Ricky situation: Puerto Rico’s protests

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. In Latin America, dictatorships and insurgencies have often ended in negotiated amnesties. To end the violence, the violent go unpunished. Some of those amnesties have been challenged years later. But it's unclear whether unearthing the past is a good way to keep the peace. And on average, women make up only 4 out of 10 of Europe's scientists and engineers. But in Eastern Europe, that ratio is far higher. We ask what's different there and how getting more women in the lab is a clear economic win. But first, For two weeks now, protests have been breaking out in Puerto Rico's capital, San Juan. Monday's demonstration was among the largest in the territory's history. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, banging pots and pans, parading with banners and chanting, ricky, resign. Later, police fired tear gas to disperse the crowds. The target of all this fury is Ricardo Rossello, the island's governor. Earlier this month, a trove of crude and offensive messages sent by the governor and his closest aides was leaked. The texts even included a joke about the bodies of those killed in Hurricane Maria, which wrecked the island almost two years ago. The public was outraged. On Sunday, Mr. Rosallo posted a video to Facebook in which he pledged to step down as leader of his party and refrain from seeking re election. But he stopped short of resigning as governor, and Puerto Ricans want him out. The governor is growing increasingly isolated. His chief of staff quit last night, and now local media are reporting that his resignation is imminent.

The reason Puerto Ricans are so outraged is that there are a lot of these leaked messages, and they're really, really bad.

Dan Rosenheck is the Economist's data editor. He's written extensively about Puerto rico.

In nearly 900 pages of leaked telegram messages, the governor can be seen on paper trashing pretty much every prominent individual and Every significant interest or identity group in the entire island he represents, Whether it's people he works with, politicians, marginal, marginalized communities, victims of Hurricane Maria, you name it, the governor trashed them. And at a time when Puerto Ricans need leadership and someone to get them off their feet more than ever before, instead, they seem to be confronted with a governor who has nothing but scorn for everyone he's supposed to represent.

I mean, this is just the latest indignity that Puerto Ricans have suffered. It's not just these chats that have brought people into the streets.

Yeah, lots of politicians have been caught saying things that they shouldn't, but haven't managed to trigger the kind of outrage and protest that Rosseau has. That's because lots of the those other politicians haven't been leading countries that have had the kind of trouble that Puerto Rico has had over the past few years. It's been mired in a deep recession since 2006. It recently suffered one of the worst government bankruptcies in history. The Federal Congress of the United States has taken away control of the purse strings from its government and has imposed, using an oversight board, punishing austerity and budget cuts that have led to sharp reductions in public services. Puerto Ricans have been fleeing the island for the mainland in droves, which in turn reduces the. And makes it ever harder for it to fund public services and pay for its obligations. And then on top of all that you had in 2017, Hurricane Maria, a devastating natural disaster that left much of the island without power for months and is estimated to have killed thousands of people. And then the icing on the cake, and this is where it does come back to. Rossell's own responsibility is just a couple weeks ago, the Justice Department unveiled an indictment of a bunch of his former officials for routing government contracts to their cronies. So Puerto Ricans are fed up with his government for good reason.

But you're describing a situation that perhaps isn't entirely on Mr. Rossio's shoulders. Right. Is it a matter just of changing this governor to change the fate of the island?

I think anybody who had the misfortune to become the governor of Puerto Rico in 2017 would find himself gravely unpopular and facing street protests after too long. Even if it weren't for the hurricane or the corruption scandal or the nasty text messages, the biggest problem is that the government is bankrupt. The economy's been collapsing, and everybody's leaving. And no matter how brilliant a governor you might manage to get, it's really the federal oversight board that calls the shots on taxes and spending in Puerto Rico, and it's them that are now in charge of handling the negotiation with Puerto Rico's voracious creditors. So sure, the governor bears some responsibility, but it's unlikely that any potential successor will have much more luck, especially without control of the government purse strings. I think that where this is likely to lead is a reevaluation of where the status quo in Puerto Rico is really viable to continue in the medium term. I think it wouldn't surprise me if, given just how badly things have gone in recent years, this might strengthen both the movement to make Puerto Rico a state and therefore give it a voice in Washington and put it in better position to advocate for its interests from the federal government, which is Governor Rossello's position. Or it might also strengthen support for outright independence. People who think that, you know, clearly this relationship with the United States just isn't working in general. The status quo, I think, has worked out pretty well for Puerto Ricans, but this bankruptcy has really exposed a lot of the weaknesses in the Commonwealth arrangement. And it wouldn't surprise me if people's appetite for a change of leader winds up bleeding into an appetite for change of status.

