Caballeros at One and My Most Controversial Opinions
It’s been one year since I launched this blog, which, predictably, feels like forever ago and not long ago at all. I didn’t really know what to expect when I started this project, but am so grateful for the community I’ve found, as well as all of you who’ve taken the time to read, subscribe, and comment.
When I launched this blog my goal was to post something once every two weeks. When the United States captured Maduro on January 3 I switched over into more of a weekly schedule which I was able to keep up for 11 weeks straight. Going forward, I’m hopeful to maintain a more-or-less weekly schedule, but will be prioritizing consistency over frequency. The goal is to publish at a minimum every other week, with no more than one week gap between articles. I also want to experiment with different article formats and maybe build out some datasets for others to use. If you have any ideas or topics you’d like to see addressed, please do drop me a line.
As far as today’s post goes, I figured I would share something that’s a little different from the normal Caballeros fare and feature five opinions I hold about Western Hemisphere issues that represent some of my most controversial or otherwise out-there takes.
These arguments are less than ironclad, and my evidence for them less robust than I would put in an ordinary post. Maybe some of them will materialize into more serious analyses, but for now, I’m putting them out there in the hopes it might be fun to read my more oddball thoughts and because I believe authors should always be willing to push the envelope somewhat.
In today’s post, I’ll cover:
Why Brazil should have a Pacific coastline
Why I’m still with Dina Boluarte
Why we need to stop putting “Narco-” in front of everything
Why we need to shut up about “Plan Bukele”
Why it’s all the United States’ fault, and why that doesn’t matter as much as you’d think
This is probably a bit risky of me, there are more than 500 of you now, and if I succeed in getting a majority of you to disagree with me on at least one of these, I could be in for a lot of angry comments. They could also end up being perfectly milquetoast, which will be embarrassing for me in a whole other way. Nevertheless, let’s get into it.
1. Brazil Should Have a Pacific Coastline
On April 8, the following post went semi-viral in LatAm circles on Twitter, calling for Brazil to annex the territories of many of its neighbors to form a new superpower and master of the South American continent.
The overwhelming reaction to this post was derision, from both other Brazilians as well as commentators from countries the author suggested annexing. The thing is, I think the original poster is right.
The United States and Brazil are alike in many ways. Both are populous countries with vast and resource-rich territories. Both benefit from a lack of dangerous and adversarial neighbors like the medium powers that hem in Chinese and Russian ambitions. But one thing the U.S. has that its southern mirror does not is bioceanic access. The U.S. didn’t luck into this, it was the product of a conscious, bloody, process of territorial aggrandizement that was sustained by governments throughout the 19th century.
For Brazil, a Pacific coastline would not only augment the country’s resource wealth, potentially bringing new hydrocarbon as well as mineral deposits into the picture, it would turn the country into a true trade dynamo. The most immediate opportunity would be in the form of brand-new synergies for trade with China. Already the country’s largest trading partner, China-Brazil trade suffers from the fact that all shipping must pass either through the Panama Canal, now bereft of PRC influence, or else through the Strait of Magellan near the southernmost point of South America, adding time and inconvenience to the flow of goods between the two countries.
Beijing is currently working to rectify Brazil’s geographic faults through a planned bi-oceanic railway connecting Brazilian producers to their export nexus at the port of Chancay in Peru. I’ve written and spoken at length in other outlets about the geopolitical relevance of this project, but I think it stands to reason that, had Brazil already possessed a territory bordering the Pacific, it would likely have already built the infrastructure needed to link this to the rest of the country. Depending on how long ago Brazil acquired its Pacific coast in our alternate history, we could also expect the country to be a genuine naval power, as a capable military would be needed to secure the trade revenues derived from bioceanic access.
Of course, I’m not saying Brazil should march its troops over the Andes, tomorrow. The time for wars of territorial conquest has passed (hopefully) for South America, and it was never particularly couth in that region to begin with. Still, if you ask me for the greatest single impediment Brazil faces in a bid for Great Power status, I’d probably say it’s not having a Pacific coast.
