As the Huffington Post reports:

“As the SWAT team forced its way into his home, Guerena, a former Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq, armed himself with his AR-15 rifle and told his wife and son to hide in a closet. As the officers entered, Guerena confronted them from the far end of a long, dark hallway. The police opened fire, releasing more than 70 rounds in about 7 seconds, at least 60 of which struck Guerena. He was pronounced dead a little over an hour later.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department initially claimed (PDF) Guerena fired his weapon at the SWAT team. They now acknowledge that not only did he not fire, the safety on his gun was still activated when he was killed. Guerena had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home. After ushering out his wife and son, the police refused to allow paramedics to access Guerena for more than hour, leaving the young father to bleed to death, alone, in his own home.”

SWAT Teams and their ability to barge into homes as a “no knock entry” is a by product of the War on Drugs. As Kenneth Nunn explains:

“The potential danger of allowing police officers to enter homes and businesses without announcing their identity and purpose has been well-known since colonial times. Officers may startle residents who may seek to defend their homes. Officers may inadvertently harm residents or innocent bystanders by the use of force necessary to effect the sudden entry of targeted buildings. Breaking into buildings through surprise and stealth seems like a tactic better suited to an occupying army, then to civilian peace officers.”

And in Arizona where citizens have recently posed as law enforcement to enter homes (see Brisenia Flores case for in stance), I can understand why someone like Jose Guerena would grab his rifle to protect his family.

And all of these resources being deployed for pot?! The irony here is that it wasn’t Al Qaeda or terrorists who killed Guerena but instead government sanctioned militarized police who were on some sort of marijuana hunt. What are your thoughts?

US-Mexico relations have clearly had a rough time in 2010. Mexico’s seeming inability to deal with the increased violence south of the border plus the disruptive and unfortunate so-called Wikileaks has made many policy-makers pause on both sides of the border.

These Wikileaks have become a serious diplomatic embarrassment to the US world-wide. But in the case of Mexico they may have created even greater tensions given the timing. Official and personal assessments in diplomatic reporting are never meant for public disclosure. Yet everyone knows that diplomats carry out their duty by reporting situations as they see them. Hence, awkward situations are created when revelations of this reporting plainly embarrass both the US and Mexico.  But the underlying problem is that relations are managed by both sides in an equally clumsy if not maladroit manner.

The Mexicans rely primarily on their nationalistic Foreign Ministry (SRE). This limits other actors or constituencies from having a more substantial role. Whereas on the US side even though Mexico is a NAFTA country, the bi-lateral relationship is still managed like the rest of Latin America: too often as an afterthought. European policy in Washington is guided by the historical gravity of the Trans-Atlantic ties and their constituencies (DoD, Treasury, the banks, the Council on Foreign Relations, academia et al). Middle East policy is primarily driven by the pro-Israeli lobby and the energy sector. Africa policy is largely formulated with plenty of NGOs and the Black Congressional Caucus input. Asia policy is guided by the US Navy (DoD), Treasury, Walmart, the banks, the high tech economy and the trade sector.  Whereas, US Latin American policy, by and large a constituency orphan (except for the glandular Calle Ocho crowd and the equally emotional anti-narcotics and anti-immigrant groups) is in the virtual hands of the State Department bureaucracy. It does not attract the influential and powerful top-cover of the other regions’ constituencies. Hence, without daily guidance from on top (the White House, Wall Street, the energy sector or powerful ethnic lobbies) the State Department bureaucratic mattress mice policy-handlers are cautious, timid, risk averse, invariably resort to lecturing the Latins on the virtues of America, insensitively imparting adult supervision and placing careers first over policy (hence more responsive to the GOP members of Congress because they do threaten careers unlike the Democrats). Therefore , the WikiLeaks stories have become a real validation of Mexican (Latin) suspicions of the US lack of serious purpose or attention and only episodically engaged. Consistent and serious policy treatment by the US will only come about when the Latin Americans begin to cultivate domestic heavy hitters in the US to become their constituents or supporters. The Mexican-American community and Latinos in general are notably missing in action in any foreign policy formulation. As for the Latin Americans and especially the Mexicans, the lesson to be learned is that only weak powers largely depend on the foreign ministry of a great power for problem resolution. It is difficult to foresee how the out years will significantly improve.

I even predict that Loretta Sanchez will grow old in this seat because she endured the Van Tran battle and seems to be comfortable taking up space in the House, but last night’s victory can be a turning point for her. She can either continue to be known for her silly Holiday cards and trips to the Playboy mansion or she can pick up the torch and take cues from some of the more productive members of congress. I hope that she does the latter and ditches the Blue Dog affiliation because Moveon.org was soliciting volunteers for her campaign for the past few weeks, and that organization has specifically targeted Blue Dog Democrats in the past.

