A Bit More Detail

The slump in raw materials prices that has hurt Brazil, Chile, Peru and Colombia is leaving Central America unscathed.

The region is bucking a trend of sluggish growth in the rest of Latin America as cheaper crude prices cut its fuel bills and faster growth in the U.S. boosts remittances and tourist spending. The region will grow 4.2 percent this year, led by Panama’s 6.3 percent expansion, according to forecasts from the International Monetary Fund. That compares to a forecast of a 0.3 percent contraction for Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole while Brazil, the region’s biggest economy, is set to shrink 3.5 percent.

All seven Central American nations count the U.S. as their biggest trading partner, while Brazil, Peru and Chile all do more business with China. Cooling demand in the Asian giant has contributed to falling prices for South America’s oil, iron ore, copper and soy. As a net importer of oil and most other raw materials, Central America is a net winner from falling commodities prices.

“Their fortunes are really tied more to the U.S. than to China,” JPMorgan Chase & Co emerging market analyst Franco Uccelli said in a phone interview. “They aren’t seeing some of the perils of being an oil exporter with oil trading as low as it is today.”

Remittances sent home to Guatemala by workers living in the U.S. and elsewhere rose 18 percent in January from the year earlier. The country, which has the largest economy is Central America, had received a record $6.3 billion in remittances last year, equivalent to about 10 percent of gross domestic product.

For most of the past century, almost all (more than 90%) of Latin Americans were Catholics. But decades of attrition have resulted in a record 1 in 5 Latinos now identifying as Protestants.

Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua lead the way, where Protestants constitute 4 in 10 residents of each nation. But Protestants in those 3 countries diverge on many measures of orthodox belief and practice, according to a detailed survey of 19 Latin American countries and territories by the Pew Research Center.

Guatemala’s Protestants arguably seem the most mature. They are the most likely of all 19 surveyed groups to evangelize weekly (53%), to believe only Christ leads to eternal life (74%), and to exhibit high commitment (75% pray daily, attend services weekly, and consider faith very important). Even their millennials are the most religious (71% are highly committed).

Protestants in Nicaragua and Honduras are more varied. Only 1 in 3 share their faith on a weekly basis. About 6 in 10 are highly committed to church attendance and prayer. On Christianity’s exclusive access to eternal life, only two-thirds of Hondurans and half of Nicaraguans agree. And only 45 percent of Nicaragua’s millennials are highly committed to their faith.

Further, Honduran Protestants are among Latin America’s most syncretistic, with 42 percent exhibiting medium to high engagement with indigenous beliefs and practices (a figure that’s higher than Catholics in most Latin American countries). Nicaraguan Protestants exhibited similarly high levels (35%), but only 24 percent of Guatemalan Protestants are similarly syncretistic.

• At Geocurrents, Martin Lewis explains why the mistaken theory tracing Indo-European origins to prehistoric Anatolia is so important as to merit nearly a half-dozen posts.


• Language Hat quotes an interesting argument arghuing that sub-Saharan African ethnicities in the era of transatlantic slavery can be rediscovered, and must be rediscovered, to understand the patterns of African diaspora communities.


• Marginal Revolution reports on the fact that some Greek islands are now up for sale to landowners, to help cover Greek debt.


• At The Power and the Money, Noel Maurer argues contra Matt Yglesias that a North America self-sufficient in oil is possible and would change things.


• Strange Maps reports on a Nicaraguan postage stamp that, on account of claims made on Honduran territory, nearly started a war.


• The Volokh Conspiracy reports on the recent sharp rise in separatism in Catalonia. The distinction made between a nationalist movement and the American Confederacy is worth keeping.

• blogTO's Rick McGinnis writes about a changing Little Italy that, despite what many commenters are saying, really does look rather bad.


• Centauri Dreams blogs about the wonders and perils of nuclear fusion-using starships.


• Co-blogger Claus Vistesen at Demography Matters blogs about the declining mobility of the famously mobile American population.


• Daniel Drezner has some interesting speculation about the dynamics behind the Russian-Iranian relationship.


• A Fistful of Euros' Edward Hugh observes that the French economy seems to be doing very well indeed, with stable and sustainable domestic consumption and the possibility of financial outlays being under control in the long run.


• The Invisible College's Tobias Thienel examines the mechanics behind Honduras' lawsuit against Brazil in the International Court on Justice based on the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa's hosting of ousted president Manuel Zelaya.


• Mark MacKinnon blogs about how the Berlin Twitter Wall, put in place by the city of Berlin to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, was taken over by Chinese internet users protesting firewalls in their country.


• Slap Upside the Head reports that anti-queer sentiments are fast becoming minority opinions in the Canadian populace and notes that the Canadian military has allowed non-heterosexuals in its ranks for 17 years without problems.


• Steve Munro links to a report examining the idea of extending the Yonge subway line north into the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill.


• Strange Maps reproduces an interesting map of an empire based on pan-Turkish and pan-Islamic ideals at the same time.


• Over at Torontoist, Quin Parker highlights the intruiging prelmiinary design plans for the Steeles West subway, the first TTC station to be built at least partly outside of Toronto.


