Chinese development finance and commercial loans to Latin America

 Chinese development finance and commercial loans to Latin America
 
Latin America has received a total of 116 billion dollars of sovereign credit from China in the last two decades. 
 
Recipients as follows:
 
Venezuela  59. 2 billion dollars
Brazil            32.4 bn
Ecuador.    11.8
Argentina  7.7
Bolivia       3.2
Mexico.      1.0
Costa Rica 533 million
Cuba            369 m
Peru             50 m
 
These loans were given through China Development Bank (CDB) and Export-Import Bank of China (Ex-Im Bank). The recipients were Latin American governments and state-owned enterprises.
 
The annual sovereign lending reached a peak of 25 billion dollars in  2010. In 2023 it has come down to just 1.3 billion. In fact, the average annual loan given in the last five years from 2019 was 1.3 billion.
 
Energy sector is the major recipient of the sovereign credit at 94 billion dollars, followed by infrastructure at 12 billion, mining 2 billion and others 12 billion.
 
China is receiving repayment in the form of crude oil from Venezuela and Ecuador.
 
In addition to the above, China's “big five” commercial banks—the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Bank of China (BOC), China Construction Bank (CCB), Bank of Communications (BoCom), and Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) have extended 61 loans to 9 Latin American countries. These are: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Honduras. But the amount of these loans is not known. Some of the loans have been given as part of a consortium of lenders. Of the total loans, 35 have gone into energy sector, 17 into infrastructure, 7 into mining and 2 into other areas.
 
Argentina has received the maximum number (36) of these commercial loans. ICBC has acquired a controlling stake in the Standard Bank in Argentina.
 
Beyond the sovereign lending and commercial loans, China provides finance to Latin American governments and companies through regional and multilateral banks and other sources. For example, China has become member of Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). With this Bank, China cofinances projects in the region. The Americans have been complaining that China has got a large proportion of the projects awarded by the IDB although US is the largest shareholder.

The Chinese credit has played a critical role in boosting their exports to 242 billion dollars in 2023 and investment of over 100 billion dollars in Latin America. The Chinese imports from the region were 242 billion.
 
India’s lines of credit to Latin America is less than half a billion dollars. Obviously India is not in a position to match the Chinese credit. However, the government of India could  consider substantially increasing credit to Latin America. During the Prime Minister’s visit to Brazil for the G-20 meeting, India could consider announcing a line of credit of at least half a billion dollars to Latin America. In this context, it is a welcome news that EximBank of India is going to open an office in Sao Paulo, Brazil in the second half of the year.
 
Increase in credit will help the Indian exporters and investors in the region. India’s exports to Latin America were 19.15 billion dollars and imports 23.75 billion with a total of 42.9 bn in 2023-24 (financial year April-March), according to the Commerce Ministry of India.  Major export items are: vehicles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, textiles, equipment and machinery, There is scope to increase India’s exports to 50 billion dollars in the coming years.

Indian companies have invested over ten billion dollars in Latin America in sectors such as energy, agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, IT and autoparts. Indian IT companies employ around 40,000 Latin Americans to service their clients in North America and Europe besides local ones. The largest Indian agrochemical firm UPL does more business in Latin America ( close to 2 billion dollars) than in India where their turnover is around a billion dollars.

Latin America is contributing to India's energy and food security through supply of crude oil, edible oil, pulses and fruits. The region has substantial quantity of reserves of lithium, copper and other critical minerals which would be needed by India for its renewable energy agenda.
 
Indian companies are not allowed to bid for IDB projects since India is not a member. Indian project contractors have started getting projects in the region in recent years. For example, Kalpataru Projects International Ltd has got almost a billion dollars of power transmission lines contract in the region. These include a single contract of 430 million dollars in Chile. There is definite scope for more such contracts through IDB, if India becomes a member of the Bank.
 