Dan, thanks very much for your time.

Thank you for having me.

What's more important, peace or justice? It's a salient question in Latin America, a region still grappling with a long legacy of dictatorships and guerrilla insurgencies. In some cases, amnesty laws were the price of democracy and stability. Crimes against humanity went unpunished. Over the past few years, though, amnesties have been repealed in several countries in the region. Some of the butchers of the 1970s and 1980s have at last been held to account. But are there risks in reopening the past? Currently, this debate is playing out in el Salvador.

Between 1980 and 1992, El Salvador suffered a bitter civil war between left wing guerrillas and the army, which directly or indirectly had ruled the country for many decades.

Michael Reed is a senior editor at the Economist. He covered El Salvador during the final years of the civil war and the peace talks that followed.

That civil war saw many acts of brutality.

Dawn today revealed the corpses of some.

Of yesterday's victims of the violence.

Firefights still peppered the air as guerrillas continued to battle.

Himself is said to be involved with the right wing death squads who until recently carried out regular mass murders of left wing suspects. Perhaps the most notorious One came in 1981 when a US trained army battalion massacred more than 900 civilians, mainly women and children, in a Village in the mountains called El Mosote. So there was a very strong demand for peace.

By 1990, after more than a decade of war, a UN backed peace process began. Three years on, a deal was reached.

On my trips to El Salvador at that time, people overwhelmingly wanted the war to end, and they wanted it to end with a better El Salvador, a democracy with reforms, a smaller army under civilian control, a new civilian police force. But you know, after more than a dozen years of war in which some 75,000 people died in a small country, war weariness and a desire for a better future took precedence in people's minds, certainly in the minds of most people I talk to over justice. As such, there was a pioneering truth commission and that was followed quickly by a government decree of a sweeping amnesty, which was a secret part of the peace process and which some people were very disappointed by at the time. But many people wanted to move forward.

So essentially, the people responsible for these crimes, such as El Mazote, they weren't brought to justice?

That's right. I mean, at the time, people's overwhelming concern was to end the war and create a better society. With the passage of time, the demands for justice have got stronger. At the same time, international law has evolved and tends to frown upon amnesties nowadays, holding that some crimes are so terrible, so called crimes against humanity, that they cannot be amnestied. And in El Salvador, a few years ago, the Supreme Court adopted that doctrine and ruled that the amnesty of 1993 was, was unconstitutional. And that has meant that a case against the military chiefs held responsible for the massacre at El Mozote has been moving forward in the courts and they are on trial at the moment.

And the current government, the people of El Salvador, are happy with relitigating this point?

That's a good question, and it's hard to know the answer. I think. I mean, some people certainly are, and some people want justice and feel that it is their right. And they have powerful supporters abroad, particularly particularly human rights groups in the United States. I think other people are concerned that reconciliation was difficult to achieve and that reopening the past in this way is not necessarily positive. The people who are skeptical include the two main political parties whose origins come from the two sides in the civil war. However, the new president, Nayib Bukele, doesn't take that view and is in favor of the case going forward. So there's been an attempt to pass a new amnesty law, but it looks as if that is going to fail and that the case will go forward.

I Mean, given a rich and horrible history in Latin America of bloody dictatorships and insurgencies, this must be a common question, a common divide about whether to unearth the past.

It is, indeed. I mean, El Salvador and Guatemala in Central America stand out for having had real civil wars. In parts of South America in the 1970s, there were military ships which had faced smaller guerrilla threats in some cases, in others not. And then in Colombia, you had a long running internal conflict involving the FARC guerrillas, which ended only in 2016 with a peace agreement. And in all these situations, there are difficult trade offs to be made between the demand for justice. On the one hand, peace or democracy and reconciliation and truth. And it's very hard to have all of those.

And so how do you balance those sometimes conflicting demands?

There are strong arguments on both sides. I mean, when you have had horrific crimes, there is a justified demand to try and punish those responsible. On the other hand, knocking down amnesties is not risk free. It can focus society's attention on the past when really it ought to be focused on the present and the future. And perhaps most importantly, it means that future amnesties will not be credible. And that, for example, is a problem in Venezuela today where the opposition is offering an amnesty to those members of the armed forces who turn against the regime of Nicolas Maduro, which is a dictatorship. But that amnesty is not seen as credible by many in the armed forces.

