Eusébio, A Life in the Shadows of the Colonial Past

Eusébio was one of the heroes of my childhood. Watching the 1966 Soccer World Cup in England on our neighbor’s black and white TV set in Switzerland, all we wanted to see is Eusébio. Eusébio was the dominant player of that tournament, Pelé notwithstanding, and led the Portuguese squad to the third place. We admired the elegance of his play, his speed, and his superb ball control. It is because of players like him that we call soccer the beautiful game. Eusébio died on January 5, 2014.

Eusébio, whose full name was Eusébio da Silva Ferreira, retired from soccer in Portugal in 1975 to play in North America, and I did not think about him much anymore after that. Until 2012, when I took a walking tour through Mafalala, a poor slum of Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique. As I walked across a gravel field, my guide told me that this is the place where Eusébio learned to play soccer and that Eusébio grew up in Mafalala. I was completely surprised–I always had thought of him as Portuguese, and the fact that he was black somehow went unnoticed during my childhood.

Eusébio learned to play soccer on this field in Mafalala, Maputo.

Eusébio’s biography is marked by the de-facto Apartheid regime Portugal had implemented in Mozambique at the tail end of Portugal’s global empire. It lasted more than half a millennium and only ended in 1975 when Mozambique became independent from Portugal. The center of Maputo, then called Lourenço Marques, was reserved for whites only. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Portuguese built a large number of concrete highrises along stately avenues in the center of Maputo for a substantial Portuguese population–this is why it is referred to as Concrete City sometimes.

Blacks were not allowed to live there and were relegated to slums without any modern infrastructure. Mafalala was adjacent to the city center and became the focus of black intellectual life during the final decades of the colonial regime. It also was the center of resistance against white rule, and many leaders of FRELIMO, the Marxist liberation movement that seized power after independence, lived in shacks in Mafalala.

Joaquim Chissano (b. 1939), the second president of Mozambique, used to live in the light blue house.

Eusébio moved to Lisbon in December 1960, at age 18, to play for Benfica. Sporting Lisbon, its cross-town rival, had first dibs on him as he played in their youth organization in Maputo. But Benfica outsmarted Sporting, and apparently they convinced Eusébio’s mother with a good bit of cash. Regardless the circumstances, for a kid from Mafalala to play for one of the major European clubs was a dream come true.

In Maputo, Eusébio was subjected to open racism imposed by the Portuguese colonial regime, but he was part of a majority community that gave him support. While the racism in Lisbon may have been less overt, he had no community in Lisbon. So soccer became his community–which he worked for until the end of his life. He remained an untiring soccer ambassador for both Portugal and Benfica, his club, until his death. When Sepp Blatter, the FIFA boss, in 2011 stated that black soccer players just should shrug off racism, thus causing a scandal, Eusébio essentially agreed.

But we know that his 15 years at Benfica were tough, in spite of the huge sportive successes. Portugal then was a fascist state, ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970) and his successor Marcelo Caetano (1906-1980), until the Carnation Revolution of 1974 swept away the dictatorship–which led to the independence of all Portuguese colonies in the following year. The established society always saw Eusébio as an inferior African, and Eusébio also endured racist attitudes at Benfica. But he never talked publicly about his experience with racism–in spite of the fact that he agreed to be ambassador against racism for FIFPro, the global association of soccer players.

His pay at Benifica was far below of what top players elsewhere in Europe earned. Clubs like Inter Milan were interested in him, but Benfica demanded unreasonable amounts of money to release him. Apparently, Eusébio personally appealed to Salazar the dictator to get permission to leave. But Salazar denied the request with the justification that Eusébio belonged to the Portuguese people. Dictators are lousy at understanding irony. And by the time the regime fell, he was 35 and no longer of interest to top European teams.

Eusébio’s biography has a lot more layers of complexity than I possibly could have suspected as kid who admired him. As a victim of a brutal colonial regime, he moved to the racist “motherland” and sought his fortunes there. He never moved back to his native Mozambique where he was admired as a national hero, although he visited often.

Street sign and informal portrait of Eusébio in Mafalala.

It appears that the issue of race was like a festering wound to him–a topic he never wanted to discuss publicly. Donald McRae in a 2006 piece in The Guardian describes Eusébio as a conflicted individual who was haunted by the ghosts of his past and struggled with issues of identity and belonging. Apartheid and the Portuguese colonial rule are gone, but their impacts on lives are real and ongoing. Eusébio is exhibit A. In its obituary, The Guardian writes: “Eusébio was the greatest African footballer in the history of the game.” While this is true, I would have never thought of it this way. The story is more complicated than that.

On the Wrong Side of History: Christoph Blocher on the Passing of Nelson Mandela

The passing of Nelson Mandela reopens the question of Swiss collaboration with South Africa’s Apartheid regime. Switzerland continued to have both diplomatic and trade relations with South Africa even at a time when the rest of the world shunned the regime. It allowed commodities traders, like Mark Rich, to use Switzerland as a base to circumvent international sanctions against South Africa. Switzerland was not a member of the United Nations then and was not bound by its sanctions. The policy of absolute neutrality served as justification for non-interference and free trade with the result that Swiss corporations were allowed to do business with the Apartheid regime and thus profit from the international sanctions against South Africa.

Christoph Blocher (b. 1940) is one of the most prominent, influential and divisive politicians in recent Swiss history. He was a Nationalrat (national councilor, member of parliament) from 1980 to 2003 and has been serving as Nationalrat again since 2011. He was a Bundesrat (federal councilor) and minister of justice between 2003 and 2007. He represents the populist-right Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP, Swiss People’s Party) which has spearheaded all anti-immigration and anti-EU measures of the past quarter century and which currently is the strongest party in Switzerland.

Blocher was a co-founder of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Südliches Afrika (Southern Africa Working Group) in Switzerland–a Swiss lobby group that supported the Apartheid regime all the way to its demise. The work of this influential but secretive group still is largely unexplored. In spite of the 2005 report by the Swiss historian Georg Kreis on Swiss relations with South Africa between 1948 and 1994, there is little public awareness of the larger role Switzerland played in support of the Apartheid regime.

