The Washington Diplomat - October 2019 by The Washington Diplomat

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VOLUME 26, NUMBER 10

OCTOBER 2019

EUROPE

No Matter Brexit’s Outcome, U.K. Will Still Be Tied to EU

For all the Brexit drama, even if the Brits crash out of the European Union on Halloween, the morning of Nov. 1 will still see Europe as the U.K.’s largest trading partner, meaning it will still have to comply with EU rules and regulations, although post-Brexit, the U.K. will have no say as to how those rules are made. PAGE 11

ASIA

Despite Criticism, China Celebrates 70 Years of Gains

Seventy years ago, on Oct. 1, 1949, communist revolutionary Mao Zedong declared the birth of what would become the world’s most populous communist nation and its longest-lasting. But much has changed in China over those seven decades of dramatic transformation. PAGE 14

Culture

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

SURPRISE

STORM

SPECIAL REPORT

Women Expose Iran’s Complexity

Women photographers capture a side of Iran that doesn’t make the front pages. PAGE 32

Iran Unites Israel, Gulf Shared enmity of Iran has created an unlikely coalition between Israel and the Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but this proxy war has come at the expense of the Palestinians, whose cause is no longer seen as a priority among many Arab governments. PAGE 4

Unlike the horrific damage wrought on the Bahamas by Hurricane Dorian, it wasn’t 185 mile-an-hour winds that recently pummeled the Dominican Republic. It was a barrage of grim headlines following a spate of American deaths that tarnished the country’s all-important tourism industry and caught many Dominicans off guard, including the country’s ambassador to the U.S., José Tomás Pérez. PAGE 17

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Contents

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

NEWS BUDDING ISRAELI-GULF TIES The Palestinian cause falls victim to the IsraeliGulf alliance against Iran.

11 BREXIT HANDCUFFS

Post-Brexit Britain is unlikely to “take back” much control from the EU.

14 CHINA’S 70TH BIRTHDAY

As a wary West looks on, China celebrates 70 years of unrivaled progress.

USMCA LATEST

Trump works with Democrats to try to get his updated NAFTA finally passed.

COVER PROFILE: DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

It was trouble in paradise for the Dominican Republic after a spate of American deaths.

GLOBAL VANTAGE POINT

Op-ed: Will Rex Tillerson go down as one of the worst secretaries of state in history?

MEDICAL

17 33

DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES

Cases of vaping-linked lung illnesses rise dramatically across America.

A Peruvian ambassador and his ambassador wife pull double diplomatic duty.

EDUCATION

IMMIGRANT BRIDGE

D.C.’s Carlos Rosario School teams up with El Salvador as part of a Sister City agreement.

LUXURY LIVING 27

GEORGETOWN SWINGS

No longer in its historic heyday, Georgetown fights to keep up with the times while preserving its past.

CULTURE 32

IRAN’S WOMEN

Six women photographers expose a more nuanced picture of their homeland.

CORCORAN LIVES ON

“Moves Like Walter” is the first in-depth exploration of the defunct museum’s treasure trove of art.

HENRY COMES OF AGE

“1 Henry IV” depicts the journey of Prince Hal, from bar to battlefield to power.

ALL JOKES ASIDE

A century of Mexican cartoons illustrates how humor can advance political awareness.

REGULARS 38 40 42 46

CINEMA LISTING EVENTS LISTING DIPLOMATIC SPOTLIGHT CLASSIFIEDS OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 3

WD | Middle East

New Priorities Palestinian Cause Falls Victim to Israeli-Gulf Alliance Against Iran BY PAIGE AARHUS AND ANNA GAWEL

he Peace to Prosperity workshop, hosted in Manama, Bahrain, in June, was not exactly a smashing

success. Described by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, as “the opportunity of the century,” the workshop was meant to mark an important step toward reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Kushner’s workshop called for $50 billion in investment for Palestinians in the occupied territories and neighboring countries, although the lack of an accompanying political plan, as well as any formal participation from the Israeli or Palestinian governments, was widely mocked by observers. In a viral Twitter thread, Jack Moore, a journalist at the UAE-based newspaper The National, wrote that he “was left speechless by the Davos-esque Conflab on Palestinian Prosperousness, or ‘economic workshop,’ hosted by Jared Kushner & co.” Moore said the attendees included “an odd mix of people, many with no link to the conflict: billionaires, real estate developers, a 15-yo who had 40k Instagram followers & a banker who was confused as to why he was even there.” He added: “Both sides weren’t here, zero pledges, no big decisions, rare mentions of the realities.” On that note, Kushner’s opening speech “promised no politics” — even though the politics of the Israeli occupation, which places tight restrictions on the West Bank and Gaza, makes economic investment in the Palestinian territories virtually unworkable. Moore summed up the workshop by writing that “this totally surreal event left me feeling like I was working in a parallel universe.” Many shared his opinion. “This event was astonishing — the way Kushner presented his plan as revolutionary, something so special and innovative. It was incredible, given it wasn’t attached to any political solution or plan,” Elisabeth Marteu, a Bahrain-based associate fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told The Washington Diplomat, “The ignorance of these people in conflict resolution is astounding. An economic plan without any political plan is nothing. It’s as if the U.S. wants to impose a solution without any agreement on the ground between the two parties. It’s a top-down approach, a pure top-down approach which has no chance to succeed.”

SHIFTING ALLIANCES

While much of the international com-

4 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

PHOTO: BY ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES - BIL’IN , JAN 2011 *’UNDERCOVER ISRAELI COMBATANTS THREW STONES AT IDF SOLDIERS IN WEST BANK’, CC BY 2.0

Palestinians throw rocks and demonstrate against Israeli land confiscation in the West Bank village of Bil’in in 2011.

“

Clearly this relationship is built around the Iran file and not the Palestinians. [Gulf Cooperation Council] governments clearly see the benefits of having a close relationship with Israel in order to confront the Iranian challenge. GERALD FEIERSTEIN, former U.S. ambassador to Yemen

munity agreed that the workshop was a disappointment, it did highlight an increasingly visible rapprochement between Israel and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), most importantly Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. On the final day of the workshop, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa told Israel’s Channel 13 News that “Israel is a country in the Middle East. Israel is part of the heritage of this region, historically. The Jewish people have a place amongst us.” The comments were not entirely unprecedented: In April 2018, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, “I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land.” The comments at the Peace to Prosperity workshop were notable nonetheless. “It’s new to hear a foreign minister say

the Jewish people and Jewish heritage is at the heart of the Middle East history. But it’s not a surprise coming from Bahrain. It has a special spot in the GCC given the presence of the Jewish community here,” said Marteu. Indeed, Bahrain’s small Jewish community was on prominent display during the economic workshop, when the Bahrain Synagogue on Sasa’ah Avenue hosted a press event. The Times of Israel later ran a feature citing the “VIP treatment” Israeli reporters received while in Bahrain as a sign that times have changed.

THE IRAN DOSSIER

While such public overtures made headlines, the formal normalization of ties between Israel and the GCC is a long way off given the Arab public’s hostility toward the so-called “Zionist enemy” and its longstanding support for the Palestinians.

”

But behind the scenes, Israel and GCC countries have been quietly cooperating for years. This cooperation has recently ramped up because of a convergence of factors, including growing economic links between Israel and GCC countries (two-way trade is estimated to be $1 billion a year); waning international interest in the moribund Israel-Palestinian peace process, which is no longer a primary driver of regional politics; the scramble for power unleashed by the Arab Spring; the game-changing presidency of Donald Trump; and, perhaps most importantly, the rise of a shared enemy: Iran. In fact, Iran’s growing influence in the region has created an unlikely coalition of leaders — Trump; Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman; Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed; and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — all of whom have SEE G UL F • PAGE 6

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OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 5

At left, President Trump huddles with Israeli Prime Minister during a trip to Jerusalem in May 2017. Below, a Jewish man looks out over the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem that is sacred to Palestinians. Many Palestinians distrust Trump because of his close relationship with Netanyahu and his controversial policies that include moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, cutting aid to the Palestinians and tacitly condoning Israeli annexation of land Palestinians hope to claim for a future state.

PHOTO: NEUFAL54 / PIXABAY

CREDIT: OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY SHEALAH CRAIGHEAD

Gulf CONTINUED • PAGE 4

united around one goal: keeping the region’s largest Shiite power in check. This proxy war against Iran has come at the expense of the Palestinians, whose cause is no longer seen as a priority among many Arab governments. In fact, Netanyahu’s pre-election pledge to annex roughly a third of the occupied West Bank barely elicited any response from Arab states other than perfunctory condemnations. “Clearly this relationship is built around the Iran file and not the Palestinians. GCC governments clearly see the benefits of having a close relationship with Israel in order to confront the Iranian challenge,” retired U.S. Ambassador Gerald Feierstein told The Washington Diplomat. Feierstein served as the U.S. envoy to Yemen from 2010 to 2013, and worked at embassies in Pakistan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Israel and Lebanon over the course of his 41-year career with the U.S. Foreign Service. He was quick to place recent events within a historical context. “I wouldn’t describe it [pro-Israel statements from Gulf leaders] as nothing, and I wouldn’t describe it as a change of sorts either. Look at what the Saudi position has been since 2001, when Mohammed bin Salman’s uncle, King Abdullah, introduced the Arab Peace Initiative, which will normalize relations with Israel when it achieves a peace agreement with Palestinians. That’s been the Saudi position ever since,” he said. The Arab Peace Initiative is a 10-sentence proposal that called for the normalization of relations between the Arab re-

CREDIT: OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY SHEALAH CRAIGHEAD

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor — seen above with his wife Ivanka and stepmother Melania during their arrival in Riyadh on May 20, 2017 — has developed a close relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.

PHOTO: BY U.S. EMBASSY JERUSALEM - EMBASSY DEDICATION CEREMONY, CC BY 2.0

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, left, is joined by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the dedication ceremony of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in May 2018. Trump infuriated Palestinians when he decided to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in effect acknowledging the city as the Israeli capital despite longstanding Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem.

gion and Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, as well as a fair settlement plan for Palestinian refugees. Although the Israeli government rejected the initiative, it was re-endorsed at the 2007 and 2017 Arab League summits, with both Netanyahu and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert voicing tentative support for some of its elements. Feierstein, who now works as senior vice president at the D.C.-based Middle East Institute, said that the Saudis, Emiratis and Bahrainis have become more open to forging closer ties with Israel. A major factor driving this evolution was former President Obama’s own attempts to forge closer ties with Tehran through the landmark Iran nuclear deal, which was fiercely opposed by Israel and the GCC countries. While Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal, Israel and Saudi Arabia remain wary of any dialogue between the un-

6 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

predictable U.S. president and Iranian officials. In fact, the mere prospect of Trump meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the G7 summit in August sent alarm bells through Israel and Saudi Arabia. Feierstein noted “how the governments reacted … when it looked for a brief moment like there might be some kind of change in the U.S. position on Iran. Netanyahu was desperately trying to call Trump to make sure everything was OK. Mohammed bin Salman and his deputy defense minister went to talk to [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo and [Defense Secretary Mark] Esper.… The expectation that they had based all their policies on — that Trump was firmly in their camp — suddenly had a bit of a shake.”

MAXIMUM PRESSURE

The dustup followed months of rising volatility and confrontation with Iran that have brought the Middle East,

once again, to the brink of war. Much of the current tension has its roots in Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal, in May 2018. The 159-page agreement placed significant constraints on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Notably, it allowed Iranian oil exports to resume, offering a critical economic lifeline to the country after nearly three decades of crippling restrictions on trade and exports. As part of the deal, Iran was forced to allow regular inspections of its nuclear program, and up until recently, the International Atomic Energy Agency certified that Iran had been in full compliance with its obligations. Nevertheless, Trump withdrew from the agreement because he said it did not address Iran’s pursuit of ballistic missiles or its other malign activities in the region. Supporters of the nuclear agreement argue that it was never intended to do that. It was meant to

minimize the nuclear threat, which it successfully did, and act as a springboard to address other thorny issues such as Iran’s support of Hezbollah and other proxy groups. But Trump, convinced he could negotiate a better deal, adopted a campaign of “maximum pressure” to bring Iran back to the bargaining table. That campaign essentially hinges on bringing the country to its knees through economic isolation. Trump reimposed sanctions the U.S. had lifted as part of the nuclear deal and slapped a series of punishing new sanctions on Iran to choke off its oil revenue. The punitive measures have taken a heavy toll on Iran’s economy, causing its currency to plummet, inflation to soar and the shortage of essential goods such as drugs. Yet the administration insists its maximum pressure campaign is geared toward the regime in Tehran, not Iranians as a whole. “President Trump is committed to supporting the people of Iran, and hopes one day for a better future between our two peoples,” said Brian Hook, the U.S. special representative for Iran. But those words ring hollow to many average Iranians who have borne the brunt of sanctions. In fact, some ex-

perts argue that the sanctions have had the counterproductive effect of galvanizing Iranians — many of whom have little love for their own corrupt, repressive government — to defend their embattled leadership in the face of what Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has described as economic warfare. The sanctions may also be strengthening hardliners in the regime, who have long maintained that the U.S. can never be trusted, at the expense of moderates who had pursued dialogue with Washington.

ESCALATING TENSIONS

Indeed, far from bringing Iran back to the negotiating table, Washington’s maximum pressure campaign seems to have had the opposite effect, escalating tensions in the area, which in recent months has seen a series of oil tanker clashes, downed drones and a major attack on Saudi oil facilities. In May, The New York Times reported that Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented Trump with an updated military plan to potentially send as many as 120,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East in response to an Iranian attack on American forces or the resumption of

Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. Shortly afterward, Iran was accused of attacking and sabotaging several oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil chokepoint. In June, the president told the media that he was within minutes of launching a military strike against Iran in retaliation for shooting down an American surveillance drone. In July, Iran seized a British-owned oil tanker two weeks after British forces impounded an Iranian tanker near Gibraltar that was suspected of transporting Iranian oil to Syria. The Iranian tanker, Adrian Darya 1, was later released despite fierce U.S. opposition that included an unprecedented offer to reward the ship’s captain with several million dollars if he allowed the U.S. to impound the ship’s oil. Then on Sept. 14, a series of explosions crippled Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil facilities, disrupting over half of the country’s oil supply. The Trump administration blamed Iran for the attack, calling it an “act of war,” although as of press time, it looked as if neither Trump nor the Saudis had the stomach for a full-blown military confrontation with Tehran. The attacks coincided with Iran’s pledges to renege on its JCPOA commitments in response to Trump’s maximum pressure campaign. Iran said it will install more advanced centrifuges to speed up uranium enrichment and that it has exceeded caps on its uranium stockpile and enrichment levels set by JCPOA — all in violation of the nuclear agreement. The recent breaches — while carefully calibrated and reversible — reflect Iran’s mounting impatience with the Europeans, who had pledged to help Iran’s struggling economy as long as Tehran did not abandon the nuclear deal. After complying with the accord for a year following Trump’s withdrawal, Iran is now warning that it will steadily reduce its JCPOA commitments every 60 days until Europe delivers on its promises.

Stakeholders in Europe have been scrambling to salvage the deal, with France floating the possibility of a $15 billion line of credit to compensate Iran for lost oil sales if it returns to compliance with the nuclear deal. But the U.S. is likely to block the French bailout — particularly after the attack on Saudi Aramco oil facilities — leading to fears that a confrontation between Iran and the U.S. may be inevitable. The D.C.-based National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which advocates for dialogue between Iran and the U.S., said in a Sept. 4 statement that Iran’s decision to abandon the nuclear accord “is a predictable consequence of the Trump administration seemingly closing off every opportunity to resolve the Iran standoff diplomatically. A U.S. failure to pivot from maximum pressure to the diplomatic opportunities initiated by France and other American allies ensures a continued cycle of escalation that could quickly spin out of control.” Michael Herzog is a retired brigadier general from the Israel Defense Forces, an international fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and head of the Forum of Strategic Dialogue between Israeli and European partners. He is skeptical of Europe’s ability to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace process and questioned the reasoning behind the proposed $15 billion loan from France. “I understand the French president is trying to mediate or broker some process, including a line of credit to Iran to ease sanctions. But from the Israeli point of view, the issue is not whether the two sides talk to each other, but what is the basis of such a dialogue? If the idea is to get Iran to fulfill its JCPOA obligations, $15 billion just to sit down and talk doesn’t seem like a very good idea, especially given what we’re experiencing with Iran in our own background,” he told The Diplomat.

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For the Iranians, however, that $15 billion is money owed to them for adhering to the nuclear agreement. Thus far, Tehran has refused to sit down and talk to the Trump administration until it honors those JPCOA commitments by dropping sanctions. But opinions within the regime are mixed. Some officials have expressed flexibility in meeting with Trump (who has flip-flopped on the issue multiple times). Others are adamant that the president’s maximum pressure campaign is just a thinly veiled attempt at the type of regime change that hawkish members of his administration have long pushed for. It’s a suspicion shared by some in the U.S. as well. “[Trump’s] advisers have come up with a shabby fix to the problem: The United States, they say, isn’t seeking regime change — it’s just trying to compel Iran into acting like a ‘normal country’” while supporting the people of Iran, wrote Jason Rezaian, a reporter for The Washington Post who was imprisoned in Tehran for a year and a half, in his Post column on July 30. Yet Rezaian argues that despite its overtures, the U.S. has “sanctioned the massive Iranian middle class almost into extinction” and consistently alienated Iran’s leadership. So, while many Iranians “began longing for the end of the Islamic republic on Feb. 11, 1979 — the day it came into existence,” Rezaian writes that “the administration’s Iran outreach falls flat, because it’s rooted in ignoring the lived experience of Iranians — not least the devastation wrought on them by U.S. policy.” That policy includes the type of West-

PHOTO: MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 3RD CLASS KELSEY J. HOCKENBERGER / WWW.DVIDSHUB.NET

“Big eyes” binoculars are used to scan the horizon as the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton transits the Strait of Hormuz on Oct. 22, 2017. The Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil chokepoint, is a frequent site of tensions and clashes between the U.S. and Iran, which was recently accused of attacking and sabotaging several oil tankers.

ern meddling that led to the 1979 Revolution in the first place.

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

Even if the U.S. isn’t actively pushing for regime change, it certainly wouldn’t shed any tears if Iran’s Islamic theocracy fell by the wayside — nor would Saudi Arabia and Israel. While the Sunni powerhouse and Jewish state seem like strange bedfellows, the two have formed an unlikely alliance based on their shared enmity of Iran. For the Israelis, Iran — particularly one armed with nukes — has long posed an existential threat. Meanwhile, the Saudis have long viewed Shiite Iran as their religious rival for power. “The Gulf alliance led by Saudi Arabia and

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the UAE has recognized Israel — the region’s most formidable military and its only nuclear power — as a forceful ally in their own struggle with the threat of Iranian expansionism. For Israel, too, instead of facing off against Iran alone, the Islamic Republic becomes a regional threat, giving Israel more legitimacy in how it responds,” wrote Omar H. Rahman in the Jan. 28 report “What’s Behind the Relationship Between Israel and Arab Gulf States” for the Brookings Institution. Forging relations with Gulf countries also allows Israel to sideline the Palestinians, argues Rahman, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. “If Netanyahu can show that the wealthy countries of the region are willing to normalize relations with Israel despite continued settlement building in the West Bank and no peace

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on the horizon with Palestinians, then the criticism of Netanyahu holds no water,” he wrote. “More importantly, Netanyahu will have done it without meaningfully adopting the land-forpeace formula in regards to the Palestinians that has been the basis for Arab-Israeli negotiations since it was developed during the Camp David process in the late 1970s.” While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict defined the region’s geopolitical landscape for decades, in recent years it has been overshadowed by more pressing events, namely America’s post9/11 war on terrorism, the Arab Spring and Iran’s growing influence. That influence increased significantly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which installed a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. More recently, Tehran expanded its presence in Syria, where Iranian money and manpower helped prevent the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, a key ally. Iran has also indirectly benefited from the civil war in Yemen, where the Saudi-led campaign to oust Iran-aligned Houthi rebels has devolved into a military quagmire for the Saudis and Emiratis. Iran’s influence on the world stage also grew under former President Obama, whose outreach helped Tehran emerge from international isolation but fueled Israeli and GCC fears that the White House was abandoning its traditional Middle East allies. Their frustration with Obama was amplified when he threw his support behind the 2011 uprising that ousted Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak, who was replaced by a democratically elected president belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, the 2011 Arab Spring was another major catalyst in cementing ties between Israel and the Sunni Gulf monarchies, as regional instability and the prospect of Islamist political movements threatened to upend the status quo. According to Herzog, the uncertainty unleashed by the Arab Spring pushed the GCC to finally soften its stance toward Israel. “It is true that Gulf states have been moving toward Israel since the early 2000s, but this same movement was significantly enhanced in the last few years. The main driving element was turmoil in the region which began with the so-called Arab Spring, this earthquake sweeping across the region. GCC countries felt vulnerable and threatened, especially by Iran and by extreme Sunni Islamists, and they looked around and realized that there is a country in the neighborhood that is stable, strong and can help them,” he said. Herzog argued that Israel also has much to gain from a united front against Iran. “In the eyes of Israelis, not only the government but Israelis at large, the three biggest strategic military challenges facing Israel would be Iran, Iran, Iran. The regime is openly hostile to Israel in terms of rhetoric, nuclear ambitions and regional ambitions,” he told us. Herzog said that over the previous decade, particularly in recent years, Iran has been capitalizing on turmoil in the region to fill the power vacuum created by war. Israel in particular fears that Iran aims to establish itself as the dominant actor, especially among Shiites, by creating a corridor extending from Iran to Lebanon. “In Syria, for example, Iran moved to build a formidable front-facing military threat. It has 130,000 projectiles, mainly missiles, rockets and mortars, situated with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The feeling is that Iran is trying to encircle Israel with military threats in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza and, if it could, in the West Bank,” Herzog said. Like Feierstein, Herzog also cited American’s erratic and ever-changing policy positions as a key driver of stronger ties between Israel and the GCC. “A feeling of uncertainty began with the Obama administration but persisted with Trump: the notion that the Middle East as a whole is less important to the U.S. The U.S. is having less of a footprint in the region because it is less dependent on Middle East energy, and SEE G UL F • PAGE 10

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www.diplomatgec.com OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 9

A demolition charge detonates 1,500 meters from the Avenger-class mine countermeasures ship USS Scout. The U.S. Navy has worked to develop strategies to counter mines it says are placed under the sea by Iran.