• The Volokh Conspiracy's Eugene Volokh examines the interesting question of whether or not a same-sex married couple in Iowa benefits or not from the spousal right not to testify in a federal lawsuit.

Barack Obama downplayed Canadian frustration over his country's so-called Buy American provisions Monday, arguing that complaints about U.S. protectionism were over-the-top.

On a shared stage with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, the U.S. president said his country's controversial procurement rules came up at their so-called "Three Amigos" summit.

Obama said Canada and the United States will seek freer trade among provinces, states, and cities, but he dismissed the complaint frequently heard north of the border that Americans are shutting down trade.

"I want to assure you that your prime minister raises this every time we see each other," Obama told a news conference as the summit wrapped up.

"(Harper) is expressing his country's concerns ... I think it's also important to keep it in perspective: We have not seen some sweeping steps towards protectionism."

Sources say the prime minister has expressed concern so often about the danger of protectionism to Obama that when he brought it up again at Monday's meeting, Harper prefaced his remarks with a self-deprecating preamble.

"I hate to sound like a broken record," officials quoted Harper as telling the leaders. "But I feel strongly about this issue."

I’ve been watching politics for a while, and I have to say that conflating Harper’s remarks with the suggestion that he “Blames Canada” is one of the bigger stretches I’ve seen. It’s a fair comment to say that you’re doing something drastic because a system is flawed and needs fixing. It’s not blaming a nation to say that a government department needs to be reformed. And in any event, heaven help us if we can’t step forward and say that our country isn’t perfect and there are flaws that need fixing.

And I’d be perfectly willing to accept Harper’s explanation for slapping visa restrictions on Mexicans so fast if… he actually had been serious about making reforms to Canada’s refugee claimant system before now. After all, he has only been in power for three years! You’d think that, if fixing flaws to the system were truly a priority for this government, we’d have heard more about this issue in parliament by now.

But, not quite. This government has proposed and made changes to the immigration process — changes so dense they have frustrated efforts of immigration lawyers to provide decent service for their clients (and, believe me, I know of what I speak) — but the refugee system wasn’t really touched, or even referred to in the three years that this government has been in power. And then all of a sudden, the Minister for Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, slaps visa restrictions on Mexico and the Czech Republic, offering no transition period, and so little warning, that a number of Mexican tourists had their vacations to Canada scrubbed.

The Honduran Congress late Sunday officially voted Mr. Zelaya out of office, replacing him with the president of Congress, Roberto Micheletti, who said Monday that he would resist pressure from other nations demanding the reinstatement of the ousted president, news agencies reported.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the last senior member of the administration to visit Honduras, just three weeks ago, said that the United States was working toward “full restoration of democratic order in Honduras.”

She said that the situation in Honduras “has evolved into a coup.” But when pressed by a reporter, she refused to say explicitly that the United States was demanding that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power, although senior administration officials pointed out that the United States had signed on to an Organization of American States statement on Sunday that included such a demand.

[. . . ]

Mr. Zelaya, 56, a rancher who often appears in cowboy boots and a western hat, has the support of labor unions and the poor. But he is a leftist aligned with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and the middle class and the wealthy business community fear he wants to introduce Mr. Chávez’s brand of socialist populism into the country, one of Latin America’s poorest. His term was to end in January.

The Honduran military offered no public explanation for its actions, but the country’s Supreme Court issued a statement saying that the military had acted to defend the law against “those who had publicly spoken out and acted against the Constitution’s provisions.”

Mr. Zelaya’s ouster capped a showdown with other branches of government over his efforts to lift presidential term limits in a referendum that was to have taken place Sunday. Critics said the vote was part of an illegal attempt by Mr. Zelaya to defy the Constitution’s limit of a single four-year term for the president.

Early this month, the Supreme Court declared the referendum unconstitutional, and Congress followed suit last week. In the last few weeks, supporters and opponents of the president have held competing demonstrations. The prosecutor’s office and the electoral tribunal issued orders for the referendum ballots to be confiscated, but on Thursday, Mr. Zelaya led a group of protesters to an air force base and seized the ballots.

Article 205, Section 12: [Congress has the power to] accept the constitutional oath of office of the elected President and Vice-president of the republic, and other appointees they select; grant them permissions and accept or reject thier resignations and fill vacancies in the case of the complete absence of one of them;

Article 205, Section 20: [Congress has the power to] approve or disapprove the admistrative conduct of the executive branch;

Article 242: In the case of a temporary absence of the the President of the Republic, the Vice-president will carry out the functions of the President. Should the Presidency be permanently vacant, the Vice-president will exercise the powers of the executive branch for the remainder of the constitutional term. Should the Vice-presidency also be vacant, the powers of the executive branch will be exercised by the president of the National Congress.

Thus, the need to declare that President Zelaya had “resigned” before giving the executive powers over to Roberto Micheletti. (The office of Vice-president is currently vacant, so having the power pass to Micheletti is kosher ... it's the whole removing of Zelaya what appears to be illegal.) Note that while Micheletti says that everything is constitutional, this article from the Honduran press cites no clauses or precedents.