Barack Obama is trying my patience. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe he inherited a mess from George Bush and is doing the best he can to turn the ship of state around.  However allowing his Attorney General Eric Holder to come out against California’s Prop 19 is not only “not change”, it is an endorsement of the racist enforcement of our nation’s drug laws.

RACIAL INJUSTICE IN THE DRUG WAR

While roughly 12% Anglos and 11% of Blacks and Hispanics are consumers of illicit drugs, criminal justice statistics dramatically demonstrate an over-representation of Blacks and Hispanics arrested for the use of illicit drugs and in those who go to trial and who are ultimately sentenced to jail. It is no accident that Prop 19 is endorsed by the NAACP and California’s LULAC.  They are joined by LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), SEIU ( Service Employees International Union), DPA (Drug Policy Alliance), NORML (National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws) who all say YES on Proposition 19.

CURRENT DRUG POLICY AN ABYSMAL FAILURE

In the almost 40 years since President Nixon declared a war on drugs, tens of millions of Americans have been arrested and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent. Yet drugs are just as available now as they were then. And the impact has been felt most strongly amongst Hispanics, Blacks, and the poor.

There are many good reasons to support proposition 19.  The most obvious is because we have a failed drug policy. Cannabis has been illegal since 1911. Not only is cannabis still widely used and available, but our present failed drug policy is racist.  It’s costly.  It is undermining the Constitution.  It decreases respect for the police.  It fuels gangs and gang violence and U.S. drug policy is responsible for 8,000-20,000 deaths per year in Mexico.

MARIJUANA LAWS DEMONIZE AND TARGET MINORITIES

The NAACP and the LULAC of California both recognize how U.S. drug laws are used to marginalize discriminated against minorities. The adverse affects are detailed in Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow. In it, she points out that a drug conviction automatically makes a person a second-class citizen who can be legally discriminated against in housing and employment, denied school loans, and barred for life from serving on juries, accessing public benefits and even voting.

While African Americans make up only about 13 percent of the U.S. population and about 15 percent of drug users, they make up about 38 percent of those arrested for drug law violations and a mind-boggling 59 percent of those convicted for drug law violations. With Hispanics, the numbers are not quite as dramatic but are still appalling. We now have 7,000,000 Americans, one out of every thirty two American adults, incarcerated, on probation or on parole, and they are disproportionately young Hispanic and Black males.

The League of United Latin American Citizens of California (LULAC) endorsed Prop. 19.  State director Argentina Dávila-Luévano said, “The current prohibition laws are not working for Latinos, nor for society as a whole. Far too many of our brothers and sisters are getting caught in the cross-fire of gang wars here in California and the cartel wars south of our border,” she says. “It’s time to end prohibition, put violent, organized criminals out of business and bring marijuana under the control of the law.”

Historically, Mexican-Americans have been demonized by associating the Hispanic population with marijuana use. This effort becomes more intense in economic hard times. This trend started shortly after the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century when large numbers of Mexican workers came across the border.

As the economy deteriorated, local prosecutors and editors publicly decried the “loco weed.” One critic associated marijuana (called “marihuana” at the time) — not only with Mexicans but “Negroes, prostitutes, pimps, and a criminal class of whites.” States began outlawing the drug, one Texas senator asserting “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy.”

Mexican-Americans were used as a whipping boy to generate anti-marijuana hysteria. In the 1930s Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, led the propaganda campaign to make marijuana possession a federal crime. He was an avowed racist as evidenced by this quote about marijuana (which at the time was commonly known as  cannabis), “its effect on the degenerate races.” He was referring to “Mexicans, Negroes, Puerto Ricans, jazz musicians and other social undesirables,” as he described those he said used marijuana.

Anslinger quoted Floyd Baskett, the publisher of the Alamosa, Colorado newspaper (Alamosa is 18 miles from my wife’s hometown by the way), who wrote “I wish I could show you what a small marijuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That’s why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentality, because of social and racial conditions.”

A decade earlier earlier in 1927, a Montana state legislator was quoted in the Butte Montana Standard, “When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff…he thinks he’ has just been elected President of Mexico, so he starts to execute all his political enemies.”

The anti-Mexican, anti-Hispanic rhetoric continues to this day.  Voting YES on Proposition 19 will be another big step to defeating this kind of racism. Right now among California’s likely voters, 63% of Latinos are likely supporters of Prop 19. The recent support of the California LULAC and a brief refresher on the odious history of marijuana prohibition should  be enough to continue that momentum toward cannabis decriminalization.

CURRENT DRUG LAWS ARE GOOD FOR CRIMINALS AND BAD FOR LAW ABIDING PEOPLE

Just as alcohol prohibition did, marijuana prohibition is enriching organized crime. Instead of regulating marijuana to control who can access it, policymakers have ceded control of the $400-billion-a-year global drug market to crime syndicates and thugs.