CREDIT: U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 1ST CLASS JOSHUA LEE KELSEY

Gulf CONTINUED • PAGE 8

because of fatigue from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It feels it has invested so much in this region and gotten nothing, and it is more focused on the Far East, namely North Korea and China,” he said.

A LOST CAUSE?

While ongoing rapprochement will allow both sides to apply more pressure on Iran, a stronger Israel-GCC alliance comes at the expense of the Palestinian cause. Yet some stakeholders have questioned whether both sides are hyping the Iranian threat while ignoring the real existential threat in the region: the failure to find a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Generally speaking, the idea of Iran the bogeyman was created simply because the Arab world cannot face up to Israel, so it turned to Iran instead,” argued Imad Harb, director of research and analysis at the D.C.-based Arab Center. “This plan to bring the Arabs and Israelis together to face Iran without addressing the Palestinian problem is not a good strategic idea. It doesn’t respect international law or human rights.” Yet, as the Peace to Prosperity workshop clearly demonstrated, the Palestinian question seems doomed to be overshadowed by Iran. Trump’s much-hyped “deal of the century” to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has yet to materialize. It’s been delayed again because of Israeli elections in September. In another potentially bad omen for the plan, Jason Greenblatt, the president’s special envoy for Middle East peace, announced he would leave his post. It’s been reported that Greenblatt’s replacement might be Kushner’s 30-yearold assistant, who has zero foreign policy experience (although Greenblatt has vacillated on when he might actually leave).

Describing the mood among Palestinians as one of “utter frustration,” Harb said their cause is “basically lost” and that they have no cards left to play in peace negotiations. “Palestinians have given up everything that they were asked to give up. If you look at the Marxist mantra ‘you have nothing to lose but your chains,’ well, the Palestinians have nothing more to lose, nothing more to offer,” said Harb, who also served as a senior analyst at the UAE-based Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research. “Look at the Oslo Accords from 1993. The Palestinians renounced Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) violence, changed the PLO charter, and yet they did not get anything in return. I’m not saying Israel is an existential threat to the Arab world, but it is an existential threat to the Palestinian people. It should be talked to as if it is an occupier of Palestinian land.” This sense of defeat has only grown under the Trump administration, which slashed U.S. aid to the Palestinians and made the historic decision to move America’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The move was widely interpreted as a de facto recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, negating Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem as their capital — one of the core issues in the peace process. Meanwhile, the White House has been noncommittal as to whether any eventual peace plan would even support the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. Trump has also refused to condemn Israel’s annexation of settlements in the West Bank, including Netanyahu’s campaign announcement that he would take advantage of the “one-off opportunity” afforded to him by Trump to annex the occupied Jordan Valley if re-elected. Experts warn that if Israel continues to chip away at territory Palestinians claim for a future state, a two-state solution will eventually become a moot point. The alternative then would be a one-state solution

10 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

PHOTO: NEUFAL54 / PIXABAY

Above, the Dome of the Rock stands in the heart of the contested holy city of Jerusalem. For decades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was seen as the primary driver of politics among the region’s Arab governments, but more recently, the rising influence of Iran has taken precedence over the Palestinian cause.

CREDIT: OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY SHEALAH CRAIGHEAD

President Donald Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence, participate in an expanded bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 25, 2019, at the White House.

whereby Israel absorbs Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza — which would either dilute Israel’s Jewish majority or force the country to adopt a system of apartheid by restricting the citizenship rights of Palestinians. While Israel has drawn worldwide condemnation for its annexation of Israeli settlements, the Palestinians have not always helped their own plight. The aging, increasingly irrelevant Fatah party leadership that controls the West Bank has failed to reconcile with its Islamist rival Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and continues to launch attacks against Israel that have only further isolated the destitute coastal enclave. To that end, Harb calls for a new Palestinian approach to the peace process. “I think the situation is calling for new leadership among the Palestinians, a new national project. It will not be fighting or guerrilla warfare. It has to be based on the principles of international law and human rights,” he said,

arguing that, much like African Americans in the 1960s, “Palestinians need to re-unify their ranks behind a program of civil resistance and civil rights. It could be that the solution to the Palestinian cause is a one-state solution — one binational state where Palestinians are fighting for their civil rights.” Harb is not alone in arguing that decades of failed peace processes have left dispossessed Palestinians, particularly the younger generation, doubtful that a two-state solution will ever be achieved. “It’s certainly being debated, and this whole issue of two state/one state is an issue people are talking about,” said Feierstein. “I was in Israel and occupied territories in January, in Ramallah. What they were saying is young Palestinians in particular have given up expectation of a two-state solution and are looking at a one-state solution as more of a realistic option.” In Herzog’s view, however, a one-state solution is not an option.

“That formula does not resonate because the overwhelming majority of Israelis believe a binational state is a recipe for catastrophe. I myself ascribe to this. It wouldn’t be a one-state solution because one state is not a solution. All you need to do is look at historic precedents of civil wars in Belfast and the Balkans, and look at us in the Middle East. States are falling apart along sectarian lines,” he said, noting nonetheless that he’s concerned “there will come a point where it will be impossible to separate [the two sides], and as an Israeli, I fear the moment that we cross the point of no return toward a binational reality. That is a recipe for ongoing, perpetual conflict.”

NO CLEAR SOLUTION

Feierstein agreed that a one-state solution is highly unlikely given current political realities. “There is no agreement whatsoever, not even close

to an agreement, on what a one-state solution means. For Palestinians, it means full civil rights and liberties — a fully unified state. Israelis think more or less of the status quo, where they absorb the West Bank into a greater Israel without any intention of according Palestinians equal rights,” he said. “Other people are saying — and I would ascribe to this view whether you think there’s going to be a two-state solution or not — the fact of the matter is no one has identified a serious alternative to the two-state solution. I’m skeptical that there is such a thing as a one-state approach.” With no resolution in sight and tensions between Iran and its rivals approaching their own point of no return, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is likely to fall off the radar. But Harb argues that whatever new alliances might be forged between the GCC and Israel, and however the Iranian conflict plays out, the region will not find lasting peace until it solves the Palestinian dilemma. “To me the Palestinian question remains the most important political and strategic question for the Arab world,” he said. “Obviously Israel has the strength and power, but in the end it’s all going to be for nothing. Human beings, especially today, we have developed in such a fashion that no occupation lasts, no exclusionary ideologies really succeed, and in the end it all collapses.” WD Paige Aarhus is a journalist and analyst who has written from East Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and India. She is currently studying at Sciences Po in Paris. Anna Gawel (@diplomatnews) is the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat.

Europe | WD

Scary Reality Post-Brexit Britain Is Unlikely to ‘Take Back’ Much Control from EU BY JONATHAN GORVETT

ince ancient times, the festival of Halloween has been celebrated across Britain and Ireland as a time separating the abundance of harvest from the scarcity of winter. Traditionally, it also marks a time when the veil separating the living from the dead can suddenly be cast aside. This coming Halloween — Oct. 31 — many Brits will also be nervous for another reason. For, at 11 p.m. that night, the U.K. is due to leave the European Union after 46 years as a member of the world’s largest trading bloc, and its earlier iterations. Some supporters of the now-infamous Brexit departure see it as a chance for the United Kingdom to bring back to life old spirits of global glory. Yet, Brexit’s detractors see Halloween as the potential start of a terrible winter for the world’s fifth-largest economy.

OR…

Or it could be three months before the harsh cold sets in, if the opposition parties get their way and the three-month extension that lawmakers approved before Prime Minister Boris Johnson suspended Parliament holds up until Oct. 19, when Johnson would be obligated to request the delay from the EU, whose 27 members may or may not agree to it. MPs from the main opposition Labour Party would then likely move to call an election after Oct. 19, ensuring two factors that could play into their hands: A later election denies Johnson the chance to change the election date until after Brexit, and it shows voters the picture of a chastened prime minister who’s been forced to go to the EU for an extension he vowed not to get. The hope then is that Labour usurps Johnson’s Conservative Party at the polls and can negotiate a softer Brexit landing or even call a new referendum. Or Johnson calls a vote of no confidence on himself when Parliament reconvenes in October and manages to thwart Labour’s strategy by forcing earlier elections that, ideally, he would win by painting Labour as surrendering to the

PHOTO: BY UK PRIME MINISTER - HTTPS://TWITTER.COM/10DOWNINGSTREET/STATUS/1164551227532877827, OGL 3

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, right, meets with French President Emmanuel Macron on Aug. 22, 2019, to discuss Brexit.

Even if the Brits do crash out of the EU, the morning of Nov. 1 will still see Europe as the U.K.’s largest trading partner. That trade will also still have to comply with EU rules and regulations — although post-Brexit, there will be no U.K. input as to how those rules are made. EU while helping his Conservatives sideline Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. A victory could give him a stronger working majority, wrangling back rebel Conservatives and other parties to push through his own revised withdrawal plan. Some have speculated that plan could see the Irish backstop applying only to Northern Ireland, instead of the U.K. as a whole, although Johnson recently ruled out the idea. Still, if a new iteration of Brexit finally passes after three years of deadlock, Johnson emerges triumphant (even if that plan is just a slightly altered version of Theresa May’s original plan). Conversely, if Parliament rejects his plan, Johnson — a political survivor and perennial opportunist — may

still cast himself as the hero who stood up to the EU but was thwarted by lawmakers. Or Johnson resigns but the opposition is able to cobble together a governing coalition, taking control of the negotiations as well as the potential election timetable. Or any elections prove inconclusive given the divided electorate, plunging the country into even more chaos as parties jockey to form a coalition ahead of Oct. 31. Or the EU agrees to remove the Irish backstop that’s held up passage of the Brexit plan in Parliament, although the bloc seems determined not to budge on the issue and staunch EU member Ireland would be outraged. Or Johnson convinces a

sympathetic EU member state to block the three-month extension dictated by Parliament — or French President Emmanuel Macron, who has repeatedly expressed how fed up he is with the British delay, vetoes it. Or Johnson just ignores the three-month extension altogether and moves forward with his “do or die” pledge to crash out of the EU on Oct. 31, a move that would further break precedence — and most likely the law, along with British democracy. Or the colorful prime minister with his signature shock of white hair throws in the towel on his beloved Brexit project and resigns, leaving the mess to someone else. Or some other wild scenario

presents itself between now and Halloween, when scary costumes will pale in comparison to the frightening prospect of Britain plunging off the EU cliff.

OR NOT MUCH CHANGES

For all the drama, though, even assuming the Brits do crash out of the EU, the morning of Nov. 1 will still see Europe as the U.K.’s largest trading partner, responsible for around half of all the U.K.’s imports and exports. That trade will also still have to comply with EU rules and regulations — although postBrexit, there will be no U.K. input as to how those rules are made. At the same time, if the U.K. leaves without a withdrawal agreement in place, British firms may face a range of tariff and non-tariff barriers when doing business with their European customers — and, potentially, vice versa. So, while the slogan of the campaign to leave the EU was SEE B R EX IT • PAGE 12

OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 11

PHOTO: LISA DIANTONIO / PIXABAY

Brexit CONTINUED • PAGE 11

“Take Back Control,” some are now questioning just how much “control” there will really be when the U.K. heads out into the unknown, on All Hallows’ Eve.

BREXIT IMPACT

In 2018, official U.K. statistics showed that the EU was responsible for 46% of the country’s exports and 54% of its imports, making the bloc by far the U.K.’s largest trading partner. While Europe has long had a leading position in British trade, the creation of the EU single market in 1993 undoubtedly spurred the development of this multibilliondollar business. Since then, there have been minimal controls on goods and services traveling between the U.K. and the other 27 memberstates. With EU member Ireland, too, there is also an open border, with no passport controls, either. This has helped keep the peace between Ireland and the U.K.’s troubled province of Northern Ireland, which was plagued by decades of sectarian strife that ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ensured an open border. This history is also why passage of a Brexit divorce agreement has been held up by the British Parliament. The EU insists on a backstop that would ensure a seamless border crossing between Ireland and Northern Ireland if London and Brussels fail to reach a comprehensive trade agreement by the end of 2020. Critics say that if this Irish backstop is implemented, the U.K. would

by default remain within the EU customs union, curtailing its ability to negotiate free trade deals with other countries — one of the main reasons for Brexit (also see “Irish Backstop Threatens U.K.’s Divorce from EU, and Northern Ireland’s Fragile Peace” in the March 2019 issue). An open border between Northern Ireland and Ireland currently allows frictionless trade between the U.K. and EU. British goods and services speed across the continent, exempt from any checks other than periodic random inspections. This is not an advantage enjoyed, however, by nonEU traders trying to enter the bloc from the outside. “At the moment, a truck going from the U.K. to the EU takes on average two minutes to pass through customs,” Andrew Wishart, a U.K. economist for Capital Economics, told The Washington Diplomat. “A non-EU truck doing the same thing takes an average 20 minutes.” Post-Brexit, British trucks would become non-EU entities, likely creating longer delays at busy channel ports such as Dover in the U.K. — which currently handles around 10,000 trucks a day — and at Calais, on the opposite coast in France. How long those delays would be remains unknown, as this will also depend on whether or not the U.K. leaves with a withdrawal agreement in place. If it does, trade may continue as before, at least for a transitional period. But if the U.K. leaves without any arrangements in place, all bets are off. Delays will likely depend on the readiness of both U.K. and EU port and airport authorities to conduct a raft of new checks — and their willingness to apply the full force of the law. “Customs officials could

12 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

PHOTO: JENNIE RAINSFORD / PIXABAY

A no-deal Brexit crash could hit Welsh sheep farmers particularly hard because a sudden onslaught of tariffs would cripple their export market, flooding the domestic market and causing the price of lamb to plummet. The automotive sector is another area that would take a steep hit if tariffs are implemented.

PHOTO: © EUROPEAN EXTERNAL ACTION SERVICE

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sits next to Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, during the 2016 U.N. General Assembly. Johnson has pledged a “do-or-die” crash out of the EU if the bloc does not come up with an alternative exit plan, although the bloc says the plan is not up for renegotiation.

decide to inspect every single ship,” said Wishart. “This could lead to many long queues developing.”

NOT IN TIME

This would be particularly damaging for refrigerated products and goods that are part of a “just-in-time” supply chain, requiring speedy delivery. The result could be shortages of fresh produce or a spike in the cost of food. Critics of a no-deal Brexit also argue that Britain could face a raft of other shortages because of disruptions to closely connected supply chains, causing a run on everything from antibiotics to toilet paper. Beyond a run on items that can’t be reasonably stockpiled, the “just-in-time” supply chain could cripple certain industries that rely on fast, frictionless trade. Big manu-

facturers such as Toyota, Airbus and Jaguar Land Rover all operate such systems, with parts moved across a number of their European and U.K.based plants before final assembly. Goods coming into the EU from outside may also be subject to tariffs. While these are currently generally low, “one area that is impacted a lot by these is automotives,” said Meredith Crowley, senior fellow with the UK in a Changing Europe, a think tank based out of King’s College London. “The bulk of the tariffs in this sector are 5% to 10%, with some at 15% to 16%. PostBrexit, U.K. firms exporting spark plugs to Germany, for example, might have to pay this and find a way of dealing with the extra cost.” Those extra costs, considered “non-tariff barriers,” will be necessary for U.K. busi-

nesses to conform to the EU’s standards and regulations. Beyond the added paperwork, new border checks and other supply chain disruptions, British exporters will suddenly lose the largely tariff-free access to the vast EU market that they currently enjoy and be forced to revert back to the rules set out by the World Trade Organization. This in turn could dramatically increase tariffs on automobile, agriculture and apparel exports. A recent report by the U.K. in a Changing Europe predicted that trading with the EU on WTO terms would reduce Britain’s per-capita income by between 3.7% and 8.7% over the course of 10 years. Meanwhile, the U.N. estimated that a no-deal Brexit could cost the U.K. $16 billion — and possibly much more — in lost EU sales as

tariffs for British goods rise from zero to the basic WTO “most favored nation” tariff rate that the bloc offers countries without preferential trade deals. Some EU companies that import from the U.K. in sectors that might face higher post-Brexit tariffs are already switching to non-Britishbased EU suppliers to avoid potential future costs. “Since the referendum in 2016, you’ve seen an increasing ‘exit rate’ among companies trading with U.K. firms that have this tariff risk,” said Crowley. This has depressed U.K. exports to Europe, despite the positive impact of another Brexit-related factor: the depreciating British pound. The pound has dropped some 15 percent against the euro since the referendum and 17 percent against the U.S. dollar, causing an uptick in inflation in the U.K., but theoretically making British goods cheaper abroad. But many economists doubt that a depreciated pound can make up for the higher tariffs and non-tariff barriers that British exports could face under a no-deal Brexit. The country’s agriculture sector could be particularly hard hit. Sugar cane brought into the EU, for example, is subject to a 200% charge. The EU also has different and often more stringent sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards than many other countries, a popular example of this being chlorinated chickens. In the U.S., battery farm conditions mean that for health reasons, chicken is washed in a chlorine solution before being sent to supermarkets. In the EU, this is

not the case, with chickens reared differently and imported U.S. chlorinated chicken prohibited on health grounds. If a future post-Brexit U.K. concluded a trade deal with the U.S., agricultural products such as chlorinated chicken might be allowed in, yet they could not be allowed to cross the channel — or the Irish border — requiring further SPS checks on British trucks trying to enter the EU.

KEEPING STANDARDS IN LINE

The possibility of a new multitiered compliance bureaucracy will only happen if there is some future divergence in standards between post-Brexit U.K. and the EU — which may not necessarily happen despite Britain’s divorce from the bloc because conforming to EU norms will continue to benefit British businesses. “At the moment, all U.K. trade with Europe is in compliance with EU regulations, as the U.K. is still an EU member and in the single market,” said Wishart. “You wouldn’t expect this to change the day after Brexit, even if there is no deal on a future trading relationship.” At the same time, “in international trade, regulation is always at the point of consumption,” said Crowley. “If you are going to eat a steak in Japan, that steak will be in compliance with Japanese law.”

Many lawmakers in Britain’s parliament are scrambling to avoid a no-deal Brexit scenario on Oct. 31.

Likewise, all U.K. products exported to the EU will have to be in compliance with EU law — as they are now — creating a strong incentive for British exporters to continue following EU rules, even after Brexit. Large international manufacturers also tend to produce products that meet the laws of a variety of different countries and trading blocs simultaneously, in order to sell the same

product to different markets and avoid the expense of needing multiple production lines. “Companies also often want to stay at the ‘cutting edge’ with new technologies and [thus] try to meet the highest standards, rather than the lowest, so as not to lose ground to rivals,” Crowley said. Sticking to EU laws may therefore be vital for post-Brexit U.K. com-

PHOTO: LUXSTORM / PIXABAY

panies if they are to maintain their competitiveness beyond Europe. Advocates of Brexit, however, say they are also looking beyond the EU, arguing that the U.K.’s departure will enable it to make deals with other countries that are more specific to British needs. But even if the U.K. does eventually negotiate free trade deals with lucrative markets such as the U.S. and

Japan, any such agreements could take years to hammer out. Meanwhile, the U.K. currently trades as an EU member under some 40 EU trade agreements with 70 non-EU countries ranging from Canada to Turkey to Mexico, giving it tariff-free access to those markets. Since the 2016 referendum, the U.K. has been attempting to secure postBrexit access to these markets by “rolling over” the EU agreements so that the same terms would continue to apply to the U.K. even after it leaves the bloc. By August 2019, 13 rollover deals covering 38 countries had been agreed, with the British government scrambling to cover the others before Brexit. Once again, though, under the terms of these rollovers, the U.K. would continue to follow EU terms, even in its dealings with many key non-EU markets. So while the spirits of Halloween may vanish on the morning of Nov. 1, the realities of international trade will not — with Britain’s economy still very much in the shadow of the European regulations that advocates of Brexit had hoped would be a ghost of the past. WD Jonathan Gorvett (jpgorvett.com) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat and a freelance journalist specializing in Near and Middle Eastern affairs.

OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 13

WD | Asia

China Celebrates While China Comes Under Fire by West, Its Leadership Touts 70 Years of Progress BY DERYL DAVIS

eventy years ago, on Oct. 1, 1949, communist revolutionary Mao Zedong stood before a battery of microphones above Tiananmen Square in Beijing and declared “Long live the People’s Republic of China!” It was the birth of what would become the world’s most populous communist nation and its longestlasting. But much has changed in China since 1949. This year on Oct. 1, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping will undoubtedly utter the same words as Mao, but unlike his legendary predecessor, Xi will appear in a crisp business suit, not a revolutionary Sun Yat-sen jacket. As in 1949, there will be hundreds of dancers, musicians, glowing lanterns and big fireworks, but security cameras, police drones and internet memes will add a layer of virtual reality and surveillance that did not exist when Mao presided over the nation’s founding. While the celebrations in 1949 included military parades and a show of weaponry (much of it foreign-made and captured from the communists’ adversaries), this year’s National Day celebration is expected to feature the biggest military parade in the nation’s history, showcasing some of its most advanced hardware. “The celebration this year will be grander and larger than the one in 2009 [the last 10-year anniversary],” wrote Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the D.C.-based Stimson Center via email. “We can expect to see a bigger military parade, potentially with the more advanced weapons systems China has been developing.” According to Sun, the bigger celebration reflects President Xi’s determination to present China to the world as “a first-tier great power,” having pronounced “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” after stepping into leadership in 2012. “Xi sees himself as the leader that makes China strong, following in the vein that Mao made China independent and Deng [Xiaoping] made China rich,” Sun told us. “In this sense, [Xi] sees himself

PHOTO: BY 萧雨 - HTTPS://WWW.VOACHINESE.COM/A/XI-THOUGHTS-ENSHRINES-CONSTITUTION-20180119/4216362.HTML

Pictures of Mao Zedong and President Xi Jinping are seen in a shop in China. Since communist revolutionary Mao declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China, “state capitalism” has replaced state communism and central planning, ushering in unprecedented prosperity in China, although many experts see in Xi echoes of his predecessor’s ruthless consolidation of power.

“

[President] Xi sees himself as the leader that makes China strong, following in the vein that Mao made China independent and Deng made China rich. YUN SUN

director of the China Program at the Stimson Center

as the most consequential and important leader in the recent history of China, since the reform and opening up…. [T]he 70th celebration will gear toward the demonstration and reinforcement of his paramount status.” Sun said there are also important differences in ideology between the Chinese leaders who stood above Tiananmen Square in 1949 and Xi and those who will join him on the platform this National Day. “Back in 1949, the Chinese leadership was highly ideology-driven,” Sun said. “The party then claimed to be the Communist Party bringing China to the new stage of communism. That is not what the Chinese leaders today claim,” she said. “What China aspires to today [more resembles] the

14 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

ancient ideal of China being the advanced civilization, the Middle Kingdom, and the hegemon that commands the respect and deference” of other countries. Sun believes that, in terms of its domestic politics, China’s system is more meritocratic than ideological, driven by performance and practical concerns. In economics, “state capitalism” has replaced state communism and central planning. “I’d say the Chinese Communist Party has shifted very far away from the original days under the founding fathers,” Sun said. Despite such differences, Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Center, believes today’s Chinese leaders

”

do have much to celebrate. “There’s been undeniable success in improving the welfare and living conditions of most Chinese people since 1978,” he told us. “They’ve increased the living standards of more people in a shorter time than ever before in human history.” But Daly believes many Westerners are loathe to acknowledge the Chinese Communist Party’s role in this success. “Some credit must be given for these enormous increases in human wellbeing, in education, in living standards,” Daly argues. While political freedoms are significantly lacking, he cites the tremendous increase in personal and individual freedoms for many Chinese, such as being able to choose where to go

to school, whom to marry or having the freedom to travel abroad. “Nothing like this has ever been done before,” Daly said of the sweeping economic and social changes over the last four decades. “That’s the primary thing they’ll be celebrating.” China’s growth has indeed been impressive. The World Bank describes it as “an upper middle-income country” — a far cry from any description of China 40 years ago — which, over the last several decades, has experienced the fastest sustained economic expansion of any major country in history. More than 850 million people have been lifted out of poverty — over two and a half times the total population of the U.S. — and China has become the world’s second-largest economy and the largest individual contributor to world economic growth over the last decade. Although economic inequality between urban and rural areas remains a serious problem, the World Bank reports that China “is on track to eliminate absolute poverty by 2020” according to the country’s internal poverty standard.

While these economic achievements are noteworthy and deserving of recognition, Daly points out that the Chinese Communist Party has celebrated them or similar accomplishments before, on earlier 10-year anniversaries. Now, he says, the party is using these successes “to make both implicit and explicit that it should remain in power, and that it is right.” What’s new, Daly suggests, is that “the party will claim not only to have greatly improved the Chinese standard of living, but also to have greatly enhanced China’s international standing and global influence. It’s not just that China is successful and developed and a good place to live. It’s that now China is a great power in the world, spreading its influence.” A primary example of China’s spreading influence is its sprawling Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has been described as the most ambitious infrastructure development and investment effort in history, stretching from East Asia to Africa and even Europe. According to a background report prepared by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), more than 60 countries, representing twothirds of the world’s population, have signed on to or expressed interest in Chinese-financed projects such as the development of railways, highways, bridges, dams, seaports, energy pipelines and the creation of special economic zones. But all of these things come with a price in terms of loan debt and the possibility of Chinese interference in the internal affairs of other countries. The CFR report notes that the United States shares the concerns of other nations “that the BRI could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development, military expansion, and Beijing-led institutions,” wrote authors Andrew Chatzky and James McBride, who suggest that China’s supreme leader has skin in the game, too. Xi has made much of China’s plans for global development, no doubt with an eye toward America’s own international reach. According to Chatzky and McBride, the BRI serves “as a pushback” to the celebrated Obama-era “pivot to Asia,” which Trump administration policies and the current trade wars have made increasingly irrelevant. Their report asks if, among other things, the BRI is “a plan to remake the global balance of power.” “China has definitely become a more assertive international actor under Xi Jinping,” said the CFR’s Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia currently focusing on China’s approach to soft power in the region. He believes that in recent years, Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea and its engagement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) “has provoked extensive anxiety among most other countries in Asia,” although these countries recognize that their options for response are limited given China’s size and strength. Kurlantzick sees China’s new assertiveness on the international stage coinciding with increasing authoritarianism at home. “The question for today,” he said, “is whether China is headed in an even more authoritarian direction, away from collective rule to one-man rule. It seems like it is.” Kurlantzick suggests that, even though Xi presides over a vastly different country with a vastly different economic system — not to mention world standing — his actions and the response to them within China often bring to mind the cult of personality that grew up around Mao after 1949. Daly, too, is concerned about Xi and notes some commonalities with Mao, although he says such comparisons are often “way overblown.” Nevertheless, like Mao, Xi seems to have become supreme leader for life (unlike past presidents, he has yet to anoint a succes-

PHOTO: BY ORIHARA1 - OWN WORK, CC BY-SA 4.0

Mao Zedong declares the founding of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949.

sor), with his political ideology, “Xi Jinping Thought,” codified like Mao’s into the nation’s constitution. Unlike Mao, however, Xi’s doctrine has been enshrined while he still very much alive and in power. Daly also argues that since Xi became China’s president in 2013, the country has backed away from reform, placed new limits on individual freedoms and more deeply politicized educational institutions, media and think tanks in a manner reminiscent of the “Maoist playbook.” “Xi has been retrograde,” Daly said, presiding over two “big bad China” narratives. The first is that China is having more difficulty than ever on its peripheries, Daly said, citing ongoing unrest in Xinjiang Province and in Tibet, the decades-long tensions with Taiwan and now political chaos in Hong Kong. “The party has had 70 years to make its case to Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan that it is in their best interests to be part of the People’s Republic,” Daly said. “But now these places are less interested in being part of the PRC than ever before. The party has failed dramatically after 70 years to make its case, despite its economic successes. They’re not getting joiners.” The most recent entity to rebel against Chinese rule has been Hong Kong, which Britain handed over to Beijing in 1997. A proposed extradition bill led to protests in June that have morphed into a broader pro-democracy movement that has challenged Xi’s control of the wealthy, semi-autonomous enclave. Yet while many in the West have supported Hong Kong’s struggle for greater freedoms, many inside China aren’t as sympathetic. “[T]o many mainlanders who believe the China model has benefited their economic development and their private lives, Hong Kong’s pursuit of democracy and freedom is not so attractive any more. They believe the mainland government is not perfect, but a messed-up government is worse. They fear political turbulence, poverty, foreign invasion — but not an authoritarian government,” wrote Beijing-based author Karoline Kan in a July 30 article for Nikkei Asian Review. “What’s worse, many believe the existing freedom Hong Kong enjoys is a ‘special treatment’ that spoils the city. They believe the mainland has helped Hong Kong, but the city is ungrateful and constantly making trouble for China.” So while Hong Kong and other territories chafe under Chinese authority, not all of China’s 1.4 billion people want to throw their system out in favor of Western-style democracy,

especially in light of the political turmoil and populist uprisings that have engulfed democracies in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. Indeed, as China has grown more prosperous — and proud of that prosperity — many Chinese increasingly resent what they see as Western heavy-handedness and hypocrisy. Just as older generations seethe at the West’s history of imperialism and colonialism — stretching back to China’s humiliating defeat

at the hands of the British in the mid-1800s during the Opium Wars — today’s younger generations suspect the West of trying dominate the region by containing China’s rise. Former President Obama’s Asia pivot, for instance, was seen by Beijing as a thinly veiled attempt to sideline China in its own backyard. Meanwhile, President Trump has abandoned any pretense of cooperation and openly describes China as a geopolitical competitor. His tariff war has sparked a nationalist backlash in China that could embolden Xi. Washington’s stepped-up military presence in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims as its own despite competing claims from neighboring countries, and its frequent denunciations of Beijing’s human rights record have also stirred nationalist sentiment in China. The Communist Party uses these disagreements to bolster its longstanding argument that the U.S. tries to interfere in China’s internal affairs and wants to impose its own values and system of governance on the country. Many Chinese citizens likely agree that the U.S. has a tendency to meddle abroad. And while they might be more pro-stability and less pro-democracy than Western observers often suggest, that doesn’t mean the Chinese aren’t worried about their own government overreaching. That gets to the second, newer “bad China” narrative that Daly says has emerged — that of the technologically enabled totalitarian surveillance state. With the advanced technology of nearly 200 million closed-circuit cameras, facial recogSEE CHINA • PAGE 47

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OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 15

WD | Americas

USMCA Haggle Administration Tries to Assuage Democrats’ Concerns to Ratify Updated NAFTA Trade Deal BY JOHN BRINKLEY

he Trump administration has given in to House Democrats’ demands — some of them at least — in the hope of making the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, palatable to them. Whether the changes the administration proposed will be enough to satisfy Democrats remains to be seen. They have been reviewing the proposal, which has not been made public, and ramped up negotiations with the White House. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (DCalif.) has not committed to putting the trade deal up for a floor vote despite a push by the administration for its swift ratification. For the USMCA to take effect, the House and the Senate have to approve it via floor votes. So does the Canadian Parliament. The Mexican Congress has already approved it. Democrats have said that the USMCA, which is a revision of NAFTA, fell short of their expectations in a number of ways. Their principal complaint is that it is weak on enforcement of labor and environmental rules. They also object to the Trump administration’s acquiescing to the pharmaceutical industry’s insistence on having 10 years of exclusivity on the production and sale of biologic drugs, a condition that Democrats fear could lead to higher drug prices. NAFTA doesn’t address labor rights or environmental protection. They are addressed in side agreements that are mostly unenforceable. U.S., Mexican and Canadian negotiators moved the side agreements into the body of the USMCA and strengthened their enforceability. Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said on Sept. 11 that the administration’s proposal represented substantial progress, but more needed to be done, particularly on labor rights enforcement. Originally, the United States demanded the right to send inspectors into Mexican factories to see if they were adhering to the USMCA’s labor standards. The government of Mexico objected to that, in part because it wasn’t reciprocal. Mexico proposed allowing Mexican labor officials to accompany U.S. inspectors and the Trump administration “has indicated it’s open to adopting a system of binational inspections,” Politico reported on Sept. 16. “Critics of NAFTA argue that lower Mexican labor standards combined with liberalized trade led U.S. companies to move operations to Mexico and hire lower-cost labor at the expense of U.S. jobs,” according to a Sept. 5 “Critical Questions” brief by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) titled “Road to USMCA Ratification: Is

16 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

CREDIT: DOD PHOTO BY U.S. AIR FORCE STAFF SGT. MARIANIQUE SANTOS

President Donald Trump poses with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during the president’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. Thus far, Pelosi has refused to bring up Trump’s renegotiated NAFTA, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, to the House floor for a vote until Democrats’ concerns about labor and environmental enforcement are addressed.

“

It so much comes down to [House] Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who I believe has been dealing with our administration in good faith on this issue. the End in Sight?” Democrats worry that the USMCA’s strengthened labor enforcement is still “not strong enough to ensure workers in Mexico are afforded rights similar to those afforded to U.S. workers,” the brief says. “The Mexican Congress enacted labor reforms in April to allay some concerns and bring Mexican law into conformance with its USMCA obligations; however, Democrats are closely watching how quickly and aggressively the new law is implemented.” Another enforcement issue comprises disputes between USMCA parties. Under NAFTA, a country can indefinitely block a legal challenge by one of the other countries by refusing to allow the formation of an arbitration panel. Because of this, the treaty’s dispute resolution essentially broke down. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer supports that right of refusal, but the administration is nonetheless willing to consider eliminating it, Politico reported. Democrats also say that the USMCA favors Big Pharma over patients. One hundred House Democrats sent a letter to Lighthizer in July expressing “strong

”

U.S. VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE

opposition” to the 10-year exclusivity period for U.S. biologics in the USMCA, which they said “would keep drug prices out of reach for patients.” Biologics are made from living organisms, rather than chemicals. They are used to treat conditions such as cancer and are a significant driver of higher prescription drug costs. Democrats argue that the USMCA shields big pharmaceutical companies from generic competition in the form of so-called biosimilars, which could not be exported to Mexico or Canada for at least 10 years even though Mexico has no exclusivity period for biologics and Canada has one that lasts eight years. However, the USMCA would require Mexico and Canada to adopt 10-year exclusivity periods for biologics. Meanwhile, the U.S. already has a 12-year exclusivity period, codified in the Affordable Care Act of 2009. “Even if Congress were to suggest a lower threshold in USMCA than ten years, it would not change America’s existing twelve-year standard,” wrote Miriam Sapiro, deputy U.S. trade representative in the Obama administration, in

a memo to the Pass USMCA Coalition. The Trump administration has proposed a tit-for-tat solution, whereby if Congress lowers the U.S. biologic exclusivity period from 12 years to five, the exclusivity period in the USMCA would also drop to five years. Democrats also complain that the USMCA doesn’t address climate change. Trump is particularly resistant to any effort by the U.S. government to combat climate change. He has said it doesn’t exist. The agreement says that each country “affirms its commitment” to international environmental agreements it has joined. For the United States, that would not include the Paris climate change agreement because Trump withdrew the U.S. from it in 2017. The administration has agreed to work with Congress to strengthen the USMCA’s environmental provisions, but has not said it would add language addressing climate change. The word “climate” does not appear in the 1,812-page USMCA text. Congressional Republicans, and some SEE US M CA • PAGE 46

Cover Profile | WD

A Different Storm Caribbean Hotspot of Dominican Republic Engulfed by Media Frenzy After U.S. Deaths BY ANNA GAWEL

first visited the Caribbean in 2007 while on vacation in the Dominican Republic. We stayed at the Majestic, an all-inclusive resort in Punta Cana on the eastern tip of the island. While some people look down on these kinds of sprawling, isolated resorts that cater to foreigners and have become a staple in the Caribbean, we had a great time. The resort was stunning, the people were friendly, the drinks were tasty and the crystal blue waters were spectacular. But this past August, that same Majestic Elegance in Punta Cana temporarily shut its doors because of low occupancy following the alleged assault of a Delaware woman by a hotel employee. The closure followed the deaths of 11 American tourists in the tropical paradise in 2019. Unlike the horrific damage wrought on the Bahamas by Hurricane Dorian, it wasn’t 185 mile-an-hour winds that pummeled the Dominican Republic. It was a barrage of grim headlines that have tarnished the country’s all-important tourism industry, which has yet to fully recover from the bad press. The backlash caught many Dominicans off guard, including the country’s ambassador to the U.S., José Tomás Pérez. “We were surprised by the way the media really went out to attack the Dominican Republic because with the amount of tourists and visitors to the Dominican Republic, always you will have per-capita a couple of fatalities. It’s something that comes with the statistics,” he told us. While he offered his condolences to the friends and families of the victims, Pérez stressed that the deaths were isolated incidents that represented a tiny fraction of the 6.6 million visitors who flocked to the country’s beaches last year; that includes 3.2 million Americans. Dominican officials echoed that message. In June, Tourism Minister Francisco Javier García told reporters, “There is no mystery whatsoever regarding any of these deaths” as he listed the various causes of those deaths, including heart attack, pneumonia and septic shock. García held another press conference in mid-September to stress that none of the deaths were related and to denounce the damage that the “bombardment” of media coverage has done to his island nation. García was backed up by Robin Bernstein, the U.S. ambassador to the DR, who implored journalists to “tell the truth about these issues.”

“

PHOTO: LAWRENCE RUGGERI

We were surprised by the way the media really went out to attack the Dominican Republic because with the amount of tourists and visitors to the Dominican Republic, always you will have per-capita a couple of fatalities. JOSÉ TOMÁS PÉREZ

”

ambassador of the Dominican Republic to the U.S.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

The truth is that U.S. tourist deaths are relatively low when considering that nearly 60 million Americans traveled abroad last year, although it’s not uncommon for Americans to die of natural causes overseas (heart-related conditions account for roughly half of all American tourist deaths abroad, according to the CDC). Yet the spate of deaths in the Dominican Republic — and the strange circumstances surrounding some of them — instilled enough fear that hotel bookings plunged in July and August and casted a dark cloud over the country’s safety procedures. Among the more notable cases was a Maryland couple found dead together in the same room at the Grand Bahia

Príncipe hotel on May 30. Days earlier, a Pennsylvania woman died at another Bahia Príncipe resort when she collapsed after getting a drink from the hotel minibar. And in April, a 67-yearold California man died at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Punta Cana, which subsequently removed all liquor dispensers from its guest rooms. Although autopsy results concluded that the guests died of natural causes, including heart attack, respiratory failure and pulmonary edema, suspicions linger about whether something other than pre-existing conditions and risk factors contributed to the deaths. Medical experts and families of the victims have questioned whether tainted alcohol may have been involved — a problem other destinations such as Mexico have had to deal with — or,

especially in the case of the Maryland couple, whether environmental factors such as exposure to pesticides, commonly used throughout the Caribbean, came into play. But Pérez, speaking to us in part through a translator, dismissed those theories, pointing out that the victims had previous medical histories and conditions. He added that the resorts where the deaths took place are wellknown chains with solid reputations. “For instance, the Hard Rock Hotel in particular cannot place itself in jeopardy by tainted alcohol from sources that are not reputable,” said Pérez. The ambassador also noted that officials from the State Department “were the ones who informed the public that there had not been anything out of the ordinary [with] these deaths.” “That being said, the well being and safety of our tourists is our utmost priority and we have very quickly taken measures for the FBI to help us figure out what was going on,” he added. The FBI is still assisting local authorities with toxicology tests for two of the cases, while autopsies for the remaining deaths concluded they were due to natural causes. Nevertheless, Dominican authorities came under fire for their initial lack of transparency and confusing accounts given to the public. (One govSEE DR • PAGE 18 OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 17

PHOTO: BY ALEX PROIMOS FROM SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - AT THE BORDER OF HAITI AND THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, CC BY 2.0

Above, Haitians amass at the border with the Dominican Republic, which has struggled to take in poorer Haitian immigrants seeking a better life in the more prosperous DR, with whom Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola.

Ambassador José Tomás Pérez wrote a book about a boy who seeks revenge for the murder of his father, based in part on true events.