Source of data on Chinese credit to Latin America: 

https://www.thedialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Chinese-Development-Finance-in-Latin-America-and-the-Caribbean-2023-Update-Final.pdf
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America - book by Ioan Grillo

Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America - book by Ioan Grillo
 

Ioan Grillo, the well-known expert on Latin American drug trafficking, gangs and violence starts off the book saying, “This book is about the move from the Cold War to a chain of crime wars soaking Latin America and the Caribbean in blood. But it starts in the United States. Latin American journalists complain that the US side of the equation is never examined. Where is the American narco?” The American politicians, media and Hollywood trash the image of Latin Americans with deceitful narratives. Drug is a demand and consumer driven business. The US consumers are happy to pay top dollars for suppliers from any country or domestic opioid manufacturing pharmaceutical companies. The US has not done anything meaningful to reduce consumption and demand. Instead, they had resorted to a war on drugs outside the US. This was started by President Nixon to divert attention away from the Vietnam war. The military-industrial complex and the spooks of US embraced the war on drugs enthusiastically to destabilize other countries, infiltrate the foreign security forces and sell arms. 

Thousands of Latin Americans are killed every year with the guns trafficked illegally from the US to the Latin American countries. But when it comes to guns, the Americans use a wrong logic. They say "guns do not kill. It is the people who kill”. This same  logic should apply to the drugs too. Drugs do not kill. It is the consumers who harm themselves by voluntarily, enthusiastically and happily consuming.
 
But unfortunately, Grillo does not go into the details of the US consumer market and elaborate how the drugs are delivered to consumers and money is collected. Instead he joins the American chorus of highlighting the crime and violence of drug lords and other criminal gangs in Latin America. He has covered the gangs of Brazil, Central America, Jamaica and Mexico. He brings out details of how the Brazilian and Central American gangs direct their criminal operations from prisons. In El Salvador, the government had arranged a cease fire between the rival gangs by bringing together their leaders in prison.

Grillo traces the origin of the Brazilian gangs such as Red Command and First Command to the time when the petty criminals were put in the same jails where the political prisoners were kept. The political prisoners had brainwashed the criminals who felt right in fighting against the social injustice in the country. While the rich people were getting richer, the poor and especially the blacks were condemned to struggle in the Favelas (slums) on the margins of the cities. 
 
Grillo has brought out the fact that the criminal gangs in Central America were the consequence of the civil war in which the leftist guerillas fought against the US-supported right wing military dictators and their paramilitary death squads. The civil war had caused the migration of young people to the US. These young central Americans joined gangs and formed their own to survive in the gang-infested Los Angeles area. Later, the US deported these gangsters to Central America where they have been flourishing as groups such as Maras. The violence unleashed by the gangs make more Central Americans to flee to the US. It is a vicious circle in which the US plays the central part.
 
The US had distributed arms to the Contras who were formed by the CIA in Central America to fight against the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Afterwards, the ex-contras and the paramilitary death squads supported by the US got into the gang business  of violence and crime.
 
Since Grillo is based in Mexico, he has given more information on the Mexican gangs who have taken control of certain parts of Mexico and bought off the local police and politicians. He has highlighted the cartel known as Knight Templars, who were lead by Nazario Moreno, known as El Más Loco—the Maddest One. He wrote a kind of holy book called as “Pensamientos” (Thoughts) which give Biblical parables, thoughts and advice. The narco Templars (Santos Nazarios ) worshipped the statuettes in the shrines built by their leader. The prayers went like this, “Give me holy protection, through Saint Nazario, Protector of the poorest, Knights of the people, Saint Nazario, Give us life”. Nazario also self-published his autobiography and distributed it to his followers. The 101 pages are fittingly titled "They Call Me The Maddest One.” Nazario portrays himself as a social bandit, subtitling his memoir “Diary of an Idealist.”
 
Grillo has concluded that the US war on drugs is a failure. This conclusion is now widely shared across the Americas, except by the vested interests like DEA, CIA and the military-industrial complex which profits from the war on drugs.
 
Grillo offers solutions to the drug and violence issues. He says the US and Latin American countries should legalize soft drugs. This has been done by Uruguay and 24 states of US as well as some European countries who have already legalized recreational drugs. Many Latin American countries are also planning to do so.
 
