AS/COA Online - Interview: Rubén Beltrán, Consul General of Mexico, on Serving U.S.-Based Latino Populations

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"The situation involves dozens of countries and hundreds of thousands joining the job market every year."

In an exclusive interview, Consul General of Mexico in New York Rubén Beltrán speaks with AS/COA Online Managing Editor Carin Zissis about a new initiative bringing together Latin American consulates to expand services for immigrants in the tri-state area. The coalition marks the beginning of the project through the June 21 Feria Consular Latinoamericana in Harrison, New Jersey, where the consulates Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay will provide services.  Beltrán also discussed the challenges facing Mexican immigrant communities across the country and consular efforts to meet the needs of New York’s rapidly growing Mexican community.

AS/COA: You described this initiative (the Feria Consular Latinoamericana) as the first of its kind with this many consul generals coming together. Can you talk about how these consul generals came together and why now?

Beltrán: Well, it is the first time that several consulates of Latin America in the U.S come together to provide services in a joint fashion simultaneously...

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AS/COA Online - Interview: Student Activist Yon Goicoechea on Venezuela's Political Future

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“I believe that to have modern countries, we also have to renew our political structures.”

Yon Goicoechea, Venezuelan law student, activist, and founder of the Futuro Presente Foundation spoke with AS/COA Online Managing Editor Carin Zissis about his country's student activist movement, widely credited with playing a pivotal role in the defeat of a December 2007 constitutional referendum. Goicoechea was recently awarded the 2008 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty from the Cato Institute.“There are hundreds of thousands of young Venezuelans with a firm commitment to making good policy practices and that’s why I believe that in 10 years we will have renewed institutions in Venezuela and new opportunities for improvement,” says Goicoechea.

AS/COA: How did Venezuela’s student movement begin?

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AS/COA Online - Entrevista: Activista Estudiantil Yon Goicoechea sobre el Futuro Político Venezolano

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“Yo creo que para tener países modernos también hace falta renovar nuestras estructuras políticas.”

Yon Goicoechea, estudiante venezolano de derecho, activista y fundador de la fundación Futuro Presente habló con la editora de AS/COA Online Carin Zissis sobre el movimiento estudiantil, ampliamente acreditado como pieza importante en la derrota del referendo constucional de diciembre del 2007. Goicoechea fue recientemente galardonado con el premio Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty del Cato Institute. “Hay cientos de miles de jóvenes en Venezuela comprometidos en hacer política de la buena y por eso creo que en 10 años vamos a tener nuevas instituciones en el país y nuevas oportunidades para hacer las cosas mejor,” dice Goicoechea.

AS/COA: ¿Como empezó el movimiento estudiantil en Venezuela?

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AS/COA Online - Secretary General José Miguel Insulza on the OAS Role in the Western Hemisphere

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“The sub-regional integration institutions will gather more strength. But we still need a forum for hemispheric dialogue.”

José Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of Americas States, spoke with AS/COA Online Managing Editor Carin Zissis following an Americas Society/Council of the Americas event about the OAS role in promoting democracy in Latin America (Listen to audio of Insulza’s remarks). In recent months, the OAS has played a central role in negotiations related to regional matters, including a vote on autonomy in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz province and the March Andean standoff between Colombia and its neighbors Ecuador and Venezuela after a Colombian attack on a FARC camp inside Ecuador’s borders. “What I think is that the OAS has to prove itself as the main forum for political dialogue in the Americas, prove itself to be a bona fide intermediary in the problems among or within countries, and especially act very independently based only on Inter-American law,” said Insulza of the organization, now in its sixtieth year.

AS/COA: During your remarks you discussed the recent Andean crisis. There’s been discussion about the role of the OAS in that matter. You talked about how quickly the OAS had to respond to that issue. Can you talk about how that has affected the OAS and the process by which various issues are handled?

Insulza: We have tried very hard this year, not only to be relevant but to be timely at the same time. I fear all the time that something will happen as it did with the Venezuela crisis; in 2002, after the president was deposed, the council met and they were still meeting when the president was re-instated.

