges of non-intervention, however, the US government often sought to influence events by other means. Guatemala saw the most egregious—and widely criticized--example of covert US action in Latin America in the 1950’s, as the CIA recruited a corrupt dissident officer to oust an elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, who had alienated the country’s oligarchs, much of its armed forces, and the United Fruit Company. The Gleijeses book describes this in tragic terms, but it also argues that Arbenz was in fact a communist sympathizer. Similar reformist regimes in Bolivia and Costa Rica escaped Guatemala’s fate. The last article tries to explain why, concentrating on the former case.
2/28 The Cold War, II: How Did the U.S. Fail in Cuba?
Alan Luxenberg, “Did Eisenhower Push Castro into the Arms of the Soviets?” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 30:1 (Spring 1988).*
Luis E. Aguilar, Cuba 1933: Prologue to Revolution (Norton, 1972), Chap. 17.*
Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution (Oxford, 1994), chap. 21.*
Fidel Castro turned out to be the communist nightmare the US feared. But during his rise, not everybody saw him as a threat—due to his careful deception and tactical skills—and those who worried often assumed that the US would be able to contain, bribe, or topple him. We read three distinct accounts of the process. Luxenberg surveys the policy post-mortems and argues against the idea stated in the title. Aguilar’s chapter is the conclusion of a classic of Cuban political history, describing how Batista’s March 1952 coup left the field open for someone to take up the neglected agenda of 1933—that is, he tells a story of Cuban domestic politics. Paterson does find a US policy failure but also sees it as strongly conditioned by the presumptions that hegemonic powers bring to bear when dealing with small countries.
3/3 The Cold War, III: What to Do About Castro
Document no. 82 in Holden and Zolov.
Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars (Oxford, 2000), section III, especially chaps. 13-17 and 21-24.*
In October 1962, Fidel Castro was prepared to see Cuba immolated by nuclear war—and tens of millions of Americans (and, presumably, Soviets) also killed--in the name of defending Cuban sovereignty against a US invasion. How did we come to this pass? The document offers a benign view of Castro from the time. Freedman describes the Bay of Pigs (April 1961) and Missile Crises, their close relationship, and the aftermath.
3/6 The Cold War, IV: Preventing More Castro’s in Central America
Schoultz, chap. 18
Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, second ed. (Norton, 1993), pp. 225-61, 271-84, 289-310, and 325-53.*
Documents nos. 108, 109, and 114 in Holden and Zolov.
The Cuban Revolution inspired many on the left in Latin America to take up arms. They were convinced that socialism was best and that a democratic path to power was blocked by local elites, the armed forces, and the USA. They also took from the Cuban experience the idea (expressed most purely in Che Guevara’s writings, as a doctrine later dubbed “foquismo,” see Document no. 90 in Holden and Zolov for a sample) that a small number of brave and committed revolutionaries could inspire mass rebellion. Others looked to China or Vietnam as operational models. Whatever the case, the key problem for US policy became how best to block them—by military opposition or by attacking the “root causes” of rebellion in land hunger and political injustice. As his title indicates, LaFeber is in the latter camp, suggesting as well that past US interventions strengthened leftist insurgencies by giving them better nationalist credentials. The documents explore the reasons for, and some of the methods of, US counterinsurgency policy in the 1980’s.
3/10 The Cold War, V: Cuba (Still?)
Jorge Dominguez, “US- Latin America Relations during the Cold War and Its Aftermath,” from Bulmer-Thomas and Dunkerley, eds. The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda (1999).*
Patrick Haney and Walt Vanderbush, The Cuban Embargo: The Domestic Politics of an American Foreign Policy (2005), Conclusion.*
Pablo Bachelet, “Poll Suggests Cuban Americans’ Attitudes Shifting” McClatchy Newspapers online, 7 April 2007.*
As we have already discovered, U.S.- Cuban relations have been historically strange and dangerous—as Wayne Smith put it, we are now “the closest of enemies.” Dominguez puts Cuba policy in the context of general US policy after the Cold War, while Haney and Vanderbush (and the Bachelet article on a recent poll) look more closely at the domestic aspect of the policy.
The embargo on Cuba, first imposed on exports in October 1960 and on imports in 1962, and later fortified in 1992 and 1996. In 1992 the Cuban Democracy Act extended it to subsidiaries of US companies abroad, prohibited ships trading with Cuba from docking at US ports, and thus effectively curtailed shipments of food and medicine from the US. In 1996, the Helms-Burton bill denied US visas to firms or people with a stake in property confiscated from those who were then or have since become US citizens; it let these former owners file suit in US courts and to have the defendants (or the corporate officers representing them) face a subpoena as soon as they touched US soil; it turned over to Congress all power to modify the provisions of the embargo, except for a twice-yearly presidential opportunity to waive some of the above provisions (which Clinton did and Bush has done each January 17 and July 17 since the law was passed).