Secondly, Grillo has called for transformation of ghettos which breed gangs and violence. The city of Medellin has achieved commendable success in the outreach to the slums with metro transport, libraries and playgrounds. The slum dwellers have been made to feel as part of the mainstream. Gang violence has dramatically come down. Other Latin American cities can learn from this success story.
 

“El Narco, the bloody rise of Mexican drug cartels” – book by Ioan Grillo

 “El Narco, the bloody rise of Mexican drug cartels” – book by Ioan Grillo

In Mexico, drug traffickers are described collectively by the Spanish word El Narco. In this book “El Narco” Ioan Grillo has traced the origin of the Mexican drug trafficking, evolution of cartels and their violent criminal activities in great detail. He has met  and talked to cartel leaders, their foot soldiers, informers, assassins, prisoners, security forces, politicians and US DEA agents. He has taken the risk of visiting cartel strongholds and crime scenes. 

Ioan Grillo, a British journalist, based in Mexico since 2001, has written extensively on drug traffickers and criminal gangs of Latin America for the last two decades. I have read his book “Blood, Gun and Money: How America arms gangs and cartels” . My blog https://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/2021/03/blood-gun-money-how-america-arms-gangs.html

 

According to Grillo, Sinaloa is the cradle of Mexican drug business and the birthplace ( like Sicily) of the nation’s oldest and most powerful network of traffickers, known as the Sinaloa Cartel. This had inspired the formation of the others such as Tijuana cartel, Guadalajara Cartel, Gulf Cartel, Juarez Cartel and Los Zetas. Sinaloa cartel itself has split into factions. Even after the arrest of the top leaders, the cartels continue with new leaders and new cartels are formed.

 

 During the one-party dictatorship of PRI for seventy years till 2000, the Mexican governments let the cartels do business quietly and some politicians took money from them. They did not see any reason to fight seriously against the traffickers, since the American consumers were paying top dollars happily and eagerly. But the Mexican traffickers earned in millions and not billions as the Colombian drug lords such as Pablo Escobar. After the crack down on Colombian cartels and the killing of Pablo Escobar in 1993, the Mexican cartels gained more power and took control and domination of the drug supply to the US. There was another driver for the Mexican supplies. The Colombians had used the sea route to Florida for drug supply. When the US administration tightened the controls in Florida, the Colombians took the help of Mexicans for supply through the land border. 

 

When they saw the direct opportunities for the multibillion dollar business, more Mexican gangs got into the business. The cartels became bigger and there were more turf wars. President Calderon (2006-12) unleashed  the army to attack the cartels but it had only added fuel to the fire. The security forces themselves  became part of the problem. In the first decade until 2010, around a hundred thousand members of the military and police had deserted from their jobs  to join the cartels. After getting the training and insider knowledge, they have made career moves to the other side to make real money. The most-feared Zetas were formed by the former members of the special forces of the army. They have brought into play their toughness, tactics and use of sophisticated weapons in the fight against their former colleagues as well as rival gangs. Some of the municipal and state police forces work for the cartels and undermine the work of the army and federal police. Even the military and federal police officers take sides and make arrests or bust gangs on behalf of the Cartels who pay them. 

 

The cartels have diversified from drug trafficking into robbery of cargo, stealing of petrol from pipelines, kidnappings, extortion, human trafficking and assassinations. They do not even hide their gruesome murders.  They seek publicity openly as a way of showing off their capabilities and to send message to the rivals and frighten the public.

 

There is a whole new narco culture which has evolved around the drug lords, some of whom have become folk heroes in their communities. Narcos are revered as rebels who have the balls to beat the system. On the streets of Sinaloa, people traditionally refer to gangsters as “los Valientes”-  the brave ones. There is a new genre of music, “narcocorridos” (drug ballads).  Composers sing in praise of the drug lords and bands play in public as well as private parties of the gangs. There are even religious sects founded by cartel leaders who have built churches and used their new interpretations of Bible to indoctrinate their foot soldiers as faithful and loyal. There are thousands of Narco movies and serials with drug lords as heroes and Americans as villains.  The drug barons even pay for the production of songs and movies.

