Saturday, October 26, 2019

Latin America wakes me up

I am still here even though three months, almost, have passed since my last post (more on that later).

I could not let pass the present troubles in Latin America without a comment. I read so many idiocies on Tweeter that I needed to vent off by reminding people that what has been going on is not such a surprise. The surprise is that it comes all at once.  So here, from North to South.

SINALOA

The administration of Lopez Obrador has shown its true color when not only it was woefully unprepared to counter the very powerful drug cartels, but preferred to release the captured son of El Chapo rather than send in the army.


No surprise there, Lopez Obrador has been all bull shit since the start, preferring non intervention and peace and demagoguery rather than face what is going on in Northern Mexico. I am not saying he could solve that problem easily, I am saying that his administration thought it could put it on a back burner. Until it blew up in their face.

Now let's see how he recovers. If he can.  Poor Mexico!

ECUADOR

This is simple/ every administration has encountered the brick wall of powerful indigenous organizations that exist in the Ecuadorean Andes.  These movement are so powerful that they overthrew at least two presidents and even gave a hard time to Correa (who they hate, by the way).

Applying clumsily needed economic reforms unleashed their ire. To save his seat president Lenin Moreno had to leave Quito in flames and take refuge in Guayaquil. Cowardice? Not at all. Moreno played well the difference between administrative Quito and Guayaquil, business oriented, economic center of Ecuador, and much less influenced by indigenous people. He let them run out of steam burning a few things in Quito and then eventually all had to seat down to negotiate. His package will not go as planned but through calculated delays the economic reforms will pass.

That is LatAm democracy for you.

BOLIVIA

This is even simpler. The Chavez left simply does not want to leave power, ever. In particular when they hold it in countries were monkey drug business was rather easy. I have named Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, for starters.

So Evo Morales decided that it was better for him to perpetrate electoral fraud rather than leave through the main door as one of the great reformers of the continent, and indigenous to boot. But I guess that giving up on the perks of office was too much for him. Thus becoming another bloody tin pot dictator was not a hard choice for Evo.

CHILE

And so we reach the truly complex situation.  I am not going to go on how the shiny star of LatAm development is on the verge of committing suicide in less than a week.

I am just going to say that Chile always had a strong and radicalized communist party, always on the watch for such an opportunity.  The opportunity came, they did not waste it.  The end result may be held in the hands of the democratic (?) socialists who are afraid to condemen the excesses and give a hand to Piñera to bring peace again. But the socialists know they cannot return to office without the communists vote. So there you go, the seed of all trouble, up to civil war if the communists feel like it.

A COMMON THREAD?

I have read all sorts of speculation on Maduro regime in Caracas financing all of these troubles. This is B.S. : Venezuela and Cuba do not have the money or organization it takes to conduct such a simultaneous multi pronged offensive.

However.....

Cuba, financed by Venezuelan oil, has been always preparing revolutionary cadres, sleeping cells and the like (in particular in Bolivia where the evidence of Venezuelan direct intervention exists).

The embassies are centers of formation and contacts. Propaganda vehicles exist numerous, like Telesur that president Moreno had to close when outright indications were sent to rioters in Ecuador.  Parallel financing exists through drug traffic amply associated to Cuba and Venezuela.

Cuba and Venezuela by themselves cannot create the riots of Quito and Santiago, but they surely can contribute to their spread and violence.

Piñera was right, it is a war though he cannot use that as an excuse for his own failings: he should have known better.

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There, end of informative rant. See you soon.

3 comments:

  1. Boludo Tejano1:36 AM

    I am just going to say that Chile always had a strong and radicalized communist party, always on the watch for such an opportunity.The opportunity came, they did not waste it. The end result may be held in the hands of the democratic (?) socialists who are afraid to condemen the excesses and give a hand to Piñera to bring peace again.

    Via Instapundit,Expensive Climate Policies Sparked Chile Riots, Just Like France’s Yellow Vest Protests,

    The article informs us that the protests are due to increased Metro prices and also a carbon tax. Oil prices have been steady to declining- as Venezuelans know.

    The above article has a link to what's been going on with increased Metro prices.Chile’s largest metro network to be powered by solar and wind. (21 June 2017.
    Next year, Latin America’s second largest subway system, will source 60 per cent of its energy from solar and wind projects.
    In a statement Metro de Santiago said that it had signed two 15-year agreements, one with a solar energy provider, and another with a wind power company.
    According to The Wall Street Journal, California-based SunPower’s will supply 42 per cent of the subway system’s power with a 100-megawatt (MW) solar plant using 254,000 panels covering an area the size of 370 football fields, located in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert.
    The remaining 18 per cent will be provided by a recently developed wind farm located just north of the SunPower solar project, The Wall Street Journal said.

    The decision to purchase wind and solar energy was made in 2017, during the Bachelet administration. IOW, Piñera is getting blowback from a decision that was made before he again took the Presidential chair in 2018.I don't know who made that decision at Santiago Metro, though I would suspect this decision was made with at least the support of the Bachelet administration.

    A quick look at the numbers tells me the following. Wind energy is fairly competitive in TX, where it provides about 15% of electricity generated. So, offhand I have no problem with the 18% wind energy figure. I would point out that the wind energy is coming from northern Chile, while the strongest winds in Chile are in the South. Rounding Cape Horn and all that, and I imagine winds are still strong on the southern mainland part of Chile.

    Solar electric is another matter. As it is a very diffuse energy source, it is going to be more expensive. Which is why Metro prices jumped. That was a rather expensive decision. I wonder if a hydro project in the South-which has a LOT of rain, would work, or if all hydro sources are maxed out.

    I would think that you could get wind energy in greater, less expensive quantities from the South instead of the North of Chile. the intermittent nature would have to be factored in.

    Time to get a Venezuelan or Argentine vivo in there to annul the 15 year old contracts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good to hear from you @Daniel. Guess times are not so good for you. Still in Spain? All the best from Germany

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  3. Daniel, real nice to hear from you.

    Interesting article on Chile:
    https://www.city-journal.org/chile-demonstrations


    ReplyDelete

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