3/13 What Determines US Policy toward Latin America?
Schoultz, chap. 19.
Document no. 72 from Holden and Zolov.
David Lake, “Anarchy, Hierarchy, and the Variety of International Relations,” International Organization 50:1 (Winter 1996), pp. 1-10 and conclusion only.*
Here we consider Schoultz’s view of what drives US policy in contrast to those of others. (We have already seen one in the Dominguez article for the last class.) Schoultz’s final chapter gives a clear statement of his book’s argument. (To give an example of a realist approach, the document excerpts George Kennan on Latin America in 1950.) Finally, Lake tries to put the US- Latin America relationship in broad historical perspective, by asking why, in this case, the dominant state generally chose to relate to the weaker ones as an informal empire, rather than as a formal empire or through an alliance. (Some students might find it helpful to review the descriptions of IR theories given in the textbook that was our first photocopied reading.)
Mid-term paper due Friday, March 14 at 4:00pm
SPRING BREAK
For something to do while you’re on break, try this link to LinkTV Latin Pulse (on US- Latin America relations, dated Feb 19, 2008). There are two parts, on trade and security respectively, but only the former is up at this writing (3/13/08):
II. Key Issues in U.S.- Latin American Relations Today
A. The Resurgence of an Anti-American Left
3/31 Hugo Chávez and Venezuela
Jon Lee Anderson, “The Revolutionary,” New Yorker 9/10/01.*
Javier Corrales, “Hugo Boss,” Foreign Policy Jan/Feb 2006.*
Frances Robles, “Chavez- Castro Friendship Pumps Billions into Cuba,” Miami Herald, 8/2/07.*
Juan Forero, “Venezuela Lets Councils Bloom,” Washington Post 5/17/07.*
“Fatherland, Socialism, or Death,”Economist 10/11/07.*
Sara Miller Llana and Peter Ford, “Chavez, China, Cooperate on Oil,” Christian Science Monitor 1/3/08.*
Michael Shifter, “The Venezuelan Surprise,” Current History Feb. 2008.
Hugo Chávez brings back memories of the Cuban Revolution and the Cold War for a good reason—he wants to. But while he constitutes an important challenge to US free trade policy, he is careful not to break relations completely, he keeps selling Venezuelan oil to the US, and the Venezuelan government still owns Citgo. Here are several views of him, along with some mentions of the failed coup against him in April 2002 (for which Chávez has held the US responsible in numerous speeches) and his narrow loss in December 2007 in a referendum on a package of constitutional amendments.
4/3 Bolivia, Ecuador, and Beyond
Larry Rohter, “Bolivia Leader Tilting Region Further to Left,” NYT 1/22/06.*
Jorge Castañeda, “The Year of the Ballot,” Current History Feb. 2007.*
Laura Carlsen, “Why Bolivia Matters,” IRC Americas Program 1/07/08.*
Recent blog posts from The Democracy Center (Cochabamba): “Bolivia’s Warring Leaders Have a Talk” (Aldo Arellano and Eliot Williams), “Violence and Discrimination in the Process of the Constituent Assembly” (Leny Olivera), “Autonomies Here and There” (Jim Shultz).*
“Factbox: Scenarios in Bolivia’s Political Criris,” Reuters 1/15/08.*
“Correa to Call Elections in Ecuador” Deutsche Presse-Agentur 10/1/07.*
Phil Stewart, “Ecuador Wants Military Base in Miami,” Reuters 10/22/07.*
Charles Davis, “Growing Push-back against US Intervention” IPS 11/8/07.*
Steven Dudley, “Chavez in Search of Leverage,” Miami Herald 4/28/07.*
“Bolivarian Finance,” Economist 12/13/07.*
“Slush and Garbage,” Economist 1/3/08.*
“Who’ll Dance with Chávez?” Economist 12/20/07.*
Latin America has seen a clear trend toward leftist presidents in recent years. It began with Chávez in 1998, picked up speed as Luis Inacio Lula da Silva won (on his fourth try) in 2002, and continued as Néstor Kirchner took office in Argentina the following May, and Uruguay then elected Tabaré Vázquez in October 2004. Just over a year later, socialist Evo Morales won in Bolivia. In 2006, left or center-left candidates triumphed in nearly every race. Ecuador elected Rafael Correa, Chile Michelle Bachelet, and Nicaragua Daniel Ortega. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez won re-election while running further to the left than he had ever done before. In Peru, the most popular right-of-center candidate (Lourdes Flores) did not even make it into the second round, which was won by a social democrat, Alan García, over an “ethnonationalist” ex-army officer, Ollanta Humala. Only Colombia and Mexico broke the winning streak of the left, as Alvaro Uribe was re-elected and the Mexican leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador lost a close and disputed three-way election to Felipe Calderón. In 2007 it continued, with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner succeeding her husband. At this writing, polls in Paraguay show progressive ex-bishop Fernando Lugo favored to win in April 2008.