Christoph Blocher (left) in his home, discussing the passing of Nelson Mandela. (Screenshot teleblocher.ch, 12/6/2013)

For several years, Blocher has run his own webcast called Teleblocher–a weekly program where he chats with the Swiss journalist Matthias Ackeret about the issues of the week. The 25-minute program recorded on December 6, 2013, includes a segment dedicated to the passing of Nelson Mandela which lasted a total of six minutes and 42 seconds (also posted on Youtube). The conversation was in Swiss German–I transcribed and translated the entire Mandela segment, and I am posting it below. The interview has a certain oral and stream-of-consciousness quality to it, and I decided to render that in my translation even though it is is not always clear what Blocher meant to say. The transcript also does not render the tone of the conversation–for instance the indignation with which he tells us how the Swiss federal government refused to receive the South African president F. W. De Klerk in the late 1980s. The Mandela segment starts at minute 7:12 and ends at 13:54.

Rather than commenting on this interview, I want to make it available to a wider global audience. What this interview shows is a clearly Euro-centric, unrepentant racist apology in support of the Apartheid regime–and of the Swiss collaboration with it. Blocher throughout the interview idealizes the accomplishments of the Apartheid regime while showing contempt for Black liberation. But I think that the text can stand for itself. Read on.

Ackeret [7:12]: Well, our second topic is a bit more serious. This morning, an announcement which went around the world, Nelson Mandela died. What kind of a relationship did you have?

Blocher [7:21]: I did not have a direct relationship, but I followed this issue of course. Simply put, Nelson Mandela was in South Africa which had a very brutal and strict racial division between White and Black—he always fought for Black people to have the same rights. And he was banned and put into prison—that was an island just off the coast where he was put. And as the Whites were–whoever was against that, it was a question of whether the government would be toppled—they intervened quite brutally. And South Africa was part of Southern Africa.

Ackeret [8:11]: Well, you were part of this famous committee.

Blocher [8:13]: The Arbeitsgemeinschaft Südliches Afrika (Southern Africa Working Group); it was not just concerned with South Africa. And that was during the time of the Cold War. The Soviet Union wanted to do everything to gain control over Southern Africa. Because, this was the Cape of Good Hope, it was a very important route around Africa. And whoever strategically had control over this had an important part of global power in their hands. And thanks to the most important state in Southern Africa, South Africa, where the Whites made sure that it would not be Communist-controlled, they did not gain control over it. And the Southern Africa Working Group in which mostly higher officers [of the Swiss Army] were participating was concerned with this issue.

Ackeret [9:06]: But which supported Apartheid—that was the allegation at the time.

Blocher [9:08]: No, no, that is what they said, because we said that South Africa should resolve this problem on their own. Of course, it is clear: Russia wanted the Blacks to gain control because with them they could have turned things. So they held back in such a strategic situation. And the Whites always said that when they get this into their hands we would not come anymore. But one always has to know: Africa turned this regime on its own, and it was the Whites to be sure. And I was part of these discussions. And De Klerk who afterwards turned things.

Ackeret [9:55]: The Prime Minister.

Blocher [9:55]: He [De Klerk] came to Switzerland shortly before that. He was not given a reception, in Switzerland, by the Bundesrat [Federal Council]. They let him stand in front of the Bundeshaus [federal building] just so they would not get a bad reputation with the United Nations. So I received him with two or three other members of parliament in the Bellevue [hotel]. And then, as a White, he turned things around and received the Nobel Prize afterwards. And since then, race discrimination has disappeared. Africa is a wonderful country, this has to be pointed out, in terms of landscape, and the Whites kept very good order. But they did not grant equal rights. They did everything to integrate the Blacks. Hundreds of thousands of them, every year, came from the North, all Blacks, because they had it much better in South Africa than back home. But they did not have political rights. They also did strange things: they labeled benches, only for whites, only for blacks. And the Blacks also did not want to be where the Whites were. For us, this is a alien way of thinking.

Ackeret [11:08]: What was the goal of that committee?

Blocher [11:10]: The committee wanted to ensure that South Africa would not fall into the hands of Communism. Because we knew if that was going to happen the Cold War would turn in favor of the left, of the Soviets. One would not get it back once they would control that tip [of Africa]. The Americans knew that too. That is why the Americans always did both things: Apartheid, nothing at all, but simultaneously collaborated with the South Africans. And I believe that this was the merit of those groups who said, let the South Africans solve the issues on their own, we do not have to give them advice, and they did solve it themselves. South Africa is difficult now. One has to be very careful when going to South Africa, because they have a high crime rate which did not ever exist before. It is difficult to go out into the streets, and of course they are economically doing more poorly than before. But as before, South Africa is the state that is the strongest in Southern Africa, and all the other states profit from that as well. And now Mandela, the representative, they had released him, and since then he has been a hero in South Africa.

Ackeret [12:35]: Rightly so or not?

Blocher [12:37]: Well, I mean, he contributed a lot to the end of racial discrimination—this is alien to us. And rightly so, we say that he fought during his entire life and went to prison—that is always a sign that one is serious about it. But perhaps he has been overrated (“überschätzt”) in many places. This is how it goes: if somebody did something well at some point, everything else he does is considered to be good. But this is all over now. Those who in the early years saw Mandela’s house—which for us almost is a palazzo—and Bishop Tutu, that was the other one…

Ackeret [13:20]: That was the neighbor.

Blocher [13:21]: […] he was on the same side. Well, they did not live in tin huts. They were well taken care of.

Ackeret [13:30]: You went to look at it?

Blocher [13:31]: Yes, look at it. I wanted to see where they lived. Well, I said, of course this is hierarchical. But in these states this has to be that way, that people of this kind and that kind live that way. And of course those in the regime made sure that they did not have to live in poverty.

Nelson Mandela’s home in Soweto before his 1964 imprisonment. Yes, I went to see it too–not exactly a palazzo. (2007)

Ackeret [13:54]: Let’s go back to Switzerland. […]

Rhäzüns castle, part-time residence of Christoph Blocher. Why criticize Mandela for living in a simple bungalow? (Wikipedia)

Why the Crash of a Mozambican Plane in Namibia Matters

On November 29, 2013, flight 470, an Embraer 190 of Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique (LAM; Mozambique Airlines), crashed in a remote area of Namibia en route from Maputo to Luanda, killing all 33 on board. This event barely registered in world media. And maybe this a good thing.