And so which side of this debate do you fall on? Michael, what's your personal take?

One wants to have one's cake and eat it in this question, which is desperately difficult. I mean, of course, one has to be in favor of the maximum amount of justice. But I do think that outsiders tend to have pushed the argument much more in favor of justice and ignoring the risks in overturning amnesties and the importance of peace and reconciliation and the strengthening of democratic institutions. I mean, Latin America needs the rule of law for the present and not just for the past. With 8% of the world's population, it's responsible for 37% of murders. And you know, what most citizens in Latin America want today is a functioning justice system that keeps them safe today. And I think that's important not to lose sight of in this debate.

Michael, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Can fashion keep up with 21st century trends? The editor in chief of Vogue and a Wintour has been the gatekeeper of high style for more than 30 years. On the Economist asks our interview show. My colleague Anne McElvoy asks her how to make fashion more inclusive and about the fashion sense of America's first couple.

I'm interested in looking. There was something so visual about the Trumps. His sort of ill fitting suits and the strange trousers and red baseball cap. Almost deliberately off trend. Not interested in some ways in presenting himself in other than as you perhaps refer to a way that might echo with the bass. Melania put together a much more put together way. She did come to the UK and I think very consciously wanted to, to see herself as an ambassador for British fashion in this case, or a transatlantic ambassador. I mean, do you value that? And would you just rather kind of stay away from the Trumps?

I think, you know, First Lady, First Lady Michelle Obama really was so incredible in every decision she made about fashion. She supported young American designers. She supported designers indeed from all over the world. She, she was the best ambassador that this country could possibly have in many ways, obviously way beyond.

But she's not the first lady now beyond that. So what about the one that you've got now?

And to me, she is the example that I admire.

Would you give Donald Trump fashion advice if he called?

I think he's unlikely to call.

To hear more, subscribe to the Economist asks on your podcast.

Apparently.

It's a tough world out there for female scientists. Across Europe, they only make up 40% of the scientific workforce. In Germany and Finland, they're fewer than one in three. But in Eastern Europe, it's going much better.

When it comes to its share of female scientists, Eastern Europe actually does much better than you might expect.

Ellen Halliday writes about Europe for the Economist and is based in Brussels.

In quite a number of Eastern European countries, gender equality in science and research outstrips the somewhat depressing figures for other parts of Europe, like Germany and Finland. So we see that in countries like Lithuania, 57% of scientists and engineers are women. And similarly, just a few percentage points behind, Bulgaria and Latvia have 52%. So both more than half. And this positive trend can also be seen in academic output. So whilst many rate academic institutions in Western Europe highly, universities in Poland and in Serbia are actually some of the best in the world in terms of equal numbers of men and women publishing research articles. So it's a slightly surprising comparison when we look at the rest of Europe.

So why do you suppose that is? Why should that kind of equality have been reached in the, in the region?

Well, that's a tricky question, but most put it down to the historical experience of these countries, which were once part of the Soviet Union. So in many places, women were actively encouraged into labs, into jobs in science. Angela Merkel, who's of course the German chancellor and grew up in eastern Germany, was one who built a first great career through science. But there were many others. There's also the question of choice. So there were fewer options in that time and it was perhaps seen as a stable, less political, even role to take on.

So what do you suppose countries beyond the region could learn from Eastern Europe?

Well, again, that's a bit tricky. Clearly, if this can be explained through historical experience, that's not something that we can really recreate per se. But at the same time, what we do see is that role models are perhaps important. You might say that the daughters and granddaughters of these women now who've seen their predecessors in jobs in science and tech, realise that that's something that they too can pursue. There's a study out from Microsoft that showed that these kind of role models, female role models for girls, do actually encourage their interest in pursuing that job. So other countries could support that more, invest more, and then they would reap the dividends.

And do you think that they will? I mean, looking across Europe as a whole, do you think the overall demographics will change?

Well, these changes do take time. It's about changing attitudes as well as investing in training. But it would be great for equality and also for the economy if women and girls did see jobs in science and tech as something that they could pursue. At the same time, the need for women in science is only going to continue to grow. The European Commission has said that by next year, economic growth could be hampered by a shortage of up to half a million ICT workers. That's information and communication technologies. So there are many, many jobs there that women could take. And closing the gender gap in STEM in science and tech could actually increase the EU's GDP per capita by at least 3% by 2050, but likely a little more, and create over 1.2 million jobs.

Thank you very much for your time, Ellen.

Thank.

You.

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