2. I’m Still with Dina Boluarte
Dina Boluarte, Peru’s disgraced ex-president reached cartoonish levels of unpopularity prior to her removal from office in October 2025, some polls reporting a barely 2 percent approval rating. That’s within the margin of error for most polling methodologies, raising the real possibility that not a single person thought she was doing a decent job. Nobody except for me, that is.
To be clear, I never thought Boluarte was a good president, rather that, given the circumstances of her ascension, she performed about as we should expect. Ideologically homeless, beset immediately by protests that paralyzed the country, and constrained by a legislature with the power to remove her at any point, the best she could hope for was to muddle through. And muddle through she did, not without a bloody crackdown against pro-Castillo protesters and a number of corruption scandals. But my sense is that the crackdown would have happened with or without Boluarte, and in fact, you do need to give her some credit for preserving the constitutional line of succession instead of letting it slip to a military or legislative coup. In terms of corruption, clearly that wasn’t a problem unique to Boluarte herself, as her successor José Jerí speed-ran himself into an impeachable corruption scandal as well.
Accordingly, to paraphrase Richard Nixon, Peru’s choice was never between Dina Boluarte and someone better, but between Dina Boluarte and someone worse, or at least even more incompetent.
More broadly I guess you could say I have a strong bias towards letting incumbents govern. Too often in the Americas I feel the pendulum swing of public opinion is so dramatic electorates and analysts alike start clamoring to throw out the current executive and replace them at the first whiff of failure. Fiddling with electoral calendars, or modifying lines of succession is one of the most insidious slippery slopes in a democracy, even when the current leader is deeply unpopular.
3. Stop Putting “Narco-” in Front of Everything
This is probably the most petty personal grievances on the list, but ever since I started working on organized crime issues in the Americas, I’ve found the obsession with affixing “narco-” to everything a deeply annoying stylistic choice. Narcosubs, narcostates, narcomoney, narcomessages, narcotanks, even narco-funerals and narco-cattle all abound in this space.
I do understand why this happens, or I think I do at least. The above terms tend to roll off the tongue more easily in Spanish, while they serve as an easy shorthand for highlighting the link between a given activity and organized crime where such a connection might not be intuitive. I’ve used the narco- prefix often in my work and even, albeit partly in jest, tried to coin “narco-datacenters” in a previous piece for this blog (a bit sad that one didn’t catch on). Still, I find the excessive use of narco-something-or-other in discussions about organized crime to be either redundant or misleading.
More often than not, the narco- prefix doesn’t add much to our understanding of an event. The statement, “the CJNG set up blockades along three major roads” is functionally identical to “the CJNG set up narcoblockades along three major roads.” Indeed, the latter suggests that there is something about these narcoblockades that makes them significantly different from regular roadblocks.
It may be true that the fact that it is a drug cartel putting up these blockades could have some analytical significance, but we seemingly don’t use differentiating prefixes for the activities of any other non-state armed groups. ISIS doesn’t put up “terrorblockades” or leave “terrormessages” they put up blockades and leave messages like everybody else.
There are some cases where I’ll grant the “narco-” prefix plays a role. Narcosubmarines for instance are a specific class of vehicle with a distinct operational history centered around their use to transport illegal narcotics. On the other hand, much prefer the term Improvised Armored Fighting Vehicle (IAFV) to “narcotank” since the fact that these vehicles are in the service of drug cartels has little bearing on their actual design or tactical employment.
Sadly, this is one conviction I simply don’t hold onto strongly enough to go against what seems to be the popular consensus, you’ll still probably find me writing about narcomantas or narcotanques in the future. But if by some chance I’ve managed to convince you with a couple short paragraphs, I invite you to join me in my own personal fight against the “narco-.”
4. We Need to Shut up About “Plan Bukele”
I’ve been talking about El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele for the majority of time I’ve been working on Latin America issues. There are good reasons for this, El Salvador’s transformation from one of the Western Hemisphere’s most violent countries to one of the safest has been genuinely remarkable, the human rights abuses happening in the country’s prison system have been genuinely deplorable, and Bukele himself has been very good at staying in the news cycle.
