View of the bulk fuel plant in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Because the kingdom needs oil prices to remain high to balance its budget, it pushed OPEC and its allies to decide on a production cut as of Nov. 1. CREDIT: Aramco

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Nov 1 2022 (IPS)

The decision to cut oil production by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies as of Nov. 1 comes in response to the need to face a shrinking market, although it also forms part of the current clash between Russia and the West.

The OPEC+ alliance (the 13 members of the organization and 10 allied exporters) decided to remove two million barrels per day from the market, in a world that consumes 100 million barrels per day. The decision was driven by the two largest producers, Saudi Arabia – OPEC’s de facto leader – and Russia.

The cutback “is due to economic reasons, because Saudi Arabia depends on relatively high oil prices to keep its budget balanced, so it is important for Riyadh that the price of the barrel does not fall below 80 dollars,” Daniela Stevens, director of energy at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, told IPS.

The benchmark prices at the end of October were 94.14 dollars per barrel for Brent North Sea crude in the London market and 88.38 dollars for West Texas Intermediate in New York."Notwithstanding Mohammed bin Salman's sympathy for Putin, the cut was due to his concern about the balance of the world oil market, and not to support Russia." -- Elie Habalián

“At the time of the cutback decision (Oct. 5) oil prices had fallen 40 percent since March, and the OPEC+ countries feared that the projected slowdown in the global economy – and with it demand for oil – would drastically reduce their revenues,” Stevens said.

With the cut, “OPEC+ hopes to keep Brent prices above 90 dollars per barrel,” which remains to be seen “since due to the lack of investment the real cuts will be between 0.6 and 1.1 million barrels per day and not the more striking two million,” added Stevens from her institution’s headquarters in Washington.

A month ago, the alliance set a joint production ceiling of 43.85 million barrels per day, not including Venezuela, Iran and Libya (OPEC partners exempted due to their respective crises), which would allow them to deliver 48.23 million barrels per day to the market.

But market operators estimate that they are currently producing between 3.5 and five million barrels per day below the maximum level considered.

The alliance is made up of the 13 OPEC partners: Algeria, Angola, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, plus Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, Sudan and South Sudan.

The giants of the alliance are Saudi Arabia and Russia, which produce 11 million barrels per day each, followed at a distance by Iraq (4.65 million), United Arab Emirates (3.18), Kuwait (2.80) and Iran (2.56 million).

In July, U.S. President Joe Biden met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom he discussed human rights and abundant oil supplies for the global market. A few months later Riyadh led the decision for an oil cut that has been seen as a betrayal by Washington. CREDIT: Bandar Algaloud/SRP

United States takes the hit

U.S. President Joe Biden was “disappointed by the shortsighted decision by OPEC+ to cut production quotas while the global economy is dealing with the continued negative impact of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” a White House statement said.

The price of gasoline in the United States has soared from 2.40 dollars a gallon in early 2021 to the current average of 3.83 dollars – after peaking at five dollars in June – a heavy burden for Biden and his Democratic Party in the face of the Nov. 8 mid-term elections for Congress.

Biden visited Saudi Arabia in July, while the press reminded the public that during his 2020 election campaign he talked about making the Arab country “a pariah” because of its leaders’ responsibility for the October 2018 murder in Istanbul of prominent opposition journalist in exile Jamal Khashoggi.

The U.S. president said he made clear to the powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman his conviction that he was responsible for the crime. But the thrust of his visit was to urge the kingdom to keep the taps wide open to contain crude oil and gasoline prices.

Hence the U.S. disappointment with the production cut promoted by Riyadh – double the million barrels per day predicted by market analysts – which, by propping up prices, favors Russia’s revenues, which has had to place in Asia, at a discount, the oil that Europe is no longer buying from it.

Biden then announced the release of 15 million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic reserve – which totaled more than 600 million barrels in 2021 and just 405 million this October – completing the release of 180 million barrels authorized by Biden in March, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that was initially supposed to occur over six months.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and President Vladimir Putin chat cordially during a visit by the Russian leader to Riyadh in October 2019. The two major oil exporters lead the 23-state alliance that upholds production cuts to prop up prices. CREDIT: SPA

Shift in Washington-Riyadh relations

Karen Young, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University in New York, wrote that “oil politics are entering a new phase as the U.S.-Saudi relationship descends.”