In Mexico, parts of the country are like Chicago on steroids under Al Capone. 28,000 people have died from drug war violence since President Calderon launched a war three years ago against well-armed, well-funded drug trafficking organizations. The U.S. government doesn’t report its prohibition-related deaths, but law enforcement officers, drug offenders and civilians die every day in our country’s war on drugs too.

OUR LEADERS USE MARIJUANA WITHOUT LEGAL CONSEQUENCES

Use of marijuana or other illegal drugs is rampant amongst our elected officials, yet few suffer any adverse legal or social consequences. President Obama used drugs. Former President George W. Bush was an admitted alcoholic and credible rumors say he regularly used cocaine.  Then there’s Bill Clinton, who famously said he smoked pot but didn’t inhale. Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, former and current governors Jesse Ventura (I-MN),Gary Johnson (R-NM), Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), and Sarah Palin (R-AK) all admit that they consumed cannabis.

CURRENT DRUG LAW CAUSES LOTS OF PROBLEMS

The war on drugs hasn’t just failed; it’s created problems of its own. The drug war is a good way to waste money. It has cost billions. In the last 30 years in California, we’ve built 22 new prisons and 4 new colleges.   20-30% of third strikes are for minor drug violations and taxpayers spend $40,000/year to incarcerate these folks.  Laws restricting the availability of sterile syringes have increased the spread of AIDS and hepatitis C.  The war on drugs, or more accurately the people who use drugs we’ve demonized, has weakened the 1^st, 4^th, 5^th, 9^th and 10^th Amendments of the Constitution.

WATCH OUT FOR THE BOOGEYMAN

The opposition is grasping at straws.  A recent article in L.A. Times was about a presumed marijuana addict, whatever that is. She spent $5,000/year on cannabis. At current rate of roughly $400/ounce, that is slightly more than an ounce/month, or one .9 gm joint per day.  This is just 10% of the amount of marijuana that the federal government provides to a person on the federal IND program. Most likely this person was self-medicating for her anxiety.

Another boogeyman of the Prohibitionists is that legalizing marijuana will increase use amongst teens. Most likely, the passage of Prop 19 will decrease the number of teens using it. Compare Holland 13% to the U.S. 19%. The Dutch Minister of Health stated “We have succeeded in making pot boring.” When Prop 215 was on the ballot, the prohibitionists said pot use would go up. It hasn’t. It has gone down.

BENEFITS OF YES ON 19

Legalization would be beneficial in key aspects of the war on terror. Afghanistan is the world leader in opium production, and this trade is highly lucrative because U.S.-led prohibition drives the market underground. The Taliban then earns substantial income by protecting opium farmers and traffickers from law enforcement in exchange for a share of the profits.  U.S. eradication of opium fields also drives the hearts and minds of Afghan farmers away from the U.S. and toward the Taliban.

Legalization could also aid the war on terror by freeing immigration and other border control resources to target terrorists and WMDs rather than the illegal drug trade. Under prohibition, moreover, terrorists piggyback on the smuggling networks established by drug lords and more easily hide in a sea of underground, cross-border trafficking.

We’ve heard cannabis is dangerous. Yet experts say it’s less harmful than coffee.  Henningfield & Benowitz compared 6 commonly used recreational drugs – alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine, coffee and cannabis. Which one was the least harmful? Cannabis. Even so there are some who do develop a dependency on marijuana. Legalizing cannabis would aid in treatment. Jail is not treatment. Prop 19 encourages those also might need help to get it legally.

We have heard that passage of Prop 19 will increase the number of users.  This seems unlikely because of the  current ease in acquiring marijuana.  Illicit sales are encouraged because of the money to be made on the black market. The alcohol model of tax regulate would make cannabis harder to obtain.  The late conservative pundit William F. Buckley, founder of the National Review and for 33 years moderator of public television’s Firing Line, said it was easier for an eighth grader to get marijuana than alcohol. Why? Because alcohol is taxed and regulated and marijuana is not. The liquor store owner has an investment to protect, the illicit seller of marijuana does not.

We have examples in Portugal and Holland of what happens when you legalize drugs. Not much except there is less crime, less fear of the police, less money wasted and a reordering of police priorities. As the attorney who fought the case that legalized marijuana in Alaska in 1982 said after a 5-2 vote of the Alaskan Supreme Court ruling that the Alaska Constitution protected the private use of marijuana: “Do you know what happened the next morning?  The sun came up and life went on.”

It is time for life to go on in California. Vote YES on PROPOSITION 19!

David Bearman, M.D. is the Vice President of the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine and author of Demons, Discrimination and Dollars: A Brief History Of The Origins of American Drug Policy.

Webmaster’s note: There seems to be a rift between the Washington, D.C. LULAC and the California LULAC mentioned in this blog post. Please read this for more clarification.