DR CONTINUED • PAGE 17

ernment spokesman claimed that Cynthia Ann Day, the fiancée of Nathaniel Edward Holmes from Maryland, died “from the shock of seeing the person beside her dead.”) But Pérez defended his government’s response, arguing that it could not reveal any details when the investigations had just begun. “These were all obviously open cases. During the time, we could not speculate on what was going on. There needed to be a series of situations such as autopsies and whatnot to find conclusive [answers] as to what was really going on before we could actually give a complete and transparent reply as to what had occurred,” Pérez told us. “Behind the scenes, there was work going on with the authorities and that’s not something that was publicly shared until we knew what was happening.”

LINGERING FALLOUT

While the headlines surrounding the deaths have faded, the ambassador conceded that the perception of the DR as an unsafe destination will take longer to erase. He said that bookings dropped significantly over the summer. “However, the numbers are going to be the same forecasted or equal to what they were last year and we do anticipate the same traffic,” he added, although the government will release a final assess-

ment at the end of the year. But Pérez is hopeful that the recent incidents won’t do longterm damage to the country’s vital tourism industry, which accounts for 17% of GDP and employs over 300,000 people. “We had approximately 6 million tourists last year. It has been growing and we expect it to continue to be on a steady incline. We are continuously working on new resorts, so that there’s more availability for hotel rooms,” he said. Yet even if tourism bounces back in time for the busy winter season, at a minimum, the American deaths have shed light on some of the issues that these behemoth all-inclusive Caribbean resorts need to address, including slow response times to emergencies and lax safety standards. To that end, the Dominican Ministry of Tourism announced it was introducing new measures to protect travelers, including doubling hotel inspections; increasing compliance with food and beverage protocols and retraining inspectors; requiring information on 911 emergency response services to be posted in each guest room; installing cameras in all public areas of hotels that are connected to the country’s 911 system; and setting up a multilingual emergency center in Punta Cana. Tourism Minister García said the country has also established a National Committee of Tourism Security, which includes 16 government agencies along with various private entities.

OUTSIDE THE HEADLINES

Despite the handful of

18 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

PHOTO: BY JOSUEFIALLO - OWN WORK, CC BY-SA 3.0

President Danilo Medina attends the swearing-in of his cabinet in 2012. Despite high approval ratings, Medina recently opted not to revise the constitution to seek a third term.

deaths, experts say the DR remains a popular and safe destination for tourists. But another high-profile incident — the June 9 shooting of former Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz at a bar in Santo Domingo — revealed a problem that average Dominicans, not foreigners, routinely face: crime. “Violent crime, including armed robbery, homicide and sexual assault, is a concern throughout the Dominican Republic,” a State Department travel advisory says, noting that resort areas tend to have more of a police presence than urban areas such as Santo Domingo. “The wide availability of weapons, the use and trade of illicit drugs and a weak criminal justice system contribute to the high level of criminality on the broader scale.” The types of crimes range from armed robberies to illegal arms trading to political corruption. But the ambassador says his government has moved to aggressively tackle

crime on all fronts — both on an international level by targeting drug trafficking networks (with help from the U.S.), and at the local level with improved policing and other measures. The effort has shown results. According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, the DR had a homicide rate of 11.3 per 100,000 people in 2017, a decline of 22.3 per 100,000 in 2012. Pérez says his country now boasts “one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America.” “But we continue working in trying to reduce the amount of crime. We have a 911 system which helped a lot. We have more than 5,000 cameras in the main cities that target delinquency. So that helped a lot because most crimes that happened in the Dominican Republic are shot by the cameras, and in two or three days, the case is solved because of that,” he said. But the long-term solution to preventing crime is not cameras, but careers, the

ambassador emphasized. “We think that the only way to reduce crime in a sustained way is by employing people,” he said. “In the last four years, we created around 500,000 jobs in the Dominican Republic and it’s increasing every year.”

ECONOMIC STRIDES

In fact, for the last 20 years, the Dominican Republic has been one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America. According to the World Bank, the country averaged 6.6% growth between 2014 and 2018, which in turn reduced poverty and expanded the middle class. Pérez credits President Danilo Medina — first elected in 2012 and re-elected in 2016 — with instituting a raft of economic reforms. That includes job creation programs, anticorruption measures, fiscal discipline and diversifying the economy away from agriculture by expanding the services sector, which, along with manufacturing, has

grown thanks in part to the Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement passed in 2007. While inequality remains a stubborn problem, the ambassador says Medina is working to reduce income disparity in part by focusing on education, noting that 4% of the national budget goes toward education. As an example, Pérez said the president began a program whereby children go to school from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. In addition, students receive breakfast, lunch and snacks throughout the day at school. “Before that, they would just go to school from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. They would go to school most of the time without eating anything and return to their homes and in many cases they didn’t have anything to eat. So we solved a huge problem by investing in education,” he said, adding that not only did this help the children, it helped the parents by allowing families to work in the afternoons. The ambassador said Medina’s government has also invested in expanding health care and offering loans to small businesses as part of its long-term National Development Strategy (Vision 2030), which makes promoting more inclusive economic growth a core policy strategy. In addition to creating a better business environment and other reforms, a key plank of the strategy is improving resilience to disasters and climate-related risks. That’s especially critical for the Dominican Republic, which, like its Caribbean neighbors, is on the front lines of hurricanes that continue to grow in strength and ferocity because of a rapidly warming planet. “For us it’s very important because every year we suffer

the consequences of climate change,” Pérez said. “In the cases of Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria, we have had very close encounters with very aggressive hurricanes that have impacted some of our nearest neighbors.” To that end, the ambassador noted that Medina created a ministry, directed by the president himself, that is solely dedicated to addressing climate change and raising awareness of the issue. “This will in a very significant way make us able to adhere and comply with the Paris agreement on climate change,” Pérez said, adding that even though President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the landmark deal, “We still trust that the Paris climate change accord is the best course of action. This does not affect our point of view in any way. We can see from the glacial melt, from the higher temperatures and higher carbon emissions that this is a very real issue and we are committed to anything to help [mitigate and prevent] climate change.”

TRUMP SUPPORTER

Despite the disagreement over climate change, Pérez said his boss and the U.S. president “get on very well,” with Trump inviting Medina to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida earlier this year. The two leaders have also found unlikely common ground: While Trump has drawn widespread condemnation for his harsh immigration policies, Medina’s government has praised the administration’s immigration crackdown, even though the U.S. is home to nearly 2 million people of Dominican descent — many of whom immigrated here through family reunifications, a practice Trump wants to sharply curtail. But Pérez sees things differently. “We have been very lucky that the Dominican diaspora that has immigrated to the United States, most of them have come legally,” he said, adding that a majority went on to become naturalized U.S. citizens. The ambassador also said his government sympathizes with Trump’s predicament. “We are very sensible regarding immigration because we suffer from the same thing. The Dominican border is very permeable. We understand exactly what the Americans feel regarding illegal immigration. We feel this same problem. We suffer from this same problem.”

Dominican Republic at a Glance Independence Day Feb. 27, 1844

(from Haiti)

Location Caribbean, eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, east of Haiti Capital Santo Domingo Population 10.3 million (July 2018 estimate) Ethnic groups Mixed 70.4% (mestizo/indio 58%, mulatto 12.4%), black 15.8%, white 13.5%, other 0.3% (2014 estimate)

Religious groups Roman Catholic 47.8%, Protestant 21.3%, other 2.2%, none 28% (2017 estimate) GDP (purchasing power parity) $173 billion (2017 estimate)

GDP per-capita (PPP) $17,000 (2017 estimate)

Flag of the Dominican Republic

GDP growth 4.6 percent (2017 estimate) Unemployment 5.1 percent (2017 estimate) Population below poverty line 30.5 percent (2016 estimate)

Industries Tourism, sugar processing, gold

mining, textiles, cement, tobacco, electrical components, medical devices SOURCE: CIA WORLD FACTBOOK

WRITING HIS OWN DESTINY

PHOTO: ZOOSNOW / PIXABAY

Recently, the Majestic Elegance in Punta Cana, above, temporarily closed its doors because of low occupancy following the alleged assault of a Delaware woman by a man dressed as a hotel employee. Despite a spate of American deaths this year at these types of all-inclusive resorts, experts say the Dominican Republic remains a safe tourist destination, with over 6.6 million visitors flocking to the country’s beaches last year.

THE HAITIAN DIVIDE

That problem is Haiti, a former French colony that shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, a former Spanish colony. Although the two countries share the same island, that’s where the similarities end. “The average Haitian is nearly 10 times poorer than the average Dominican, and much more likely to be unemployed,” according to a report by Vox Media. “And that poverty manifests in drastic disparities in health. The infant mortality rate in Haiti is more than twice the rate in the DR, and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS is almost double.” As a result, tens of thousands of Haitians have migrated to neighboring DR (an estimated 500,000 Haitian immigrants now live in the country of 10.7 million). But these impoverished immigrants are ethnically, culturally and religiously distinct from their Dominican counterparts. Many complain of discrimination and harsh working conditions, particularly among migrant sugar cane cutters. Meanwhile, Dominicans lament that even though their economy is much stronger than Haiti’s, it cannot afford to absorb hundreds of thousands of immigrants competing for jobs, health care and education. The bad blood between the two countries also stems from a long history of racism and conflict. “The historical animosity between Haitians and Dominicans is rooted not only in language, but in attitudes toward race,” wrote Aida Alami in an Aug. 13, 2018, article for The New York Review of Books. “Santo Domingo, founded in

After an international uproar, the Dominican government backtracked on the law and Medina introduced a plan to grant residency to hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants — mostly Haitians — who had been living and working in the DR before 2011. “President Medina initiated a law which we think is unique to the situation and in the world, where he opened up a channel [for those of Haitian descent] to become legal residents,” Pérez told us. “Everybody who had a birth certificate or any kind of document that would prove their status, they were granted residency and they could work legally in the country.” But critics say many Dominicans of Haitian migrant descent lack those documents, having struggled for years to obtain birth certificates from a government bureaucracy not keen on granting them rights — even if they were born in the DR. The ambassador counters that under Medina’s “naturalization” plan, some 300,000 illegal Haitians applied for residency, with the majority of them approved. Yet Pérez readily admits that his government is prepared to deport any illegal Haitians in an effort to stem the constant flow of migrants across the border. “We’re in the exact same situation that the United States is facing.”

PHOTO: MUSTANGJOE / PIXABAY

1496 by Spaniards, was the first European colony in the Americas. The French settled in the western part of the island, where they made a fortune by using slaves to grow sugar cane. Then, in 1791, a slave rebellion drove out the French, making Haiti the world’s first independent black republic in 1804. In 1822, Haiti occupied its Spanish-speaking neighbor, an episode in that country’s history that has left the image of Haitians as machete-wielding killers in the collective imagination of many Dominicans. “In 1937, that history of enmity and bigotry resulted in the massacre of an estimated 20,000 Haitians along the border by Dominican soldiers armed with machetes,” Alami added. But the ambassador scoffed at the notion

that Dominicans are racist against Haitians. “This situation of race that has been thrown into this particular [debate] is not real because we are not white. We are Latinos. We are a mix of black as well, so we are not discriminating against a race. We are discriminating against the illegals that are coming into the country,” he insisted. To that end, President Medina has struggled to control the flow of illegal immigrants crossing the porous 230-mile border. His government has also been criticized for its treatment of Haitians in the DR. In 2013, a landmark court ruling stripped an estimated 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian migrant descent of their citizenship, sparking fears of mass deportations.

While Medina’s track record on Haiti is mixed, he’s enjoyed high approval ratings at home for his handling of the economy. More recently, he earned international praise for his decision not to seek re-election next year after considering a proposal to amend the constitution to run for a third term. The move ensures that the Dominican Republic’s young democracy continues to mature after decades of brutal dictatorship. Pérez, a political appointee, is a longtime member of Medina’s Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) who was asked by the president to serve in Washington in December 2014. The oldest of 10 children, Pérez joined the PLD in 1978 because he was “inspired by the revolutionary ideas” of the party’s founder, Juan Bosch, who was the country’s first democratically elected president for a brief time in 1963 and who led the exiled opposition against the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo for 25 years. “This led me to a beautiful life of politics,” Pérez said, although he admits that he could’ve done without the door-to-door campaigning he had to do during his run for senator. The ambassador’s admiration for Bosch extends well beyond politics. In addition to founding the PLD, Bosch is regarded as one of the Dominican Republic’s most prominent writers — a path Pérez might try to emulate as well. An avid fan of the classics, the ambassador wrote his first book last year detailing the social and economic realities of life in Latin America. He recently completed his second book, which goes in a “totally different direction” than the first. Based on real-life events, the novel tells the story of a boy who witnesses the murder of his father at the hands of his best friend and, when he grows up, embarks on a quest to find the killer and avenge his father’s death. Pérez laughed when asked if he’d become a full-time writer, saying he wasn’t sure what his next career move would be. But it probably won’t be in diplomacy. “I’m not a diplomat. I came here because … I’ve had a very close relationship with President Medina for years. One day he asked me, ‘You want to be my ambassador in Washington?’ I said, ‘I’m not sure. I don’t know anything about it.’ But he said, ‘You are a politician. You know how to do it.’” And so he did. Asked whether he’s enjoyed his posting, the ambassador replied with a diplomatic smile: “I feel happy, but I’m not going to continue with this career.” WD

Anna Gawel (@diplomatnews) is the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat.

OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 19

WD | Global Vantag e Point

You’re Fired! Op-ed: Will Rex Tillerson Go Down as One of the Worst Secretaries of State? BY DENNIS JETT

ne thing diplomats often have to do is help their fellow citizens when they go abroad and do something foolish. Those unwise decisions take many forms. A missionary in a country in the midst of a civil war may decide that his deity will prevent any harm from coming to him. Other people will show up at an airport for an international flight with a suitcase full of drugs thinking the authorities cannot possibly be smart enough to catch them. For American diplomats at least, there is a third group that also frequently poses a challenge. It is businessmen who fly in for a meeting with government officials and believe they will have a deal signed by lunch and be back on their corporate jet before the sun sinks in the sky. They have no interest in learning much about the local situation and display a remarkable mix of ignorance and arrogance. And the bigger the company, the truer it tends to be. That combination is why when future historians consider the Trump era, there is one debate they are sure to have. The argument will be whether Rex Tillerson was just among the worst secretaries of state or wins the gold medal for ineptitude. Tillerson provided a lot of support for the latter point of view when he sat down for an interview with the staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in May. A somewhat redacted transcript of the meeting was released several weeks later. Tillerson said he did not prepare for the meeting, which was perhaps why he said — over 30 times — that he could not remember the responses to questions posed by committee staff. He was also aided in avoiding most substance by being accompanied by two of his own lawyers and one from the State Department who exerted executive privilege on seven occasions. Tillerson did describe how his goal as secretary was to promote and protect freedom, democracy, individual liberty and human dignity, and he lauded the tireless efforts, talent and dedication of State Department personnel. He also said that when he was called to Trump Tower in New York to meet Trump for the first time, he talked for over an hour about how he saw the world. He was then offered the job on the spot without any discussion of the role he would play. Tillerson lasted only 14 months in the position, which is one of the shortest tenures on record. There are a few secretaries of state who exited quicker for various reasons, but it would be very hard to name one who was fired faster. While he parroted the required rhetoric about American values and the valu20 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

PHOTO: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson lasted only 14 months on the job before being fired by President Trump — one of the shortest tenures on record.

“

There are a few secretaries of state who exited quicker for various reasons, but it would be very hard to name one who was fired faster. DENNIS JETT

professor of international affairs at Penn State University

able State Department staff, his respect for both rings more than a little hollow. He never let values get in the way of making a profit for his company. And among his first acts as secretary was surrounding himself with a very small group of people with little to no foreign policy experience, isolating himself from the rest of the building and bringing in clueless outside management experts to work on a reorganization plan that envisioned cutting the department’s budget by somewhere between a quarter and a third. Such a huge cut would require a massive and forced reduction in the number of diplomats and civil servants. Unlike the Pentagon, the State Department cannot deal with a budget cut by deferring the acquisition of a billiondollar bomber or a few multibilliondollar ships. Another of his first acts was to freeze hiring, including that of the family members overseas. The move had no relation to the supposed reorganization and was a disaster in every respect. A

”

report by the Inspector General determined that the freeze had endangered the security, health and safety of department personnel and devastated morale. At the same time Tillerson was doing his best to eliminate the chances of meaningful employment for the spouses of diplomats, he was ignoring the politicization of parts of the State Department. Another IG report found gross mismanagement and abuse of career employees in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs. Tillerson even managed to compound his own weaknesses by his personnel decisions. He hired a chief of staff he had never met who had no State Department experience and a deputy chief of staff with even thinner credentials. The person he brought in to run the reorganization had no government experience and lasted only three months. The man he looked to for slashing the budget came from a rightwing think tank and was again someone who brought no relevant experience to the job.

To say it was a question of the blind leading the blind would be to imply that Tillerson at least had a sense of touch. He didn’t and instantly alienated the press corps at the department by cutting the daily press briefing to a couple of times a month while making no room for interviews — or for the press — on his plane during overseas trips. His relationships in other parts of Washington were not much better. He made little attempt to cultivate congressional leadership or ties with the administration. And he failed at his most important relationship — the one with the president — when he made what will be his most memorable quote by referring to Trump as a f**king moron. Tillerson confirmed to the committee staff that he believed Trump to be “a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read things, doesn’t like briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of lots of things.” But then he hastened to add that he did not consider this a critical or pejorative assessment, but rather just a description of how Trump operates. He justified his desire to gut the department’s budget on the basis of the growth in its staffing over the last decade without ever bothering to ask why that had happened. During the period from 1985 to 2000, the department’s budget in real terms was cut in half thanks to a post-Cold War attitude that commuSEE OPED • PAGE 46

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WD | Medical

Cloudy Outlook Cases of Vaping-Linked Lung Illness Rise to 530 Across 38 States: CDC BY DENNIS THOMPSON

he number of confirmed or suspected severe lung illnesses linked to vaping has leapt to 530 cases across 38 states and the Virgin Islands, U.S. health officials reported on Sept. 19. There have also been seven confirmed deaths in six states — California, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota and Oregon, officials added. Unfortunately, officials still don’t know exactly what is triggering these lung injuries. “Although the investigation continues, no consistent e-cigarette or vaping product, substance, additive or brand has been identified in all cases, nor has any one product or substance been conclusively linked to lung injury in patients,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a media briefing. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration now has more than 150 vaping product samples tied to these cases and is analyzing them for any potential clues, said Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. “FDA is analyzing these samples for the presence of a broad range of chemicals,” Zeller said. He also mentioned that the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations (OCI) is participating in ongoing efforts to figure out what is making these people sick. Zeller declined to comment on any potential criminal cases that might result from the OCI’s involvement. However, he noted that “OCI is not pursuing any prosecutions associated with personal use of any controlled substances in these cases.” The investigation has been hampered by the fact that there are so many different vaping products on the market being used in many different ways, Schuchat and Zeller explained. There’s also the possibility that some people have been sickened by exposure to more than one type of product, Schuchat noted. One potential culprit is an oily chemical called vitamin E acetate. Vitamin E acetate is typically available as a dietary supplement and skin treatment, and it continues to be found in some of the samples, Zeller said. But Zeller added that “our laboratory analysis continues to show a mix of results. There’s no one com-

22 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

PHOTO: LINDSAY FOX / PIXABAY

“

Although the investigation continues, no consistent e-cigarette or vaping product, substance, additive or brand has been identified in all cases, nor has any one product or substance been conclusively linked to lung injury in patients. DR. ANNE SCHUCHAT

”

principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

pound, ingredient, constituent — including vitamin E acetate — that’s showing up in all of the samples tested.” Nearly three-quarters of the people who’ve developed lung injury from vaping are male, Schuchat said, and more than half the cases are in people younger than 25. Symptoms include cough, shortness of breath and chest pains. Some patients have had so much trouble breathing that they wind up on oxygen, and in extreme cases placed on a mechanical ventilator. “Until we know more, if you are concerned about these specific

For More Information The American Lung Association has more about vaping and lung health at www.lung.org/stop-smoking/ smoking-facts/impact-of-e-cigarettes-on-lung.html.

health risks, CDC recommends you not use an e-cigarette or vaping product,” Schuchat said. Former smokers should ask their doctor about using a nicotine patch or gum, Schuchat added.

Health officials particularly warn against buying any vaping products off the street, especially if they’ve been laced with THC, the compound in marijuana that gets you high, Zeller said. But again, THC products have not been involved in all the cases, Schuchat said. Some patients have used products containing THC and others containing nicotine, while some have only used nicotine products. WD Dennis Thompson is a HealthDay reporter. Copyright © 2019 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Education A Special Section of The Washington Diplomat

October 2019

PHOTO: CARLOS ROSARIO INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL

Immigrant Bridge

Teachers from D.C.’s Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School traveled to a technical school in El Salvador this summer to study the culture of a country from where the bulk of their pupils hail.

