“A history of Violence: Living and dying in Central America” – book by Oscar Martinez

The author of the book, Oscar Martinez, is a journalist from El Salvador. He runs Sala Negra, a crime investigations unit for El Faro, the investigative Central American online magazine based in El Salvador.

 
He has given a graphic and moving account of the violence in Central America based on his direct interaction with criminal gangs, assassins, security forces, prison authorities, judges, prosecutors, police detectives, informants, government functionaries, political leaders, priests and the victims. He has taken enormous personal risk in visiting the areas controlled by gangs in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. He himself has faced several death threats.
 
Martinez traces the roots of the violence to the civil wars in the eighties and the role of US. He says, “The violent gangs weren’t born in Guatemala or Honduras or El Salvador. They came from the United States, Southern California, to be precise. They began with migrants fleeing a US-sponsored civil wars in Central America. The US supported brutal dictatorships, trained security forces and armed right-wing militias and death squads. This had caused hundreds of thousands of Central Americans fleeing from the violence and seeking refuge in US. Some of the young refugees found themselves living in an ecosystem of gangs already established in California. And so they came together to defend themselves and survive by forming their own gangs called as Mara Salvatrucha (Maras) and Barrio 18.  The US government deported about 4,000 of these gang members back to Central America. Those 4,000 have expanded to about  70,000, just in El Salvador. 
 
Besides the two main gangs, there are numerous smaller gangs called as Mara Gauchos Locos 13, the Crazy Cowboys 13, Los Valerios, Mirada Lokotes 13, Los Meli 33, the Twins 33, Los Chancletas (the Sandals) and Los Uvas (the Grapes). These gangs terrorise neighborhoods, extort businessmen, traffic in drugs  and recruit teenagers and train them in crime. They corrupt the political leaders and security forces and issue death threats to judges, prosecutors and police. They control the prisons and continue their criminal operations from inside the jails. The gangs overrun the police stations and outgun the police with more deadly weapons. Martinez narrates a case in which the helpless police officer calls on the families threatened by gangs to join him in prayers, as a last resort.

 
This has caused a second wave of fleeing of the Central Americans to US as illegal emigrants. But their journey from Central America through Mexico into US is perilous. They are abused by the human and drug traffickers. Martinez has written another book "The Beast: Riding the tails and dodging Narcos on the migrant trail". He himself took the freight train in Mexico called as "the beast" in which many migrants hitch a ride. 
 
In this book, Martinez has covered the period from 2011 to 2015.  Since then, the violence has been brought down drastically in El Salvador by President Nayib Bukele with an iron hand in the last five years. He has put in jail around 70,000 gang members and built the largest prison in the Americas. His success has inspired other governments in Latin America to deal with the crime and violence in their countries.
 

Argentine writer Hernan Diaz’s novel “Trust”

Hernan Diaz, the Argentine writer settled in New York, was an invitee at the 2024 Jaipur Literature Festival held last month. He spoke about creativity and writing. I was impressed by his brilliant ideas, profound intellect, subversive thoughts and powerful articulation. After listening to him I read his novel “Trust”. The book has exceeded my expectations.

‘Trust’ is not a simple story for passive pleasure of reading. It is a complex and unconventional novel provoking the readers to think, detect, imagine and question. Within the book, there are four different books written by different fictional authors in disparate genres and styles. There are multiple characters at different time periods. The author describes ‘Trust’  as a polyphonic novel. The first section is a novel written by a fictional writer Harold Vanner about New York financier Benjamin Rask and his wife Helen who patronizes arts and culture. Although Harold Vanner is one of the central characters in the book he never appears in it. Vanner opens the book and triggers everything that happens in it: several people in “the real world” react to Vanner’s book, setting the whole plot in motion.
 
The second part is a memoir of Andrew Bevel, a Wall Street tycoon who wants people to believe that his pursuit of profit was always aligned to the social good. His wife Mildred is a connoisseur of music and a lover of literature. They live together physically but live apart mentally. They find that the living together improves by the vast distance between their minds of which one is obsessed with money and the other arts. At times, Mildred dabbles in stocks and gives valuable advice to her husband which he uses to make more money. 
 
