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131. Celebrating Germany in Brazil — Dominica hosts the World Creole Festival — Tackling Mexico City's traffic jams —10 Things to Do in Antigua

Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Prost, Brazil! Grab a stein-full of caipirinha and stroll down to Ipanema beach in your lederhosen—it's Germany-Brazil Year in Brazil. The yearlong festival, aimed at deepening German-Brazilian relations, kicked off in May with the opening of the German-Brazilian Economic Forum in São Paulo. “Brazil is one of the most successful new centers of power in the world,” says Guido Westerwelle, Germany's foreign minister. “We want to intensify cooperation with Brazil, not only economically but also culturally.” It's no surprise that Brazil, the sixth-largest economy in the world, has caught the attention of Europe's financial powerhouse. Brazil is Germany's most important trading partner in Latin America, accounting for $14.2 billion in imports in 2012. With some 1,600 German companies in Brazil providing 250,000 jobs and 17 percent of industrial GDP, it's an economic relationship that clearly has mutual benefits.
Topic:
Security, Economics, and Environment
Political Geography:
United States, New York, Europe, Brazil, Germany, and Mexico

132. Does Development Reduce Migration?

Author:
Michael Clemens
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The most basic economic theory suggests that rising incomes in developing countries will deter emigration from those countries, an idea that captivates policymakers in international aid and trade diplomacy. A lengthy literature and recent data suggest something quite different: that over the course of a "mobility transition", emigration generally rises with economic development until countries reach upper-middle income, and only thereafter falls. This note quantifies the shape of the mobility transition in every decade since 1960. It then briefly surveys 45 years of research, which has yielded six classes of theory to explain the mobility transition and numerous tests of its existence and characteristics in both macro- and micro-level data. The note concludes by suggesting five questions that require further study.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Social Stratification, Social Movement, and Developing World
Political Geography:
United States, Canada, and Mexico

133. Scarcity without Leviathan: The Violent Effects of Cocaine Supply Shortages in the Mexican Drug War

Author:
Juan Camilo Castillo, Daniel Mejia, and Pascual Restrepo
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Using the case of the cocaine trade in Mexico as a relevant and salient example, this paper shows that scarcity leads to violence in markets without third party enforcement. We construct a model in which supply shortages increase total revenue when demand is inelastic. If property rights over revenues are not well defined because of the lack of reliable third party enforcement, the incentives to prey on others and avoid predation by exercising violence increase with scarcity, thus increasing violence. We test our model and the proposed channel using data for the cocaine trade in Mexico. We found that exogenous supply shocks originated in changes in the amount of cocaine seized in Colombia (Mexico's main cocaine supplier) create scarcity and increase drug-related violence in Mexico.
Topic:
Crime, War on Drugs, and Narcotics Trafficking
Political Geography:
Colombia and Mexico

134. Governance Transfer in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

Author:
Francesco Duina
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
Abstract:
While NAFTA itself does not contain any provisions for governance transfer, its two side agreements (NAALC, NAAEC) prescribe standards in the realm of human rights (labor, environment), the rule of law, and good governance and create a number of instruments for their (indirect) promotion. Through technical assistance, fora for dialogue and exchange, monitoring, and complaints procedures that can result in monetary sanctions, the side agreements aim at promoting the effective enforcement of national law rather than regional standards. These provisions reflect the same concerns in the United States and Canada that lead to the conclusion of the two side agreements in the first place: creating conditions for fair competition in light of Mexico's failure to effectively enforce national laws, resulting in de facto lower labor and environmental standards and thus lower costs compared to the northern neighbours. Beyond formal governance transfer, NAFTA has had an impact on domestic governance reforms in Mexico since the early 1990s as it was used as leverage in both international negotiations and Mexican domestic politics.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
United States, America, Canada, North America, and Mexico

135. From "Make-Sicko" back to Mexico City: The Greening of Mexico's Distrito Federal

Author:
Marcelo Ebrard
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Mexico City has one of the world's most complex concentrations of people. In the early sixteenth century, Mexico City already had 200,000 inhabitants, and the Valley of Mexico almost half a million—which is to say, it has always been one of the world's largest cities. Due to its longstanding position as Mexico's capital city, industrial development in the twentieth century, and particularly the rapid demographic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, the city's air quality was suffering by the early 1990s. Mexico City became known internationally as the most polluted city in the world.
Political Geography:
Mexico