Of course, we know the pattern of Western under-reporting about Africa: an event in Africa does not exist in the Western media unless it is related to atrocities or terrorism or it directly impacts Western interests. On the same day a police helicopter crashed into a pub in Glasgow, Scotland, killing eight. That accident was on top of the news in the US for two days.

Aside from the loss of human life, the accident is tragic because Africa urgently needs to expand its air transportation infrastructure in order to develop economically and become more competitive in international business. A report by Mathias Haufiku and Fifi Rhodes on the allAfrica.com web site explains the connection: “The accident took place at a time that African countries are working hard to shed off the negative reputation of accident-prone African airlines, the majority of which are still banned from flying over European Union airspace due to stringent EU safety standards. Currently there are only five African countries and their airlines, which are permitted to fly over European airspace, of which Namibia is one.”

The African Airlines Association (AFRAA) claims that the EU bans most African carriers by deeming them unsafe in order to block African airlines from competing in highly profitable routes connecting Africa and Europe and thus to give European carriers an unfair competitive advantage. For example, the European Union withdrew landing rights not just from LAM but from all airlines based in Mozambique in 2011. In other words, EU restrictions hit an entire country due to perceived deficiencies in its regulatory system, not just a single airline that happens to have an outstanding safety record–until last week that is. As a consequence, LAM had to give up its Maputo to Lisbon route. Today, a TAP flight to Lisbon is the only direct flight to Europe.

This is one of the reasons why it is difficult for African airlines to be competitive on the global market–aside from lack of capital and a very small domestic customer base of businesses and affluent individuals. Governments often protect their airlines through regulatory schemes–which removes the pressures to be competitive. But heavy regulation also turns out to be a huge impediment for air travel. National airlines like LAM still have monopolies which make air travel very expensive.

Embraer ERJ-190AR of Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique at Nampula airport (2012).

Mozambique tried to escape this vicious cycle. LAM leased a Boeing 737-500 and purchased a brand-new Embraer 190–the very plane that crashed last week–in November 2012 to bring the total of planes operated by LAM to seven. At that occasion, Paulo Zucula, the Mozambican Transport and Communications Minister, announced that Mozambique’s air space was being liberalized. Just two months before, his deputy Manuela Rebelo had stated that the liberalization of Mozambique’s air space had to wait until LAM could “receive new equipment as it is currently unable to withstand competition.” But Zucula insisted that the two new planes now satisfied this criterion and that LAM was strong enough to compete in the market. But this now is very much in question.

Reliable, safe, and inexpensive air transportation is essential for Africa’s economic development by enhancing trade relations, helping to cultivate personal ties, and promoting tourism. Distances in Africa are vast, road infrastructure often poor, and rail infrastructure spotty to largely non-existent. Air travel still is the domain of a privileged few in most African countries which has a negative impact on the mobility and productivity of their populations.

On a trip to Mozambique in 2012 I had the option of a bus ride of over 48 hours on partly unpaved roads or an expensive two-hour plane ride on LAM from Maputo to Nampula–and back to Maputo. My decision was quick and easy, and the credit card took care of the rest. But for the middle class in Mozambique, this would not have been a likely choice as the ticket was expensive even by Western standards. The flights were highly uneventful–on-time departures, professional service, perfect take-offs and landings. But then I had no idea how well the pilots were prepared for emergency situations and how well the plane was maintained.

Regardless of the cause of this plane crash, airplane safety standards in many African countries are still not up to acceptable standards, and even though the cause of the crash has not been determined at this writing this crash may have “cast fresh doubts over Africa’s aviation safety record.” But many African countries have made great efforts to improve the safety of their air transportation systems. And the US government has tried to improve the air transportation infrastructure in a number of African countries through its “Safe Skies for Africa” program, launched by President Clinton.

Most African airlines are still not ready to be exposed to competitive pressures, including competitive pricing which is a prerequisite for developing a mass market. This is why the 2012 launch of Fastjet, the first African budget carrier with a hub in Dar es Salaam and Western capital support, is a real opportunity for Africa.

Unfortunately, the crash of LAM 470 creates a setback, in terms of demonstrating a sustained safety record in Africa, in terms of capacity to raise capital for new and innovative airlines, and in terms of developing a market for airline seats, both domestic and international. LAM always could boast an impeccable safety record. This has changed now, with potentially serious consequences for the viability of LAM and for air transportation in Africa. This is why it is perhaps a blessing in disguise that this accident went largely unnoticed in the Western world.

Update 12/22/13: The preliminary investigation indicates that the pilot locked himself into the cockpit when the co-pilot had temporarily stepped out and intentionally crashed the plane. While this may point to a problem with pilot screening and training, this does not change the basic thrust of my argument.

Santo Domingo, San Juan, and the First Age of Globalization

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, were the two first cities the Spanish built in the Americas, in that order. But the histories of the two cities located on two neighboring islands in the Caribbean and only 254 miles apart could not be more different. A close look at the architecture in these two cities makes this evident.

Santo Domingo became the early hub of all Spanish activities in the Americas and was booming in the first half of the 16th century. The first stone houses were built there in 1502, just ten years after Columbus first had arrived, a real audiencia was established in 1511, and a magnificent cathedral followed. All early conquistadors, like Cortés and Pizarro, came through this city, owned or rented houses, and spent months or years preparing for their respective conquests. The earliest fortifications were built starting in 1502, and in the 1540s a city wall was built to protect the entire city. Yet, building activity dropped off in the second half of the 16th century, and the fortifications remained modest in size and scope.

The modest Fuerte de San Gil, erected 1503-1510, overlooks the entrance to Santo Domingo harbor.

The Spanish established the Real Audiencia (1528) and the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1532) in Mexico City, and political power gradually began to shift there. The Pedro de Mendoza expedition to the Río de la Plata region in 1534 was the first allowed to bypass Santo Domingo altogether, thus diminishing the role of the city as the hub of the Conquest. The sack of Santo Domingo by the pirate Sir Francis Drake in 1586 dealt a final blow to the aspirations of this city, as I have discussed in a different post, and little of significance seems to have been built in the 17th and 18th centuries.

San Juan, by contrast, features two of the most massive forts the Spanish ever built in the Americas to protect city and harbor, and the entire city was surrounded by a massive wall 40 feet tall and 18 feet thick. The military installations were a work in progress: starting with the first small fort in 1534, the Spanish continued to expand walls and bastions until 1790.