One of the arguments frequently given in the comments of my most-recent Huffington post is, essentially, that “illegals should apply for entry into the United States and wait in line like everyone else.” In a perfect world, this argument makes sense. Historically the U.S. has been a harbor for “huddled masses yearning to be free.” These masses identified themselves, waited in line, and were eventually admitted and naturalized, ‘mericanized, etc.

However, if there is one consensus in the immigration debate it is that the U.S. immigration system is far from perfect. The system is broken, as it were.

In 2008, David Bennion noted the following in Citizen Orange (h/t kyledeb):

“Immigrants eager to apply for employment-based green cards often find themselves in a Catch 22. There is typically a wait of three to five years for an employment-based green card for a worker with a college degree or two years of experience. But the worker must remain in status or leave the country during that waiting period and, unless he/she has an H-1B visa or qualifies under Section 245(i) of the INA, usually cannot continue to work for the employer in the U.S. and still get a green card at the end of the wait. Most employers don’t want to sponsor someone who can’t work for them for the next three to five years. This means that many immigrants who are qualified to work in the U.S. and have an employer willing to sponsor them still find themselves unable to work lawfully.

If you are poor and unskilled, it is usually much more simple: there is no line whatsoever. Duke from Migra Matters had a good run-down a while back of the miniscule number of green cards made available in 2006 for unskilled workers: 147. The great majority of immigrants from Mexico and Central America fall into this group. Almost none of them can get a visa to come here lawfully in the first place, and they certainly can’t get one if they leave the country after having violated U.S. immigration laws.”

The simple(ton) answer here is, in essence, Well, tough shit! Then they should just say home! Unfortunately, this answer fails to take into account the increasingly-hellish world many Mexicans and Central Americans now call home.

Last October, a report issued by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) found that the overall homicide rate in Central America “(32 homicides per 100,000 persons) is tantamount to more than three times the worldwide rate, and it exceeds by seven points the rate for Latin America as a whole.”

“To put it bluntly,” the report concluded, “Central America is the most violent region of the World, with the exception of those regions where some countries are at war or are experiencing severe political violence.”

Since the UNDP report was released, narco-violence seems set to put Mexico on course to join Central America in the dubious “most-violent” distinction. On Wednesday, AP reported the mayor of El Naranjo became the third Mexican mayor in a month to be slain by hitmen believed to be working for drug cartels. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has remarked that Mexico is “looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago.”

“How can I explain this,” writes Bennion, “For most undocumented immigrants, there is no line. There. Is. No. Line.”

But there could be, and needs to be, a line. And not just one line, but (at least) two.

The first “line” can be found in the Real Enforcement with Practical Answers for Immigration Reform (REPAIR) proposal released on 29 April of this year by Senators Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, and Bob Menendez. REPAIR offers a framework for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that secures our nation’s borders, reforms our immigration code, and offers a path to citizenship (or earned citizenship, or back of the line citizenship…whatever you want to call it) for undocumented immigrants already living in the United States. One provision of the REPAIR framework is the creation of an altogether new visa category (the H-2C visa) for “non-seasonal, non-agricultural workers to enter the United States” legally. In short, an H-2C visa category creates “a line” Latin America’s average Josés to apply for legal entry into the United States.

The second “line” can be found in the Refugee Protection Act introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy’s office in March. In some sense, those who wish to flee to the U.S. from the hellish violence in Central America and Mexico seek asylum. Unfortunately, not in the legal sense.

In order to qualify for asylum under current U.S. immigration law, an applicant must establish a “well-founded fear of persecution” due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Julia Preston notes in the New York Times that “American immigration judges, always careful not to open the asylum door to any flood, have made it more difficult for Central Americans running from gangs.” The Refugee Protection Act is designed to address this dynamic.

According to a press release by Sen. Leahy’s office:

“The bill eliminates the one year waiting period for refugees and asylum seekers to apply for a green card. The legislation authorizes the Secretary of State to designate certain vulnerable groups as eligible for expedited adjudication as refugees. The Refugee Protection Act also clarifies the law to ensure that innocent asylum seekers and refugees are not unfairly denied protection as a result of the material support and terrorism bars in law…”

In short, one thing the Refugee Protection Act would do is create a way for Latin Americans fleeing persecution from the violence plaguing the region to legally flee to el norte.

Unfortunately, the Refugee Protection Act remains stuck somewhere in the legislative pipeline and the H-2C visa remains two paragraphs in a framework, a draft, a outline of suggestions, and not somewhere immigrants can yet “line up and wait their turn just like everyone else” to come to the Land of the Free.

That said, until the U.S. immigration code is amended to create places where immigrants — and particularly, immigrants from Latin America — can line up, the argument this blog seeks to address remains, as Bennion noted in 2008, “a fabrication dreamt up by restrictionists to make their odious ideas palatable to an unknowing public.”