 

Some Mexicans see the illegal migration to US as a historical revenge. The US had taken over nine hundred thousand square miles of  Mexican territory after the war in 1846-48.  These include the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. Mexico annually commemorates a squad of young cadets shot dead by American troops (los ninos héroes) during the war. So the Mexicans call their migration to the United States as “la Reconquista”—the reconquest. 

 

Of course, the primary responsibility for the drug issue lies with the American consumers who have created the demand themselves. Drug is a demand driven business originating from the American consumers who wants to get high and pays for it happily. The killing of Escobar or the jailing of Guzman have not caused any dent in the consumption of drugs in the US. As long as this continues, there will always be suppliers both internal and external. The Colombians, Mexicans, Chinese and American opioid manufacturers took turns to supply the  consumers. While the American companies got away with paying fines, the Colombians and the Mexicans were on the receiving end of the “war on drugs” started by the American politicians and the military-industrial complex. Drug war was good politics for Nixon to divert attention away from the Vietnam war. With no communists to hunt after the Cold War, American spooks, soldiers and the arms makers were looking for new opportunities. The American politicians obliged them with the War on Drugs. The American, Colombian and Mexican administrations also used the “war on drugs” as a cover to fight the leftist guerilla groups. DEA, created in 1973 has become another empire like CIA with multibillion dollar budget. DEA’s way of cultivating informers had opened new avenues for corruption on both sides. CIA itself got into the drug business to raise money for financing the Contra war against Nicaragua during the Reagan era. The American manufacturers of helicopters, planes and guns made money from supplies to Latin Americans for the war on drugs. The Mexican and Colombian security forces enjoyed the new American toys such as helicopters, aircrafts and guns as well as the training opportunities in USA. Even the drug cartels are happy by getting their guns from the illegal trafficking from USA. While the Mexican supplied cocaine is consumed by the Americans, the American-trafficked guns into Mexico stay and kill more and more people.

 

Now the American right wing  politicians call for invasion of Mexico to fight the drug traffickers. After the serial wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and the proxy war in Ukraine, the next show might be in Mexico. 

 

 

 

 

Mexico elects a woman scientist and leftist as president

                   Mexico elects a woman scientist and leftist as president 

 

 Mexico has elected a woman, Claudia Sheinbaum, as the new President, in a new milestone for gender parity in the country.

Her main opponent Xochitl Galvez was also another woman candidate of the center right coalition.

Gender parity

The election of the first female president is a climax of the gender  parity  movement in Mexican politics in the last two decades.

In 2003, Mexico started with introduction of a  30 percent quota for women political party nominees. In 2014, the Congress passed a law for gender parity in federal and state legislative elections. In 2019, the Congress enacted another law which made gender parity in all the three sectors of power: Legislative, Executive and Judiciary. Half of Mexico’s legislature since 2021 is female. The presidents of both the chambers of legislature are women. The cabinet has 9 women in a total of 18 ministers. A woman is chief justice of the Supreme Court. Sheinbaum has promised to advance the feminist agenda further.

 

Since January 2020, Mexico has a Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) too. It focuses on the creation of gender parity in its foreign and national policy mechanisms. Mexico has become the largest nation to achieve gender parity and the first country from the global south to have a FFP.

 

Scientist

 

The president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum is a scientist and both her parents and her brother are also scientists. She has a Ph.D in energy engineering from California. She was part of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which won the Nobel Peace Prize for the work on climate change. 

 

Leftist

 

She is a member of the leftist Morena party of the outgoing president Lopez Obrador. He was the first leftist to be elected as president of Mexico in 2018. With his pro-poor policies, he has lifted millions of Mexicans out of poverty, increased wages and invested in infrastructure projects. With his very high popularity ratings he could have easily got reelected. But the Mexican constitution allows only a single term of six years for presidents. So he had chosen Sheinbaum as his successor and had groomed her since 2000 when he was elected as Mayor of Mexico city. He was looking for an expert to deal with the high level of pollution and found her profile as a climate scientist as the perfect fit. He made her as the environment secretary. Since then she has been a loyal follower and colleague of Obrador, despite his eccentricities. She was elected as Mayor of Mexico city in 2018 and served till June 2023. Before that, she was Mayor of a part of Mexico city called as Tlalpan from 2015 to 2017.