“Both countries are now directly involved in each other’s domestic politics, which has not been the case in most of the 80-year bilateral relationship,” she wrote.

“….(M)arkets had anticipated a cut of about half that much. Whether the decision to announce a larger cut was hasty or politically motivated by Saudi political leadership (rather than technical advice) is not clear,” she added.

Saudi leaders could apparently see Biden as pandering to Iran, its archenemy in the Gulf area, with positions adverse to Riyadh’s in the conflict in neighboring Yemen, and would resent the accusation against the crown prince for the murder of Khashoggi.

Young argued that “the accusation that Saudi Arabia has weaponized oil to aid Russian President Vladimir Putin is extreme,” and said “The Saudi leadership may assume that keeping Putin in the OPEC+ tent is more valuable than trying to influence oil markets without him.”

Gasoline prices in the United States, while down from their June level of five dollars per gallon, are still at a high level for many consumers ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez/IPS

More market, less war

OPEC’s secretary general since August, Haitham Al Ghais of Kuwait, said on Oct. 7 that “Russia’s membership in OPEC+ is vital for the success of the agreement…Russia is a big, main and highly influential player in the world energy map.”

Writing for the specialized financial magazine Barron’s, Young stated that “What is certainly true is that energy markets are now highly politicized.”

“The United States is now an advocate of market manipulation, asking for favors from the world’s essential swing producer, advocating price caps on Russian crude exports and embargoes in Europe,” Young wrote.

For its part, the Saudi Foreign Ministry rejected as “not based on facts” the criticism of the OPEC+ decision, and said that Washington’s request to delay the cut by one month (until after the November elections, as the Biden administration supposedly requested) “would have had negative economic consequences.”

In its most recent monthly market analysis, OPEC noted that “The world economy has entered into a time of heightened uncertainty and rising challenges, amid ongoing high inflation levels, monetary tightening by major central banks, high sovereign debt levels in many regions as well as ongoing supply issues.”

It also mentioned geopolitical risks and the resurgence of China’s COVID-19 containment measures.

The two million barrel cut was decided “In light of the uncertainty that surrounds the global economic and oil market outlooks, and the need to enhance the long-term guidance for the oil market,” said the OPEC+ alliance’s statement following its Oct. 5 meeting.

Oil analyst Elie Habalian, who was Venezuela’s governor to OPEC, also opined that “notwithstanding Mohammed bin Salman’s sympathy for Putin, the cut was due to his concern about the balance of the world oil market, and not to support Russia.”

Latin America, pros and cons

Stevens said the oil outlook that opens up this November will mean, for importers in the region, that their fuels will be more expensive but probably not by a significant amount, and net importers in Central America and the Caribbean will be the hardest hit.

Exporters will benefit from higher prices. Brazil and Mexico have already increased their exports of fuel oil, and Argentina and Colombia have hiked their exports of crude oil. And higher prices would particularly benefit Brazil and Guyana, which are boosting their production capacity.

Argentina could have benefited if it had begun to invest in production years ago, but its financial instability left it with little capacity to take advantage of this moment. And Venezuela not only faces sanctions, but upgrading its worn-out oil infrastructure would require investments and time that it does not have.

Venezuelan migrants stranded in Guatemala after their journey to Mexico was cut short by new restrictions issued by the United States. Most of them, unable to afford to return to their home country, await possible humanitarian return flights. CREDIT: IMG

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Oct 28 2022 (IPS)

Thousands of Venezuelans who have crossed the treacherous Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama, or who have made the perilous journey through Central America and Mexico to reach the United States, have found themselves stranded in countries that do not want them, unable to continue their journey or to afford to return to their country.

Unexpectedly, on Oct. 12, the U.S. government announced that it would no longer accept undocumented Venezuelans who crossed its southern border, would deport them to Mexico and, in exchange, would offer up to 24,000 annual quotas, for two years, for Venezuelan immigrants to enter the country by air and under a new set of requirements.

“We were already in the United States when President Joe Biden gave the order, but they put us in a van and sent us back to Mexico. It’s not fair, on the 12th we had already crossed into the country,” a young man who identified himself as Antonio, among the first to be sent back to the border city of Tijuana, told reporters in tears.