136. Inroads or Detours in the Drug Debate?

Author:
Bernardo J. Rico
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
In June, 15 gunmen traveling in three vehicles attacked a police station in the small town of Salcaja in the northern Guatemalan highlands. By the time the shooting ended, eight policemen were dead—and one, the station's deputy inspector, was kidnapped. The motive was initially unclear, but the government's subsequent investigation revealed that the deputy inspector and a few of the police who were murdered had heisted $740,000 from the leader of a local narco-trafficking organization connected to Mexico's notorious Gulf Cartel.
Political Geography:
Mexico

137. Dispatches from the field: Xaltianguis, Mexico

Author:
Nathaniel Parish Flannery
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Dispatches: Xaltianguis, Mexico BY NATHANIEL PARISH FLANNERY How armed housewives in the hills of Mexico are fighting back against narcotraffickers—without the state. View a slideshow from Xaltianguis, Mexico below. Angelica Romero, a middle-aged mother of two, views her reflection in the bedroom mirror. She tucks her blue T-shirt into her jeans, pulls her hair back in a ponytail, and slips a tan baseball cap onto her head. In black letters across the brim, it reads: “Citizen Police.” Only a few months earlier, residents of Romero's town, Xaltianguis, located in the verdant hills outside Acapulco, had been paralyzed by fear of kidnapping gangs, armed robbers and extortionists. But since the townspeople banded together to form a militia this summer, the crime wave has come to an end.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
Mexico

138. Celebrating Chinese New Year in Cuba — 10 Things to Do in Valparaíso — Mezcal goes upscale in Mexico—Graphicanos.

Author:
Richard André
Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Graphicanos View a slideshow of Graphicanos prints below. Indiana is better known for the Indy 500 and sports teams than for a thriving art culture, so most art lovers would be surprised to stumble upon the cutting-edge exhibit of serigraphic prints—a contemporary art form that uses block-size ink stencils to print images onto canvas—on display this winter at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Charles Shepard, the museum's executive director and curator of the groundbreaking exhibit—Graphicanos: Contemporary Latino Prints from the Serie Project—likes to point out that there is a thriving art world beyond the traditional centers of New York and San Francisco. And he believes presenting often-ignored contributions of Latino artists in the American “heartland”—not usually seen as a center of Latino culture—reflects the rich diversity of U.S. society today. “Every part of our diverse culture is making art in some form,” Shepard says. “And as a museum, we should be looking at that.” The museum hosts an annual Día de los Muertos celebration every November, which attracts about 2,000 visitors from a variety of cultural backgrounds. The event became so popular that it inspired him to collaborate with the late Sam Coronado, a Mexican-American serigraphic print artist, for the Graphicanos exhibit.
Topic:
Agriculture
Political Geography:
New York, Cuba, and Mexico

139. Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles

Author:
Selim Erbagci
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles In the last decade, the world has witnessed an unprecedented development of many countries. The speed of this process has not only caused surprise but also has generated questions: How did these countries manage such significant improvements? Why have some other countries failed to reach a similar level of success during the same period? How long could this rapid development last? Ruchir Sharma answers these issues, explaining the common reason for rapid development during the last decade and also the country-specific internal dynamics behind the rapid development of countries such as China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, Mexico, and South Korea. Finally, He also identifies the potential breakout nations for the next decade.
Topic:
Development and Economics
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Turkey, India, Brazil, and Mexico

140. Subnational Electoral Contexts and Corruption in Mexico

Author:
Brian M. Faughnan, Jonathan T. Hiskey, and Scott D. Revey
Publication Date:
06-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
Scholars of the world's most recent democratization processes have tended to focus on how national-level institutions have developed and how citizens have interpreted and responded to those developments. In this paper, we argue that the distinct subnational political environments that emerge from uneven national regime transitions are important determinants of how people view their political world. Specifically, we argue that citizens' experiences with and attitudes towards corruption are particularly influenced by the subnational political context in which those citizens live. We use survey data from across Mexico to test our theoretical expectations that a multi-party electoral context will heighten citizens' awareness of corruption as a governance issue, even as their chances of being victimized by corrupt behavior is reduced. Conversely, we posit that one-party electoral environments should facilitate a "business as usual" attitude toward corruption among government officials and citizens. As efforts to deepen democracy and improve governance continue across the developing world, our findings highlight the need to incorporate subnational political processes into efforts to under- stand and address such critical issues as corruption and its consequences.
Topic:
Corruption and Democratization
Political Geography:
Mexico