Panel 12- Latin American Politics, Past, Present, and Future

In between my blogging and film duty I got the chance to catch the last of one of the undergrad panels this morning. I was thoroughly impressed by the engagement between the students and the MACLAS members as lively discussions took place on NGO and government interaction, and environmental concerns in the Amazon.

PANEL 12

This panel explored the mechanisms that drive politics in Latin America, starting with a historical view on the Sandinista movement and the role of borderlands in national conflicts, moving to a discussion of Brazilian foreign policy as driven by the external image the nation, and lastly media lobbying and enacting of interests in Uruguay.
Michael Schroeder discussed the use of cross-border plundering to finance Sandinista offensives versus the marines in Nicaragua, which allowed for an ideological argument to denounce Sandino as a bandit and centralize the national government under the Samoza regime. Discussions later linked this case to the current cross-border issues between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Ivani Vassoler's presentation elicited a discussion on Brazil's present "pragmatic" foreign policy, focusing on Brazil's attempts to make a place for itself as both a leader in the region and a partner of the US. We discussed the necessity entailed in this goal to balance connections with both the US, and the anti-US block of Chavez, Morales, and others within South America, walking a tight-rope to form economic partnerships with the two sides. In the question and answer session, participants discussed the concept of "national development" as Brazil's foreign policy goal, concluding that this signifies facilitation of capital accumulation within Brazil, and foreign policy decisions that serve to protect oil interests and international aspirations.
Diane Johnson's presentation focused on how mass media articulates its interests to the government, defining these interests as both free expression and access to information, as well as business practicalities such as licencing laws and taxes on print material. Media lobbies, according to Johnson's research in Uruguay, is a powerful tool used by media companies to push forward their interests, but leads to business relations between the government and the media that are not necessarily transparent. So who is watching the watch dog? Public dealings of media outlets are highly visible to society, but business dealings are not. Thus perhaps it is the responsibility of media sources to watch each other. Our discussion brought up the difficulty of insulating journalists from the business concerns of a newspaper or other media outlet, and this the possible political and economic influence on reporting.