He was one of approximately 150,000 Venezuelans who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border this year to join the 545,000 already in the U.S. by the end of 2021, according to U.S. authorities.

Raul was in a group that took a week to cross the jungle and rivers in the Darien Gap, bushwhacking in the rain and through the mud, suffering from hunger, thirst, and the threat of vermin and assailants. When he arrived at the indigenous village of Lajas Blancas in eastern Panama, he heard about the new U.S. regulation that rendered his dangerous journey useless.

There he told Venezuelan opposition politician Tomás Guanipa, who visited the village in October, that “the journey is too hard, I saw people die, someone I could not save because a river swept him away, and it was not worth it. Now what I have to do is return, alive, to my country.”

In Panama, as in Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and of course Mexico, there are now thousands of Venezuelans stranded, some still trying to reach and cross the U.S. border, others trying to get the funds they need to return home.

They fill the shelters that are already overburdened and with few resources to care for them. Sometimes they sleep on the streets, or are seen walking and begging for food or a little money, abruptly cut off from the dream of going to live and work legally in the United States.

That aim was fueled by the fact that the United States made the possibility of granting asylum to Venezuelans more flexible, as part of its opposition to the government of President Nicolás Maduro, which U.S. authorities consider illegitimate.

In addition, it established a protection status that temporarily allowed Venezuelans who reached the U.S. to stay and work.

Venezuela has been in the grip of an economic and political crisis over the last decade which, together with the impoverishment of the population, has produced the largest exodus in the history of the hemisphere: according to United Nations agencies, 7.1 million people have left the country – a quarter of the population.

Venezuelan migrants walk in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez between the Rio Grande and the wall that separates them from the United States, a border that they will no longer be able to cross on foot but only by air and with express permission from Washington. CREDIT: Rey R. Jáuregui/Pie de Página

Caught up in the elections

The flood of Venezuelan immigrants pouring across the southern border coincided with the tough campaign for the mid-term elections for the U.S. Congress in November, which could result in the control of both chambers by the Republican Party, strongly opposed to Democratic President Biden.

Republican governors and candidates from the south, strongly opposed to the government’s immigration policy and flexibility towards Venezuelans, decided to send busloads and even a plane full of Venezuelan asylum seekers to northern localities governed by Democratic authorities.

Thus, through misleading promises, hundreds of Venezuelans were bussed or flown and abandoned out in the open in New York, Washington, D.C. or Martha’s Vineyard, an island where millionaires spend their summers in the northeastern state of Massachusetts.

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International denounced the use of migrants as political spoils or as a weapon in the election campaign.

Against this backdrop, the Biden administration changed its policy towards Venezuelans, closing the country’s doors to them at the southern border, reactivating Title 42, a pandemic public health order that allows for the immediate expulsion of people for health reasons, and reached an agreement with Mexico to return migrants to that country.

The 24,000 annual quotas provided as a consolation, for migrants who have sponsors responsible for their support in the United States, plus requirements such as not attempting illegal border crossings or not having refugee status in another country, is almost equivalent to the monthly volume of Venezuelans who tried to enter the U.S. this year.

A family of migrants reaches the end of their journey through the dangerous Darien jungle, between Colombia and Panama, on their long journey to reach the border between Mexico and the United States. But a new U.S. immigration measure prohibits access to the U.S. for Venezuelans. CREDIT: Nicola Rosso/UNHCR

What happens now?

In the immediate future, those who were on their way will be left in limbo and will now have to return to their country, where many sold everything – from their clothes to their homes – to pay for their perilous journey.

Hundreds of Venezuelans have begun to arrive in Caracas on flights that they themselves have paid for from Panama, while in Mexico and other countries they await the possibility of free air travel, of a humanitarian nature, because thousands of migrants have been left destitute.

There are entire families who were already living as immigrants in other countries, such as Chile, Ecuador or Peru – where there are one million Venezuelans in Lima for example – but decided to leave due to a hostile environment or the difficulties in keeping jobs or finding decent housing, in a generalized climate of inflation in the region.

This is the case told to journalists by Héctor, who with his wife, mother-in-law and three children invested almost 10,000 dollars in tickets from Chile to the Colombian island of San Andrés, in the Caribbean, from there by boat to Nicaragua, and by land until they were taken by surprise by the U.S. government’s announcement, when they reached Guatemala.