The new age of political correctness has created the insidious nature of this new racism: the great and grand struggle to protect America from getting too foreign (read: dark and alien) looking. After all, Latinos are not traditionally viewed as acceptable immigrants but instead like Native Americans: conquered and vanquished people but without reservations. They are people who traditionally were confined to certain sides of town. They were the ones with the ability to seasonally service rural parts of the country but who were expected to return to their places of origin.

If one ‘passed’ or assimilated in unnoticed numbers, then one could be accepted, especially with the increasing need for cheap labor, as the US rapidly became less competitive in the global market, as cost of labor skyrocketed. This occurred as traditional white and black Americans insisted in the American dream of high (living) wages. The massive migratory movements from Latin America began concurrently. Previously, the only significant flow had been during the Mexican Revolution. The Castro Revolution of 1960 ignited the first migratory movement covered by the mass media. The anti communist factor helped generally in accepting the first waves of mainly the Cuban white enclave fleeing a majority non-white country. Subsequently, the truly large numbers of immigrants coincided with the US need for cheap labor and the economic and political upheavals in all of Latin America. Hence, the rise of both legal and illegal immigrant movements into the US occurred.

At the same time, the increasing rise of remittances (dollars) sent back to the countries of origin ”hooked’ many Latin American governments to actively support or encourage this massive migration to the US and other developed countries suffering a labor shortage. With the US economy soaring from the late 80s through the 90s, the flow continued. It was the tragic incident on 9/11 that brought a noticeable halt to this readiness to accept this immigrant flow. As the deepest economic recession since the 1930s reared its head in the aftermath of 2001, the exacerbation of economic conditions especially unemployment together with the foreign anti-terrorist awareness or phobia heightened the rejection of ‘outsiders’.

During the Depression years of the 1930s, a backlash against Mexicans arose, significant round-ups of anyone suspected of being Mexican nationals took place and all were deported. Many US citizens were taken to Mexico forcibly. It is common to see, during these uncertain times, the ever-present nativist crowd spring into action as guardians of sovereignty and sentinels of the American tradition. The recognition that the “Latino” population is over 45 million is daunting. The battle cry of “border security” is now the operative term against illegal immigrants and increasingly anti-Latino. The feared white backlash is perhaps and unfortunately the gathering storm in civil relations in the US. Much lies ahead and the impending 2010 electoral cycle will serve to polarize the discourse. The “Latino” leadership must take note and rise to the occasion.

I will be ramping up the blogging in the next few days, but I thought that I would share some articles that I have been reading and pondering the last few days before delving into more detail and commentary in the coming weeks:

1. Everyone should read this article in today’s Washington Post about how there has zero net job creation in the last decade. This part is particularly worth highlighting:

“There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.

Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 — and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.”

Part of this problem involves the exportation of manufacturing and the reality that the United States has transitioned into more of a service economy, while capital was funneled into the housing industry that went bust.

2. The Pew Hispanic Center came out with a report a few weeks ago revealing that more Latinos are using the internet, so the digital divide is lessening. This will have implications for blogs like this and the dissemination of content online and how Latinos use it. I’m hoping that more of our people will start reading news from different sources and digesting information from different blogs from all ends of the political spectrum.

3. Drug violence in Mexico kills an up and coming community leader from El Monte, California. Right now people are saying that this was a random act of violence, but it will be interesting to see what the investigations reveal in coming days. I do believe that as violence escalates and is perpetuated that there will be more serious consideration of legalizing certain “drugs” like we are seeing in California with marijuana right now, as a case can be made for reducing violence and increasing tax revenue.

If you have any other blog post ideas or articles you would like to explore, please post links and share your thoughts.

Since 1992 and the fall of the Soviet Union, US policy toward Latin America has been generally ‘insufficient’ or one of ‘benign neglect’.  In fact, many observers have concluded that both the Clinton and W. Bush administrations basically handed the lead on Latin policy to the Cuban American lobby in order to secure Florida, a swing state in the Presidential elections. The Summitry Process began by Clinton which some critics considered an every four year photo op and not much more. It did have two substantive themes: a hemispheric free trade area and strongly endorsing democracy by pointing out that Cuba was the only non-democratic country in the region.

After 9/11, Latin America was readily served up and all but forgotten so it seemed. At first, the Bush Administration catered to the fiercely anti-Castro sector which had strongly voted for him. In W’s second term, the policy was pretty much given to the bureaucracy to manage and handle. This disappointed many hardliners. The objective evolved to keep the region’s problems from distracting Secretary Rice from more serious and important areas of concern. The designated hitter for Latin Policy became a fourth level bureaucrat, an Assistant Secretary was left to fend for himself without much visible top cover. Obama reached the White House and Hillary Clinton was ensconced as Secretary of State after having successfully blocked Bill Richardson from the job. Admittedly, Gov. Richardson was in the midst of a brewing scandal in New Mexico. Several political and media wags noted that all the key Latin foreign policy slots have been given to Latinos. These included Dan Restrepo at the NSC, Arturo Valenzuela at State, Frank Mora at Defense and Carmen Lomellin as Ambassador to OAS. This has been applauded notably by the Latino constituency groups. The issue has become now one of policy. Does the Obama administration care about the Latin American region? Where does it stack up? The fact is that the region once again finds itself vis-a-vis the US on the back-burner. It is not on the cutting edge of foreign policy. Yet early on Obama found himself in a tussle on two issues: Cuba and Chavez.