 

Sheinbaum is a data-driven technocrat and goal-oriented pragmatic and sober political leader. She does not have a personal charisma or a strong political base of her own. The credit for her successful political career goes to Obrador. He was comfortable with her low profile without any ambition so far to outshine him. On the other hand, she also realized that she had a winning path by following Obrador and did not mind being known as his protégé.  Obrador is a populist who communicates directly with people through his daily week day press conferences at 7 in the mornings (mañanera) and through social media. He used these to trumpet his achievements, attack his opponents and share his feelings in general. He has set a new standard as a corruption-free president in Mexico. He lives an austere life foregoing the presidential aircraft. He travels in economy class in the regular flights. He has reduced the presidential salary by 60% and also many of the perks.

 

Obrador’s Morena party has swept the polls for the Congress as well as other positions for which simultaneous elections were held on Sunday.  The coalition of Morena party has got very close to clinching a supermajority in Congress, obtaining two-thirds of the seats in the lower house and nearly two-thirds in the senate.  Even in gubernatorial races that were expected to be competitive, Morena and its allies have emerged victorious with clear margins. Obrador is likely to use this majority to try constitutional changes to advance his progressive agenda, although some of them are controversial. 

 

As a committed leftist and disciple of Obrador, Sheinbaum has criticized the neoliberal economic policies of Washington Consensus followed by the past presidents of Mexico, arguing that they had contributed to inequality in the country. She has promised to expand welfare and intends to continue the programs started by Obrador.

 

Foreign policy

 

While Obrador would continue to influence Sheinbaum in some domestic policies, she will get a free hand in foreign policy for which Obrador has complete disdain. He has ignored foreign policy and has zero ambition to raise his or Mexico’s profile in the region or globally. He said “the best foreign policy is a good domestic one” He considers foreign travel as a waste and avoids summit meetings. His travels have been limited only to a few trips to US and Latin America.

 

But Obrador  was proactive in extending support to leftist presidents in trouble and attacking the right wing presidents in Latin America. He had given asylum to leftist presidents overthrown in coups and criticized right wing regimes bluntly and publicly. These have lead to diplomatic disruptions in some cases. He has downplayed the non-democratic leftist regimes of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. At the same time, he has not sought to be a regional leader of the left, unlike Chavez and Lula. 

 

Sheinbaum will be more sober and pragmatic in foreign policy and avoid the anti-right and pro-left rhetoric of her predecessor.

 

Relations with the US 

 

López Obrador pledged at the beginning of his administration in 2018 that there would be no tension with the U.S. and he has largely kept that promise by working quietly with the US on issues of serious concern such as illegal migration. Obrador managed both President Trump and Biden without major controversies. In fact, he had shown support at times to Trump despite the latter’s ugly anti-Mexican attacks. But he refused to give in to the American pressure to give priority to deal with drug cartels and militarize the issue. He took the stand that “ hugs not bullets” is needed in Mexico to deal with the fundamental socioeconomic issues. 

 

Obrador has called for the removal of the US sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. In 2022, he had refused to attend the Summit of Americas in Los Angeles because those three countries were not invited. 

 

Sheinbaum has said Mexico would have “good relations” with either Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden as president, and that Mexico would continue to work to contain flows of illegal migrants.

 

Mexico is the largest trading partner and the #1 source of imports of US. Mexico has overtaken China as the largest exporter to US in 2023, thanks to the USMCA Free Trade Agreement with the US and Canada. As part of the new trend of friend-shoring, many American firms and global MNCs are shifting manufacturing to Mexico from China. 

 

Sheinbaum is the first Mexican president of Jewish heritage. In a newspaper Op-ed in 2009, she wrote, “No reason justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians” and called for Palestinian liberation and reflected on her own family’s history of escaping Nazi persecution. 

 

President Obrador has has refused to join the US sanctions on Russia and has condemned supply of arms by the west to Ukraine.