D.C.’s Carlos Rosario School Partners with El Salvador as Part of Sister City Agreement • BY STEPHANIE KANOWITZ

ive teachers from Washington’s Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School became students when they traveled to a technical school in El Salvador this summer. The first concrete result of a Sister City

agreement between San Salvador and D.C., the trip enabled the staff members to study the culture of a country from where the bulk of their pupils hail. Team members from the charter school’s Culinary Arts Academy

traveled to San Salvador from Aug. 8 to 23 to visit ITCA-FEPADE, a technical education institute that has provided workforce training to Salvadorans for 50 years. SEE R OS AR IO • PAGE 24

OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 23

LOOKING FOR MORE INTERNATIONAL LOOKING FOR MORE STUDENTS? INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS? PHOTO: CARLOS ROSARIO INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL

Members of the Carlos Rosario Culinary Arts Academy traveled to San Salvador to visit ITCA-FEPADE, a technical education institute that has provided workforce training to Salvadorans for 50 years.

Rosario CONTINUED • PAGE 23

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SAMPLING ANOTHER CULTURE

Carlos Rosario’s partnership with ITCAFEPADE — known as the Puente/Bridge Exchange Project — meshes with the school’s model and is the result of a 2018 pact that D.C. made with San Salvador at the urging of Mayor Muriel Bowser, along with the May-

Our doors are open to serve all immigrants and D.C.’s adult learners…. This partnership that we have is just a really natural initiative for us to be part of.

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Three instructors, the employment developer and Sebastien Lamerre, the academy director, visited cultural sites, interacted with students and gave culinary demonstrations throughout the country. “It was enlightening, it was eye-opening, it was discovering new cultures,” Lamerre said. “Foremost for us, it was understanding better the Salvadoran culture and community.” That’s crucial at the school, where almost half the students are Salvadoran immigrants and 70 percent of the student body speaks Spanish. The next most-represented country is Ethiopia, but students come from 70 countries and speak 50 languages. Named after a Puerto Rican activist and educator, the Carlos Rosario school is a mini United Nations, said Allison Kokkoros, its chief executive officer.

foundational skills to the immigrant community. The first is offering ESOL, citizenship preparation, GED and computer skills literacy programs at its two campuses. The second prong is career certification training for high-demand, high-growth industries such as culinary arts, nurse aides and bilingual tutors or teacher aides. For example, the school’s Construye DC Plus program is a preapprenticeship construction trade program that was named the nation’s best innovative workforce training program by Minds that Move Us, an initiative to encourage innovative education models. The third prong is providing comprehensive services that help students achieve their goals during and after their time at the school.

ALLISON KOKKOROS

CEO of Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School

The school is the country’s first adult charter school and the only one in D.C. dedicated to serving foreign-born immigrants. For over 40 years, it has offered tens of thousands of immigrants a holistic learning experience through award-winning education, life skills programs and support services. Its student makeup reflects the District’s: More than 20,000 Salvadorans live within the city’s boundaries, while about 200,000 reside in the region. More than 14 percent of D.C.’s population was born in another country, according to the American Immigration Council, and the top three countries of origin are El Salvador (15.3% of immigrants), China (4.9%) and Ethiopia (4.7%). “Our doors are open to serve all immigrants and D.C.’s adult learners,” including those born and raised in D.C., Kokkoros said. “Our mission is to help them to thrive, to have access to equal opportunity through really outstanding education, premier training and support.” Students range in age from 17 to 70, although a man in his 80s graduated in June from the English as a Second Language (ESOL) program. Since its founding in 1970, the school has graduated more than 71,000 students. It has a three-pronged model of providing

”

or’s Office on Latino Affairs and the Greater Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Bowser and a delegation that included Kokkoros went to the city in August 2018 to sign a memorandum of understanding with ITCA-FEPADE, with Claudia Ivette Canjura de Centeno, the Salvadoran ambassador to the United States, standing by. “This partnership that we have is just a really natural initiative for us to be part of,” Kokkoros said. In January, Carlos Rosario hosted three chefs and an administrator from ITCA-FEPADE. They stayed with school employees and were trained by Benjamin Velazquez, a founder of the Culinary Arts Academy, in an internationally recognized industry certification called ServSafe that trains restaurant workers in the safe preparation and handling of food. There is no equivalent certification in El Salvador, but the visiting chefs left with plans to replicate it in their country to help elevate its culinary and hospitality industries. They also took part in cultural activities such as seeing a play and visiting New York City and the renown Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. Likewise, the team from Carlos Rosario traveled around El Salvador, including a stop in the coastal municipality of La Unión, an

area from where many of the charter school’s students hail. They also visited local markets and sampled fresh fish and tropical fruit that are not as readily available here as they are in El Salvador’s warmer climate. In observing classes at ITCA-FEPADE, Lamerre and his travel companions learned about Salvadoran cooking techniques and noticed that instructors teach culinary arts by looking at where food is available and accounting for costs. “I realized we should do that more here as well, emphasizing … what we can do at home as far as budget,” he said. After all, many students work more than one job, are heads of their families and came to the United States to earn money to support not only their loved ones here, but back home, too. Lamerre was impressed by a restaurant operated entirely by students and coached by chef instructors. “That gives them very good experience on how to cook, serve and even manage because the students are also in charge of making reservations … and planning the menu, just like a real restaurant,” he said. But the biggest takeaway for Lamerre was the country’s beauty. “Understanding the past history of El Salvador helps us to tailor better our teaching techniques and methods to the El Salvadoran community, but not only to them, but to the Central and South American culture,” he said.

CURRENT CLIMATE GIVES TRIP LARGER MEANING

El Salvador is Central America’s smallest country, but it’s also among the poorest and has one of the highest homicide rates in the world: 50.3 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018. Although that is down from 60.8 in 2017 and 103 in 2015, the State Department issued a travel advisory in January warning travelers to reconsider going there because of crime. Since 2001, the United States has provided temporary protected status (TPS) to about 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants living and working here, but

A delegation from Washington, D.C., including Mayor Muriel Bowser, fourth from right, recently traveled to El Salvador as part of a Sister City agreement between San Salvador and D.C.

PHOTO: CARLOS ROSARIO INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL

the Trump administration has moved to end it. First, the deadline was Sept. 9, but that has been extended to Jan. 2, 2020. What’s more, President Trump decided to cut aid to Central America after blasting Mexico for not stopping a recent influx of immigrants from Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — who have come to the U.S. border to apply for asylum here. While the administration says the cuts are in line with its increasingly strict immigration policies, others say the move is counterproductive because that assistance is designed to curb the very violence and poverty that drive people to flee in the first place. In fiscal 2018, Customs and Border Protection officials apprehended more than 38,000 unaccompanied children and nearly 104,000 people traveling as families from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Between 1980 and 2017, the size of the Central American immigrant population in the U.S. grew tenfold from 354,000 to 3.5 million. Still, El Salvador is more than what we hear about in the news, Kokkoros said.

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Rosario CONTINUED • PAGE 25

“There are realities in El Salvador about gangs so that is true, but that’s all we hear about … and it is such an injustice because it’s a beautiful country with the most beautiful natural resources and history and Mayan culture,” she said. For instance, she visited a newly uncovered Mayan ruin known as the “Pompeii of the Americas” because it was covered by ash until it was discovered in 1978. The buildings there date to the year 660, when the nearby Loma Caldera volcano erupted. She also saw modernization efforts, including infrastructure improvements such as roads and bridges under construction, and a push for ecotourism. “They have the natural resources and our partnership with them will help them prepare to be on the hospitality side of supporting ecosystem,” Kokkoros said. “It feels like El Salvador could be on the brink of some really exciting new day — growth and recovery from the ravages of their civil war [from 1979 to 1992]. It makes it that much more exciting and it feels that much more important to have some small part to play to support Salvadorans in El Salvador.” PHOTO: CARLOS ROSARIO INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL Lamerre concurs. He and his team met a man building a na- In observing classes at the ITCA-FEPADE education institute in El Salvador, teachers from D.C.’s Carlos Rosario ture destination on a mountaintop that will offer a small resort School learned about Salvadoran cooking techniques and how instructors teach culinary arts by looking for guests to stay in and enjoy fishing and hiking. at where food is available and accounting for costs. “One of the things that struck me the most is that in spite of all the challenges and past history, it is amazing to see how the Salvadorans, and sister institute with resources such as cutting-edge technology. particularly the new generation that is growing, how welcoming they are and how As part of the first MOU, Bowser pledged $500,000 from D.C.’s MCN Build happy they are and how willing they are to do whatever it takes to succeed and Foundation to San Salvador for a new library, to which Carlos Rosario will donate make a living for themselves. It’s just amazing,” he said. culinary books, Kokkoros said. “We approached this knowing that many times Sister Cities that were signed across the nation might be more symbolic, and we decided if we wanted to be part NEXT STEPS of this, we wanted to support our mayor’s vision of making this Sister City agreeCarlos Rosario is working on a new MOU to document the partnership’s next ment substantive and impactful for both capitals,” Kokkoros said. WD steps. For instance, there are plans to hold quarterly meetings via Skype to support ITCA-FEPADE’s ServSafe efforts. Additionally, the D.C. school plans to support its Stephanie Kanowitz is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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Luxury Living A Special Section of The Washington Diplomat

October 2019

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal passes through Georgetown.

PHOTO: BY AGNOSTICPREACHERSKID - OWN WORK; TRANSFERRED TO COMMONS BY USER:MATTHIASB, CC BY-SA 3.0

Georgetown’s Many Lives A Haven of History, Georgetown Fights to Compete with City’s Newer Neighborhoods •

eorgetown was the first glimpse of D.C. that I got when my then-fiancé brought me to the area to apartment hunt in Ballston, Va. We went to dinner at one of many non-chain restaurants. It was summertime and a lobster special

was on the menu. I ordered it, and as I cracked its shell, I watched passersby and noticed something interesting: They were clothed. I grew up in South Florida and attended the University of Florida. I was accustomed to seeing many midriffs,

BY STEPHANIE KANOWITZ

barely-there shorts and boxers deliberately puffed out of oversize, low-slung jeans. But in Georgetown, there were crustaceans and class. I was sold. SEE G EOR G ETOW N • PAGE 28 OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 27

Georgetown CONTINUED • PAGE 27

During the seven years I lived over the bridge from Georgetown, the neighborhood became a destination for me. My husband and I went to movies at the AMC Georgetown 14 on K Street, even though we passed two theaters on our drive there. We ended up sitting slack-jawed next to comedian Dave Chappelle when he plopped down next to us at Hershey’s Ice Cream adjacent to the theater. We strolled along the cobblestone streets lined with multimillion-dollar Federal-style rowhouses and stylish, quirky storefronts, window shopping at high-end stores such as Intermix and drooling over delicacies at Dean & DeLuca. Eventually, we moved to the suburbs and the nights out in Georgetown all but stopped. The neighborhood continues to have a certain allure in a nostalgic kind of way. But now the District has hipper, more popular attractions such as CityCenterDC and the H Street Corridor, as well as entire new neighborhoods such as The Wharf and Navy Yard, which some Georgetown devotees say leaves their neighborhood stuck in the very past that gives it its charisma. “It has old charm. You don’t get that in other areas of the city. I think that’s what really makes Georgetown special,” said Jennifer Romm, director of the Citizens Association of Georgetown. But it also makes it tough for Georgetown to modernize and keep up with the times. A federally protected historic district, PHOTO: BY INGFBRUNO - OWN WORK, CC BY-SA 3.0 Georgetown’s appearance is fiercely protected by the Commission of Fine Arts and the Old Georgetown Board, which dictate As part of the 15-year action plan Georgetown 2028, the National Park Service will restore canal boat rides along the C&O canal that had stopped in 2011. what renovations are allowed. Incoming businesses must adhere to strict rules and secure specialized permits, which can hold up from $47,000 at the end of 2018 and about $46,000 in 2017. The real estate services firm their progress. That’s one reason for the abundance of “for lease” and “for sale” signs in also puts the neighborhood’s overall vacancy rate for office space at 17.2%, the highest of empty storefronts right now, said Joe Sternlieb, chief executive officer and president of the seven areas that the firm tracks. That’s up from 12.9% in the first quarter and 10% at the Georgetown Business Improvement District (BID), which was established in 1999 to the end of 2018. enhance the commercial part of the neighborhood. But one-offs are making a comeback, Sternlieb said, as more people shop online, rather than inside big chain stores and malls. “The people who always like shopping small, local, well-curated stores where the owner is there and gets to know you, those people still like IDENTITY CRISIS shopping in those places,” he said. “So, we are seeing a lot of interest lately from locals Over the years, Georgetown’s treasure trove of mom-and-pop shops and eateries gave interested in coming back into the market.” way to chain stores and restaurants that began taking over both sides of M Street. HighFor instance, clothing chain Zara closed its location on Wisconsin Avenue in April 2018, end shops such as Kate Spade and Intermix offered inviting storefronts for people to ad- and that space has been purchased and will be replaced by seven smaller retailers — all mire as they munched on treats from Georgetown Cupcake. locals. “I think they will be quite successful,” Sternlieb said. Landlords began raising rents to attract the national and global brands that could afNine retail buildings sold in Georgetown in 2018, totaling $50.8 million in sales volume. ford them, while the independent stores owned by locals closed shop. To Beth Solomon, And while some longtime restaurants recently shut their doors, including J. Paul’s and founder of the Georgetown Dish news and entertainment website, that shift from unique Paolo’s, others are stepping in to fill the void, including the first Georgetown location for to a “lowest common denominator approach” signaled a downturn for the neighborhood. celebrity chef José Andrés’s America Eats Tavern. A Bethesda, Md., native, she spent much of her late childhood traipsing through Georgetown. “It shaped what my sense of Washington was, and in the ’80s, Georgetown was a REOPENING THE TAPS really different place,” Solomon said. “It had texOn that note, another major help in stemming the exodus of restaurants to other upture, it was interesting, it was kind of bohemian and-coming neighborhoods was lifting the liquor licensing moratorium that capped the and cultural. I don’t think those would be the number of licenses available to restaurants and multipurpose facilities within 1,800 feet first adjectives that people would use now.” of the central intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street, NW — a major turnoff to She criticizes what she said were decisions to restaurants otherwise interested in hanging a shingle in Georgetown. orient Georgetown toward tourists and suburEnacted in 1989 at the behest of residents who balked at the behavior of inebriated colbanites — something she says is starting to hap- lege students and tourists, BID worked with the Advisory Neighborhood Commission and pen on 14th Street, NW, now, too. Citizens Association of Georgetown to put an end to it in 2016. “Any neighborhood can suffer from its own “Restaurants that weren’t even interested in Georgetown are now touring here, and popularity,” Solomon said. “I don’t know how you put the genie back in the bottle.” SEE G EOR G ETOW N • PAGE 30 PHOTO: RIGGS BANK, GEORGETOWN / CC BY-SA 2.5 Another iconic aspect of Georgetown’s personality has also disappeared alongside the trend The PNC Bank stands at the central juncture toward more brand-name, upscale retail: its of M and Wisconsin Streets in Georgetown. nightlife, particularly its boisterous college bar scene. That was a welcome development for many well-heeled residents who grew tired of drunk, rowdy university students taking over Georgetown streets every weekend — and who spearheaded the drive to curb the growth of bars by sharply limiting the number of liquor licenses that can be issued. But the demise of Georgetown’s nightlife scene was, predictably, a disappointment to those college kids, as well as to others for whom the neighborhood’s casual pubs and dive bars gave Georgetown a laidback, fun vibe despite its ubiquitous wealth. Among the longtime iconic bars to fall victim to this decline were Third Edition, legendary for its lax entry policies for younger students; Garrett’s; The Guards; Rhino Bar; the piano bar Mr. Smith’s, which moved to the location once occupied by Chadwick’s; and, most recently, Old Glory BBQ.

EMPTY SPACE

Rising rents and the closure of mainstay, locally owned businesses have taken their toll in recent years. Georgetown’s retail vacancy rate was 7.1% in 2018, compared with 6% for the D.C. region, according to BID’s 2018 Georgetown Retail Market Report. “At the end of 2018, there were 48 empty storefronts totaling 214,000 square feet, or about 10.1% of total retail space. Of those spaces, 15 had signed leases, totaling 61,500 square feet, or about 3% of total retail space,” the report states. The average asking rent in Georgetown was about $49,000 for the second quarter of 2019, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s MarketBeat Washington D.C. report — up

28 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

PHOTO: MONICA VOLPIN / PIXABAY

Georgetown used to be dotted with independent mom-and-pop stores, which gave way to larger retail and restaurant chains, although locally owned stores seem to be making a comeback.

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Long & Foster | Christie’s

16.8% 11%

Compass

9.9%

TTR

9.3%

WFP CBRB

3.2%

Discover your next home at longandfoster.com/luxury Source: Information included in this report is based on data supplied by BRIGHTMLS and its member Association(s) of REALTORS, who are not responsible for its accuracy. Does not reflect all activity in the marketplace. July 1, 2018 — June 30, 2019, as of July 11, 2019. Luxury is defined as homes priced $1 Million and above. Information contained in this report is deemed reliable but not guaranteed, should be independently verified, and does not constitute an opinion of BRIGHTMLS or Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc. ©2019 All rights reserved. Christie’s International Real Estate in select areas.

OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 29

Georgetown CONTINUED • PAGE 28

some of them have signed leases,” Sternlieb said. “More than anything, it’s changed the perception that Georgetown was closed to those businesses and too difficult to do business in, so we now have the same rules as everybody else in town.”

FUTURE VISION

BID is six years in to Georgetown 2028, a 15-year strategic plan to keep Georgetown viable against all of D.C.’s new competing neighborhoods. Among its most notable accomplishments is a revamp of the section of the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal that runs through Georgetown and the 184.5-mile towpath alongside it. Once a crucial conduit of trade, the canal operated until a flood damaged it in 1924. The National Park Service (NPS) has kept the section in Georgetown watered since the C&O Canal National Historic Park was established in 1971, even continuing to offer rides on canal boats pulled by mules as PHOTO: ROBSON MACHADO / PIXABAY they had back in the day. But it fell into disGeorgetown is one of D.C.’s oldest repair and went out of use in 2011. neighborhoods and has preserved As a result of Georgetown 2028, the boat much of its historic charm. Below, is coming back in September 2020, and sailing vessels dock along the NPS will run the mules again. That one line Georgetown waterfront circle 1865. in the plan led to the creation of an orgaWhen this photograph was taken, nization — Georgetown Heritage — with Georgetown was still a separate municipality within the District of four staff members, a $1 million budget Columbia until it was consolidated and $20 million in investments from the with Washington City in 1871. city and federal governments, Sternlieb said. according to NPS, and during the Another major project, which is still under BILLY MARTIN, owner of Martin’s Tavern American Revolution, it was a depot discussion, is the construction of gondolas for military supplies. Incorporated in connecting Georgetown to the Rosslyn neigh1789, Georgetown became more industrial as flourborhood of Arlington, Va. The Georgetownmills, a textile mill and a paper factory set up shop Rosslyn Aerial Gondola Lift would involve 23 there. cabins hanging from a cable and traveling at 12 After the river flooded and damaged the canal, miles per hour, according to the Georgetownthe neighborhood fell into disrepair. It would reRosslyn Gondola Coalition. The goal is to main “one of Washington’s worst slums” until the make Georgetown — the largest employment 1930s and hit its stride two decades later thanks to center in D.C. without a Metro station, accorda dashing young politician named John F. Kennedy. ing to the group — more accessible. Before he and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy lived Feelings for and against that proposal run in the White House, they lived in Georgetown. strong. “I think it sounds totally fun,” Romm He proposed to her in a booth at Martin’s Tavern. said. “People think that it would really affect (Other famous patrons include presidents Richard the commute, that it would get cars off the Nixon, Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and street and get people using public transportaGeorge W. Bush.) tion. It would be a huge boon for [Georgetown] The neighborhood is also home to Blues Alley, University and for businesses and for residents, the oldest continuously operated jazz supper club too. It’s sort of our subway stop.” in America — a place where Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy But not everyone is enamored with the conGillespie and Wynton Marsalis have held court. cept. What’s more, Georgetown was home to a vibrant “Many people just roll their eyes at the idea African American community. Many came as of a gondola into Rosslyn from Georgetown,” PHOTO: WILLIAM MORRIS SMITH / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS slaves to tobacco land owners, but by 1900, Washsaid Billy Martin, owner of Martin’s Tavern. “I’m on the fence. I’m not a big proponent for the gondola, but they may put it in and prove ington had the largest percentage of African Americans of any U.S. city, largely because of opportunities to work for the government. In Georgetown, civil rights movements ran me totally wrong.” Meanwhile, a Metro station isn’t a lost cause, Sternlieb said, but it probably won’t be in strong. For instance, black residents created the Rock Creek Citizens Association in 1916 place by 2038, let alone 2028. “Some day, they’re going to have to separate the Blue Line and boycotted Georgetown’s bicentennial celebration because they said blacks didn’t confrom the Orange and Silver to deal with the bottleneck at the Rosslyn tunnel, and they’re tribute to celebration plans, and it destroyed “For Coloreds Only” signs on Rose Park in going to have to do another tunnel and when they do, that tunnel will come through 1945 and rounded up a petition to create an integrated playground. Many of Georgetown’s homes and buildings date to the 18th and 19th centuries. AccordGeorgetown and we’ll get a station,” he said. Despite the potential changes that could once again transform the neighborhood, not ing to NPS, about 58 houses are listed in the D.C. Inventory as landmarks of Federal City/ all of Georgetown’s iconic offerings have fallen victim to shifting tastes, trends and modes Pre-Civil War importance. The Old Stone House, built in 1765, is the oldest structure on of transportation. Martin’s Tavern, a fixture on Wisconsin Avenue and N Street, NW, since its original foundation in the District. In 1967, Georgetown became a National Historic 1933, has weathered the pendulum swings over the years by staying true to its roots while Landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Still, the neighborhood powers that be are well aware of the commercial competition remaining open to new ideas, according to its owner. “We stay in tune with the times. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — and we don’t,” Martin told they face from places such as The Wharf, where glass-covered mixed-use buildings tower us. “But we also keep an eye on what is the market in the restaurant industry, in the hos- over the historic Municipal Fish Market, the oldest continuously operating open-air fish pitality industry. What direction is it going? What do people want? What are they looking market in the country. Or from CityCenterDC, which has become something of a Rodeo Drive, with designers such as Bulgari, Dior and Salvatore Ferragamo staking out spots in for? So we have to incorporate those kinds of things into our business.” sparkly new buildings. “Something my father told me many, many, many years ago is Georgetown is kind of STORIED HISTORY like a pendulum. It swings up and it swings down,” said Martin, who is on the BID board. Georgetown has long been known as a hub for commercial activity. It was established “The pendulum is, I think, kind of at the bottom right now and it’s going to start swinging in 1751, 40 years before Washington, D.C., was formally established. Reportedly named in back up.” WD honor of Britain’s King George II, it began as a shipping center, due in large part to its location on the Potomac River. Over time, tobacco became “the lifeblood of the community,” Stephanie Kanowitz is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

“

Something my father told me many, many, many years ago is Georgetown is kind of like a pendulum. It swings up and it swings down…. The pendulum is, I think, kind of at the bottom right now and it’s going to start swinging back up.