When Obama attended the Summit of the Americas meeting in the spring in Trinidad Tobago, he ran into unexpected or unscripted situations: is the US now ready to re-admit Cuba to the OAS? The vast majority of the Hemisphere’s countries were angling to get Cuba back into the OAS. The Obama team seemed surprised and almost unprepared for this challenge. The other one was how to deal with Chavez. Obama showed class and engaged Chavez briefly but certainly in awkward photo ops. The Cuba question dogged Hillary in the June OAS ministerial in Honduras. At the eleventh hour the Obama team was able to scramble and cobble a mutually acceptable communiqué that did not re-admit Cuba but addressed the irregularity of Cuba being absent from the OAS family. Some labeled the new Administration’s performance “Bush Light.” At the same time the US Mexico relationship was steadily moving forward. Obama revealed his support of Plan Merida to enable Mexico to better take on the drug cartels which have created enormous instability. But the funding for Merida was largely held up because of bureaucratic lack of clarity and other requirements. The other US Mexico challenge is undocumented immigration. No political bravery has emanated from the White House to wrangle with this most sensitive political public policy issue. In fact, no one is able now to predict if immigration reform will be an agenda item in the first two years of the Administration. So far it seems like the Democrats have concluded that the immigration reform bill is a lose-lose situation. The post 9/11 anti-terrorist sentiment coupled with the global economic downturn has inflicted pain on the US body politic. The US public has become more reluctant if not hostile to new immigration flows. This has plainly put a crimp into Obama team’s outlook. The continuation of building the border wall and draconian Homeland Security illegal-immigrant raids on job sites have not been seen sympathetically in Latin America and among Latino audiences in this country.

The more defining moment for the Obama Administration has been the on-going Honduras ‘golpe’ or coup crisis. The Obama team initially sided with the ousted President Zelaya and declared that the sacred principles of democracy had to be adhered and respected. Hence, Zelaya’s restoration to power became the battle cry for US interests in the initial months. Five months later the Obama administration is backtracking on the defense of democratic principles. The Administration appears to have tired of the Honduran crisis. The de facto regime in Honduras dug in and used PR and propaganda cleverly. More interesting seemed to be the Administration’s inability to persuade the defacto regime to cede power. Honduras is small with no political influence, no economic power nor military might — only diplomacy is in its arsenal. The US having all these options thinks in exhausting the first three before employing diplomacy. Hence, the Hondurans readily resorted to the old small country approach to concerns: use diplomacy but follow the rules of not speaking first, do not get angry and finally if unable to resolve favorably the problem then tangle it more. In using these tactics, Honduras wore out the US. The Obama administration slowly began to show  impatience and wariness. They saw Honduras as a small pesky country becoming increasingly more annoying and troublesome on the international stage.

Finally, the US after having declared itself initially pro-restoration of Zelaya and passing the problem to the OAS and Nobel Laureate President Arias of Costa Rica to resolve saw itself being drawn back into the fray. The contentious process dragged out in the discussion of whether the ouster of the Honduran President was legal or not. It attracted Republican die-hearts who defended the coup (because of the Chavista factor against Zelaya) while the Administration and the whole international community condemned the coup as anti-democratic. Obama’s team began to see themselves politically caught between a rock and a hard place: do we support and restore a Chavista (enemy of the US ) while defending democracy? After five months, Secretary of State Clinton and her Assistant Secretary for Latin America (who was being denied confirmation as Ambassador to Brazil by the Republicans) sought to cut a deal and injected themselves finally into the process to basically extricate themselves from this tar-baby. This required an about face or a betrayal of the previous US position. This has now become most troubling in Latin America to see the young dynamic US Administration as less than gracious in this process. In fact, many pundits in and outside the US are remarking or noting that the Administration not only demonstrated confusion or ineptitude or at best a maladroit approach, but callously left most of the OAS membership holding the bag.