Apart from the overview by Castañeda, these articles concentrate on Bolivia and Ecuador, two countries whose governments now follow most closely the Chávez pattern of constitution-remaking at home and a coolness toward the US in foreign policy. We also read about the Venezuela-led plans for a regional development and trade pact that excludes the US and a Bank of the South that offers an alternative to the IMF and World Bank, as well as other possible links among leftist governments.
4/7 What Has Caused It and What Should Be Done?
Mark Weisbrot, “Latin America: The End of an Era,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, Reports and Issue Briefs no. 2006-31 (December 2006).*
“A Warning for Reformers,” (summary of Latinobarómetro poll), Economist 11/15/07.*
Peter Hakim, “Is Washington Losing Latin America?” Foreign Affairs 85:1 (Jan-Feb. 2006).*
Fareed Zakaria, “Right Ideas, Wrong Time,” Newsweek 3/19/07.*
These papers offer two broad answers to the question posed above. One emphasizes regional trends in inequality and economic growth, which have arguably made neoliberal policies look inadequate or perverse. The other implicates a failure of US policy under George W. Bush.
Papers on the rise of the Left due Tuesday, April 8 at 4:00pm
B. Economic Integration
4/10 NAFTA, CAFTA, FTAA, WTO, and the Goal of Economic Integration
(For reference) “Overview of the North American Free Trade Agreement,” OAS Foreign
Trade Information System.
Ralph Nader and Lori Wallach, "GATT, NAFTA, and the Subversion of the Democratic Process," in Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, eds., The Case Against the Global Economy (Sierra Club, 1996).*
Edward Schumacher, “A Meeting of Minds, from Peoria to Patagonia,” Wall Street Journal 4/16/98.*
Jorge Castañeda, “NAFTA at 10: A Plus or a Minus?,” Current History Feb. 2004.*
Sidney Weintraub, “Scoring Free Trade: A Critique of the Critics,” Current History Feb. 2004.*
Daphne Eviatar, “A Toxic Trade-off,” WaPo 8/14/05.*
Walter Molano, “Latin America: Ours to Lose?” The Latin American Adviser 1/18/05.*
Tim Johnson, “China’s Tango with Latin America Intensifies,” Knight-Ridder 7/5/05.*
Neil Irwin, “A Shift in Bush’s Trade Politics,” Washington Post, 10/10/07.*
“Commerce between Friends and Foes,” Economist 10/4/07.*
Steven Weisman, “Using Chavez as Counterpoint,” NY Times 10/25/07.*
Janet Plume, “A Pluralistic Latin America,” Shipping Digest 12/10/07.*
Geoff Dyer and Richard Lapper, “Pace of Investment Disappoints Latin America,” Financial Times 12/20/07.*
The oldest US policy toward Latin America is economic integration. This means trade flows and investment flows should be free, for everyone’s benefit, but especially in the national interest of the US. Today this policy takes a variety of forms—regional agreements of various scale (NAFTA, CAFTA, FTAA), ongoing negotiations of the Doha round of the WTO, and most importantly in recent years, bilateral trade deals. The dream of a western hemisphere common market is running into new challenges at home and, with the rise of China, from other powers interested in Latin American trade.
The readings begin with a classic statement of why trade agreements are anti-democratic, referring to NAFTA and its passage by the US Congress. Schumacher’s summary of survey results from 1998 captures the optimism then about the FTAA. Then we have two ten-year evaluations of NAFTA that engage larger arguments about the goals and usefulness of trade agreements, before turning to descriptions of the complicated contemporary situation.