Now, in contact with relatives in the United States, he is considering the possibility of returning to the country he left three years ago for Chile, or trying to continue on, while waiting for another option to enter the U.S.

The United States has reported that crossings or attempts to cross its border by undocumented migrants have decreased significantly since Oct. 12.

Among the justifications for its action at the time, Washington said it sought to combat human trafficking and other crimes associated with irregular migration, and to discourage dangerous border crossings in the Darien Gap.

According to Panamanian government data, between January and Oct. 15 of this year, 184,433 undocumented migrants reached Panama from the Darien jungle, 133,597 of whom were Venezuelans.

After his return to the country on Oct. 25, Guanipa the politician told IPS that at least 70 percent of the migrants who crossed the Darien Gap in the last 12 months were Venezuelans, along with other Latin Americans and people from the Caribbean or African nations.

And, after collecting personal accounts of the death-defying crossing, he urged his fellow Venezuelans to “for no reason risk their lives” on this inhospitable stretch that is the gateway from South America to Central America.

At every Latin American border, migration rules are becoming more restrictive and Venezuelans wait patiently to be allowed access, often to try to reach the farthest destinations in the hemisphere, such as Chile or the United States. CREDIT: Gema Cortés/IOM

The Venezuelan government blames the massive exodus and the dangers faced in the Darien Gap on its political and media confrontation with the United States, while claiming that the numbers of reported migrants are wildly inflated and that, on the contrary, more than 360,000 Venezuelans have returned to the country since 2018.

Heads of United Nations agencies and international humanitarian organizations believe that given the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, the flow of migrants will continue, and they therefore call on host countries to establish rules and mechanisms to facilitate the integration of the migrants into their communities.

While the United States has slammed the door shut on Venezuelan migrants, in countries such as Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and some Central American nations, new rules are also being prepared to modify the policy of extending a helping hand to Venezuelans.

For example, Ecuador overhauled the Human Mobility Law to increase the grounds for deportation, such as “representing a threat to security”, and Colombia – which has received the largest number of Venezuelans – eliminated the office for the attention and socioeconomic integration of the migrant population.

Panama will require visas for those deported from Central America or Mexico, Peru is working to change regulations for the migrant population, and the government of Chile, which in the past has expelled hundreds of migrants on flights, announced that it will take measures to prevent unwanted immigration.

Of the 7.1 million Venezuelans registered as of September as migrants by U.N. agencies, the vast majority of them having left the country since 2013, almost six million were in neighboring Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Entire families have not only sought to reach the United States or Europe, but have traveled thousands of kilometers, in journeys they could never have dreamed of, with stretches by bus but often on foot, through clandestine jungle passes or cold mountains, to reach Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina or Chile.

Others tried their luck in hostile neighboring Caribbean islands and dozens lost their lives when the overcrowded boats in which they were trying to reach safe shores were shipwrecked.

Faced with the explosive phenomenon, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) established a platform for programs to help migrants in the region and host communities, which is coordinated by a former Guatemalan vice-president, Eduardo Stein.

Of their budget for 2022, based on pledges from donor countries and institutions, for 1.7 billion dollars, they have only received 300 million dollars, in another sign that Venezuelan migrants have ceased to play a leading role on the international stage.

María Santos Hernández, 66, poses outside her home in the village of Huisisilapa, municipality of San Pablo Tacachico, in central El Salvador, on Aug. 17, a day before leaving for the United States, in her case with a visa and by plane, to reunite with three sons who live in the town of Stephenson, in the state of Virginia. A fourth son is on his way through Mexico to try to enter the country as an undocumented immigrant and join his family. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN PABLO TACACHICO, El Salvador , Aug 23 2021 (IPS)

The Joe Biden administration’s call for undocumented Central American migrants not to go to the United States, as requested by Vice President Kamala Harris during a June visit to Guatemala, appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

In towns in countries such as El Salvador, people continue to set out every day on their way to the U.S. in search of a better future. But there are no hard numbers to indicate whether the flow is larger or smaller than in previous years.

It remains to be seen whether the number of undocumented Salvadoran migrants has significantly decreased as a result of the public policies implemented since June 2019 by the government of Nayib Bukele, as his administration claims, said experts interviewed by IPS.

