Tackling Chronic Hunger in Quiché

The Maya Food Security Programme is an initiative designed to combat chronic malnutrition through the distribution of monthly food rations and the sponsorship of workshops, fairs and street theater on nutritional education. The program also "promotes best practices and services for livelihoods, natural resources and risk management, and for small business development."

Over ten thousand Guatemalan families in Quiché benefit from this program sponsored by Save the Children, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Frito Lay Foundation and various community organizations. 

Quiché was one of the department's most fiercely struck by the Guatemalan counterinsurgency project and is today one of the country's poorest departments. The six municipalities that they serve (Sacapulas, Cunén, Nebaj, Cotzal, Chajul and Uspantán) are especially among the country's most vulnerable.

In fact, between 86 and 95 percent of the area's population lives below the poverty line, while 29 to 41 percent are extremely poor, making them six of the 125 most poverty-stricken municipalities in Guatemala, according to the presidency's Secretariat of Planning and Programming.

It looks like a really successful program for the people of Quiché and one that hopefully can be replicated throughout other areas of Guatemala. However, I do wonder how much overlap there is between this mixed public-private initiative and those that are government run. US AID has photos of the various projects on its website.

Shopping with a dollar in Guatemala

How does one eat with seven quetzales?

Forecasting Poor Economic Times in El Salvador

Berlin, El Salvador 2004

Poverty trends in the 2000’s can be divided in two periods: a poverty reduction phase until 2006 and the reverse of the tendency in 2007-2008. In the first phase of the cycle poverty fell 8.6 percentage  points. This phenomenon was even stronger in rural areas (decreased 17.4 percentage points), and also lead to a more equal income distribution. In 2007-2008, the food crisis hit El Salvador hard, and almost all the gains in terms of poverty reduction were lost. The poverty headcount rate increased from 35.5 percent in 2007 to 42.3 in 2008, reaching the highest ratio since 2002...

And then there's this.

The debt sustainability analysis (Table A.l) indicates that the public debt to GDP ratio is expected to continue on an increasing path until 2011, when it will reach 50.1 percent o f GDP before starting to decline to reach 46.2 percent in 2014.

These paragraphs were published by the World Bank in 2009. Maybe President Funes hasn't handled the economic crisis in El Salvador that well (O'Grady). However, economic conditions worsened beginning in 2006. (See Tim's post and my earlier post on the subject).

The World Bank even predicted, well before Funes took office, that conditions were likely to deteriorate well into the next administration's five-year term. One needs to evaluate Funes' handling of the economy from the baseline that conditions were bad and getting worse. O'Grady sort of does this by blaming Saca as well but that is not what the story's headline indicates.

Given the worsening economic situation that Funes inherited upon taking office (heck, it's one of the issues that got him elected in the first place), how well has he done to stop the bleeding and turn things around. He might not get high marks, but it's a different story than "he's ruining everything good that ARENA had built up over twenty years in office."

Poverty and other El Salvador links

FMLN Supporters in Berlin, El Salvador

Locavore del Mundo writes about the cycle of poverty in rural El Salvador. Gloria Moran at ContraPunto looks at Fundación Círculo Solidario's attempt to break that cycle of poverty. And finally Carin Zissis at the Americas Society has a report on Latin American Childhood Poverty under the Lens. According to a recent joint survey from the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) and the Caribbean and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), over two-thirds of Salvadoran children live in poverty.

Tim has posts on Aeroman aircraft maintenance in El Salvador, the Texis cartel in El Salvador, and Desperate lives packed into a tractor trailer that are each worth a look. While most of the migrants in the tractor trailers were from Guatemala, nearly fifty were from El Salvador.

Here's the El Faro video that accompanies the Texis cartel story.



And if you'd like to read a horrific story about why the US, Canada, Mexico and Central America need to design a migration policy that puts people first, you can read The Horror Filled Journey of an 8-yr Old Attempting to Reunite with U.S.-based Parents at Hispanically Speaking News.