Castillo San Felipe del Morro, built 1539-1786 to protect the entrance to San Juan Bay and San Juan harbor.

And all this in spite of the fact that San Juan never played a major role in the Spanish colonial administration. Ironically, it remained under the jurisdiction of the Real Audiencia of Santo Domingo. But Santo Domingo failed to thrive because it could offer only a modest seaport consisting of the mouth of the Río Ozama, a minor river, which was protected by a small barrier island. The harbor was difficult to defend, in spite of the Fortaleza Ozama next to it, built 1502-1505. As trade picked up substantially within a few decades, this port could neither provide the needed capacity nor offer sufficient protection.

Entrance to the Santo Domingo harbor, protected by a small barrier island, seen from the Fortaleza Ozama (1502-05).

The Spanish needed a large and safe seaport as the Western anchor of the Atlantic crossing. This was critical as ships sometimes needed to wait for weeks or months for favorable trade winds to guarantee safe and expedient passage to Spain. Inversely, Puerto Rico was the first large island with food, a reliable fresh water supply, shelter and a secure deep-water port the weary sailors en route from Spain encountered in the Americas. It also was important to have a safe place to repair ships and to tend to sick crew members. San Juan Bay offered all of that.

These factors, plus the favorable location on the course of the eastern trade winds, gave San Juan and Puerto Rico great military, economic, and strategic importance: its harbor could protect merchant fleets and offered a safe point from which warships could be dispatched to maintain control over the Caribbean. While the Spaniards ceded the Western portion of Hispaniola (now Haiti) to France in 1697 and lost control of Santo Domingo in 1801, they vigorously defended San Juan and its strategic harbor entrance for almost 400 years–until Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in 1898.

Castillo San Felipe del Morro controlling the entrance to San Juan Bay–the most important half mile in the Americas.

Puerto Rico is only a footnote in the history of the Conquest as it never played a major political role–in contrast to Santo Domingo which was the political center of the first phase of the Conquest. So the fact that the Spanish invested heavily in the massive defense infrastructure in San Juan is surprising to the uninitiated visitor. But we tend to overlook the centrality of trade and commerce in the Conquest of the New World. San Juan became a major hub in the Spanish trade in silver and gold, and that is the true significance of the city: the San Juan seaport was used by merchant and military ships traveling from Spain as the first stopover in the Americas, but it also was the port where ships heading to Spain prepared for the transatlantic voyage. So the fortifications served to protect the lucrative trade in silver and gold and thus one of the major hubs in the early modern trade network and of the first age of globalization.

The large, protected San Juan Bay could give shelter to large merchant fleets and to Spanish war ships. Today, it is lined with harbor installations. As these two large cruise ships indicate, San Juan now is part of a different kind of global network.

“When did globalisation start?” A Response.

This question was posed in a blog post on The Economist web site on September 23. Why does the question matter? It matters because it forces us to think about the nature of globalization, its history, and its interpretation. And it forces us to address the question of whether globalization has benefited humanity over time. In that sense it is important to understand whether globalization started in Antiquity, around 1500, in the 19th century, or in the 1980s, as arguments can be made for all scenarios.

Economists like to connect globalization with a convergence and integration of markets, enhanced by a progressing division of labor and expanding trade systems. The great European discoveries around 1500 thus must be seen as a major incubator for globalization. Already Adam Smith argued that the influx of great amounts of silver from mines in Mexico and Bolivia in the 16th century profoundly affected the markets in Europe by dramatically lowering the price of silver–to which the value of European currencies was pegged–while accelerating inflation. Inflation only slowed around 1650, so the theory goes, “when the price of silver fell to such a low level that it was no longer profitable to import it from the Americas.”

The fact is that Europe suffered from serious inflation between 1500 and 1650 which had a destabilizing effect on European societies. Inflation was real, and it was feared. In church hymns of the time, inflation joined illness, hunger, disorder, celestial events, and the Turks as the most serious ills of the time that required God’s assistance. But did Columbus cause inflation?

While the story of American silver is a compelling one, there are a number of destabilizing factors after 1500 that contributed to inflation: the Protestant Reform, the transformation of a feudal society into a mercantilist one, the rapid growth of urban production with rising wages, the Little Ice Age, and the Turkish threat, to name just a few. Then there was the demographic collapse created by the arrival of the plague around 1350 which caused low prices, and the rapid rise of the population starting in the late 15th century which caused a rise in price levels and promoted a rapid expansion of the European trade system. Inflation was also driven by the Thirty Years War (1618-48) which created both shortages and high demand for weapons and provisions for soldiers. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia ended the high demand, and coupled with a massive population loss in the Empire it also ended inflationary pressures.

But there is a larger point to be made. Globalization is a way of thinking about the world and the role of the human in it. Around 1500, the way humans thought about space and the way they related to it changed profoundly. The earth now was thought of as a sphere that could be traveled on endlessly, the universe became infinite, and art marked the centrality of spatial relations through Leonardo’s innovation of the perspective. It is in this context that Columbus’s westward travels to Asia and Vasco de Gama’s travels around Africa and across the Indian Ocean became thinkable. So globalization reflects a state of mind which allows humans to see the world as a whole, to understand spatial relations, to make connections between its parts, and to act upon this insight. The transformation from the old T-O world map, printed as late as 1475, and the Waldseemüller world map of 1507 that first marks “America” indicates this intellectual leap.

Vasco de Gama may have stopped at this protected natural harbor on Mozambique Island in 1498. The Portuguese built their first fort here in 1507.

The second element in this globalization story is competition. It is no accident that Columbus and Vasco de Gama ventured out almost simultaneously to find a sea route to Asia. Both Spain and Portugal were in an open competition to find a commercially viable route to Asia to enhance their trade in high-value goods such as silk and spices. While quickly seizing the opportunities the newly discovered continent offered, the Spanish for three decades were feverishly looking for navigable passages through or around it.

The third element was that the discoveries were driven by commerce, not by sheer curiosity. As opening a sea route to Asia had great economic promise, many merchants and investors financed expeditions to lands unknown. Voyages of discovery were financed by private venture capital under license from the Spanish and Portuguese crowns to a significant degree. Santo Domingo, the first Spanish hub in the Americas, became a city with stone buildings teeming with investors, entrepreneurs and adventurers within a decade of Columbus’s arrival. From there, the new Atlantic trade system evolved with breathtaking speed–which included mining and plantation operations in the Americas, the Transatlantic slave trade, and an intensifying trade with Asia. But it is the intellectual leap of seeing the world holistically which is the true moment of globalization, the evolving system of global trade just being its logical outgrowth.