What is clear is that people continue to undertake the journey that could offer them an opportunity for a better future, given the poverty and social exclusion they face in this country of 6.7 million inhabitants, as well as in the rest of Central America, especially Guatemala and Honduras.

Oscar left on Aug. 14 for Stephenson, a small town in Virginia, a state on the east coast of the United States, from his native Huisisilapa, a village in San Pablo Tacachico municipality in the central Salvadoran department of La Libertad.

“I don’t know where in Mexico I am right now, I’m going with the guide,” Oscar told IPS in a WhatsApp conversation on Tuesday, Aug. 17, asking to be identified only by his first name.

A photo of Oscar and his son Andrés, when they lived together in Huisisilapa, a village in central El Salvador. Five years ago the boy left with his mother for the small town of Stephenson, Virginia, and now Oscar is making his way across Mexico as an undocumented migrant, with the aim of living in the U.S. with his son, who is now eight years old. CREDIT: Courtesy of the family

The 27-year-old peasant farmer who used to mainly grow corn undertook the journey with the aim of being reunited with his son Andres, who is now eight and has been living in that town since his undocumented mother took him with her to the United States five years ago.

“It’s dangerous, but my desire to be with him outweighs my fears of the trip,” Oscar added.

Irregular migration of Salvadorans to the United States skyrocketed in the 1980s with the outbreak of the civil war, which left some 70,000 people dead between 1980 and 1992.

An estimated three million Salvadorans live in the U.S., many of them undocumented, contributing enormously to the economy of this Central American nation, sending home some six billion dollars in remittances.

The decades that followed the 1992 peace agreement saw a rise in crime, especially gang activity, which spurred another surge in migration to the United States.

El Salvador became one of the most violent countries in the world, with rates sometimes exceeding 100 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

A picture of the main street in the village of Huisisilapa, San Pablo Tacachico municipality in the central El Salvador department of La Paz. Many undocumented migrants set out from farming towns like this one, where there are few possibilities of finding work, heading to the United States in search of the “American dream”. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Has “Bukelismo” reduced undocumented migration?

Bukele became president in June 2019 at the age of 39, after a landslide victory in the February elections when he wrested power from the former Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas, who were in power since 2009.

Just two years into his term, Bukele, described as a millennial populist who governs through tweets, has achieved a significant decrease in crime rates.

Since he took office, the homicide rate has plunged from 50 per 100,000 population to 19 per 100,000 – a drop that the president attributes to his Territorial Control Plan to crack down on crime.

According to the government, the programme has also reduced the numbers of Salvadorans heading to the United States.

“Don’t ask me if the territorial control plan is really a success, or if the government’s plan to generate jobs has worked, because most likely neither has been that good,” analyst Oscar Chacón, of Alianza América, told IPS in a telephone interview from Chicago, Illinois.

He added, however: “But a good percentage of people want to believe that there is hope that things are going to get better in El Salvador; that is what I call the hope factor.”

Bukele achieved his overwhelming victory by arguing that the parties that preceded him, the leftist FMLN and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which governed from 1989 to 2009, plunged the country into crisis during three decades of corruption and failed policies.

Lito Miranda, a relative of María Santos, husks ears of tender corn in the Salvadoran village of Huisisilapa to prepare the tamales that the mother of three young Salvadorans living in the United States insists on bringing them to enjoy at their family reunion. Some three million Salvadorans live in the United States, many of them undocumented. The flow of migrants from the country continues, despite the administration of Joe Biden’s plea urging them not to come. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

But more and more information is coming out that some of his officials may be involved in embezzlement, and the president’s style of governing, always at loggerheads with the opposition and social movements, has not created a climate of stability.

In any case, the hope factor should make Salvadoran families less likely to leave the country than families from Guatemala and Honduras, Chacón said.

In April, El Salvador’s ambassador in Washington, Milena Mayorga, said in a tweet that, thanks to the government’s policies, there has been an “unprecedented” reduction in migratory flows to the United States, since only 5.11 percent of the total number of migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border are Salvadorans.

However, the diplomat did not offer more data, nor did she mention the source of her information.

In March, Mayorga reported in another tweet that, in the case of unaccompanied minors, the number of Salvadorans reaching the southern border was lower than the numbers of Guatemalans, Hondurans and Mexicans so far in fiscal year 2021 (which began in October 2020).