Taking the Blame in El Salvador

The Wall Street Journal's Mary Anastasia O'Grady had an opinion piece last week entitled El Salvador Quits the Market Model that Tim tried to take apart over the weekend. O'Grady's argument is that in the last two years, Mauricio Funes and the FMLN have destroyed what was once a thriving economy in Central America. Tim, on the other hand, argues that O'Grady is "simply dishonest with her use of statistics." I'll give this bout to Tim, but in a split decision.

O'Grady's main problem is her lack of evidence. If I were going to put together an article on how Funes has dismantled the free market system in El Salvador, I would have actually tried to come up with some evidence of how he actually dismantled the free market system. Instead, she writes that the level of foreign direct investment increased in almost every country in Latin America except El Salvador in 2010. That might or might not be good, but that doesn't say anything about quitting the market model.

Then O'Grady states that both the Saca and Funes administrations failed to grant operating permits to the Pacific Rim Mining Corporation. Funes maintaining a policy that first started with the previous ARENA administration is again weak evidence of his quitting the market model. There are some worrisome economic indicators in El Salvador that O'Grady mentions (debt-to-GDP ratio and an expanding fiscal deficit), but no evidence that Funes or the FMLN have given up on the market.
 
While O'Grady is selective in the use of her statistics, so is Tim unfortunately. O'Grady reports that El Salvador fell from ninth (2000) to thirty-ninth (2010) on the World Index of Economic Freedom. Tim says that it is important to know that El Salvador still ranks second in the 2010 index even though O'Grady reports that it has fallen seventeen points under Funes. That's not what she said. O'Grady said that while El Salvador fell from ninth to thirty-ninth over the last decade, it fell seventeen of those places under Tony Saca's administration.

If my math is correct, that means it only fell thirteen under Funes. If El Salvador's score is both valid and reliable, then we can see that El Salvador still ranks pretty well in terms of economic freedom - just less so than in previous years. We can then try to figure out why the perceived drop in economic freedom. Was it because of Saca and/or Funes' approach to economic policy or something else.

Here's another issue. Both Tim and O'Grady seem to agree that poverty has declined significantly since the end of the war. Officials statistics indicate that the percentage of households below the poverty line declined from approximately 60% in 1991 to 35% in 2007 and that the percentage of households living in extreme poverty fell from 28% to 10%. While I am not totally confident in these estimates (Dean Brackley at the UCA believes that rate is more like two-thirds), the big debate is what explains the decrease in poverty.

O'Grady argues that El Salvador grew considerably between 1989 to 2008 (at least to 2006) as a result of the neoliberal policies of successive ARENA governments. ARENA's policies promoted growth and led to a tremendous reduction in poverty rates. Tim, on the other hand, says that she under appreciates how much poverty was reduced through both the peace dividend and remittances. Tim then links to a Proceso article from the UCA that credits remittances with much of the growth and poverty reduction.

O'Grady is probably basing her arguments off of the same statistics that Juan Carlos Hidalgo's uses in his report on El Salvador A Central American Tiger? for CATO (2009). Hidalgo argues that El Salvador's growth during the postwar period is even greater than government figures indicate once you accurately control for the country's population and that the economic policies implemented by ARENA fueled this growth.

Hidalgo does try to tackle non-ARENA-related causes of the growth and decline in poverty. Hidalgo's not very convincing in terms of measuring the peace dividend's impact on growth and/or poverty (not all post-civil war societies experience the same level of growth that El Salvador did following the conclusion to its civil war). However, he does cite two studies, one by the World Bank and another by the UN, that found remittances lowered poverty in El Salvador by 5.1% and 4.5%. An important factor in poverty reduction, but not enough to explain the 25% drop.

Hinds

Who's right? I don't know. From the table above (Hinds uses the same data as Hidalgo from what I can tell), it looks like the number of households living in poverty had been steadily improving since the early 1990s but it worsened beginning sometime in 2006. By all indications, poverty has probably continued to worsen since then.

