Lowenthal

Continuing my interview of March 10, 2009 with Dr Abraham Lowenthal, internationally recognised authority on Latin American/Caribbean/US relations, he commented:

"A lot of the issues in United States relations with the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico are what some of us call 'intermestic issues.' Intermestic is a made-up-word combining international with domestic.

Many things on the agenda are not classic foreign policy issues. They are issues in many ways domestic but have strong international drivers. Immigration policy is one great example. But also the narcotics flow, public health, environmental pollution, climate change - these are things for which you can't draw a border and say 'On that side of the border it's a foreign policy problem.'

These have both domestic and international sources. I think that's going to be high on the agenda of the Obama administration."

When I mentioned the drugs-for-weapons-trade with the US via Haiti currently affecting our security in Jamaica, Lowenthal responded: "I think the most dramatic case is that of Mexico. The evidence is that a very, very high percentage of the weapons used in violent crimes in Mexico are sold in Texas gun shops.

We have a political reality in the United States, based on a particular interpretation of the Constitution that's imbued in American culture, that people ought to have the right to bear arms. I'm not convinced by it myself, but the courts have upheld it.

Certainly there is no constitutional right to sell arms for the purpose of introducing them into another country to do mischief. And yet that's what's been happening.

Good things

One of the good things that has already emerged from the Obama administration is, I understand from press reports, in his meeting with President Calderon of Mexico, which occurred in the period of transition, President-elect Obama assured President Calderon that he was aware of this as a significant problem and under his administration efforts would be made to do something about it. I think that's very important."

Lowenthal mentioned hearing very favourable things about Jamaica's electoral reform, unlike his observations during his November trip to Nicaragua:

"I was there just after the municipal elections, during a period of intense and contentious dispute, in which the opposition claimed, I think with considerable evidence to support it, that the results of the elections had been fraudulently manipulated by the government of Daniel Ortega.

The very interesting thing is that President Ortega and his wife, Maria Rosario Murillo, who represent the Sandinista Party - and he was freely elected in open elections to come back to be the President of Nicaragua - every body with him in the original Sandinista government of the late 1970s, early 1980s, virtually all of his colleagues and allies from that period have left his entourage.

They've broken with him. He no longer has their support. So although he still has the party banner of the Sandinista movement, it's much more an Ortega/Murillo movement now.

In terms of the elections, the government refused to authorise international electoral observers and put some restrictions on national election observers, but there was sufficient national monitoring to provide considerable evidence of fraud, particularly in Managua itself where the announced results strained credulity."

"Former President Aleman of Nicaragua, also freely elected (a successor to Ortega's first regime) was eventually charged and convicted of massive corruption.

He was sentenced and negotiated with Ortega to have his sentence changed to essentially a comfortable house arrest but he was still a convicted criminal. He then negotiated in two stages.

He first negotiated that he would be released from house arrest. Still on the books as a convicted felon, but with no actual punishment. In other words no longer restricted to his house. And for that concession he agreed to recognise the electoral victory of the Sandinistas in Managua and several other cities. But then the Liberal Party, Aleman's Party, which still had a controlling fraction of the legislature refused to allow Ortega's programmes to be approved.

They didn't have enough strength to get an alternative programme but they, in effect, vetoed the Sandinista programme. And just recently, they reached a deal whereby all the criminal charges against former President Aleman have been removed.

RAW politics

He is no longer a convicted felon. All the charges have been quashed and he has relented to allow control of the Congress by the Sandinista movement. So this is RAW politics at its most crude form and that's Nicaragua today in tough shape.

It's already being extremely affected by the international economic crisis and by issues of remittances, exports and so on. The Nicaraguan financial situation as such is that they have depended on a very high degree on international foreign aid.

The international sources of aid, including the United States but very importantly European countries, are not impressed by the electoral shenanigans. So they are looking at their aid and it's a pretty sad situation." Lowenthal regards Jamaica's electoral reform "as an important aspect" of our country.

As the first Robert F. Erburu Professor of Ethics, Globalization and Development and Professor of International Relations at the University of South California (USC), as well as author of innumerable articles and 12 books, Lowenthal's roots in international ethics and the dissemination of information about international relations rests in his own family's experiences. He was born on Cape Cod, Massachusetts only because his German-Jewish parents escaped from Nazi Germany by a fluke.

Lowenthal relates: "At a time when the Swiss were not granting visas on humanitarian grounds, my father had written a doctoral dissertation with a footnote which asserted that he intended to conduct further research in some archives in Switzerland and that provided a non-humanitarian basis for applying for a visa to Switzerland, which is an irony that shows you just how important footnotes can be!"

In the DNA

He reveals: "Probably a lot about myself derives from being descended on one side from a line of rabbis. Not only my father, but his father, and his paternal grandfather so that's undoubtedly in the DNA but on my mother's side my grandfather was a textile manufacturer, somebody deeply and broadly respected in his community as a civic leader based on his business acumen, but then what he did with his time.

Even though I didn't ever meet my grandparents, I was imbued through the DNA and my parents' influence to be interested both in ethical and social issues, and also in organisation and the community. I feel I come from a very rich heritage and I have a responsibility which I certainly hope to have at least partially been able to live up to, to follow in those traditions."

While we await his book on Caribbean/Latin American/US relations, his latest venture, Global California: Rising to the Cosmopolitan Challenge, was launched by Stanford University Press just this March. Lowenthal couldn't resist pointing out:

Future leadership

"I live and work most of the year in California, a long way from Jamaica, but it's interesting to look at California as a cutting edge for what the United States is becoming. It's fascinating. Of the eight campuses of the University of California this year, 69 per cent of the entering class are what have traditionally been called minorities: African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, Native-American. Thirty-one per cent are 'Anglo-Saxon' and this is the future leadership of America.

"Your readers in Jamaica know that our Governor speaks English with an Austrian accent but what you don't know is that when the elections which resulted in Schwarzenegger's election as Governor reached their final stage, the Los Angles Times invited the five leading candidates to a state-wide televised debate, and when they appeared, four of the five candidates spoke English with an immigrant's accent! It gives you a sense of the openness and dynamism of American society, which I think is a saving grace. Obama obviously personifies that, but my point is, it's not limited to that exceptional case."

'Probably a lot about myself derives from being descended on one side from a line of rabbis. Not only my father, but his father, and his paternal grandfather so that's undoubtedly in the DNA ...' - Lowenthal