But other data indicates that the influx may actually be growing.

Local media reports, citing U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures, have indicated that 12,643 Salvadorans were apprehended at the southern border in July. That represented a 9.2 percent increase over the 11,575 apprehensions reported in June.

Pieces of chicken that formed part of the filling of the tamales cooked in the home of María Santos Hernández, on Aug. 17, in the village of Huisisilapa in the central Salvadoran municipality of San Pablo Tacachico. She flew out the next day to join her sons in the small town of Stephenson, Virginia, carrying with her 60 tamales: 30 filled with chicken and 30 stuffed with corn, to remind them of the land they left behind in search of a better future in the United States. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“It seems so simplistic to me to say that the government is doing things right and that’s why fewer people are supposedly leaving,” migration expert Karla Castillo told IPS.

Irregular migration is a complex phenomenon with many different facet, she said, and has to do with structural causes that cannot be solved in one or two years.

Chacón said that overall, U.S. authorities have reported 1.24 million people apprehended at the southern border from October to date, but he stressed that the figure was not entirely reliable.

That is because the number counts “events” rather than people, since the same person may be arrested and deported several times.

“Unfortunately, I couldn’t say that there is an accurate measurement method, because we only have partial measurement units,” Chacón said, adding that “we have no way of counting the people who make it in undetected. It’s as simple as that, we just don’t know.”

Some of the 60 tamales made in the home of María Santos Hernández, which she successfully brought with her to the United States, where she traveled by plane with a visa on Aug. 18 to visit three of her sons who live in a small town in the eastern state of Virginia. A fourth son, Oscar, is currently making his way up through Mexico as an undocumented migrant, to try to join his mother and brothers. CREDIT: Courtesy of the family

Taking tamales to Virginia

Oscar is hopeful that he will make it. While he was crossing Mexico, his mother, Maria Santos Hernández, was packing her bags at her home in Huisisilapa to also travel to Stephenson, Virginia, on Wednesday, Aug. 18.

But she travelled by plane with a temporary visa, planning to return home after spending some time there. Her son Walter, who emigrated 13 years ago and “already has papers,” arranged her visa a few years ago.

Maria Santos also has two other sons living in Stephenson, but without documents: Moises and Jonathan.

“We are praying that Oscar will make it through so we can all be reunited there,” the 66-year-old told IPS, adding, “I have a mixture of feelings: the joy of seeing my three sons who live there, and concern for Oscar, who is making his way through Mexico right now.”

Maria, her husband Felipe, and their children lived in Huisisilapa after they were relocated to their land there at the end of the war. And they were able to build their home thanks to the remittances sent back by their sons.

In her suitcase she was carrying 60 tamales that she made on Tuesday the 17th, to celebrate the family reunion in Stephenson with Walter, Moises and Jonathan, and later with Oscar, who is still en route.

“They love tamales, that’s why I’m bringing them,” María told IPS, who was with her on her last day at her home, as she stirred with a large wooden paddle the liquid that bubbled inside a huge pot on the stove.

Tamales are a kind of corn cake with savory or sweet fillings, which are wrapped in banana leaves or corn husks. María was making two different kinds of fillings: chicken and fresh corn.

And as IPS learned, the tamales made it through customs and her family in the United States is enjoying them – though they have saved some for Oscar, who everyone is waiting for.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden wrapped up his finger-wagging tour of Asia on Friday, with a busy week of lecturing the Chinese, trying to get the South Koreans and Japanese to play nice with one another, and damning North Korea with faint praise for releasing an 85-year-old American after more than a month of detention.

Aside from a couple of verbal gaffes, his performance elicited generally passing marks at home and abroad. But Biden’s effort did little to reverse the fundamental reality that the U.S. role in the region has dwindled over the last decade, despite recent efforts to reverse the trend.

The United States has long billed its presence in Asia as one of an “honest broker”. More recently, the Obama administration has tried to underscore U.S. interests in the region through its “Pacific pivot”, away from the roiling conflicts of the Middle East and toward the economic opportunities of the East."“The ‘pivot’ seems to reflect a desire to maintain things as they have been. I don’t see anything new in it.”
-- Patrick Smith

U.S. policy, however, has been slow to pivot. Continued turmoil in Syria, nuclear negotiations with Iran, and a raft of domestic challenges have absorbed Washington’s attention. Biden’s trip was an effort to bolster U.S. commitment to Asia after President Obama cancelled his trip to the region in October because of the U.S. government shutdown. The vice president, definitely not an Asia hand, was an unusual choice for emissary.