The third part is about Ida Partenza a writer who becomes secretary to the tycoon and ghost-writes his autobiography. Her father is an anarchist and an immigrant from Italy. She is caught between the anti-capitalist rants of her father and working with the wealthy financier who wants her to help with his autobiography spinning a positive image of his business and the cultural activities of his wife who becomes mentally ill. Diaz says in an interview, “ I enjoyed particularly writing the character of Ida. She is like my hero—she’s fearless, effective, crafty, and very bold. I made her all the things that I wish I were. She’s also a very different writer from me, so I had to learn to write like her”. 
 
The fourth part is the personal diary of Mildred, the tycoon’s wife “that is also a sort of a prose poem and a love letter to modernism”, in the words of the author. Midred writes about music, art, philosophy, her illness, the stock market and Swiss mountain slopes among which she convalesces in a clinic.
 
The connecting themes in all the four books are the Wall Street money-making and the world of art and literature. The author has juxtaposed the two themes with provocative pronouncements challenging the conventional American narratives and myths about money. He has chosen the boom years of the Wall Street in the twenties and the bust in 1929 followed by the years of depression for context. 
 
Diaz says he wanted to write about the labyrinth of capital, how it works and distorts the reality around itself in the American value system. He is fascinated by the ‘transcendental and mythical place of money in the American culture’. He explores how wealth  creates isolation for the wealthy while  giving the person extraordinary outreach to the world of art, culture and politics. According to Diaz “money is also a fiction. It is just that we have all agreed on the terms and conditions and agreed to play it as a game. There is nothing that ties money to real value other than a narrative. Or the trust that we invest in that narrative”. 
 
In another interview, Diaz says, “Reading is always an act of trust. Whenever we read anything, from a novel to the label on a prescription bottle, trust is involved. That trust is based on tacit contracts whose clauses I wanted to encourage the reader to reconsider. As you read Trust and move forward from one section to the next, it becomes clear that the book is asking you to question the assumptions with which you walk into a text. I would even say that Trust aims, to an enormous extent, to question the boundaries between history and fiction”.
 
Here are some vignettes from the novel:
  
-He became fascinated by the contortions of money—how it could be made to bend back upon itself to be force-fed its own body. The isolated, self-sufficient nature of speculation spoke to his character and was a source of wonder and an end in itself, regardless of what his earnings. He viewed capital as an antiseptically living thing. It moves, eats, grows, breeds, falls ill, and may die. But it is clean. This became clearer to him in time. The larger the operation, the further removed he was from its concrete details. There was no need for him to touch a single banknote or engage with the things and people his transaction affected. All he had to do was think, speak, and, perhaps, write. And the living creature would be set in motion, drawing beautiful patterns on its way into realms of increasing abstraction, sometimes following appetites of its own that he never could have anticipated—and this gave him some additional pleasure, the creature trying to exercise its free will. He admired and understood it, even when it disappointed him.
 
-The root of all evil, the cause of every war—god and country.
 
- History itself is just a fiction—a fiction with an army.
 
-Every life is organized around a small number of events that either propel us or bring us to a grinding halt. We spend the years between these episodes benefiting or suffering from their consequences until the arrival of the next forceful moment. A man’s worth is established by the number of these defining circumstances he is able to create for himself. He need not always be successful, for there can be great honor in defeat. But he ought to be the main actor in the decisive scenes in his existence, Whatever the past may have handed on to us, it is up to each one of us to chisel our present out of the shapeless block of the future.
 
-Every single one of our acts is ruled by the laws of economy. When we first wake up in the morning we trade rest for profit. When we go to bed at night we give up potentially profitable hours to renew our strength. And throughout our day we engage in countless transactions. Each time we find a way to minimize our effort and increase our gain we are making a business deal, even if it is with ourselves. These negotiations are so ingrained in our routine that they are barely noticeable. But the truth is our existence revolves around profit.
 
Hernan Diaz’s cerebral perspectives, intriguing plots and unconventional literary tools reminds me of Jorge Borges the famous Argentine writer. Diaz says, “Borges has shaped me not only as a reader and as a writer but also as a person. His playfulness with genre, his joyful disregard for taxonomies of any kind and his obsession with framed narratives are some of the aspects of his work that have influenced me”. Diaz has written a book “Borges, between history and eternity”.
 
Diaz believes that "fiction has palpable effects on reality. A lot of the power constraints that we feel in our everyday lives are based on fiction. Think of something that is as inherent and powerful to you as your nationality. That is, at the end of the day, a collection of ideological fictions. There's nothing in it. Nothing. Think about it for a second. There's nothing that makes you American or Belgian or anything aside from what you ascribe to that identity, and that is a series of narratives”.
 