”

30 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

Culture arts & entertainment art

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diplomatic spouses

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theater

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photography

A DIFFERENT

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IRAN

music

The Washington Diplomat | October 2019

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history

dining

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film

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events

“My Iran: Six Women Photographers” is a welcome, nuanced approach to the country through the eyes of a selection of women photographers who

explore Iran at home and abroad from the start of its revolution to the present day. PAGE 32

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST / © GOHAR DASHTI

Gohar Dashti's "Iran, Untitled"

DI PLOMATIC SPOUSES

ART

Two for One

Boundless Cartoons

Peruvian Ambassador Hugo de

In today’s tense political climate, it’s hard to know

another ambassador: his wife,

have helped us make light of the crazy times

Zela shares his residence with

María Eugenia Chiozza, a distinguished diplomat with her own 38-year career. PAGE 33

whether to laugh or to cry. Fortunately, cartoons in which we live, and as an exhibit on Mexican cartoons shows us, this type of political satire transcends time and boundaries. PAGE 37

OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 31

WD | Culture | Photography

Iranian Complexity Six Women Photographers Capture More Nuanced Picture of Their Homeland •

BY MACKENZIE WEINGER

My Iran: Six Women Photographers THROUGH FEB. 9, 2020

ARTHUR M. SACKLER GALLERY 1050 INDEPENDENCE AVE., SW

(202) 633-1000

| WWW.FREERSACKLER.SI.EDU

his is an Iran that doesn’t make the front pages. With the air conditioning blowing at full speed in the gallery, the resplendent turquoise headscarf on a woman named Somayeh billows in the wind in a single-channel looped projection by the photographer Newsha Tavakolian. The camera slowly zooms in. Somayeh stares forward, confronting viewers with her steady gaze, ultimately fading into darkness before we loop again to her standing tall against a tree whose empty, expansive branches are scattered with a few clear plastic bags. This immersive piece is a transfixing start to “My Iran: Six Women Photographers,” now at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery through February. The show explores Iran at home and abroad through the eyes of a selection of women photographers from the start of the Iranian Revolution to the present day. It’s a welcome, nuanced approach to the country, with women both at the heart of these narratives and serving as the narrators and creators behind them. “We’ve never shown these six Iranian artists together, and with the new acquisitions, they’ve never been shown at all, so we just thought this was a really good time to bring them all together and present a different view of Iran — and of artists in Iran and how they’re working — than what people are seeing in the media every day,” PHOTOS: COURTESY OF co-curator Amelia Meyer told The Washington THE ARTISTS / ARTHUR M. Diplomat. SACKLER GALLERY OF ART Tavakolian, whose stunning work effectively melds the personal and the political, is one of the many highlights of this exhibition. “These images will not change anything, nor will they help anybody. What I hope is that they visualize a generation marginalized by those speaking in their name,” she says in a quote in the exhibition text. Tavakolian found herself in the news earlier this year when The New York Times announced she and her Dutch husband Thomas Erdbrink, the paper’s Tehran correspondent, had been denied permission to work in the country. “My Iran” is a photography show that embraces the fullness of the medium: There are projections, prints that resemble photo albums, black-and-white pictures, documentary photography, whimsical pastiches and manipulated images and computer-generated photographs. There’s also an incredible, small collection of photographs from a 19th-century album showcasing the Iranian Qajar Dynasty-era photography that inspired some of the artists in the show. The six photographers — Tavakolian, Hengameh Golestan, Shadi Ghadirian, Malekeh Nayiny, Gohar Dashti and Mitra Tabrizian — offer fascinating, sensitively drawn portraits of life both within and outside of Iran. American perceptions about Iran have been largely shaped by the 1979 Revolution, whose aftermath Golestan famously captured in photographs documenting the protests that erupted after Iranian authorities ordered women to wear the veil (chador) in public. While the other photographers examine life in post-revolutionary Iran, “the show isn’t overtly political,” Meyer said, noting that even though the photos mostly focus on women, men are also depicted. The result is a nuanced portrayal of the country that offers different “representations of how Iranians are living,” Meyer said. “There’s no one definition of what it means to be Iranian.” The show depicts an array of compelling scenes. Ghadirian’s intriguing series, inspired by 19th-century Iranian photography, incorporates the contemporary and the

32 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

PHOTO: COURTESY OF NEWSHA TAVAKOLIAN / MAGNUM PHOTOS

“My Iran: Six Women Photographers” features a variety of works such as, from top clockwise: Newsha Tavakolian’s “Somayeh”; Malekeh Nayiny’s “Observation”; Shadafarin Ghadirian’s “Untitled Series”; a print from the “Witness” series by Hengameh Golestan; and Mitra Tabrizian’s “A Long Wait.”

historical, with women dressed up in traditional attire posing with objects like a Pepsi can, a newspaper or a bike. The stark contrast hints at the traditional and modern forces that both coexist and compete in today’s Iran. Dashti, who lives and works in Iran, has a particularly memorable set of stylized images from her series “Iran, Untitled.” In one, women are pictured seated on a long couch. They’re reading, gazing into the distance, sporting sunglasses — all seemingly unconcerned with the emptiness of the landscape. They could be right at home, or set adrift. The opposing image features men and women out in that same, liminal wilderness, waiting with suitcases. What are they waiting for? Are they staying? Or going? Tabrizian, who lives in London, shares the final room with Dashti, and it’s a fascinating pairing for their monumental works. As Tabrizian says in the exhibition text, “Those who live in Iran tend to idealize life in the West and those who live outside long for ‘home.’ But what both groups have in common is the will to survive.” “I think the last room of the gallery is particularly arresting. There are two Tabrizian photographs of the emigres who are living in London, and they are kind of interspersed with the Dashti photos of people living in Iran. So you have these very different communities living inside and outside of the country, but you see this kind of limbo that they’re all sort of standing in, this middle space as Tabrizian has called it,” Meyer said. “If they’re living in Iran, they’re not really sure what’s going to happen next or where they’re going to go. And if they’re living outside of Iran, they’re not sure if they’re ever going to go back. I think that gallery is particularly, for me, really interesting to put together, and very moving,” she added. The exhibition closes on Dashti’s beautiful series “Home,” which showcases plants growing out of abandoned buildings. The perspective makes the plants seem endless, spreading and expanding, reconfiguring the architecture and transforming it into something new. These plants may not belong in that space, the images suggest, but they are there and thriving in unusual, strange conditions. They’re a part of the landscape now. WD Mackenzie Weinger (@mweinger) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

Diplomatic Spouses | Culture | WD

Two for One Peruvian Ambassador and His Ambassador Wife Pull Double-Duty Diplomacy •

BY GAIL SCOTT

wo ambassadors live in the Peruvian Residence in D.C.: Ambassador Hugo de Zela, a distinguished 42-year career diplomat, and Ambassador María Eugenia Chiozza, a distinguished diplomat with a 38-year career. Zela, a former permanent representative to the Organization of American States (OAS), became Peru’s ambassador to the U.S. in April, so for now Chiozza is playing the role of the ambassador’s wife. “If there were the top post open at the OAS, that could have been a possibility for me but since I have the rank of ambassador, nothing else is appropriate,” she told us. “Having two ambassadors in the same embassy, the same residence, makes things, I would say, run smoothly precisely because of each other’s experience in diplomacy,” said Chiozza. “It can sometimes be even fun planning events and embassy activities together.” “I always see ‘the big picture’ and Hugo goes very deep into details,” she added. “If he asks me to take a look at his speech, his lecture, I always give him advice.” Which makes sense because between the two of them, they have a multitude of experience. In addition to his two stints at the OAS, Zela was Peru’s ambassador to Brazil and Argentina, as well as its national coordinator in the Rio Group. Unlike her husband, Chiozza has not formally served abroad as an ambassador. Rather, she holds the rank of an ambassador, having served in a number of top postings at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she spearheaded Peru’s relations with the European Union and North America, among other regions, throughout her career. “I wanted to be a diplomat from the time I was little,” said Chiozza, who is still called by her childhood nickname, “Yoyo,” by family and close friends. “A dear friend of my father’s was a fine ambassador and represented Peru in Austria, Canada and Mexico. I was always amazed at his stories and what he knew about other countries by living there,” she recalled. “I watched how diplomacy was being done and I became even more interested in foreign policy and international relations.” During her first two years at the University of Lima, she majored in communication sciences but then decided to become a career diplomat and opted to get a bachelor’s degree in international relations at the Peruvian Diplomatic Academy. She then received her master’s in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, along with a post-graduate degree in foreign commerce from Lima’s Academic Center for Exporters Association. “At the academic center, I was the first woman in a man’s world. I received a lot of attention. Today, it is not rare any more to have women in diplomacy,” Chiozza said. “Now Peru has 20 female ambassadors out of 100 representing our country around the world and soon we will have more. We have a woman vice president and half of the minister’s cabinet are women…. These women are visible and create opportunities for other women. This is the sustainable objective of the United Nations,” she noted. Chiozza is an example of the strides Peruvian women have made in the field of diplomacy. She was most recently director of Europe at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in charge of relations between Peru and European Union countries, before which she was director of investment promotion at the ministry. From 2010 to 2013, she served as deputy consul general of Peru here in Washington and earlier held the same job in São Paulo, Brazil. She was also general director of North America at the ministry in charge of bilateral relations with the United States, Canada and Mexico. At the start of her career, she served as head of

María Eugenia Chiozza, who holds the rank of ambassador, is pictured with her husband, Peruvian Ambassador Ambassador Hugo de Zela, during a trip to Peru’s Sacred Valley of the Incas, above, and a D.C. reception.

“

Having two ambassadors in the same embassy, the same residence, makes things, I would say, run smoothly precisely because of each other’s experience in diplomacy. AMBASSADOR MARÍA EUGENIA CHIOZZA wife of Peruvian Ambassador Hugo de Zela

”

the Political Section at the Peruvian Embassy in the United Kingdom. In addition, she has lectured over the years and participated in various international commissions, conferences and delegations. Not surprisingly, Chiozza is particularly focused on the issue of gender equality and was in charge of designing policies to reduce gender gaps in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She’s been decorated by the governments of Spain and Argentina and besides English, she speaks Portuguese, French and Italian. “My first posting abroad was to the United Kingdom. It was at the beginning of my career and I had the chance to meet Queen Elizabeth II,” Chiozza recalled. “I will never forget her deep blue eyes and how she looked straight at me. I bowed like they told me to and said, ‘your majesty.’ Then I was told to call her ‘ma’am.’ She asked me, ‘What did you do today?’ I told her I was head of Peru’s political section, which meant I was in charge of British politics and British foreign policy. She crossed her arms and said, ‘Is that interesting?’ I quickly answered, ‘Oh, definitely!’ I was so impressed.” Chiozza — whose mother is Scottish — has had other interesting experiences with the Brits. Recently, as director of European affairs, she had two weeks’ notice to prepare for a visit from Boris Johnson, Britain’s colorful and unpredictable prime minister. “We had to plan every minute with security and worked very long hours. He wanted to fly over the Amazon Basin,” she said. “I was only two days into another position when I found out that I was in charge

SEE DIPL OM AT IC S POUS ES • PAGE 34 OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 33

Diplomatic Spouses CONTINUED • PAGE 33

of the first visit to Peru of a sitting American president, George W. Bush, with a huge White House delegation. He stayed only 24 hours but between the two countries, we had 1,000 security personnel on duty. I was talking to the White House nonstop,” she said. The logistics of the visit were compounded by the fact that three nights before the president was to arrive, a car bomb exploded near the American Embassy in Lima. The 2002 bombing in Lima killed nine people and injured 32. While some pointed the finger for the attack at sympathizers of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who fled the country in 2000, or groups such as al-Qaeda or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), suspicions largely fell on the Shining Path, a leftwing terrorist group that has waged a guerilla war in Peru since 1980 but whose influence has waned significantly in recent years. “We had to evaluate what to do. We could have called the visit off but both governments decided it was important to show that our two countries do not negotiate with rebels,” Chiozza said. Her husband has also dealt with thorny political issues throughout his career, including as a member of Peru’s delegation in the border negotiations with Ecuador from 1997 to 1998. (The two countries fought over the disputed territory since the early 19th century until a comprehensive peace accord was finally signed in 1998.) While Peru has dealt with political turbulence and military governments in its past and modern-day problems such as corruption scandals linked to Brazil’s infamous Car Wash investigations that have rocked the region, the country of over 30 million is still one of the most stable and prosperous in Latin America. After decades of military rule and the highly polarizing Fujimori presidency in the 1990s that saw both economic gains and authoritarian backsliding, Peruvians are doing better than many of their neighbors. Peru, dubbed the “Pacific Puma,” has seen four successful democratic elections since 2001, along with steady, robust economic growth driven by sound, market-oriented policies. Home to ancient civilizations and majestic Inca ruins, Peru is a magnet for tourists. “If you want to have a unique experience, I would encourage you to visit Peru,” Chiozza said, putting on her promotional hat. “Peru not only has an ancient history and culture which can be seen in archaeological sites and museums like Machu Picchu, the Nazca Lines, Kuélap and Sipán, among others, but it is a modern, cosmopolitan and vibrant country that has led economic growth in Latin America in the last two decades and offers world-class hotels and services to serve the most sophisticated tourists. “It is one of the world’s 10 mega-diverse countries with countless natural wonders and breathtaking landscapes. Peru is great for adventure, bird watching and visiting magical places such as the Manú National Park, the Colca Canyon and Lake Titicaca. Of course, you should take home beautiful pieces of silver and colorful first-class handicrafts,” she added. Peru is also home to a globally renown dining scene acclaimed for both its cutting-edge cuisine and traditional favorites such as ceviche. “Peru has one of the most prestigious and delicious cuisines of the world,” Chiozza proudly told us. “It earned the distinction of ‘Cultural Heritage of the Americas for the World’ from the OAS in 2011. In 2018, it won, for the seventh consecutive year, the ‘Best Culinary Destination in the World’ by the World Travel Awards. Prestigious restaurants like Central and Maido are among the top 10 restaurants in ‘The World’s 50 Best Restaurants’ by Forbes magazine.” Chiozza and her husband are obviously effective representatives for their homeland. This is in fact the second marriage for both ambassadors. Each has two grown children from their first marriage and Zela has two grandchildren, ages 4 and 7. Their own children did not follow the diplomatic path of their parents. “My children are industrial en34 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

PHOTO: PERUVIAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

María Eugenia Chiozza, bottom right, who previously served as director of Europe at the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during political consultations with the European Union in 2018.

María Eugenia Chiozza is seen above with her children Claudine and Christophe and at left painting a dinner plate in a delicate floral motif.

PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

gineers,” said Chiozza. “They were always very good in math.” It’s been a whirlwind for the family since Chiozza and her husband moved into the D.C. residence this past May. Both her son and daughter announced that they were getting married four weeks apart. “I had two marriages to plan in a month and at the same time settle us into our new home,” she said. After her daughter’s honeymoon and before her daughter started her new job, she came to visit her mother and father and brought her maternal grandmother, Chiozza’s 94-year-old mother, “so she could see where we would live.” Before these two high-profile diplomats married, they knew each other from their work. When they began talking about marriage, Chiozza recalled that “the first thing he told me was that he would make me laugh every day — and he has.” Zela is also his wife’s biggest cheerleader. “Sometimes he’ll be the main speaker and I’ll be in the audience or on the panel. When it’s all over, he takes great joy in surprising everyone by saying, ‘You want to know something? The ambassador is my wife’ — and then we all laugh.” At home, the two diplomats are more relaxed. “At night, we watch Netflix but during the weekend, sometimes Hugo goes walking or biking but I practice yoga and I paint.”