The Calle de las Damas in Santo Domingo in 1502 became the first paved road built by the Spanish in the Americas, just 10 years after Columbus first arrived here. These stone buildings were built as investment properties around the same time. One tenant was Hernán Cortés.

Reinfeldt to Obama: “You’re now in Sweden, a small country.”

On his way to the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, President Barack Obama stopped in Stockholm on September 4 to visit Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. During their joint press conference, Reinfeldt in his opening statement summarized the issues being discussed in their private meeting and said this about the situation in Syria: “Sweden condemns the use of chemical weapons in Syria in the strongest possible terms. It’s a clear violation of international law. Those responsible should be held accountable. Sweden believes that serious matters concerning international peace and security should be handled by the United Nations.” Obama tried to gloss over the apparent differences in his own opening statement: “I respect–and I’ve said this to the prime minister–the U.N. process.”

President Obama with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. (Screenshot: whitehouse.gov)

Later, Obama explained his views in response to a question on Syria to both leaders. Reinfeldt responded to Obama in this unexpected way: “Just to remind you, you’re now in Sweden–a small country with a deep belief in the United Nations.” While expressing understanding for Obama’s position, he added a little later: “But this small country will always say let’s put our hope into the United Nations.” Why did Reinfeldt remind Obama that Sweden was a small state, and what was the real message he had for Obama?

Throughout history, small states routinely disappeared from maps or became client states of larger neighbors—the history of Poland or the fate of small states in both World Wars could serve as examples. Ironically, the two World Wars (and de-colonization) triggered an unprecedented proliferation of small states which was followed by equally unprecedented political protection of small states anchored in international law and guaranteed by international organizations, particularly by the United Nations which has served as a de facto accreditation agency for small states.

Since 1945, power relations have been primarily regulated by international organizations rather than by armed conflict. Small states profited from the rise of multilateralism as it reduced the power differential associated with smallness and offered them agency and disproportionate political influence in an increasingly globalized world.

The events leading to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 offer a textbook example of how this dynamic can play out in an international conflict. The United States preferred a unilateral path by building a “Coalition of the Willing” that constituted a community of values promoting “freedom” and “democracy.” President George W. Bush’s phrase “You’re either with us or you are against us” symbolized the ideological polarization his brand of unilateralism fostered–which created great anxiety in small states who wanted to sit out this conflict.

Small states, on the other hand, insisted on building a community of laws and thus creating a multilateral path, based on resolutions passed by the UN Security Council–a step that would be elusive in the brewing conflict over Iraq, as it appears to be in the Syrian conflict now. Small states want actions by the international community to be based on laws and on treaties and to be embedded in the framework of the United Nations—an approach that has served well to protect small-state interests since 1945.

So Reinfeldt’s unusually blunt comment was a history lesson to remind Obama how American unilateralism spectacularly failed in the past—particularly in Iraq. It also was a reminder that small states think and act differently and prefer a multilateral conflict resolution within the framework of the United Nations—even though both Reinfeldt and Obama agree that President Assad’s horrendous crimes against his own population constitute a violation of international law. This reminder must have stung as Obama is the most multilateralist president in recent memory. Not surprisingly, the only reference to Syria in the official Joint Statement was that “we strongly condemn any and all use of chemical weapons.”

Reinfeldt in the press conference quickly moved on from this point of discord and instead focused on humanitarian aid–an area on which this small Scandinavian state has built part of its reputation and which is an important source of national identity: “You’re also in a country where, I think yesterday or the day before, we took the decision that all the people that are now coming from the war in Syria are allowed to stay permanently in Sweden.” Humanitarianism is a proven safe ground for small states that want to make a mark in a globalized world.

In Mozambique, China is Encroaching

The Chinese presence in Maputo is subtle, yet noticeable. For instance, the Chinese Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Group (AFECG) just built a shiny new international terminal at Maputo airport, and the new domestic terminal should be open by now as well. When I was in Maputo in summer 2012, the small old domestic departure lounge felt positively crowded while the new international departure area was cavernous and empty. The only things missing now are flights and passengers–at this writing Maputo airport has only 19 daily departures. So thanks to the Chinese, there is ample room for growth. Evidently, the Chinese are planning ahead.

Terminal building at Maputo airport, built by the Chinese. (Photo: Ryan Kilpatrick, Flickr, 2012)

Chinese contractors have also been building many roads, government buildings, public facilities, such as the national parliament building and the national stadium, but also commercial buildings. About 30 Chinese construction companies have a base in Maputo. Many projects were built free of charge or financed with soft loans from the Export-Import Bank of China. Mozambique also is an important trade partner. The Chinese have mostly imported agricultural and fisheries products from Mozambique and exported manufactured goods and machinery to Mozambique in return. But in the last few years, they have become more aggressively engaged in logging and in the extractive industries–as is the case in other African countries.

China’s involvement with Mozambique has grown sharply, as Lora Horta summarizes: “As China surges into Mozambique with sophisticated business relations and friendly aid, the former Portuguese colony’s traditional Western patrons are humbled.” One example is the recent exploration for gold by the Chinese Sogecoa corporation in Sofala province. But Chinese imports of Mozambican agricultural products, fisheries, and wood are sharply rising as well. The extraction of natural gas will commence in the near future (and India wants a piece of that action as well). A week-long trip of President Guebuza to China in May 2013 to meet government and business leaders accentuates the centrality of relations with China for Mozambique.

So the expansion strategy China pursues in Mozambique is quite evident. For over a decade, China has been engaged in projects designed to generate soft power, such as erecting stadiums and government buildings. Infrastructure projects followed suit, like roads, airports, and sea ports. In 2009, about a third of all road construction in Mozambique was being carried out by Chinese companies. Recent road construction efforts have been to pave roads along major transportation corridors, like the Nacala Corridor in northern Mozambique that connects the Indian Ocean port of Nacala with Malawi and Zambia.

Highway N8 in the small town of Monapo (Nampula province); the N8 is part of the Nacala Corridor.