4/14 Is the Free Trade Area of the Americas a Good Idea? DEBATE
Figures on trade from Peter Smith, Talons of the Eagle (2000), pp. 375-76.*
Bernard Gordon, “The Natural Market Fallacy: Slim Pickings in Latin America,” Foreign Affairs 77:3 (May/ June 1998).*
Felipe A.M. de la Balze, “Finding Allies in the Back Yard,” Foreign Affairs (July/ August 2001).*
Raúl Zibechi, “Regional Integration after the Collapse of the FTAA,” Foreign Policy in Focus 11/21/05.*
Jeffrey Schott, “Does the FTAA Have a Future?” Institute for International Economics, Nov. 2005.*
Jorge Arrizurieta, “A Revitalized FTAA Takes Shape,” Metropolitan Corporate Counsel Mayy 2006.*
Monica Showalter, “Free Trade’s Hidden Advantage,” Investor’s Bus. Daily, 1/4/08.*
All of the readings bear on the FTAA and economic relations in the hemisphere, though a few do so in unusual ways. We look at economic arguments and geopolitical ones. The decline of the FTAA proposal has a variety of causes, few of which bear on the ultimate desirability of this or other trade agreements.
Papers on Economic Integration due Tuesday, April 15 at 4pm
C. The Drug War
4/17 History and Economics of Drugs and US Policy
David T. Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World
(Harvard, 2001), chaps. 2, 5, 10.*
Ted Galen Carpenter, Bad Neighbor Policy (Palgrave, 2003), introduction and chap. 4.*
The chapters from Courtwright’s fine book give background on history, economics, and pharmacology. Carpenter is a Cato Institute (libertarian) critic of the drug war.
4/21 The Drug War and Latin American Politics
Carpenter, chaps. 5, 6, and 7.*
Juan Forero, “Colombia’s Landed Gentry: Coca Lords and Other Bullies,” NYTimes
1/21/04.*
Eduardo Posada-Carbo, “Colombia’s Resilient Democracy,” Current History Feb. 2004.
Chris Kraul, “Afro-Colombians Driven Off Land in Cocaine War,” LA Times 1/4/06.*
Chris Kraul, “Colombian Drug Cartels Take Underwater Route,” LA Times 11/6/07.*
Reed Lindsay, “Clash Deepens Bolivian Disdain for U.S.,” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 12/7/03.*
Manuel Roig-Franzia, “Mexican Drug Cartels Move North,” Washington Post 9/20/07.*
Richard Lapper, Anastasia Maloney, and Adam Thomson, “At War with the Law of Supply and Demand,” Financial Times 1/14/08.*
The chapters from Carpenter discuss the effect of drug war policies on Latin American governments, local and national. Forero talks about how drug lords are becoming landlords. Posada-Carbo argues that Colombia is not falling apart, as many worried it would, while Kraul’s article tells of ongoing conflicts. Lindsay gives us some background on the rise of Evo Morales—a former leader of coca farmers—in Bolivia, reporting on the fall of Sánchez de Losada and unpopular coca eradication policies. The other articles bring us up to date now that Morales is president of Bolivia and the Mexican government tries to keep the country from becoming like Colombia was in the 1990’s.
4/24 Evaluating the Drug War DEBATE
ONDCP website
ONDCP, “The Price and Purity of Illicit Drugs” [1981- 2/4 2003] (Nov. 2004), selected figures.*
Citizen Joe page on drug use in US
William Bennett, “The Drug War Worked Once. It Can Again,” WSJ 5/15/01.*
John P. Walters, “Don’t Legalize Drugs,” WSJ 7/19/02.*
Faye Bowers, “Surprise—Terror War Aids Drug War,” Christian Sci. Monitor 11/22/05.*
Peter Reuter and Harold Pollock, “How Much Can Treatment Reduce National Drug Problems?” Addiction, March 2006.*
“Just Don’t Call it Plan Mexico,” 10/25/07.*
“Mexico, US Step Up Drug Cooperation,” Christian Science Monitor, 1/23/08.*
Juan Forero, “Cocaine Prices Rise and Quality Declines, White House Says,” NYT 11/18/05.*
John Walsh, “Connecting the Dots: ONDCP’s (Reluctant) Update on Cocaine Price and Purity,” Washington Office on Latin America, 4/23/07.*
These readings take on the war on drugs, specifically the campaign it eradicate coca in the Andes and interdict it elsewhere (although there are some references to methamphetamines). Evaluating this policy means understanding the pharmacology of cocaine, its effects on family and social relations, its economics, and the politics of fighting its use here and its supply in the Andes. You also have to consider a key ancillary goal of our policy in Colombia--weakening guerrilla and paramilitary forces that profit by protecting and taxing growers and traffickers.