I think [the handling of the recent crisis] has given us a lot of legitimacy to work on the process. Basically, we were very evenhanded. We understood the Colombian motives, we understood the Ecuadorian rights, and we managed to forge a consensus on that.

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CFR.org | Backgrounder: The U.S.-South Korea Alliance

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The longstanding U.S.-South Korea alliance, originally established during the early years of the Cold War as a bulwark against the communist expansion in Asia, has undergone a series of transformations in recent years. Since 1998, when political power passed for the first time from the dictatorial ruling party to the political opposition, the United Democratic Party, successive UDP governments have steered a more independent course from Washington, sometimes leading to friction. During the tenure of President George W. Bush, the once solid alliance went through a difficult period. Among the many issues that bedeviled ties was disagreement over how to handle Pyongyang’s erratic behavior, a generational divide in South Korea on the alliance and the U.S. military presence that underpins it, an ascendant China, and disagreements during bilateral trade negotiations. In 2007, the countries signed a bilateral free trade accord and agreed to a rearrangement of the military command structure that gives Seoul a greater say in its own defense. They also narrowed their differences on North Korea policy. In 2007, a conservative, Lee Myung-bak of the Grand National Party, won South Korea’s presidency, and his party followed up with victories in 2008 parliamentary elections, ending two decades of UDP dominance. Lee strongly supports the U.S. free trade agreement and takes a harder line on North Korea unlike his two predecessors.

Read the full text.

Co-authored by Carin Zissis and Youkyung Lee

CFR.org | Backgrounder: Media Censorship in China

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The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing have drawn international attention to censorship in China. Watchdog groups say the preexisting monitoring system piles on new restrictions, and the government continues to detain and harass journalists. But the country’s burgeoning economy allows greater diversity in China’s media coverage, and experts say the growing Chinese demand for information is testing a regime that is trying to use media controls in its bid to maintain power.

Read the full text.

Co-authored by Carin Zissis and Preeti Bhattacharji

AS/COA Online - JPMorgan's Joyce Chang on Latin American Markets

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“Latin America is more insulated from a United States slowdown than at any time in recent history.”


Managing Director and Global Head of JPMorgan Chase’s Emerging Markets Research Group Joyce Chang talked with AS/COA Online Managing Editor Carin Zissis about Latin American markets and how they will face a U.S. economic downturn. JPMorgan predicts 5 percent or more growth for emerging market countries in 2008, says Chang, who notes that “the commodities rally continues to support terms of trade in Latin America." Chang says, “China is critical for emerging market economies given that it has been the key source of marginal demand for commodities in recent years.”

AS/COA: Debate has raged in recent months over how the U.S. recession will affect the global economy. How are Latin American emerging markets faring given the U.S. economic downturn?

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AS/COA Online - Pew Hispanic Center's Susan Minushkin on the Latino Vote

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"It is a continuation of a trend that’s been happening over the past few elections and will continue to be a factor going forward, as Hispanics become a growing share of the electorate in the United States."


Deputy Director Susan Minushkin of the Pew Hispanic Center spoke with AS/COA Online Managing Editor Carin Zissis about the buzz over the Latino electorate’s role in this year’s presidential election. Minushkin emphasized that the number of Latino voters has and will continue to grow as immigrants become naturalized and the large pool of young Hispanics reaches voting age. The immigration debate may have played a role in the abatement of Latino voters identifying with the Republican Party, she says.

Minushkin, who worked previously as a professor at the Centro de Investigaciones y Docencia Economicas (CIDE) in Mexico City, also talked about President Felipe Calderon’s upcoming visit to the United States—his first official visit since taking office—and the high level of Mexican interest in U.S. elections: “Mexicans see that whatever happens in the U.S. elections as having a direct affect on the future of their country.”

AS/COA: The issue of the Latino vote has been a big one this election year. What’s different this time around compared to previous years in terms of the Hispanic electorate?