Diaz is a voracious reader. In interviews, he quotes so many writers and points out parts of his novel  which have styles similar to some of the writers. After having read 29 books of P G Wodehouse he says, “ I love Wodehouse. Ever-surprising in his repetitiousness, never failing to delight, always making us safe in his breezy world. It is paradoxical that Wodehouse should give me so much comfort when he also makes me feel how mean and shabby my life is each time I emerge from one of his novels”.
 
Some authors write well but not impressive in speeches and conversations. Diaz is spectacular and mesmerizing both in writing and talking with his spontaneous thoughts and reflections. I have read some of his interviews which are as fascinating and inspiring as his book. He revels in abstract concepts and subversive thoughts. He calls writing as a monstrous act because it implies a metamorphosis. 
 

Diaz says, “I write with a fountain pen (received as gift twenty years back) in large format notebooks. I enjoy the feeling of flowing ink and the rumor of the pen on the paper. With a pen, you create your own geography, with its islets of thoughts and streams of associations”. 
 
‘Trust’ has won the 2023 Pulitzer prize for fiction. It is the second novel of Diaz. I cannot wait  to read his first novel “In the Distance”. 
 
Hernan Diaz is a potential candidate for Nobel Prize.
 

“Where there was fire” – Costa Rican novel

 "Where there was fire" is the first Costa Rican novel I have read. It is also the first novel written by John Manuel Arias, the Costa Rican author, published in 2023.

The novel brings out the life and situation in Costa Rica during the time of domination of American banana companies in the sixties. The companies exploit the workers and the country. Their use of chemicals to spray on the banana plants cause sterility among men. To hide this, the company's Gringo doctor falsifies medical records to show that the men were already sterile. He is foolish and arrogant enough to tell one of the worker Jose Maria that his two children might not be his own. The angry husband tries to kill his wife Teresa but murders his mother- in-law who fights back. Then he goes to the house of the Gringo doctor and sets it on fire. The doctor and the whole banana plantation as well as the arsonist are burnt and turned into ashes. 
 
Teresa runs away to US leaving her two kids Lyra and Carmen. The latter, who is traumatized after witnessing the murder of the grand mother and the burning of the plantation, commits suicide leaving her son as orphan. The boy is adopted by Lyra, the sister of Carmen. But she does not tell the kid about the tragedy till he becomes an adult. Lyra does not let her mother Teresa meet the grandson when she comes back from US. The boy comes to know just before Teresa dies of cancer.
 
The author has added many other fascinating typical Latino characters and sub plots in the novel. The three Marias, the spinster sisters who are involved in the life of Teresa family, are memorable with their quaint characteristics and playful dialogues. The author has added some magical realism which makes the novel more interesting and familiar for the fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Latin America’s economic and political outlook in 2024

Latin America’s GDP growth in 2024 is projected at 1.8%, down from 2.1% in 2023, according to the annual December report of ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean). 

 

This lowering of growth is due to the general slow down of global growth and in particular the decline in Chinese growth and the fall in commodity prices exported by the region. The modest 4.2% of Chinese GDP growth in 2024 will impact particularly Chile, Panama, Peru, Brazil and Uruguay. China absorbs 39% of Chile’s goods exports, 32% of those of both Panama and Peru, and 27% of those of Brazil and Uruguay. Latin America’s exports of agro products and minerals and metals are projected to fetch less revenue in 2024 with the anticipated reduction in prices of these items by 4% and 2% respectively.

 

Brazil’s GDP is expected to grow by 1.6% (down from 3% in 2023), Mexico’s 2.5% (down from 3.6% in 2023), Colombia’s by 1.7% (up from 0.9% in 2023, Chile’s by 1.9% (up from 0.3% in 2023) and Peru’s by 2.4% (up from 0.1%). Central America’s GDP is expected to increase by 3.2%, down from 3.4% last year.

 

Surprisingly, Venezuela will have the highest growth among the major economies of the region with 4% (up from 3% in 2023). The country which had gone through historic economic crisis due to mismanagement and US sanctions in the last several years has now recovered. The US has recently loosened some sanctions on export of oil and investment of American and other foreign companies in Venezuelan oil production.