To shore up support and bring someone high-level from the US Administration, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis was chosen to be the senior US participant in a so-called Verification Commission to secure the recent signed accords now being hailed as the final solution. Solis, practically unwitting or unfamiliar with the situation, was carefully choreographed by the State Department to ensure that she would stick to the diplomatic script and not become a freelancer. Hilda had been initially hailed as the most liberal member of the Obama cabinet but by the time she left Tegucigalpa she was seen as apologist for the defacto ‘golpista’ government. She now takes the hit, not Hillary. Rather clever and cynical maneuvering it was indeed. As soon as Tom Shannon, the State Department’s overseer of this whole show announced that the Hondurans no longer had to restore Zelaya to get international recognition of the upcoming elections, the defacto government felt it was off the hook and home free.  The Brazilians, who are housing Zelaya in their Embassy and waiting for his restoration, feel the US has behaved at best negligently and indifferent. The problem could have been avoided or minimize by having initially forceful high-level US leadership on the issue. The OAS  had its Secretary General and all the countries in the region had their Presidents or Prime Minister through their Foreign Ministers decry this US perfidy. The US has had a fourth-rung bureaucrat (the Assistant Secretary) in the lead.  Obama’s team failed to recognized from the beginning the limitations of the State Department if not given top White House cover. Moreover, in handing over the volatile issue in this case to the bureaucracy, it plainly did not understand that ‘diplomats seek the path of least resistance, they believe in nothing and everything to everyone’ and as bureaucrats they adhere to: never get between a bureaucrat and his/her ambitions. They mow you down….the additional factor is that while the US behaved like a world power during the Cold War: it basically ordered everyone except the Soviets to do its bidding. In Spanish it was referred to as the ‘dedazo’…now in the post Cold War-era even the tiny insignificant powers have begun to lose their fear of the US. Yet this muddle and lack of focus produce the image of a Gulliver with Lilliputians throwing ropes over his back to bring him down. The US Latino community regardless of partisan bias will feel that if this is all the Obama Administration can provide in terms of moral leadership and support for democratic ideals and most of all the lack of consistency in policy toward Latin America then a closer  look at the expectations must be undertaken. Disappointment is the only word to describe the first real test of fortitude, skill and determination in dealing with Latin America. Arturo Valenzuela the new Assistant Secretary will now have to rectify, re-define as well as need to provide the real Obama vision of the region.

The US has sent Latinos/Hispanics as envoys to Mexico. The first one was John Jova in the 1970′s, a career diplomat born in Long Island of Cuban-Spanish descent. His aristocratic bearing made him most acceptable. The second one was not so fortunate. Julian Nava was chosen by Jimmy Carter towards the end of his Presidential term. Nava, a Mexican-born California college professor, became among the Mexican elites the caricature of the Pocho/Naco coming home. At times his mangled Spanish, sprinkled with Spanglish, and his sometimes maladroit demeanor made him a reason for many Mexicans to insist that sending a Gringo envoy with such a background and behavior is a manifestly insensitive effort by gringos to insult the Mexicans. Plainly, it suggests an insecurity of the Mexicans’ identity conundrum. The third one Reagan sent. John Gavin, the glamorously handsome movie star of yester-year whose mother was a high-born Mexican from Sonora cut his swath. He spoke impeccable Spanish, manifested a self-possessed élan and almost recklessly proceeded to alienate all Mexicans with a sniffy contempt not seen since Lane Wilson the execrable US envoy of the early twentieth century. Most recently W. Bush sent his Texas friend, Tony Garza, a Mexican-American from Brownsville. Garza has no patrician airs, but looked and behaved like a regular gringo. He was not revered like Jova nor disdained like Nava nor loathed like Gavin, but viewed as a light-weight but amiable friend of the First Family and who managed to romance and marry the richest woman in Latin America, a Mexican beer heiress. However, it is known in some Washington circles that Garza did deliver in the end for the Mexicans. When the Plan Merida appeared to be headed for the budget chop at OMB, Garza readily called the White House and successfully persuaded President Bush to restore the Plan Merida funding. This is the kind of envoy the Mexicans hoped that Obama would name. Instead Carlos Pascual, a former career foreign service officer (with a zen-like demeanor) has been selected but not yet given agreement  (approval or acceptance) by the Mexican Government. Pascual, a Cuban-born, Stanford/Harvard educated Hispanic achieved recognition mostly during the Clinton Presidency. He was sent to the CIS countries (former part of the Soviet Union) in the early ’90′s. He apparently has an academic concentration in Russian and related fields. Strobe Talbott, initially the State Department’s CIS head and later Deputy Secretary became aware of Pascual’s linguistic and programmatic accomplishments as a USAID development officer.  Pascual was subsequently detailed to the National Security Council to manage the Russian and CIS portfolio.