Papers on the drug war due Friday, April 25 at 4pm
D. Immigration and Border Security
4/28 For research papers: one-page topic summary and brief bibliography due in class
4/28 Philosophical and Economic Issues
Robert E. Goodin, "If People Were Money..." and
Brian Barry, "The Quest for Consistency: A Sceptical View," from Barry and Goodin,
eds., Free Movement (1992).*
George J. Borjas, “Increasing the Supply of Labor through Immigration: Measuring the
Impact on Native-Born Workers,” Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder,
May 2004.*
Council of Economic Advisers, “Immigration’s Economic Impact,” 6/20/07.*
Samuel Huntington, “The Hispanic Challenge,” Foreign Policy (Mar/Apr 2004).*
Responses to Huntington, Foreign Policy 2004.*
The first two articles take on the question first at the general, philosophical level. Borjas (whose family left Cuba in the early 1960’s) has argued that current immigration hurts the least-educated native-born workers. The CEA document is much more positive. Huntington’s article takes up the question in terms of national identity; it caused a firestorm of criticism, some of which you read here.
5/1 Security vs. Economic Integration?
Peter Andreas, “A Tale of Two Borders” (to p. 14 only) and
Gary Hufbauer and Gustavo Vega-Cánovas, “Whither NAFTA?” from Andreas and Biersteker, eds., The Rebordering of North America (Routledge, 2003), chaps. 1, 3, and 7.*
Peter Andreas, “Politics on Edge,” Current History Feb. 2006.*
N.C. Aizenman, “Bush Moves to Step Up Immigration Enforcement,” Washington Post 8/11/07.*
“Keep Out,” Economist 1/5/08.*
Carin Zissis, “’Two-Way Street’ on the Border,” News of the Americas 1/22/08.*
As Andreas notes, in many ways the post-9/11 discussion on border security reprises old themes from the war on drugs and the wall-building U.S. immigration policy that was begun in the mid-1990’s. These readings ask whether the U.S. can really attain both security against terrorism and economic integration by means of a restrictive southern border and stepped-up immigration enforcement.
5/5 Should Migration Be Liberalized? DEBATE
“Plentiful, Productive—and Illegal” NY Tmes 4/2/06.*
Christopher Jencks, “The Immigration Charade,” NY Review of Books 9/27/07.*
Mireya Navarro, “On California’s Urban Border, Praise for Immigration Curbs,” NYT 8/21/01.*
Philip Martin and Michael Teitelbaum, “The Mirage of Mexican Guest Workers,”
Foreign Affairs (Nov/Dec 2001).*
Douglas Massey, “Migrants Need a Way to Go Home,” LA Times 1/15/04.*
Scott Gold and H.G. Reza, “Border Agents Assail Bush’s Plan,” LA Times 1/23/04.*
Jeffrey Birnbaum, “Immigration Pushes Apart GOP, Chamber,” WaPo 12/14/05.*
Congressman Tom Tancredo, “REAL GUEST Act of 2005”*
Home page of Minuteman Project
“Suspected Illegal Aliens, April 2005” from Minuteman website
Tom Barry, “Truth about Illegal Immigration and Crime,” Americas Program Commentary 1/18/08.*
Citizen Joe on immigration
…and on immigration bills
Drake Bennett, “The Amero Conspiracy,” Boston Globe 11/25/07.*
George Bush’s first foreign trip was to Mexico, and the strongest note then sounded by his host, Vicente Fox, was on liberalized immigration of Mexicans into the U.S. Early in 2004 he returned to the theme, with a proposal for guest-worker provisions. Many of the articles refer to the President’s proposal. We also have materials and links for the anti-immigration movement whose most important leaders are Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado (soon to retire) and the Minuteman Project. As the Birnbaum article notes, this is an issue that divides the Republican Party between its culturally conservative base and big business. It also divides the Democrats, but to a lesser extent.
Papers on immigration and border security due Tuesday May 6 at 4:00pm
III. Conclusion
5/8 Waning Hegemony and Cultural Convergence
Daniel Erikson, “Requiem for the Monroe Doctrine,” and
Virginia Burnett, “Priests and Preachers,” both from Current History Feb. 2008.
Final exam topics handed out
If Latin America turns Protestant, if people there come to have similar priorities as do people here, if more Latin American countries adopt the dollar as their currency, and if more people from Latin America move here and become US citizens—that is, as cultural differences erode—won’t the attitudes Schoultz described also change, and with them, US policy? Or with the new security importance of the U.S. border—and the new manner of exercising US power—will this matter?
Research papers due Tuesday, May 13 at 4 pm
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