 

Unsurprisingly, Argentina will have a negative growth of 1% (better than the 2.5% contraction in 2023). It is the only country in the region to suffer economic contraction. All the other 18 countries will show positive growth. Poverty in Argentina increased from 21.5% in 2016 to 30.1% in 2022.The new President Javier Milei who took office in December 2023 has already started some reforms such as cutting down expenditure and privatization of public sector companies. He has postponed implementation of his radical proposals such as closure of the Central Bank and dollarization of the economy. In the coming months, there will be more economic and financial difficulties for the government and sufferings for the people. The country could recover next year.

 

Milei will cause some minor disruptions in the process of deepening of integration of Mercosur with his anti-Lula rhetoric. However he will not have accomplices for destabilization of the region as a whole with his anti-Left policies since all the other major powers such as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Venezuela are ruled by Leftist governments.

 

Latin America’s sovereign risk reached the level of 410 basis points in October 2023, as measured by the J. P. Morgan EMBI Global Diversified Index (EMBIGD) of emerging markets. This indicator measures the spread between interest rates on a country’s debt obligations and those of the United States, which are considered risk-free. The countries with the lowest sovereign risk index are Uruguay (about 90 basis points since the second half of the year), followed by Chile and Peru (both below 200 basis points). At the other extreme are countries with the highest credit risk namely Venezuela (15867), Argentina(2576) and Ecuador(1755) followed by Bolivia (1599)

 

Average inflation of the region was 5.2% in September 2023, down from 8.2% in September 2022. It has remained in single digit for the last two decades. Exceptions are Venezuela with inflation of 318% ( down from 138000 percent in 2018), Argentina 140% and Cuba 37%. The only other country with double digit inflation is Colombia 11%.

The region's ratio of gross external debt to GDP was 42% in September 2023. The region has relatively comfortable position of foreign exchange reserves with 860 billion dollars. But Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba have acute shortage of forex reserves.

 

Average lending rate (Q3 of 2023) was the highest in Argentina at 108%, followed by Venezuela at 48.6%, Brazil (42%) and Mexico at 32%.

 

In 2024 there will be presidential elections in Mexico, El Salvador, Panama, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela. However, these will not bring out any dangers such as Bolsonaro or drastic changes and challenges.

 

In the Mexican elections in June, the current president Lopez Obrador’s protégé Claudia Sheinbaum is leading in the opinion polls and expected to win and continue the policies of the current government with more pragmatism but without the eccentricities of Obrador. In El Salvador, the Cool Dictator Nayib Bukele is expected to win in the June elections. He has consistently high popularity ratings with his successful containment of crimes and murders. The popular incumbent President Luis Abinader of Dominican Republic is poised to get a second term in the June elections. The elections in Panama and Uruguay are open but there is no polarizing radicals among the leading candidates. President Maduro will ensure his reelection by hook or crook in the last quarter of the year. He and his top political and military leadership have no other option. They cannot afford to let power pass to the hands of the opposition. The US government has announced (in 2020) a bounty of 15 million dollars on the head of president Maduro and several million dollars on other political leaders of Venezuela on trumped charges of drug trafficking and other crimes. So Maduro and other top leaders will certainly be killed or deported to US prisons immediately.  If Maduro is reelected, the US will make some pro forma noises about rigged elections but will get on with its resumption of business with Venezuela. The US will not repeat its regime change policy, after having failed miserably in the last several years.

 

Latin America will continue to be a large market for India’s trade and investment in 2024 and in the coming years and decades. India’s exports to the region were 22.5 billion dollars in the financial year April 2022-March 2023. Indian companies have invested around 12 billion dollars in the region. The region is contributing to India’s energy and food security with supply of crude oil, edible oil, pulses and fresh fruits. India is exploring opportunities in the region for mining and production of Lithium, needed for electrification of vehicles. India will continue to source copper, gold and other minerals from Latin America which has abundant reserves of them.

 

In 2024, India will deepen its engagement with Latin America and work closely with Brazil, the current president of G-20. Argentine President Milei has switched teams. He will play for Team USA while his predecessors played in BRICS and Global South teams. But this will not make any difference to India or BRICS since Argentina is completely mired in the economic crisis from which it will take time to get out. 

   
                    

ECLAC report 
https://repositorio.cepal.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/16783e9f-6195-433d-9a5a-4c38c47432b9/content