I'm with Tim here when he says that O'Grady neglects the effects of the worldwide economic crisis of the last few years. El Salvador was struck particularly hard given its dependence on the US. Hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans fell into poverty in 2009 because of the economic crisis. While O'Grady likes to blame Funes, she also blames Saca, because that's where the weakening of the Salvadoran economy appears to have begun, in 2006. If several of the country's economic indicators began to worsen halfway through Saca's term in office, it probably makes better sense to look there than midway through 2009 when Funes took office.

The worsening of the poverty situation in 2006 and 2007 coincided with the global food crisis. The World Food Programme believes that between September 2007 and June 2008, 100,000 Salvadorans fell below the poverty line. In 2008, the Inter-American Development Bank predicted that the poverty rate in El Salvador was likely to increase from 35% to 42% in the coming years. Unfortunately, the worsening economic situation that El Salvador is currently experiencing, was predicted well before Funes was elected president. It's hard to then blame him for the dire situation two years into his term in office.

Like Tim said, "My point is simply that O'Grady helps no one in understanding the issues facing El Salvador when she continues to distort her information. O'Grady is a right-wing ideologue with an agenda, plain and simple."

Heck, I was just impressed that she put together an entire story without once mentioning Hugo Chavez.. She did blame a Brazilian "advertising hotshot" but at least it isn't Hugo's fault this time.

Poverty in Argentina

Both Argentina's Catholic University (UCA) and the government use the same 2010 census conducted by the Statistics and Census National Institute (INDEC) to analyze the country's social and economic conditions. While they agree that poverty has declined between 2006 and 2010, the university's analyses produce much higher rates of poverty and extreme poverty than do official government figures.

According to government reports, approximately 4 million (9.9%) Argentines are poor. The UCA report, on the other hand, says that approximately 10 million (29.6%) people are poor. The UCA also estimates that 11% of the population lives in extreme poverty compared to the government's 2.5% estimate. Of the country's 10 million poor, 3.5 million are homeless.

The difference between government and UCA's statistics is based primarily upon how each calculates the cost of the basic food basket. The government estimates that by the end of 2010, an average family needed $303 to avoid falling under the poverty line. The UCA estimated the amount to be $436.

Discrepanices between governmental and other organizations' poverty figures is nothing new in Argentina. Here's a 2009 Al Jazeera report on poverty in Argentina.


Argentina is not the only country where official and unofficial poverty figures are in dispute and I wonder whether these differences are playing into the discussion at Two Weeks Notice over what Peruvians want from their government (see here, here, here, and here).

Food Crisis in Guatemala

On Tuesday, Alvaro Colom's government declared a nationwide "nutritional risk alert" to avoid a food crisis in the country's poorest areas. The goal of issuing an alert is to prevent an "emergency."  The country's "dry corridor" and southern coastal communities (heavy rains) are the areas that have been most affected by extreme weather.


According to the UN, 49% of Guatemalan children under the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition. Guatemala has the highest percentage in all Latin America and the fourth highest rate in the world. Unsurprisingly, chronic malnutrition approaches 70% in indigenous communities.


The Colom administration is trying to use the food crisis to again push for a tax reform. That was going to be a problem any day of the week. More so after the vice president comes out and says that 45,000 tons of food donated by the international community recently went missing! 


Fortunately, President Colom later clarified that the vice president should have said 45 tons, but now those are accounted for as well. Just a minor exaggeration. 

(See Fox News Latino, Prensa Libre, Mission Network News, Nuevo Herald, Guatemala Times)

Malnutrition, Violence, and Investment

Several recent reports do not put Guatemala in a positive light. First, the European Union published a study that found that Guatemala has the highest rate of child malnutrition in all of Latin America. Almost 50% of children under the age of 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition. The EU's Rafael Señán Llarena added that Guatemala's malnutrition rate is higher than that of Haiti and among the five worst in the world.

Second, the Mutual Support Group (GAM) voiced its preoccupation with the continued violence in the country. During the first three months of the year, there were a total of 1,240 victims of violence, including 116 women and 3 girls. 874 of the victims were killed while the remaining 366 were "only" injured.