 

India- Mexico

 

Mexico is the second largest destination for India’s exports to Latin America. The 2023-24 exports of India to Mexico (5324 m) are more than the exports to Thailand (5038 m), Russia (4261 m), Canada (3845 m), Sri Lanka (4117 m) and Egypt (3520 m).

 

Mexico is the largest destination for India’s global exports of motor cycles with 281 million dollars. Car exports to Mexico are 874 m in 2023-24.

 

India  can increase its exports significantly if it signs a FTA with Mexico which has FTA with 50 countries. Mexico’s total imports were over 600 billion dollars in 2023.

 

India’s imports from Mexico were 3.1 billion dollars. Crude oil accounted for 1.8 billion dollars, followed by electrical equipment worth 442 m.

 

A number of Indian IT, pharma and autoparts companies have invested in Mexico. Samvardhana Motherson Group from Noida has 19 plants in Mexico which supply auto parts to OEMs. JK Tyres has three tyre plants. 

 

Mexican company Grupo Bimbo is the largest bread maker in India. It had acquired the famous Modern Bread company of India in 2021. Cinepolis of Mexico is the third largest owner of multiplexes in India with over 440 screens. Kidzania, a Mexican edutainment chain has theme parks in Mumbai and Delhi in a joint venture with Shah Rukh Khan, the actor. There are also some Mexican autoparts makers operating in India.

 

The last Mexican president to take interest in India was Felipe Calderon (2006-12) who visited India in 2007 and pitched for India’s investment. President Obrador had no interest in India unlike the other leftist presidents of Latin America who have sought economic and development partnership. The new president Sheinbaum might show interest. Muktesh Pardesi, Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs and former ambassador to Mexico recalls his meeting with Sheinbaum in 2018 when she was mayor of Mexico city. She had shown interest in cooperation with India in climate change mitigation, electric mobility and culture.

 

Mexican lessons for US

 

The American politicians, the Hollywood and the media have always given a negative narrative of Mexico through their obsession with the issues of drug trafficking and illegal immigration. They have been lecturing the Mexicans about democracy.  Now it is time for the Gringos to learn from the democratic maturity and best practices of Mexicans. Firstly, the two Mexican presidential candidates, who lost, had conceded and congratulated the winner even on the basis of the preliminary results before the final counting. The Congressional building of Mexico is safe and free from any attacks as it happened in Washington DC. Secondly the two leading candidates are highly qualified, cultured and respected: the winner is a scientist and the runner is techpreneur. Mexico would have done well even if the runner was elected. This is in contrast to Trump who has been indicted on criminal cases and who has crossed the lines of decency in public discourse. Thirdly. The Mexican women have been empowered politically, while the American women have to suffer with Trump who makes obscene remarks about women and brags about grabbing them by their genitals. Fourthly, the Mexican campaign discourse was free from the preposterous lies and fake news in the US.

 

The American charges of  Mexican drug trafficking and illegal immigration need to be seen in a non-American neutral perspective. 

 

Drug is a consumer-driven and demand-driven big billion dollar business in USA. Eighty percent of each dollar involved in the drug business stays in US itself. Despite the long War on Drugs, the American drug consumption has not come down.  American pharmaceutical companies such  as Purdue Pharma are equally responsible for opioid addiction and deaths in US. These companies have got away after paying fines. 

 

While the Americans demand end to illegal trafficking of drugs from Mexico, they do nothing to stop the illegal trafficking of American guns into Mexico which has a strong gun control regime. In the whole of Mexico, there is only one gun shop. It is located in Mexico city and controlled by the military. So almost all the guns used in the massacres and crime in Mexico are American guns. There are several thousands of American gun shops in the border with Mexico making illegal sales and facilitating open trafficking. Every year, more Mexicans are killed by American guns than the number of American deaths caused by Mexican drugs.

 

Mexican illegal emigration needs to be seen in the light of this popular Mexican story. A Mexican was caught by the US border patrol agent who said, “ Mister, you have crossed the border into US.”. The Mexican responded, “ Senor, I did not cross the border. The border has crossed me”. This is the truth. The Americans had grabbed (Trump style) 55 percent of Mexican territory in 1848. These include the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. So the Mexican immigration into US is as they say “ the chickens are coming home to roost”.