Creating a more reliable transportation infrastructure helps China usher in the next phase that has now begun: Chinese-controlled mining and agriculture projects designed to meet China’s massive needs for raw materials and food–although Brazil has emerged as a competitor in Mozambican agriculture and mining as well.

Perhaps the most visible Chinese project in Maputo, and also a part of a long-term strategy to expand economic ties, is the two-story Horizon Ivato supermarket and department store on Avenida Vladimir Lenine which is designed to give Chinese workers and business people a homey feel and give the local middle class access to a wider range of consumer goods, made in China of course.

Chinese-built and operated Horizon Ivato Supermarket and Sogecoa Apart Hotel in Maputo (constructed in 2004).

The upper floors of this fourteen-story highrise are occupied by the Sogecoa Apart Hotel. Sogecoa is a branch of the Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Group (AFECG), a Chinese construction and mining company, established in 1992, which also built the airport and the stadium. The AFECG has set up branches in 22 countries in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Caribbean and in the South Pacific, with heavy emphasis on Africa. It has completed dozens of large and medium-sized projects, like this one, in more than thirty countries with aid from the Chinese government.

Corporations like AFECG often appear as state actors, and their corporate managers like to have their pictures taken with government officials. Photo-ops also arise when agreements are signed, for instance when a Chinese communist party delegation visited in 2011 to found a Confucius Institute in Maputo and to provide anti-malaria medications. Spreading goodwill and generating soft power in Mozambique is an ongoing effort. Soft loans or outright bribes to officials are common, as is extensive ajuda amigavel e gratuita (free and friendly aid) to benefit a broader segment of the population.

One such initiative to spread goodwill in Mozambique is the China-Mozambique “Journey of Brightness” launched in 2011–which is co-sponsored by the China Visual Impairment Prevention Office, the China Association for Promoting Democracy (I am not making this up–it even says so on the background in the image below), the omnipresent AFECG, and China Hainan Airlines. For six days, ophthalmologists from China performed cataract operations free of charge. Of course, frequent ceremonies and photo-ops are created to grease the Chinese PR-machinery.

“Journey of Brightness” ceremony (2011): pictures with Mozambican leaders are prized.

Efforts like this one serve as a glossy veneer to distract from hard-core business moves that take place in a darker and shadier place, one without cameras and without a presence on the internet. What we see here are parts of a well-coordinated strategy by the Chinese government and its dependent corporations to become a dominant force in the economy of Mozambique and to exert greater influence over its government.

Why Is Norway So Expensive? (Think Living Wages.)

On a recent visit to Norway, two friends from the University of Oslo on my first evening in Oslo took me out for a beer to talk about my visit–as in one beer each. The tab for the three beers: $57. Needless to say, I headed for a store the next day to check out retail prices. I noticed that they mostly sell beer individually, not per six-pack. It is because buying a six-pack would bankrupt you. The cheapest beer I could find, a mass-market Pilsner, was about $5 for one half-liter can–just over 16 ounces. Beer is very expensive because it is heavily taxed, as are all alcoholic beverages, as part of a strategy to curb alcoholism. My Norwegian friends assured me that the plan is not working.

But the bread at the store was expensive as well. As were restaurant food, train rides, hotel rooms, and books. And the list goes on. Most surprisingly, gasoline is expensive, too. Norway is the only oil-producing country with high gas prices. In fact, Norway has the highest gas prices in the world. Yet, the government through heavy taxation seeks to convince Norwegians to keep their cars at home and use public transportation instead. And it also subsidizes alternatives to fossil fuels, like this recharge station for electric_cars in central Oslo.

Battery recharge station for electric cars in central Oslo–in an oil-rich country. Nice parking job.

One interesting tool to compare price levels across countries is the Big Mac index which was developed by The Economist in 1986. Not surprisingly, the most expensive hamburgers in the world are sold in Norway where in July 2013 they cost 64.7% more than in the US. We might arrive at the conclusion that the Norwegian krone is overvalued. But if we use the index adjusted for GDP per person, the hamburger is only overvalued by 13.6%. So the exchange rate is a factor, but perhaps not the major one.

A Whopper will set you back a whopping $10. (That is without cheese.)

While the price of a hamburger is 64.7% higher, the GDP per person is a little more than double than that in the US. As the per-capita economic output is twice that of the United States, I assumed that some of this would trickle down in terms of personal income. So I asked the colleague who paid for the $57 beer tab why things are so expensive in his country. His response was, if you have a Norwegian paycheck this is not a problem. Not only are the wage levels very high, but disparities in income are much smaller than in the US. In other words, the person who sells you a hamburger or a beer in Oslo actually earns a living wage. High wages are prevalent and render the service industry expensive. But high wages are also common in education and other areas of the public sector–not to speak of the energy sector.

It is no secret that the North Sea oil brought a lot of wealth into the country over the past 30 years. What is interesting is how this wealth has trickled down. It has lowered the unemployment rate to an enviable 3.4%–one of the lowest in the world. (There are downsides to this which I will explain in a future post.) At the same time, it has supported a notion of a livable wage that is deeply anchored in Norwegian society. This stands in stark contrast to the United States where the working poor not just include workers in the service industry but increasingly also school teachers and other workers in the public sector.

But in this small Scandinavian country that sees itself as a social laboratory, making sure that this new-found oil wealth benefits all Norwegians is a national priority. Norway is a consensus-driven, relatively egalitarian society with a high level of social cohesion. According to the OECD, wage inequality is low, and a very progressive system of taxation further helps to reduce income inequality. And there even appears to be a consensus that the few that fall between the cracks deserve support–which is not the sole responsibility of the government. I observed a young woman, perhaps 18, walk out of a 7-Eleven convenience store in central Oslo and hand a sandwich to a street person.

Homeless person in front of 7-Eleven in central Oslo, shortly after a young woman gave him a sandwich.

So if you will visit Norway as a tourist any time soon, you will surely complain about the exorbitant prices. But keep in mind that the money you pay in restaurants, hotels, and other parts of the tourist infrastructure will allow real people to have a real middle-class life. And Norway is a stunningly beautiful country, well worth a visit.

View of the Aurlandsfjord from the town of Flåm. (Yes, this was the view from my hotel room.)