One of the most common perspectives that circulates about El Salvador’s story involves the export of “Plan Bukele” as a template for the kinds of anti-crime policies voters in Latin America are demanding. Barely an election goes by these days without some candidate styling themselves, or being stylized, as “the Bukele of X” with Colombia’s Abelardo de la Espriella beening the latest to receive this treatment.
Advocates of “Plan Bukele” furthermore tend to champion the El Salvador story as an example of how crime and violence are simply choices any government can solve with the right amount of political will. Richard Hanania recently posted something to this effect, arguing that Latin America’s combination of weak state capacity and excessive rights for accused criminals undergirds persistently high homicide rates.
The thing is, by now I think we have enough data to say that either “Plan Bukele” does not translate to other country contexts, or else requires a level of political buy-in most Latin American leaders never receive. Ecuador is probably the best case in point here, where spiraling violence and insecurity gave President Daniel Noboa a mandate to wage war on crime in January 2024.
If there was ever a country to test whether the Bukele model was exportable, surely it would be Ecuador. However, more than two years into the country’s “internal armed conflict” homicide rates have remained stubbornly high, and Noboa’s dalliance with autocratization has done no favors for his approval ratings. Either Ecuador got what should be a simple formula for public safety horribly wrong, or else curbing organized crime is a tougher battle than it might at first appear.
Personally, I believe the latter explanation to be more the case than the former. I’ve long argued that El Salvador’s real success in curbing crime is the product of a combination of policies and circumstances that happened to work really well in the specific context of El Salvador. That doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons that can be drawn from the El Salvador story, but rather that endlessly regurgitating narratives about a single country’s success feels increasingly stale when that same success hasn’t been replicated anywhere else in the region.
“Plan Bukele” does a disservice to voters who want a stronger stance on crime and insecurity from their leaders by offering a neat branding strategy to disguise a lack of real substance. Analysts and commentators would accordingly do well to avoid retreading familiar ground when the next tough-on-crime Bukele wannabe surfaces.
5. It’s All the United States’ Fault, That Matters Less than You’d Think
I’ve saved probably the most controversial for last.
Did you know that the United States is responsible for the MS-13 gang getting its start among Salvadoran deportees? Or that the DEA’s aggressive counternarcotics campaign in 1970s Mexico may have helped kick-start the country’s bloody cartel wars? Surely if nothing else you’re aware of the linkage between the CIA, drug-running Nicaraguan contras, and the crack epidemic that ripped through U.S. inner cities in the 1980s.
Everywhere you look in the region, the scars of past U.S. interventions and policy failures are painfully obvious. Still, I don’t think it follows that U.S. engagement today is by necessity pernicious or counterproductive. Nevertheless, I often find myself encountering a certain type of commentary that substitutes historical grievances for an actual understanding of current events.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t think the legacy of CIA intervention in Nicaragua makes efforts to combat the brutal authoritarianism of the Ortega-Murillo regime any less noble, or has much bearing on U.S. sanctions posture for that matter. I don’t think the U.S. origins of MS-13 matter that much either except insofar as they help us understand the group’s organizational structure. While we shouldn’t ignore these pieces of the story, they tend to receive more attention than they deserve in analyses that should be focused on current trends.
In order to apply history effectively to policy questions, we should be allowing history to inform and guide our recommendations. It’s not enough to list all the reasons previous peacekeeping missions in Haiti failed (often to the detriment of the local population), you need to explain, based on the lessons of the past, what the United States and international community should do right now. History ought to instill us with a sense of humility, but it should not also shame us into inaction.
There are plenty of scholars who do this, and my frustration isn’t directed at them. Instead, it is the smug analogization of contemporary policy proposals to Cold War blunders that rankles me. It is true the United States orchestrated a coup in Guatemala in 1954, it is also true the United States probably stopped a coup in Guatemala in 2024, if your analytical framework for contemporary Guatemala-U.S. relations relies more on the former event and ignores the latter, it’s probably a bad framework.
Very fun 'Stack! Did not see #1 coming.
But Henry, surely you would never complain about the “Narcocorrido!”