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CFR.org | Pakistan’s Broken Border

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The frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan serves as the flash point for tensions between the two countries as Kabul grows increasingly critical of Islamabad's seeming inability to control cross-border raids by Islamic militants. The solution proposed by Pakistan last month to mine and fence the roughly 1,500-mile Durand line (VOA) did little to reassure Afghans, who have long disputed the boundary. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose criticism was echoed by Washington and the United Nations, said Islamabad should instead eliminate terrorist sanctuaries (BBC) within Pakistan rather than separate families who live in the border region. Pashtun tribal leaders on both sides of the boundary warn if Pakistan carries out the plan they will remove any barriers or mines (Pajhwok Afghan News).

Read the full text.

AS/COA Online - Interview: Jorge Castañeda, Former Foreign Minister of Mexico, on Immigration Reform

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"It takes leadership because most politicians in the United States don’t want to lead on this. They look at McCain and they say, 'Look what happened to him.' Who wants to take a leadership position on this and then get slammed in Iowa?"

In an interview, former Foreign Minister of Mexico Jorge Castañeda talks about his new book Ex Mex: From Migrants to Immigrants with AS/COA Online Managing Editor Carin Zissis. Talking before an AS/COA event, Castañeda, who played a firsthand role in attempts to pass a U.S.-Mexican immigration agreement during the Fox administration, says passage of immigration reform will depend on election of a U.S. leader “with more political capital than Bush has.”

The author and political analyst, now a professor of politics and Latin American studies at New York University, also says the need for a decision on comprehensive immigration reform will become increasingly apparent: “It’s either regression—with all the dangers and the outrages of separating women from their children, of deporting people, of raiding houses—or it’s reform.”

AS/COA: In the book, you discuss how immigration reform became central to Mexican foreign policy after [former President Vicente] Fox came to power. Meanwhile, in the United States there has been this turn towards nativism. Given the implied conflict here, what will it take for immigration reform to move forward?

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CFR.org | India's Energy Crunch

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India’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth hit 9.2 percent for the period from July through September of this year—an increase over the already robust rate of 8.4 percent during the same period last year. But along with an ascendant economy comes a mounting hunger for energy, and New Delhi fears it cannot sustain growth in the long term without continually boosting the country’s energy supply. India’s per capita energy consumption rates remain low in comparison to those of countries like the United States and China. But India, the world’s fifth biggest energy consumer, is projected to surpass Japan and Russia to take third place by 2030. Doing so will test India’s ability to create a domestic policy for its semi-privatized energy sector, as well as its capacity to develop relationships with foreign energy exporters.

Read the full text.

CFR.org | Pying-Pyong Diplomacy

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The Bush administration’s policy of no direct talks with Pyongyang is no more. Christopher R. Hill, the chief U.S. envoy in North Korean denuclearization talks, made a surprise visit (KTimes) to the isolated country Thursday. With this trip, Hill aimed to breathe life into a February denuclearization deal that gave Pyongyang sixty days to shut down its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and allow inspectors to return to the country. In exchange, Pyongyang would receive desperately needed food and energy supplies from members of the Six-Party Talks. But the April deadline came and went with Pyongyang refusing to hold up its part of the bargain until it received $25 million in funds, which the United States says were connected to North Korean counterfeiting and money laundering, frozen in a Macao bank. After meetings in Pyongyang, Hill said North Korean officials were prepared to move past the funds issue and shut down Yongbyon (BBC).

Read the full text.

CFR.org | Backgrounder: India's Muslim Population

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Although home to a Hindu majority, India has a Muslim population of some 150 million, making it the state with the second-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. While many Indian Muslims achieve celebrity status and high-profile positions abroad and in India’s government—the current president is Muslim—India’s booming economy has left the nation’s largest minority group lagging behind. Muslims experience low literacy and high poverty rates, and Hindu-Muslim violence has claimed a disproportionate number of Muslim lives. Yet Muslims can impact elections, using their power as a voting bloc to gain concessions from the candidates who court them.

Read the full text.

CFR.org/NYTimes.com | China's Slow Road to Democracy

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In a February 2007 article, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao predicted China would continue in the “primary stage” of socialism for the next hundred years—considered by many a signal of Communist Party thinking about the slow-motion development of democracy. At the same time, a rise in social protests and nongovernmental organizations demonstrates Chinese popular demand for a more open society. But thanks to a burgeoning economy and clampdowns on press freedoms and dissent, experts say the central government in Beijing has an increasingly firm grip on power.