Oprah Creates a Stir: Switzerland’s Small-State Response

In my blog post of August 9, I commented on the Oprah incident in Zurich which has been dubbed Täschligate (handbag-gate) in Switzerland. While “Oprah-Gate” has long been dropped from short-lived news cycles around the world, the story continues to unfold in Switzerland. And here the story becomes interesting: how does a small country process the scolding and humiliation by the global media?

Here is a brief synopsis: Oprah entered an exclusive Zurich boutique, asked to see a very expensive handbag, but being turned down by the sales clerk with the remark that this item would be too expensive for her. This at least is Oprah’s version of the story. The story was picked up by news outlets around the world after Oprah’s high-profile interviews with Entertainment Tonight and with Larry King, and Oprah’s interpretation of this incident as racially motivated was uncritically accepted and disseminated. In my first blog post, I concurred that there was a racial component to the story, and in spite of some unresolved discrepancies I have not changed my mind.

There have been multiple responses in Switzerland, and the bulk of them focused on discrediting Oprah on some level and thus on putting her credibility in question. One commentator bluntly claimed that she couldn’t sing nor act and that her only true skill was self-presentation. The most common response is to frame Oprah as a petulant and narcissistic star who was irritated by the fact that she was not recognized in an upscale boutique–which is used to dealing with celebrities–and that her show does not have any traction in Switzerland.

First, there was a tearjerker of an interview in the Swiss tabloid Blick with the sales clerk–who was idendified as Adriana N.–with the title “I have not been able to sleep for days!” It is a full-blown victim narrative–“I feel like I am in the center of a hurricane.” Adriana remembers that Oprah entered the store accompanied by a man (Oprah claims to have gone shopping alone). In Adriana’s version of the story, she showed Oprah a handbag from the Jennifer Aniston line and explained that they existed in different sizes and materials. In Adriana’s account, Oprah eyed the expensive crocodile skin bag on top of the shelf: “I told her that this is the same bag like the one I was holding in my hand at the time. Only that that one was much more expensive. I would be happy to show her other bags.” The uncontested fact is that Adriana did not take down the expensive bag even though Oprah showed an interest in it and that Adriana tried to steer Oprah towards less expensive bags.

Trudie Götz, the owner of the boutique, in her own interview with Blick, admits that Adriana committed one mistake by not having taken the bag off the shelf and handed it to Oprah. When Adriana mentioned the price to Oprah, she felt bad about it, according to Götz. Why would you feel bad about stating a price in an upscale shop–unless of course you believed that the item was way out of the person’s price range. So Oprah’s reaction seems justified: she indeed was profiled by Adriana and considered not worthy of being shown this very expensive bag. Was racism a factor? Götz, flatly denied that, adding: “I am sorry, but perhaps she [Oprah] is a bit too sensitive in this regard.” Götz unwittingly points to the inverse as the real problem: if you are white, you don’t have to concern yourself with issues of race.

This is the mainstream interpretation of this event in Switzerland. Even the speedy apology to Oprah by Switzerland Tourism, Switzerland’s heavily subsidized tourism office, now is being criticized in Switzerland. Rino Büchel, a member of parliament representing the populist-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP), is demanding to know how this “bizarre apology” came about. Even Daniela Bär, the spokesperson for Switzerland Tourism who had tweeted the apology, is now backpedaling, stating that the apology was premature, too emotional and provided an unfortunate interpretation of the event. Büchel in the meantime increased the pressure by promising a parliamentary investigation of Switzerland Tourism’s original apology, stressing that too many outside of Switzerland were confounding Switzerland Tourism with the country itself and read this as a national admission of guilt. Unfortunately, the headline in Britain’s The Telegraph bears this out: “Switzerland apologises to Oprah Winfrey over handbag incident.” And Politico reported: “The Swiss government and the boutique apologized, trying to tamp down what had a become a worldwide story.”

One of the more bizarre commentaries by Martin Sturzenegger in the Zurich daily Tages-Anzeiger focuses on the object of desire: the handbag, made from crocodile skin and with a SFr. 35,000 ($38,000) price tag. For this handbag, the skins of three crocodiles were used who were raised under horrible conditions in a crocodile farm, as the linked PETA video narrated by actor Joaquin Phoenix graphically shows. Sturzenegger points out that PETA, the animal rights organization, named Oprah the person of the year in 2008 because she made her large audience aware of the systemic abuse of animals in industrial settings. Based on the handbag incident, Heinz Lienhard, the president of the Swiss animal rights organization, declared that Oprah was not a true protector of animals. So Sturzenegger’s take is that Oprah is a phony animal lover with a pathological desire for publicity. The problem with this argument: Oprah just wanted to see the bag; she never expressed the desire to buy it.

The most recent line of argumentation in the Tages_Anzeiger and in Blick is that Oprah created a big stir around this incident to promote the new movie “The Butler” in which she has a starring role. Granted, Oprah knows how to generate publicity and how to stage herself. But the article in Politico–on which this theory is based–more generally argues that “Oprah Winfrey is stepping back into politics,” mentioning her discussion of the Zurich incident as one example and only in passing.

All of these responses are typical for a small state that sees itself exposed to massive criticism from abroad. In moments like these, defending national interests trumps introspection and reasoned debate. Even Martine Brunschwig Graf, the president of the federal commission against racism (Eidgenössische Kommission gegen Rassismus), condemned the efforts by mostly foreign media outlets to turn an ego problem into a racism problem, as she put it.

But in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, the response seems to be more moderate. A piece in the Lausanne daily 24 heures, entitled “Oprah Winfrey finds Switzerland racist, and our black community does as well,” takes this opportunity to reflect on racism in Switzerland. Celeste Ugochukwu, the president of the Conseil de la Diaspora africaine de Suisse (CDAS), stated in the article that racial discrimination was common in Switzerland–but more so in the German-speaking part. André Loembe, vice president of a different immigrant organization, diagnosed a rising anti-Black attitude in Switzerland since the early 2000s. The federal commission against racism in a 2010 report confirmed a rise in anti-Black and anti-Muslim incidents. Loembe further expressed his view that Swiss anti-racism laws should be used to prosecute the sales clerk. If you are black in Switzerland, it is a lot easier to see the racial component of Oprah’s handbag incident.

Some progressive politicians take a more critical perspective as well. In an interview with the German news magazine FOCUS, the social democratic politician Andreas Gross recognized a “combination of an inflated self-importance of being Swiss (Selbstüberwertung des Schweizer-Seins) and a strange provincial attitude in contact with foreigners.” In his view, this paradox between competency in foreign trade and inability to deal with foreigners in their own country is poorly understood in Switzerland and not part of a critical self-examination.