On the positive side, this number is a decrease from the 909 deaths reported during the first three months of 2010. However, on the negative side, both February (295) and March (304) murders increased after a "calm" January (275). GAM is also worried about the increase in massacres and the number of lynchings.

These numbers include some of the 22 police officers who have died so far this year (some off duty). At least 60 officers were killed last year.

Finally, Guatemala fell eight places (86th to 94th) in the World Economic Forum's Global Information Technology Report's rankings. 138 countries were in the survey.

According to the report, the country is at a disadvantage in terms of the number of days to enforce a contract, the perception of the effectiveness of the laws, the preparation of ICT staff, the quality of education in mathematics and science as well as the quality of the educational system in general.

[The country] also received low scores on the issue of the importance of these technologies in the vision of the Government, intellectual property rights, the acquisition of technologies, production of computers as a percentage of imports and the number of procedures to open a joint-stock company.

One last thing - Rigoberta Menchu's Winaq Political Movement officially became the 27th political party certified by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) for this year's election. I thought that this had already occurred, but I guess not. Menchu sees Winaq's successful formation as a poltical party as an achievement for the indigenous people of Guatemala and all the Americas.

Human Rights, Trade, and Poverty in Guatemala

A Canadian judge denied bail for Jorge Sosa. Sosa is wanted by Guatemalan authorities for allegedly participating in the 1982 Dos Erres massacre. He is also wanted by US authorities for lying about his past when applying for US citizenship.

Two things. First, I haven't really read much about the Guatemalan government clamoring for his extradition, but I might have missed it. If you see it, let me know. Second, given that we were supporting the Guatemalan military and government in 1982 and President Reagan was meeting with the man in charge, it's pretty pathetic that one would have to lie about being a part of that military because it would be held against you when applying to become a US citizen.

Unsurprisingly, Guatemalan textile businesses are unhappy with the government's decision to increase the minimum wage by 15%. They are threatening to lay off a significant number of workers sometime this year.

The Guardian has a report on the estimated 1.5 million children working the streets in Guatemala.

It's nearly impossible to judge how many children in Guatemala are missing out on a formal education to work the streets as José does. Viva, an umbrella organisation for charities that help street children, says up to 1.5 million are consistently out of school – about a fifth of what the country's pupil population should be. Unesco's Education for All Global Monitoring Report, published this month, reckons one in 28 Guatemalan children are missing out on school.

Finally, Danilo Valladares has a story on Overcoming Barriers in Central America for IPS. Valladares highlights some of the depressing social and economic indicators in Central America, including Guatemala.

In Guatemala, for example, "At age seven, only 54 percent of Mayan girls are in school, compared with 71 percent of Mayan boys and 75 percent of Ladina (persons of mixed race ancestry) girls," says a 2007 study by the U.S.-based Population Council, a non-governmental organisation that advocates reproductive rights...

Paradoxically, "Girls and women in the region have a high level of academic performance. So when they do make it to secondary school, they are more likely to finish their studies than boys," she added.

In the case of Guatemala, Verdugo said an essential measure was the government's announcement that public school was effectively free of cost as of 2009. Although the right to free education is enshrined in the constitution, until that year schools required payment for services, which limited access for children from poor families.

In Guatemala, more than half the population of 14 million lives in poverty and 17 percent in extreme poverty, according to United Nations figures. And while official statistics put the proportion of indigenous people at 40 percent of the population, native organisations say the proportion is more than 60 percent.

In 2000, eight out of 10 indigenous Guatemalans were poor, compared to four out of 10 for the rest of the population -- numbers that have seen little change since 2006, according to a government report presented in late 2010.

Three important topics for the next president - the legacy of human rights violations, trade, and poverty. Given the challenges that Guatemala confronts, it's disappointing that the next few months are likely to be about whether Torres, Rios Montt, Arzu, or Caballeros is allowed to run for office.

