Drug cartels target Obrador; Venezuela, Monroe Doctrine, Roosevelt Corollary; Haiti blackouts, and more

The most interesting interpretation of the doctrine, however, came from President Theodore Roosevelt, who added what became known as the Roosevelt Corollary.
He essentially proclaimed that when there was flagrant or chaotic or despotic leadership of a Latin American country, the United States could intervene to re-establish the rule of law and democracy.
The United States would carry a big stick and speak loudly when it came to the countries south of us.
….
It could not be more apparent that if the Roosevelt Corollary is applied, the Maduro cabal qualifies for American intervention.
But is this a good course to pursue?
This is the issue that President Trump must decide. One suspects he is getting a variety of views from people such as national security advisor John Bolton and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
It is a difficult call.

Venezuela: U.S. sanctions hurt, but the economic crisis is home grown (Thomas Purcell, The Conversation)
There appear to be two distinct responses to the current crisis in Venezuela. Either an authoritarian regime (led by Nicolás Maduro) is clinging to power against the wishes of popular forces arrayed around the new self-declared interim President Juan Guaidó. Or Venezuela is facing a coup backed by US imperialism with clear designs on the country’s huge oil reserves.
As with most complex situations, neither of these narratives fully captures what is going on. Indeed, for the majority of Venezuelans – thousands of whom have again taken to the streets across the country in peaceful demonstrations – ideological epithets pale in comparison to the economic impact they are experiencing in their daily lives.
Many face hunger, seeing family members flee the country (upwards of 3m have left the country) and rampant hyperinflation (predicted by the International Monetary Fund to reach an astronomical 10,000,000% in 2019).
And make no mistake – despite the much publicised US sanctions, the economic crisis in Venezuela is home grown. The government’s attempt to set prices for basic goods, maintain currency and exchange controls and regulate profits has decimated domestic production.
It has also strengthened black markets and encouraged the smuggling of everything from meat to nappies over the border with Colombia – a trade which has became an everyday survival strategy for thousands of Venezuelans.
Maduro’s government has been peddling the line of an “economic war” for over four years. It even denies inflation actually exists, while printing more money to pay for increases in a minimum wage that doesn’t even cover the cost of a dozen eggs.

Mexico’s fourth transformation (Edwin F. Ackerman, Jacobin)
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has backed his hyperbolic promise for a “fourth transformation” with “a staggering sequence of substantive government actions” including a truth commission to investigate the Ayotzinapa disappeared, labor rights for domestic workers, minimum wage hikes and closing tax loopholes benefiting large corporations. And over two months into his government, he remains wildly popular.

Guatemala must not grant amnesty to war criminals (Jo-Marie Burt, NPR)
Guatemala’s lawmakers are poised to pass an amnesty bill that would free more than 30 military officials convicted of crimes against humanity and more than a dozen others awaiting trial on such charges. It would also prohibit all future investigations into other cases of grave human rights crimes committed during the country’s brutal 36-year civil war that ended in 1996. Such a move would “represent an unequivocal return to the reign of impunity long sought by the powerful, military-backed networks of corruption that the United States has invested significant resources into dismantling.”

Routine blackouts in Haiti symbolize a loss of political power for its citizens (Greg Beckett, The Conversation)
Haiti’s public utility company just announced it’s reducing output again. The move comes after a series of blackouts throughout the country, some lasting weeks. The power outages are the result of a weeks-long fuel shortage that has led to fuel rationing and gas station closures as reserves run dry.
Haiti is dependent on fuel imports, and the national electrical grid is small and inefficient. Haiti’s already weak infrastructure has been damaged by a string of natural disasters. Yet, for many Haitians, blackouts are not just the result of the country’s vulnerability; they are also a symbol of political crisis.

Why Venezuela’s oil money could keep undermining its economy and democracy (Scott Morgenstern and John Polga-Hacimovich, The Conversation)
As political and economic crises threaten to topple Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, political scientists like us are not surprised that he has run into trouble.
Instead, we see Venezuela as another example of what scholars call the “resource curse.” That’s the unfortunate correlation first described by the British economic geographer Richard M. Auty between nations with vast wealth from oil or other natural resources and political instability.
Venezuela is a textbook case of the curse, since nearly 90 percent of its people are now living in poverty in the country with the world’s largest oil reserves. After decades of leaders who failed to harness this commodity for peace and prosperity, it is questionable whether a new government can do a better job.
Only a few oil- and natural gas-rich countries, such as the United States, Canada and Norway have avoided this curse – in part because they built solid institutions and diverse economies before their petroleum drilling began.