In fact, Chiozza has become an expert at porcelain painting. She started back in 2009 during her husband’s posting in Brazil. “I wasn’t working and I didn’t want to get bored so I started a Ph.D. and began painting,” she said. Today, she takes three-hour private lessons once or twice a week and studies European and Oriental styles of art. She’s also a member of the advisory board for the National Museum of Women in the Arts. During our interview, she showed me a set of 14 dinner plates she painted, each with a different exotic floral motif and a delicate 24-carat gold rim. “I have a passion for detail in my painting and in my work. If I’m doing a party or a state dinner, I go over every detail,” she explained. “My husband teases me, saying, ‘Oh, you’re the perfect one.’ But I believe in doing things right. At the ministry, I believe in teamwork and I get the best people to help me. I have high expectations.” That professional attitude carries over to her marriage. “At home during dinner or on weekends, we joke a lot and always laugh. We discuss everything. But there is always a clear notion of authority. Together in private, we can be outspoken and say what we want. We can disagree, just not publicly. We are each other’s harshest critic and greatest admirer,” she said. Their symbiotic relationship will enter a new phase shortly. “My husband is older than I am and is expected to retire in two years. Then our roles will change. He will be teaching, consulting.” In the meantime, however, Chiozza says she is “always happy to support my husband. D.C. is one of the most important diplomatic posts for our country and we want to give the best image of Peru.” WD Gail Scott is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

Art | Culture | WD

Corcoran Resurrected ‘Moves Like Walter’ Marks First In-Depth Exhibit of Defunct Museum’s Artwork •

BY KATE OCZYPOK

Moves Like Walter: New Curators Open the Corcoran Legacy Collection THROUGH DEC. 15

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY MUSEUM 4400 MASSACHUSETTS AVE., NW

(202) 885-1000

| WWW.AMERICAN.EDU/CAS/MUSEUM

or decades, the Corcoran Gallery of Art was an iconic museum in the nation’s capital, and one of the oldest privately supported cultural institutions in the U.S. But after years of inept management and financial woes, the Corcoran closed its ornate doors in 2014. But its vast art collection of 19,493 works was not lost. The National Gallery of Art initially won the rights to most of the museum’s collection, at no cost, while The George Washington University took over the Corcoran School of Art and Design and the museum’s historic building on 17th Street. But in the end, the National Gallery of Art, which had been criticized for the 2014 deal, only acquired about 40% of the Corcoran’s collection. Almost 9,000 pieces went to the American University Museum, while others were distributed among 10 Smithsonian museums and other museums throughout the city, several universities and the U.S. Supreme Court. While the decision to shutter the troubled Corcoran was a painful one for many Washingtonians, who feared that much of the collection would be shelved away from public view, supporters of the closure say it was the only way to keep the Corcoran’s legacy alive — and its artwork still mostly in the city. Washingtonians now have the chance to revisit a large chunk of that artwork in the first indepth exhibition from the now-defunct Corcoran Gallery of Art on display at the American University Museum — whose director, Jack Rasmussen, has described the acquisition of the Corcoran holdings as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” The exhibition, “Moves Like Walter: New Curators Open the Corcoran Legacy Collection,” is inspired by Walter Hopps, who was for a short time the director of the Corcoran and “an erratic but seminal” American curator of contemporary art, according to the AU Museum. “Moves Like Walter” was curated and conceived by AU graduate students studying art history, arts management and studio art. Dubbed “a playful and provocative interpretation” of the Corcoran’s collection, the exhibition explores themes like race, gender and power. The show features work by women and artists of color such as Joan Cassis, William Tolliver and Carroll Sockwell, and the pieces range from haunting black-and-white photography to classic portraiture to abstract art. The students divided their curations into five sub-groups: “Boundless: Existing Within Ambiguous Space”; “The Road Home”; “The Selfless Spirit: Nature vs. Nurture and the Effects of Motherhood in the Corcoran Collection”; “American Legacy: Reconsidering Non-Western Subjects in the Corcoran Collection”; and “Redefining the Gaze: Shifting the Power.” Abigail Swaringam was one of the graduate students who helped to curate the exhibit. “The process was very exciting for me because I got to translate a lot of the questions and themes that were relevant to my art historical studies,” she told us. “When trying to decide my angle and work of art that I wanted to focus on, I had

PHOTOS: GIFT FROM THE TRUSTEES OF THE CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART

“Moves Like Walter” offers a snapshot of the 9,000 pieces of art from the defunct Corcoran Gallery of Art that the American University Museum inherited, including works such as, from top, Joan D. Cassis’s “Untitled,” Thomas Prichard Rossiter’s “Rebecca at the Well” and Bernis von zur Muehlen’s “Teri.”

one primary research question: What had the Corcoran collection naturalized? This question prompted our group’s section of the exhibition.” Michael Quituisaca was also a fellow curator of the exhibit. He specializes in 19th-century American art. “Everyone in the class had the sort of intention to be part of a major exhibition in a respected museum,” he said. “We all came in with that motive. We wanted to work on something really cool.” Quituisaca explained that the class was divided up among the five designated sub-groups. His group’s focus was the representation of non-Western subjects, or how the artists in the Corcoran collection depicted race. Some groups examined motherhood, others abstraction. Quituisaca’s passion for art started at a young age. He was a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Ecuador. He had never had the opportunity to visit any museums with his family but was finally able to do so through his schooling. Raised in New York City, Quituisaca distinctly remembers visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “In that museum, there was a painting called ‘Heart of the Andes’ and it depicted Ecuador,” he recalled. “It was beautiful — the Ecuador I remembered.” What he took the most pleasure in was that it was housed in the American art section. “For me as an Ecuadorian-American, seeing my homeland in an American arts section made me feel American,” he said. Swaringam worked with the “American Legacy: Reconsidering Non-Western Subjects in the Collection” group, writing the introduction in the catalogue. She said diplomats in particular should see the exhibition not only because it’s a diverse sampling of work with many international overtones, but also because it’s a great opportunity to survey the history of art collecting in America from the country’s formation to the present day. “Collecting art is not just economic exchange,” she said. “Art has always served political and social purposes. By examining the process of collection, we can discover what ideologies were important to whom and why.” WD Kate Oczypok (@OczyKate) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat. OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 35

WD | Culture | Theater

Royal Growing Pains ‘1 Henry IV’ Depicts Journey of Young Hal from Bar to Throne to Battlefield •

BY DERYL DAVIS

1 Henry IV THROUGH OCT. 13

FOLGER THEATRE

201 EAST CAPITOL ST., SE

(202) 544-4600

| WWW.FOLGER.EDU

hakespeare’s “1 Henry IV,” running at the Folger Theatre under the capable direction of Rosa Joshi, is a coming-of-age story about choosing among the various possibilities of who and where one will be. Young Prince Hal of England must choose between the harsh realities of the court ruled by his distant and authoritarian father, Henry IV; the riotous life of the London tavern presided over by Falstaff, lord of misrule; and the battlefield dominated by his rival, the courageous but intemperate Hotspur. To their credit, Joshi and her cast and crew highlight the contrasts of these various possibilities. In Henry’s court, stern figures stand in harsh light wearing suits that seem to have been inspired by Chairman Mao (credit costume designer Kathleen Geldard). But when Falstaff and his companions enter, they do so down the center aisle (among the people) to the thump-thump of techno music and swirling colored lights (courtesy of sound designer Palmer Hefferan and lighting designer Jesse Belsky). Life with Henry may be hard, even brutal; with Falstaff, it is a full-time party. Neither existence is, perhaps, sustainable for long, which could be Shakespeare’s point. As if developing that idea, Joshi focuses her production on themes of leadership and decisionmaking, following the young Hal as he navigates his way toward becoming Henry V, one of England’s greatest kings. Complementing Joshi’s tight direction are standout performances by her cast. Avery Whitted presents Hal as a young man slowly awakening to the realities of who and where he is in the world and what he may be called upon to do. In his first appearance onstage at the tavern in Eastcheap, where he has been leading a dissolute existence under the influence of Falstaff, Whitted’s Hal intimates that a change is coming. “I … will awhile uphold/The unyok’d humor of … idleness,” he tells us, so that “My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault/Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes/ Than that which hath no foil to set it off.” In Whitted’s performance, we see Hal actively contemplating that reformation even as he follows Falstaff back to the tavern. In the climactic scene where Hal and Falstaff dramatize an encounter between the prince and his father, we are not surprised when Hal (as King Henry) banishes “plump Jack” — as Hal in fact will do after he becomes king. As Hal’s foil, Harry “Hotspur” Percy is the “son who is the theme of honor’s tongue,” as Hal’s father, King Henry, laments in the play’s opening scene. Tyler Fauntleroy brings the right mix of boldness, warlike bravado and dangerous intemperance to the role of Hotspur, appropriately contrasting with Hal’s inward transformation, especially in the scene in which Hotspur prepares to go to war, ignoring his wife’s sensible entreaties not to leave. Of particular note are the occasional comic overtones with which Fauntleroy imbues his Hotspur, a character who can sometimes slip into twodimensionality. While he remains a sometimes admirable, always headstrong figure, Fauntleroy’s Hotspur is also human and engaging, perhaps despite himself. Casting a broad (perhaps fat?) shadow across the entire play is Falstaff, masterfully played by four-time Helen Hayes Award winner Edward Gero. As is often the case, the fat, riotous knight immediately engages our attention, but Gero brings to this iconic role an exuberance matched with a depth of sympathy and imagination that make us as interested in what goes on inside Falstaff as outside him. If he is a clown, he is a clown who speaks a truth we all recognize, as literary critic Harold Bloom has noted. In the pivotal role-playing scene with Prince Hal, as well as in his famous “cat-

36 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

PHOTOS: C. STANLEY PHOTOGRAPHY

Above, Poins (Jazmine Stewart) puts a scare into her partner-in-crime Falstaff (Edward Gero), as Prince Hal (Avery Whitted) looks to ease the tension. At left, a heated Hotspur (Tyler Fauntleroy) is kept in check by allies Worcester (Naomi Jacobson) and Northumberland (U. Jonathan Toppo) in the Folger production of “1 Henry IV.”

echism” on honor late in the play, we see profound insight paired with imagination and humanity. We cheer Gero’s Falstaff on, despite the fact that we know that he and his vices must be rejected. The question is, is there anything Hal can learn from them? Or put another way, does the tavern have anything to teach the court? Joshi’s production suggests there is. The centerpiece of designer Sara Ryung Clement’s minimalist set, an oversize throne chair marked with the insignia “IV,” is itself a metaphor for Hal’s transformation from tavern companion to future king. When Peter Crook’s severe, calculating King Henry sits atop the structure, it is the symbol of power and repression. But when Falstaff and his companions appear, the throne is upended, becoming the feasting table for the dissolute rabble and the place where the fat knight sleeps off his riot. As a throne, the structure is occupied by a single person, a symbol of control; as a common tavern table, it is a place of welcome and celebration, if the site of much licentiousness. Finally, when the rebels Hotspur, Glendower and Mortimer gather to make their battle plans in Wales, the structure is transformed yet again into a map stand on which the ill-fated trio lay out their strategies against the king. Each transformation of the throne can be seen as an element of Hal’s journey toward maturity and future leadership — how, as king, he will exercise political power, deal with challenges to his authority and relate to the common masses in his realm. Shakespeare leaves open the possibility that Hal learns from each of these alternatives. He emulates Hotspur’s bravery and sense of duty on the field of Shrewsbury, defeating his rival while acknowledging the latter’s important and necessary attributes. In the companion play “II Henry IV,” Hal will employ the realpolitik of his father, banishing Falstaff and his destabilizing influence when Hal must assert control over the kingdom he inherits. And after the victory at Shrewsbury, in which Hal saves his father’s life, the prince shows unusual mercy to the rebel Douglas, an act uncharacteristic of his authoritarian father, but perhaps reflective of Falstaff ’s plea for mercy. Has Hal learned something from the fat knight, despite himself? Or does Falstaff ’s comedic drama serve as a cautionary tale for a future king? In her director’s notes, Joshi explains that she became interested in “I Henry IV” because of its presentation of “the coming-of-age story of a young leader.” The Folger’s joyful, engaging, often introspective production of this popular history play stays faithful to that narrative, presenting us with a young man who learns from tavern, court and battlefield what it means to lead — and on occasion, to be led. WD Deryl Davis is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

Art | Culture | WD

No Laughing Matter Century of Mexican Cartoons Shows How Humor Can Advance Political Awareness •

100 Years of Cartoons in El Universal: Mexico-United States as Seen by Mexican Cartoonists THROUGH OCT. 30

MEXICAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE 2829 16TH ST., NW

(202) 728-1628

| WWW.INSTITUTEOFMEXICODC.ORG

n today’s tense political climate, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the dizzying bombardment of daily news headlines. Fortunately, comedians have always helped people make light of the crazy times in which we live, although lately these laughs have become serious business. From “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” in the United States to “El Pulso De La República,” Mexico’s first satirical political news show, there has been a growing trend toward combining political awareness with comedic satire — so much so that young people are abandoning traditional television and radio news outlets in favor of getting their news from “The Daily Show” and other comedic sources. But political satire existed long before Comedy Central — long before the advent of TV in fact. Newspaper cartoonists have been instrumental in both poking fun at the absurdity of politics while also exposing its deeper flaws, using biting humor to raise the public’s consciousness about important issues of the day. In the Mexican Cultural Institute’s newest exhibit, “100 Years of Cartoons in El Universal: Mexico-United States as Seen by Mexican Cartoonists,” political satire transcends time and boundaries. The show features 70 political cartoons from one of Mexico City’s major newspapers, El Universal, drawn by artists such as Andrés Audiffred, Eduardo del Río Rius, Helio Flores and Rogelio Naranjo. Exhibit curator Agustín Sánchez González said that being able “to bring to Washington this work that has critiqued, that has questioned, its own Mexican government and the government of the United States is highly important.” The curator can be heard speaking in a video that plays throughout the exhibition rooms, his voice echoing the importance of the small, priceless slips of paper on display, most of which are originals from as early as the 1920s. El Universal was Mexico’s first modern newspaper, with its first edition published on Oct. 1, 1916. Only a few weeks later, the first cartoon appeared, a sprawling drawing of the candidates vying for the constituent congress. Several of these candidates were creators of the newspaper itself, such as its founder, Félix Palavicini. The drawing, featured on the pamphlet for the exhibit and on the Mexican Cultural Institute’s website, reimagines the iconic scene of American soldiers raising the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima. Here, the candidates raise a giant pen that serves as the flagpole, with a dove depicted on the flag. The exhibit contains five sections, beginning with a look at the formation of the newspaper and the origins of its cartoons. The comic strip itself was exported from the United States, and in the section titled “Tribute of the Mexican Cartoon to the Comic Strip,” Juan Terrazas, the director of Museo de la Caricatura, reproduces an article and its cartoon drawings from the famous cartoonist Guillermo Castillo. The article, “The Men of Laughter,” features caricatures of well-known American personalities at the time such as Charlie Chaplin. Among the recurring themes are searing critiques of American neocolonialism

BY HANNAH VANDEGRIFT

“100 Years of Cartoons in El Universal: Mexico-United States as Seen by Mexican Cartoonists” features 70 political cartoons that poke fun of everything and everyone from Mexican artist Diego Rivera, at left, to Richard Nixon and an array of other U.S. presidents.

and the borders that governments erect — themes that resonates just as strongly today as they did decades ago. In one drawing, Uncle Sam is seen slipping on a banana peel that represents the United Fruit Company, a reflection of the animosity many Mexicans felt toward the conglomerate that came to dominate Latin America, becoming deeply intertwined in its politics, cornering the banana market and, critics say, exploiting the region (leading to the term “banana republic”). Yet the critiques don’t just PHOTOS: MEXICAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE apply to the U.S. In a bold 1960 piece, Eduardo Del Río, whose penname is Rius, depicts a man sitting leisurely on a beach reading a newspaper titled “Mexico para los Mexicanos (Mexico for the Mexicans).” A nearly drowned man emerges from the water while a ship with “Cuba” written along its side sinks in the distance, but a sign blocks his passage, telling the man to keep out. The cartoon by Rius — a strong supporter of the Cuban Revolution — shows that Mexico, like so many other countries, is not immune to antiimmigrant sentiment. Another section, “The Gaze at the Neighboring President,” looks at American presidents. A caricature of Barack Obama exaggerates his distinctive facial features, although — not surprisingly given their controversial Mexico policies — the caricatures of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump are infused with political commentary. A piece by the artist Efrén simply titled “Reagan” shows the former president smiling while inside his mouth sits a peace dove trapped behind bars. A more contemporary, self-explanatory piece by Arturo Kemchs features barbed wire in the shape of Trump’s name. In another not-sosubtle piece, the controversial, Twitter-happy U.S. president resembles a pig, with a nuke button as his nose while he clings to a smartphone in his hand. The final section, “The Masters of Cartoon,” showcases pieces by modern artists such as Ramón Garduño and David Carrillo. Garduño’s colorful rendition of “Las dos Fridas: The Two Fridas” is placed amusingly and perhaps purposely next to Carrillo’s unflattering black-and-white caricature of Diego Rivera, clearly showing a contrast between legendary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and her older muralist husband, with whom she had a tempestuous relationship. We live in a highly visual world, a phenomenon that predates today’s age of Instagram selfies. Even in the heyday of newsprint, images were a powerful vehicle to elicit visceral responses ranging from laughter to tears. As this exhibit shows, cartoons are more than just amusing illustrations. They are an important part of the political fabric that allows society to criticize — not censor — itself. “Criticism and humor are vital to societies,” González said. “A society without humor, a society without criticism, will inevitably fall to authoritarianism. I believe democracies need criticism, need liberty, need a diversity of opinions. In that sense, the cartoon has it all.” WD Hannah Vandegrift is an editorial intern for The Washington Diplomat. OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 37

WD | Culture | Film

Cinema Listings *Unless specific times are listed, please check the theater for times. Theater locations are subject to change.

ARABIC Adam

Directed by Maryam Touzani (Morocco/France, 2019, 98 min.) Samia, pregnant and living on the street and going doorto-door begging for work, encounters Abla, a single mother deeply traumatized by her husband’s recent death. Abla supports herself and her daughter by running a small bakery connected to their house. Though at first she shoos Samia away, Abla eventually has second thoughts (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival). AMC Mazza Gallerie SUN., OCT. 20, 5:15 P.M., FRI., OCT. 25, 6:30 P.M.

Baghdad in My Shadow

Directed by Samir (Switzerland/Germany/U.K./Iraq, 2019, 105 min.) In his latest thriller-drama, award-winning filmmaker Samir’s ambitious feature elevates discussions surrounding women’s rights, the plague of extremism ensnaring young lost Muslim men in Europe and other controversial issues. The ensemble film revolves around a group of Iraqi immigrants and once idealistic socialists who regularly meet and work at London’s Café Abu Nawas (Arabic and English; part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival). AMC MAZZA GALLERIE SAT., OCT. 19, 6:15 P.M., FRI., OCT. 25, 8:30 P.M.

Diamond Dust

Directed by Marwan Hamed (Egypt, 2018, 154 min.) This Cairo-set vigilante story follows Taha, a pharmacist who leads a dreary life with his wheelchair-bound father. When he returns home one day, he finds his father dead on the ground. After reading his father’s diary, he discovers a dark past of racism, corruption, political oppression and abuse of power (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival). AMC MAZZA GALLERIE SAT., OCT. 19, 3:15 P.M.

The Guest

Directed by Hadi El Bagoury (Egypt, 2018, 99 min.) Dr. Yehia Al Tigany is a writer and thinker who lives a stable family life with his wife Mimi and his daughter Farida. But his views against religious extremism and his ambitious ideas to renew religious discourse bring him accusations of blasphemy and make him a target for contempt by radicals (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival). AMC MAZZA GALLERIE SAT., OCT. 26, 2 P.M.

Midnight Traveler

Directed by Hassan Fazili

The Washington Diplomat

Directed by Rupert Goold (U.K., 2019, 118 min.) Winter 1968 and showbiz legend Judy Garland (Renée Zellweger) arrives in Swinging London to perform a five-week sold-out run at The Talk of the Town. It is 30 years since she shot to global stardom in The Wizard of Oz, but if her voice has weakened, its dramatic intensity has only grown. ANGELIKA MOSAIC

LANDMARK’S BETHESDA ROW CINEMA

LANDMARK’S THEATRES OPENS FRI., OCT. 18

LANDMARK’S E STREET CINEMA

The Last Emperor

Rashid & Rajab

AMC MAZZA GALLERIE SAT., OCT. 26, 4:15 P.M.

Tel Aviv on Fire

Directed by Sameh Zoabi (Luxembourg/Belgium/Israel/ France, 2019, 100 min.) Salam, an inexperienced young Palestinian man, becomes a writer on a popular soap opera after a chance meeting with an Israeli soldier. His creative career is on the rise — until the soldier and the show’s financial backers disagree about how the show should end, and Salam is caught in the middle. (Arabic and Hebrew). WEST END CINEMA

ENGLISH Ad Astra

Directed by James Gray (China/Brazil/U.S., 2019, 123 min.) Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. His journey will uncover secrets that challenge the nature of human existence and our place in the cosmos. ANGELIKA MOSAIC

ATLANTIC PLUMBING CINEMA LANDMARK’S BETHESDA ROW CINEMA

Cold Case Hammarskjöld

Directed by Mads Brügger (Denmark/Norway/Sweden/ Belgium, 2019, 128 min.) In 1961, U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane mysteriously crashed in what was then Northern Rhodesia, killing Hammarskjöld and 15 others. Danish director Mads Brügger and Swedish private investiga-

38 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

October 2019

Judy

(Qatar/U.K./Canada/U.S., 2019, 90 min.) When filmmaker Hassan Fazili made a documentary for Afghan television about a Taliban commander seeking peace, the Taliban killed his subject and put a bounty on Hassan’s head, forcing him to flee the country with his wife and two young daughters. They recorded the harrowing trek across numerous borders on three iPhones, capturing the story from the inside with an immediacy and emotional power that grips the viewer.

Directed by Mohammed Saeed Harib (UAE, 2019, 105 min.) This witty and engaging farce puts a fresh spin on the body swap comedy formula as Rashid a high-powered Emirati business executive, and Rajab an easygoing Egyptian deliveryman, find themselves learning to walk in each other’s shoes (literally) following a freak accident (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival).

PHOTO: LANDMARK THEATRES

A wife, husband and their two daughters flee the Taliban in the documentary “Midnight Traveler.” tor Göran Björkdahl are trying to solve the mysterious death of Dag Hammarskjöld. As their investigation closes in, they discover a crime far worse than killing the secretary-general of the United Nations (English, French, Swedish, Bemba and Danish).

WEST END CINEMA

The Cotton Club Encore

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola (U.S., 2019, 127 min.) Originally released in 1984, writer/director Francis Ford Coppola’s glittering spectacle presents Prohibition, gangsters and virtuoso tap dancing in a lavish ode to the music and drama of Harlem’s famed hot spot, the Cotton Club (English and Italian). LANDMARK’S THEATRES OPENS FRI., OCT. 11

The Current War

Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (U.S., 2019, 107 min.) This is the dramatic story of the cutthroat race between electricity titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse to determine whose electrical system would power the modern world. ANGELIKA MOSAIC OPENS FRI., OCT. 25

Downton Abbey

Directed by Michael Engler (U.K./U.S., 2019, 122 min.) The story of the Crawley family, wealthy owners of a large estate in the English countryside in the early 20th century, picks up after the popular TV show ended. ANGELIKA MOSAIC

ATLANTIC PLUMBING CINEMA LANDMARK’S BETHESDA ROW CINEMA

The Farewell

Directed by Lulu Wang (U.S., 2019, 98 min.) Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi

reluctantly returns home to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai, has been given weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai-Nai herself. As Billi navigates family expectations, she finds a lot to celebrate: a chance to rediscover the country she left as a child, her grandmother’s wondrous spirit and ties that keep on binding even when so much goes unspoken. LANDMARK’S E STREET CINEMA

Gemini Man

Directed by Ang Lee (China/U.S., 2019, 117 min.) An over-the-hill hitman faces off against a younger clone of himself. ANGELIKA MOSAIC OPENS FRI., OCT. 11

Hustlers

Directed by Lorene Scafari (U.S., 2019, 110 min.) Inspired by the viral New York Magazine article, “Hustlers” follows a crew of savvy former strip club employees who band together to turn the tables on their Wall Street clients. ANGELIKA MOSAIC ATLANTIC PLUMBING CINEMA

Arabian Sights Film Festival).