“Politicians always make a virtue of sheer circumstance,” observed Patrick Smith, a longtime correspondent in Asia and the author most recently of “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century”. “Biden, we were told, was the right technology for this trip.”

“But Biden has no experience in Asia. He was the wrong guy in the wrong place,” Smith continued. “It underscored…that we just can’t keep up with events any more. I’ve seen this problem with pace coming for years, and now it’s here: China, Iran, Syria. We’re running to catch up.”

Biden’s mission was not just handicapped by his lack of deep regional knowledge. Instead of a bold effort to stay ahead of the curve, the Biden trip became an exercise in damage control when China announced a new Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) shortly before he set out.

The newly expanded zone includes a set of islands that Beijing and Tokyo contest – Diaoyu in Chinese, Senkaku in Japanese – and which Tokyo currently controls. It also covers a submerged rock that South Korea uses as a tiny maritime research station.

The United States responded to China’s unilateral announcement by sending two unarmed B-52 fighter jets to fly through the zone without advance notification. Japan instructed its commercial airlines to ignore the demand to notify Chinese authorities of their flight paths through the zone. South Korea most recently has responded with its own slightly expanded ADIZ to encompass the submerged rock.

In Beijing, Biden pushed the Chinese to back off from applying its new rules to disputed parts of the zone, and the Chinese reiterated their own sovereign right to do what other countries have already done.

So the vice president was left to repeat his own diplomatic boilerplate about the importance of cooperation over competition, saying in an interview with a South Korean newspaper, “Economically, diplomatically, militarily, we have been, we are, and we will remain a resident Pacific power.”

The past history of involvement and present alliance commitments certainly bind the United States to the region. Even if  current tensions have more to do with simmering tensions between Tokyo and Beijing, Washington necessarily finds itself in the middle, leaning geopolitically toward Japan and geoeconomically toward China.

“My sense is that Washington will have to play a significant role,” argued Sheila Smith, a senior fellow for Japanese studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Two of the players, Japan and South Korea, are our allies. Crisis management will involve us – even if we are unprepared.”

The pivot to Asia was touted as a way for the United States to check rising Chinese influence, recommit to allies in the region, and tap into Asian economic success through trade and investment deals.

But Patrick Smith considered the pivot a “figment.” He explained that “if the thought now is to play the role in the region that we already played, that’s a reiteration and no more.” Rather than a set of new initiatives, the new policy is an effort to maintain the status quo. “The ‘pivot’ seems to reflect a desire to maintain things as they have been. I don’t see anything new in it,” he concluded.

Figment or fact, the “pivot” has not been an easy manoeuvre for the United States to execute. The Obama administration has been rearranging military forces in the region, sending Marines to a new base in Australia, expanding facilities in Guam, and negotiating new access agreements with the Philippines and Vietnam.

But local resistance has prevented the construction of a new military based to replace the facility in Futenma, Okinawa, and budget constraints at home make a significant increase in Pacific military presence unlikely.

Meanwhile, Japan has continued to develop its own more assertive foreign and military policy, most recently proposing to overturn its decades-old ban on weapons exports. Tokyo and Seoul have descended into a deep freeze in relations, with friction over their own disputed islands as well as Japan’s contrition – or lack of it — regarding its World War II actions in the peninsula. Further south, China and a number of countries spar over the South China Sea and the resources beneath the waves.

And Washington’s prospects for concluding a trade deal, the Trans Pacific Partnership, are not especially bright either. Opposition is fierce in some participating countries, such as Japan, and it will be very difficult for negotiators to meet the end-of-year deadline for the treaty’s text. Nor is the enthusiasm level in Congress particularly high.

Now that Biden is back in Washington, Asia is once again out of the U.S. headlines. Obama is heading to South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s funeral, the war in Syria grinds on, congressional opposition to the agreement with Iran continues to simmer, and the demonstrations in Ukraine are expanding. The territorial conflicts in East Asia haven’t disappeared. But the United States must attend to priorities other than its much-vaunted pivot.