The context of increasing hostility towards immigrants in Switzerland also is hard to overlook. Most notable are popular votes against the construction of new minarets in November 2009 and for tightening asylum laws in June 2013. In July, allegations of inhuman treatment of asylum seekers in some Swiss towns became public. In the affluent town of Bremgarten, for instance, asylum seekers have been banned from the public pool and from local sports facilities–this town of 6,500 people has created a total of 32 exclusion zones where asylum seekers are not allowed to go.

So the Oprah incident is just the tip of the iceberg. It reveals a country that feels pressured by immigration and that is deeply troubled by the rapid demographic transformation unleashed by immigration. It also reveals just how clumsy and insecure the Swiss debate about race is. Moreover, it reveals the typical collective small-state defensive reflexes against any perceived threat from the outside that render a national debate toxic. In a more recent interview, Oprah showed a surprising insight into this issue: “It’s not an indictment against the country or even that store. It was just one person who didn’t want to offer me the opportunity to see the bag. So no apologies necessary from the country of Switzerland. If somebody makes a mistake in the United States do we apologize in front of the whole country? No!” The Swiss would do well to take this to heart.

Racist Attitudes in Switzerland? The Tales of two African-American Women

Oprah traveled to Zurich, Switzerland, recently to attend the wedding of Tina Turner who has lived in the tony Zurich suburb of Küsnacht since 1995. Earlier this year, Turner made the headlines for accepting Swiss citizenship while simultaneously renouncing her US citizenship, presumably for tax reasons. The US has the questionable distinction of being the only industrialized country that taxes its citizens who reside abroad. (One would wish that the US would apply similar standards to US corporations, but that is a different matter.) Taxes aside, Turner seems to be genuinely at ease in Switzerland: “I’m very happy in Switzerland and I feel at home here. […] I cannot imagine a better place to live,” Turner reportedly told the Swiss tabloid Blick.

Oprah, her wedding guest, had a different story to tell to Entertainment Tonight. Oprah apparently entered the exclusive boutique Trois Pommes (which Oprah refused to identify) in downtown Zurich by herself, without any of her handlers. She asked to see a handbag with a SFr. 35,000 ($38,000) price tag. According to Oprah, the sales person replied, “No, it’s too expensive!” When Oprah further insisted on seeing that bag, the woman at the store replied, “No, no, you don’t want to see that one, you want to see this one, because that one would cost too much and you would not be able to afford that.” The employee then proceeded to show Oprah other, less expensive handbags. After three unsuccessful attempts, Oprah apparently left the store without making a scene and without pulling “the black card,” as she put it.

Upscale shopping street in the historic heart of Zurich

In the interview, Oprah was clearly annoyed because her star power apparently has not reached tiny Switzerland yet: “I didn’t have my eyelashes on, but I was in full Oprah Winfrey gear. I had my little Donna Karan skirt and my little sandals. But obviously The Oprah Winfrey Show is not shown in Zurich. So this does not happen to me unless somebody obviously does not know it is me.”

It is unfortunate that this narcissistic display of injured vanity obfuscates the matter. It has allowed commentators in Switzerland to focus on the hissy fit by a narcissistic international entertainer–as a commentary entitled “Die verletzte Narzisstin” (the injured narcissist) in the respected Zurich daily Tages-Anzeiger did. This line of argumentation enables commentators to deny that there is any racism at issue in this scandal that now is referred to as “Täschligate” (handbag-gate) in Switzerland. As in the cases of the Nazi Gold and the bank secret, Switzerland again sees itself exposed to a barrage of international accusations, and the gut reaction is to circle the wagons–a posture that is common when small states see themselves exposed to massive criticism and pressure from abroad. And Oprah delivered all the arguments for this defensive posture.

This also is unfortunate because Oprah clearly has had a positive impact on young black women around the world. In a visit to South Africa some years ago, a group of young women from Limpopo province glowingly told us how Oprah is a role model for them who as a person of color and as a woman made it in a world dominated by white men.

But Oprah is right that this incident would not have happened if the sales clerk had recognized her as a celebrity. Which brings up the question why it did happen. Trudie Götz, the owner of the boutique, in an interview with the Swiss tabloid Blick framed this as a “misunderstanding” due to the imperfect command of English of her employee and claimed that her employee meant well, acted correctly and in no way displayed racial prejudices. She further stated that she sees no reason to fire her sales person. Ironically, Ms. Götz was an invited guest at the Turner wedding as well.

Trudie Götz, owner of the upscale Trois Pommes boutique, in an interview with the tabloid Blick (screenshot Aug. 9, 2013)

If the sales clerk acted correctly by not showing a handbag to a customer deemed undeserving, business policies and practices come into focus. It is obvious that the profiling of customers in this boutique is standard procedure and that sales people are trained to profile customers–a practice that was confirmed by other upscale Zurich retailers. But what are the criteria for this profile? Obviously, the perceived ability to pay is key, and race factors into that in a major way. Furthermore, the rabid denials of racism by so many Swiss commentators imply that race indeed is a major underlying issue. Switzerland just in recent years has been forced to deal with a multi-racial society. Switzerland still lacks any authoritative mainstream voices–like Oprah–who can talk about race from a minority viewpoint. As the clumsy and insensitive commentaries in the Swiss press indicate, the Swiss have a long way to go to develop an understanding of the subtle ways of racism in our globalized world.

In the meantime, Switzerland Tourism, Switzerland’s official tourism office, showed outrage over the scandal, apparently fearing damage to its brand. International tourism in Switzerland has been in decline over the past few years, and the perception is that this scandal is not helpful. Daniela Bär, the spokesperson for Switzerland Tourism, offered a speedy apology to Oprah, reducing the issue to a clumsy salesperson who acted inappropriately. This also seems to be the view of other retailers in Zurich–again denying any systemic issues this scandal seems to have revealed. It is evident that Switzerland Tourism and other commercial interests would like the world to see Switzerland through Tina Turner’s eyes rather than Oprah Winfrey’s.

Note: see my later post, published on August 13, 2013, entitled Oprah Creates a Stir: Switzerland’s Small-State Response

Cultures Contexts

Essays on global issues, present and past