PBS NewsHour on Women and Public Health in Guatemala

PBS News Hour is running a series of articles related to public health in Guatemala. Here's the preview that they've released about upcoming stories.



Here's a blurb from Talea Miller at NewsHour about the upcoming broadcasts.

On March 7-8, the global health unit will air two stories from Guatemala on the NewsHour, focusing on family planning and maternal health and violence against women. The NewsHour will also air follow-up discussions with representatives of NGO groups working in Guatemala and government officials. President Obama will visit Central America in mid-March as part of a three-nation trip.

It's great that PBS NewsHour is bringing attention to the problem of poverty and violence in Guatemala so that people in the US and around the world are more aware of the problem and more likely to do something about it. However, I am getting worried about the quality of the programming.

For example, in the blurb above, they say that they will be covering public health in Guatemala at the same time that President Obama is visiting Central America. They do know that he is visiting neighboring El Salvador, not Guatemala right?

Then there's this Violence Against Women is Epidemic in Guatemala article from Imani M. Cheers.

The trend towards socialism in the 1950s concerned the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States, as the Cold War against Soviet communism played out in other countries around the world.  In 1956, the CIA backed a military coup and the country fell into a decades-long civil war that left more than 200,000 civilians dead. During that time, the U.S. helped train Guatemala's military in counter-insurgency techniques

The coup was obviously in 1954, not 1956.

Then there's this quote as well.

The PBS NewsHour global health team recently returned from Guatemala reporting on the femicide crisis and violence against women. The Guatemala Human Rights Commission estimated that in 2008, over 700 women were violently murdered. 

What year are we in? If you are spending January and February 2011 in Guatemala to prepare stories for March 2011 broadcasts, you need to do better than 2008 statistics. Approximately 838 women were killed in Guatemala in 2010.

Sorry for the bit of a rant. I just think that it's a really important topic that needs greater exposure and do not want it to be done half-arsed. These aren't the biggest mistakes, but when you neglect these details they do throw your entire work into doubt. (I know I make mistakes as well, but they have editors.)

You can find several stories on their website here.

(I am hoping that they ask why officials and activists think that the total number of women murdered in Guatemala increased from 2009 to 2010 while the overall murders declined)

Poverty in Guatemala

The Guatemala Times recently summarized 2010 poverty data from the country.

Poverty in Guatemala increased from 51% to 54.1% -55%, according to the latest data published by the Central American Business Intelligence, CABI. CABI informed that poverty, infant and maternal mortality have increased in Guatemala due to the global economic crisis between 2009 and 2010. This has severely affected local efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

In their study, CABI reported that the fall in economic growth in Guatemala caused the poverty level to rise from 51 percent to 54.1 percent and in some cases to 55 percent. Among the causes that increased poverty, the agency cited the loss of formal jobs, reduction in real wages (inflation) and bankruptcy of small businesses.

The agency stressed that the annual cost to address maternal and child mortality in Guatemala is not high, it takes only 0.25 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). If the investment in health is reduced it will adversely affect progress recorded in the field. The decrease of remittances of 9.3% in 2009 (Bank of Guatemala) had a very negative impact in the fight against poverty in Guatemala, in addition, despite the boost from programs like Social Cohesion, which distributes 300 Quetzals, (approximately US $ 38.4 depending on the exchange rate) per family, poverty has risen since 2007.

While the decline in remittances was one of the causes for the recent increase in poverty figures, there is some grounds for optimism given that Guatemala recorded a 15.1% increase in January 2011 remittances compared to January 2010.

The Bank of Guatemala revealed yesterday that January 2011 showed revenues of $ 283.3 million. Although this amount is higher than January 2010, when revenues where at U.S. $ 246.1 million, it has not yet reached the levels of 2009, revenues of US $ 290.2 million, or U.S. $ 314.6 million of January 2008.

While not as strong as 2009, it is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near the MDG's 2015 goal of 31.4% and really only returns the country to its 2006 poverty level.

Tax Evasion Kills