Read the full article at NYTimes.com.

CFR.org | Musharraf Tightens Media Grip

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Three Pakistani journalists (Reuters) recently left a press meeting in Karachi to find a dark message on their cars: an unaddressed envelope containing a single bullet. A week earlier two of the three journalists, who work for foreign media outlets, were included in a list of a dozen reporters considered “enemies” by a shady group called the Mohajir Rabita Council, which has links to the Karachi-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement allied with President Pervez Musharraf’s political coalition.

Read the full text.

CFR.org | Park: Private Sector Solution Could Resolve North Korean ‘Radioactive Funds’ Issue

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John S. Park, head of the Korea working group at the United States Institute of Peace, discusses the controversy over $25 million in North Korean funds holding up a February 2007 denuclearization deal. Although the U.S. State Department pledged to release the money from Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macao, banks around the world consider the funds tainted by a U.S. Treasury Department ruling that connects the $25 million with illicit activities.

“The $25 million is the financial equivalent of radioactive funds,” explains Park, who says the time has come “to start thinking out of the box of having governments approach third party banks.” He suggests a private sector solution to the current stalemate and that Asia’s experience with troubled banks during the 1997 financial crisis provides a model for resolving the issue. Monetary authorities in Macao could declare BDA a distressed bank and put it up for sale, explains Park. He says the BDA banking license in a recapitalized format could result in a “lucrative sale” in which the proceeds “can be used for the clean transfer of $25 million to a bank designated by North Korea.”

Access the podcast at CFR.org.

CFR.org | Timeline: Venezuela's Chavez Era

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took office in 1999 on a populist platform. But as he moves to enact his “socialist revolution,” critics say the country increasingly resembles an authoritarian state. This interactive timeline offers a visual account of modern Venezuelan politics and Chavez’s rise to power.

Served as photo editor.

Access the interactive.

CFR.org | China Policy: Protectionism in the Wind

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The United States reached minor economic agreements with Beijing during talks in Washington this week, yet failed to secure a deal (AP) for significant Chinese currency reform. Delegates from the two countries met for the biannual Strategic Economic Dialogue, which serves as chance for discussion between two of the world’s largest economies. Although envoys reached pacts on energy, the environment, and opening Chinese markets to U.S. financial institutions, the currency issue could trouble U.S.-China economic relations. In advance of the talks, a bipartisan group of forty-two lawmakers urged the Bush administration to investigate whether Beijing manipulates the value of the yuan, keeping it priced low against the dollar to boost Chinese exports. They charge this practice exacerbates (Reuters) the U.S. trade deficit, which hit a record high of roughly $233 billion last year.

Read the full text.

CFR.org | Supreme Problems in Pakistan

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Multiple assassination attempts have failed to remove President Pervez Musharraf from power, yet unrest caused by his suspension of the Supreme Court’s chief justice threatens his authority. Protesters say that Iftikhar Chaudhry, handpicked by Musharraf, was removed over concern he would question the president’s hold on the army chief post in fall 2007 presidential elections. The chief justice has refused to go quietly. Highlighting tensions, a court official was murdered in his home (Australian) hours before a pivotal Supreme Court hearing on the matter. A BBC backgrounder examines the judicial crisis.

Read the full text.

CFR.org | Abbas: Musharraf’s Sinking Credibility

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Hassan Abbas, a research fellow at Harvard University and author of Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism, served as an official in the administrations of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He discusses escalating violence over Musharraf’s decision to suspend Pakistan’s Supreme Court chief justice and says it signifies “the beginning of the end” for the president, who seized power in a 1999 coup. Abbas says deadly clashes over the judicial crisis could not have occurred “without instruction from the top,” and that the government wished to show it would not tolerate dissent. The possibility of an agreement between Musharraf and the exiled Bhutto appears increasingly remote given the Supreme Court controversy, says Abbas.

Access the podcast at CFR.org.