In 2000 before the Clinton Administration ended, Pascual was made Ambassador to the Ukraine. After a successful stint there, he returned in the first term of the George W. Bush Administration, and Colin Powell selected him as the first Director of the State Department’s Reconstruction Office. This office primarily focused on strengthening emerging democracies and faltering states. He later left State and the Foreign Service to replace Jim Steinberg at the Brookings Institute as Vice President International Affairs when Steinberg became head of the LBJ School at the University of Texas. Strobe Talbott had become Brookings’s President. Now in the Obama Administration Steinberg is Deputy Secretary of State (the old Talbott position). Susan Rice, also formerly at Brookings and an Obama confidante, is US Ambassador to the UN. Pascual is seen by his Brookings colleagues as a perfect fit for Mexico with his programmatic talents and his glowing accomplishments. Yet he has no Mexico or Latin American experience or connection except for being born in Cuba and may speak Spanish as good as Ukrainian. Clearly, the Brookings group promoted him into this job as a fellow member of the Institute’s guild. However, it is generally perceived that both Hillary and the White House leaped like trouts when Pascual’s name came before them with hefty recommendations from Brookings along with a Hispanic last name to boot. But the Obamites failed to appreciate the significance of a recent dust up in senior Mexican official circles caused by the public assertion or suggestion  by some high ranking US officials that Mexico was either a ‘failed state’ or fast headed towards that status. Now the selection of the former head of the ‘failed states’ bureau at State Department as the US Ambassador caused the Mexicans to scratch their heads or recoil in frustration. Hence, why did Hillary not make the scheduled announcement after she met with President Calderon? Moreover, Pascual does not have any notable direct links to President Obama. Adding to the Mexican concern is their natural distrust of Cuban Americans because of the Miami crowd’s animosity over the years towards Mexico for being the only Latin country to preserve continuously diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro. Certainly, Pascual does not appear to share the Miami Calle Ocho syndrome. Any President reserves the right to send whomever he desires to be his envoy. But the acceptance (agreement) by the receiving country has to be manifested. In this case, the US did not think this carefully through. Moreover, the Latino political leadership in Washington was either unaware of the appointment or equally ignorant of the consequences. Now the challenge for the talented Pascual, assuming he gets Mexican approval, will be to manage the disjointed Plan Merida program and be as successful as in the Ukraine. The problem will be that the Mexicans, unlike the Ukrainians, will not drop to their knees or kiss up to the US. The Ukrainians had good reason: they sought US protection from the Russians next door. Hence, their servility to the Americans was evident. The Mexicans with their historical and morbid suspicion of American intentions and actions will be harder to read, distant at times, unrelentingly independent, reluctant to be led or guided by the US…the question arises, ‘Is Pascual really a fit or a misjudgment by the Obamites and the Brookings crowd?’ He may have to choose between trying to conduct the bilateral relationship or just managing the US Plan Merida programmatic cast of thousands who will appear throughout Mexico. Sarukhan, who is already conducting the basic thrust of the bilateral relationship in Washington, will ultimately prefer having Pascual do the programmatic drudgery and he (Sarukhan) carry out the more glamorous weight of the bilateral relationship fraught with diplomatic sensitivity, sovereignty issues, political suspicions, the treatment of Mexican illegals in the US and the NAFTA political and bureaucratic thickets. Sarukhan has quickly mastered that a country knows when its relationship with the US is equal and mature. This is discernible when the bilateral relationship is conducted in Washington by the foreign country’s ambassador and not in the capital of his country with the American would-be pro-consul. The US can send as envoys retired politicians, used car salesmen, fat cat businessmen, and political party donors to countries like France, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Scandinavian countries, Japan, Spain and sometimes even to Russia and China. These countries in return send the US their top professional diplomats or statesmen to conduct the bilateral relationship directly with the White House, State Department and the myriad of US agencies in Washington. The US sends normally career diplomats as chief of mission generally to weaker, less significant countries to conduct the bilateral relationship in those countries. Mexico has joined the ranks of these more mature relationships. Hence, the US Embassy in Mexico is not as influential as in the past, but it remains a huge job.
 
Where were the Latino advocacy wags and politicos in Washington on this critical selection process? It was noted that several Latino advocacy groups were included in the pre-trip briefing dinner held for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before she set out for Mexico. Apparently, neither the State Department’s talking heads and analysts nor the domestic Latino groups present like the National Council of La Raza added any value to the expected substantive discussion. Plainly, Mexico appears to be treated as an appendage of the domestic Latino concerns not as a foreign policy priority. The appointments of Dan Restrepo, a Colombian American to the National Security Council, Frank Mora, a Cuban American to the Defense Department’s Office on Latin America, Pascual to Mexico and the pending appointment of Arturo Valenzuela, a Chilean American to be the Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere appear to be solidifying. These selections have the Latin Americans already wondering if the Obama team is trying to address Latin America or the domestic Latino/Hispanic agenda. If it is the latter: what has been the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ role? And the advocacy groups’ input into such selections would be most interesting to examine. This zany selection process demonstrates that the Obama team has to be more surefooted in vetting not only for qualifications and ethnicity but for political sensitivity.  Moreover, it needs to distinguish better the domestic from the foreign policy concerns. This is a classic case where a perfectly sound and qualified Latino is selected but stumbles for more nuanced and complex reasons.

Photos: Secretary Clinton in Mexico, Mexican Ambassador to US Arturo Sarukhan, and Carlos Pascual