AMC MAZZA GALLERIE FRI., OCT. 18, 6:30 P.M.

Jim Allison: Breakthrough

Directed by Bill Haney (U.S., 2019, 90 min.) This is the astounding true story of one warm-hearted, stubborn man’s visionary quest to find a cure for cancer. The film traces Allison’s remarkable life from his school-boy days in Texas all the way to Stockholm where, in December of 2018, he accepted the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering the immune system’s role in defeating cancer. LANDMARK’S E STREET CINEMA OPENS FRI., OCT. 4

Jojo Rabbit

Directed by Taika Waititi (Germany/U.S., 2019, 108 min.) This World War II satire follows a lonely German boy named Jojo whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his single mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a young Jewish girl in their attic. ANGELIKA MOSAIC OPENS FRI., OCT. 25

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci (U.K./Italy, 1987, 160 min.) Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor” won nine Academy Awards, unexpectedly sweeping every category in which it was nominated. It follows the life of Emperor Pu Yi, who at age three took the throne of the Qing dynasty in 1908. Decades of cultural and political upheaval, within and without the walls of the Forbidden City, followed (English, Mandarin and Japanese). FREER GALLERY OF ART SUN., OCT. 13, 1 P.M.

Lucy in the Sky

Directed by Noah Hawley (U.S., 2019, 124 min.) Astronaut Lucy Cola returns to Earth after a transcendent experience during a mission to space, and begins to lose touch with reality in a world that now seems too small. ANGELIKA MOSAIC OPENS FRI., OCT. 4

Monos

Directed by Alejandro Landes (Multiple countries, 2019, 102 min.) Teenage commandos perform military training exercises by day and indulge in youthful hedonism by night, an unconventional family bound together under a shadowy force know only as The Organization. After an ambush drives the squadron into the jungle, both the mission

It Must Be Heaven

Directed by Elia Suleiman (France/Qatar/Germany/Canada/ Palestine, 2019, 97 min.) In a series of comic vignettes shot in international locales, famed Palestinian director Elia Suleiman investigates the meanings of nationalism, normality, identity and exile. A church in Nazareth with a door that won’t open. A deserted Paris. A New York supermarket with as many guns as fresh produce. Suleiman embellishes small details in each vignette, his style edging ever closer to the surreal in an attempt to capture the experience of a perpetual outsider and to suggest that normality is often absurd (English, French and Arabic; opening night of the

PHOTO: JAMES MEEHAN / SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Political powerbroker and controversial figure Roy Cohn is the focus of a new documentary.

Film | Culture | WD and the intricate bonds between the group begin to disintegrate. WEST END CINEMA

Ms. Purple

Escape from Raqqa

Directed by Justin Chon (U.S., 2019, 87 min.) A young woman who works as a karaoke hostess in L.A.’s Koreatown reconnects with her estranged brother in the final days of their father’s life. LANDMARK’S BETHESDA ROW CINEMA

LANDMARK’S E STREET CINEMA OPENS FRI., OCT. 4

Official Secrets

Directed by Gavin Hood (U.K./U.S., 2019, 112 min.) Kiera Knightley stars in the true story of a British whistleblower who leaked information to the press about an illegal NSA spy operation designed to push the U.N. Security Council into sanctioning the 2003 invasion of Iraq. LANDMARK’S BETHESDA ROW CINEMA

LANDMARK’S E STREET CINEMA

Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins

Directed by Janice Engel (U.S., 2019, 93 min.) This is the story of media firebrand Molly Ivins, six feet of Texas trouble who took on the Good Old Boy corruption wherever she found it. Her razor sharp wit left both sides of the aisle laughing, and craving ink in her columns. LANDMARK’S E STREET CINEMA

Where’s My Roy Cohn?

Directed by Matt Tyrnauer (U.S., 2019, 97 min.) One of the most controversial and influential American men of the 20th Century, Roy Cohn was a ruthless and unscrupulous lawyer and political power broker whose 28-year career ranged from acting as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist-hunting subcommittee to molding the career of a young Queens real estate developer named Donald Trump. ANGELIKA MOSAIC

LANDMARK’S BETHESDA ROW CINEMA

LANDMARK’S E STREET CINEMA

FRENCH Arab Blues

Directed by Manele Labidi (France, 2019, 88 min.) After 10 years of living in Paris, Selma has returned to Tunis in an incisive comedy about coming home, breaking taboos and building community (French and Arabic; part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival). AMC MAZZA GALLERIE SAT., OCT. 26, 8:30 P.M., SUN., OCT. 27, 8:15 P.M.

By the Grace of God

Directed by François Ozon (France/Belgium, 2019, 137 min.) In this urgent and heartfelt the story, three adult men band together to expose the stifling code of silence that continues to enable a priest who abused

Midnight Family

them as boys.

LANDMARK’S THEATRES OPENS FRI., OCT. 25

Directed by Emmanuel Hamon (France, 2019, 102 min.) This contemporary thriller set partially inside the Islamic State is based on the true story of a French woman who voluntarily took her child to Syria and wound up a prisoner in the titular ISIS stronghold. Unbeknownst to her husband Sylvain, Faustine leaves Paris with her 5-year-old son to join ISIS in Syria. But when she realizes she has been made false promises, she reaches out for help. Sylvain quickly understands that the French authorities are hardly empathetic with his wife’s sudden change of heart and must plan a high-risk exfiltration to save them (French, English and Arabic; part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival). AMC MAZZA GALLERIE FRI., OCT. 18, 8:30 P.M., SUN., OCT. 27, 6:15 P.M.

New Biz in the Hood!

Directed by Mohamed Hamidi (France, 2019, 90 min.) Frederic, a high-strung, smoothtalking, 40-something Parisian marketing exec, lands a big new client for his company but the hitch is that French authorities have caught on to a tax scheme he ran for years, and after a heated audit, Frederic is given an ultimatum: pay off a $2 million debt or transfer his company to the an impoverished community in dire need of employment (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival). AMC MAZZA GALLERIE SAT., OCT. 19, 8:30 P.M., SUN., OCT. 27, 2 P.M.

GERMAN What Have We Done to Deserve This?

Directed by Eva Spreitzhofer (Austria, 2018, 92 min.)

For Vienna resident Wanda, an adamant atheist and feminist, her worst nightmare has come true when her teenage daughter Nina converts to Islam, asks to be addressed as Fatima and announces her desire to wear a veil. To top it all off, her exhusband has to pick this very moment to become a father again (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival). AMC MAZZA GALLERIE SUN., OCT. 20, 8 P.M., SAT., OCT. 26, 6:30 P.M.

HEBREW Advocate

Directed by Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaiche (Israel/Canada/Switzerland, 2019, 108 min.) Lea Tsemel calls herself a losing lawyer, because every case she has taken was lost. She has spent nearly 50 years representing Palestinians in an increasingly conservative Israel, earning the sobriquet “the devil’s advocate” in her native Israel for her decades of work championing Palestinians accused of resisting the occupation (part of the Arabian Sights Film Festival).

Directed by Luke Lorentzen (Mexico/U.S., 2019, 81 min.) With 9 million residents and only 45 government-provided ambulances, Mexico City’s population must rely on a cutthroat industry of private, for-profit paramedics. This immersive documentary transports you into the Ochoa Family Ambulance — and into the heart of the frenzied action. AFI SILVER THEATRE WED., OCT. 2, 7:05 P.M.

Pain & Glory

Directed by Pedro Almodovar (Spain, 2019, 113 min.) A film director reflects on the choices he’s made in life as past and present come crashing down around him. PHOTO: LANDMARK THEATRES

An aimless boxer tries to rescue a woman on the run in “First Love.” AMC MAZZA GALLERIE SUN., OCT. 27, 4 P.M.

as it turns out, to help the local economy.

ITALIAN

FREER GALLERY OF ART SUN., OCT. 20, 1 P.M.

Loro

KOREAN

Directed by Paolo Sorrentino (Italy, 2019, 151 min.) Sex, drugs, power, and vice: welcome to the mid-2000s Italy of Silvio Berlusconi, the egomaniac billionaire prime minister who presides over an empire of scandal and corruption. LANDMARK’S E STREET CINEMA OPENS FRI., OCT. 4

JAPANESE First Love

Directed by Takashi Miike (Japan/U.K., 2019, 108 min.) In this noir-tinged yakuza thriller that blends genres, Leo, a promising but aimless young boxer, discovers something to fight for when he encounters Yuri, a beautiful young woman on the run, and on impulse rescues her. LANDMARK’S E STREET CINEMA OPENS FRI., OCT. 4

Kwaidan

Directed by Masaki Kobayahi (Japan, 1965, 183 min.) After more than a decade of sober political dramas and socially minded period pieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears for this rapturously stylized quartet of ghost stories. These haunting tales of demonic comeuppance and spiritual trials are existentially frightening and meticulously crafted. FREER GALLERY OF ART WED., OCT. 9, 2 P.M.

Woman in the Dunes

Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara (Japan, 1964, 123 min.) A Tokyo entomologist exploring a small seaside settlement for new insect species accidentally misses his bus back to the city and ends up staying the night with a young widow in her fragile shack at the base of a dune. In return for room and board, the man must continually shovel sand to keep the rickety house from collapsing—and also,

Parasite

Directed by Joon-ho Bong (South Korea, 2019, 132 min.) All unemployed, Ki-taek’s family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident. ANGELIKA MOSAIC OPENS FRI., OCT. 18

LITHUANIAN Woman and the Glacier

Directed by Audrius Stonys (Lithuania/Estonia, 2017, 56 min.) For decades, Lithuanian scientist Aušra Revutaite has been living 11,000 feet above sea level on the Tuyuksu Glacier of Central Asia bordering Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the autonomous Chinese region of Xinjiang. Alone with a dog and cat, she turned a Soviet-era research station into a home and lab for recording local gradations of global warming. FREER GALLERY OF ART SUN., OCT. 20, 4 P.M.

PORTUGUESE Lisbon Beat

Directed by Rita Maia and Vasco Viana (Portugal, 2019, 65 min.) On the outskirts of Lisbon, an underground electronic music scene is exploding, as contemporary Afro-Portuguese sounds draw from myriad influences, giving traditional roots a modern twist (Portuguese, English and Creole). AFI SILVER THEATRE WED., OCT. 2, 5:30 P.M.

SPANISH The Cordillera of Dreams

Directed by Patricio Guzmán (Chile/France, 2019, 85 min.) When the sun rises in Chile, it

ANGELIKA MOSAIC OPENS FRI., OCT. 11

SWEDISH has to scale hills and walls of rock before it reaches the peaks of the mountains. Because the Andes are everywhere, and yet they remain unknown territory to most of the country’s inhabitants, Patricio Guzmán sets out on a journey through the mountains, his somber narration accompanying elegant aerial shots of their stunning topography. AFI SILVER THEATRE TUE., OCT. 1, 5:20 P.M.

Days of Light

Multiple directors (Panama/Costa Rica/El Salvador/ Honduras/Guatemala/Nicaragua, 2019, 87 min.) This beautifully integrated, multi-threaded narrative seamlessly interweaves six stories set in radically different locations across Central America, ranging from the tropical forests of Guatemala to the skyscrapers of Panama City. AFI SILVER THEATRE WED., OCT. 2, 7:15 P.M.

De Lo Mio

Directed by Diana Peralta (U.S., 2019, 74 min.) Two high-spirited sisters raised in New York travel to the Dominican Republic to reunite with their estranged brother and to clean out their grandparents’ old home before it is sold. As they rifle through the remnants of their family’s legacy, shared joys, pains and traumas resurface that they must confront once and for all (Spanish and English). AFI SILVER THEATRE WED., OCT. 2, 5:20 P.M.

The Longest Night

Directed by Gabriela Calvache (Ecuador/Mexico, 2019, 94 min.) Sex worker Dana pours all of her earnings into the costly, life-saving treatments that sustain her critically-ill daughter in Colombia. Increasingly in debt to her contemptible ex-lover and current pimp, Dana is also wrestling with opioid addition. When she sees a glimmer of hope in a client with whom she forges a strong bond, she decides to plan an escape. AFI SILVER THEATRE WED., OCT. 2, 9 P.M.

Britt-Marie Was Here

Directed by Tuva Novotny (Sweden, 2019, 94 min.) Britt-Marie, whose 40-yearold marriage has just broken up because she learned her husband was unfaithful, is faced with making a new start in life in the small town of Borg. Told she is a nagging passive-aggressive aunt, the only job she can find is quite challenging: to coach the town’s youth soccer team (Swedish and German). WEST END CINEMA OPENS FRI., OCT. 4

THAI Folklore: Pob

Directed by Pen-ek Ratanaurang (Thailand, 2018, 56 min.) HBO Asia’s miniseries “Folklore” presented tales of the supernatural from six Asian countries. One standout was Thailand’s entry about the myth of the pob, a ghost known for devouring human intestines. When an American corporate executive is found murdered, a photojournalist covers the story, only to find himself meeting the pob who committed the crime and now wants to tell its side of the story. FREER GALLERY OF ART FRI., OCT. 8, 7 P.M.

Krasue: Inhuman Kiss

Directed by Sittisiri Mongkolsiri (Thailand, 2019, 122 min.) One of the most terrifying of Thai ghosts – and one that has appeared on film countless times – is the krasue. By day she lives as a normal human woman, but at night her head detaches from her body and floats around, trailing viscera and feasting on flesh – human and animal alike. FREER GALLERY OF ART FRI., OCT. 25, 7 P.M.

Culture

arts & entertainment

Plan Your Entire Weekend. www.washdiplomat.com

OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 39

WD | Culture | Events

Events Listings *Please check the venue for times. Venue locations are subject to change.

ART OCT. 4 TO 21

Minhwa: The Beauty of Korean Folk Paintings

This exhibition of works by 19 living artists follows in the footsteps of an iconic art tradition, in partnership with the Korean Minhwa Center at Keimyung University. It introduces minhwa, Korea’s traditional folk paintings that depicted people’s tangible hopes and dreams through unconventional yet artistic expressions. Popularized during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897), minhwa are known for their bright colors, humorous depictions, and various virtues embedded symbolically within the imagery. KOREAN CULTURAL CENTER

OCT. 10 TO JAN. 12

Intersections: Los Carpinteros – Cuba Va!

Los Carpinteros (Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodríguez) is an internationally acclaimed Cuban artist collective best known for merging architecture, sculpture, design, and drawing. Since the early 1990s, Los Carpinteros’s work has reflected on social transformations in post-revolutionary, socialist Cuba, offering critical commentary of dominant ideologies and power structures with humor and artistry. THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION

THROUGH OCT. 12

Reconciling City and Nature

Architect Mario Schjetnan and his Mexico-based team Grupo de Diseño Urbano present the possibility to conceive — through science, art and design — a different form of constructing our human habitat, establishing new paradigms for the present and future of our cities. For over 42 years, he has constructed or transformed sites based on the concept of “design with nature.” Through extensive large-format photographs, models, sketches and original drawings, this exhibit showcases iconic projects executed in Mexico and the U.S.. MEXICAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE

OCT. 13 TO FEB. 17, 2020

Alonso Berruguete: First Sculptor of Renaissance Spain

This is the first major exhibition held outside Spain to celebrate the expressive art of the most important sculptor active on the Iberian Peninsula during the first half of the 16th century, Alonso Berruguete, featuring an impressive range of more than 40 works from across his career, including examples of his earliest paintings from his time in Italy, where he trained. NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

THROUGH OCT. 18

Lullaby by Georgia Saxelby

“Lullaby” explores the relationship between architecture, gender and ritual within the monumental landscape of Washington, D.C. This solo exhibition presents Australian-born, U.S.-based artist

Georgia Saxelby’s recent video installation that documents a series of performances staged at five of the monuments on Washington’s National Mall. Collaborating with performers Viva Soudan and Bailey Nolan, the artist developed a series of imagined ritual gestures that repurpose the heroic forms and masculine iconography ubiquitous. In doing so, Saxelby questions the symbolic spaces in which we perform our identities and value systems today.

GALLERY @ EMBASSY OF AUSTRALIA

THROUGH OCT. 20

Grace Hartigan and Helene Herzbrun: Reframing Abstract Expressionism

This exhibition features painting by Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) and Helene Herzbrun (1922-1984), painters of the second Abstract Expressionist generation who lived and worked as influential artists and teachers in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C., region for many decades. AMERICAN UNIVERSITY MUSEUM

THROUGH OCT. 20

Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths

More than 225 works of art — including blades and currencies in myriad shapes and sizes, wood sculptures studded with iron, musical instruments and elaborate body adornments — reveal the histories of invention and technical sophistication that led African blacksmiths to transform one of Earth’s most fundamental natural resources into objects of life-changing utility, empowerment, prestige, artistry and spiritual potency. NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN ART

OCT. 24 TO SEPT. 7, 2020

Pat Steir: Color Wheel

The Hirshhorn will host the largest painting installation to date by the acclaimed abstract painter Pat Steir. The exhibition is an expansive new suite of paintings by the artist, spanning the entire perimeter of the Museum’s second-floor inner-circle galleries, extending nearly 400 linear feet. HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN

OCT. 26 TO JAN. 26

Bonnard to Vuillard: The Intimate Poetry of Everyday Life

This exhibition presents over 60 exquisite, rarely seen works by a leading group of European Post-Impressionist artists who ushered in a new form of artistic expression in the 1890s. Assuming the name “Nabis” (from the Hebrew navi, meaning “prophet”), its members shared a belief in art’s intimate connection to everyday life. THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION

THROUGH OCT. 27

Revolutionary Reflections: French Memories of the War for America

This exhibition explores how the French king’s officers understood the American Revolution and

40 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

their role in the achievement of American independence, and how they remembered the war in the years that followed—years of revolutionary upheaval in France that included the execution of the king and many of their brothers-in-arms.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION INSTITUTE OF THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI

THROUGH NOV. 17

Portraits of the World: Korea

Pioneering feminist artist Yun Suknam (born 1939) uses portraiture to gain insights into the lives of women, past and present. A wood assemblage portrait of her mother is the centerpiece of this exhibition, which includes portraits of American artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Louise Nevelson, Marisol, Kiki Smith and Nancy Spero. NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

THROUGH DEC. 14

Moves Like Walter: New Curators Open the Corcoran Legacy Collection

This exhibition contains select paintings and photographs from the collection of 9,000 artworks the AU Museum received as a gift from the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Following the closure of the Corcoran, more than 19,456 works from the collection were distrubted to museums and institutions in Washington, D.C. This is the first in-depth exhibition at AU Museum of work from the collection and is inspired by Walter Hopps, briefly the director of the Corcoran and an American curator of contemporary art. AMERICAN UNIVERSITY MUSEUM

THROUGH DEC. 15

Fast Fashion/Slow Art

“Fast Fashion/Slow Art” scrutinizes today’s garment industry. A diverse group of emerging and established contemporary artists and filmmakers including Julia Brown, Cat Mazza, Hito Steyerl and Rosemarie Trockel explore issues of waste, consumerism and the human cost of mass production through 11 films and video installations. GW ART GALLERIES

THROUGH DEC. 15

Swedish Dads by Johan Bävman

The photo exhibition portraits 45 fathers who belong to the relatively small percentage of fathers in Sweden who choose to stay at home with their children for at least six months. Swedish photographer Johan Bävman examines why these fathers have chosen to stay at home with their children and how their relationship with their partners and their children has changed as a result. The exhibition aims to show the effects of gender equality on parenting, both for an individual and for society. HOUSE OF SWEDEN

THROUGH 2019

Urban Challenges

According to the U.N., 2.5 billion people are expected to live in cities by 2050. This will force

The Washington Diplomat cities to find new ways to handle the increased demands on natural resources, housing and infrastructure. This exhibition presents some of the social, economic and technological solutions proposed by Sweden to absorb the impact of our rapidly growing urban environment while leaving the environmental legacy next generations deserve. Come and find out more about Guerilla Crafts, Democratic Architecture and the mixed reality Block Builder application in large-scale environments. Part of the Swedish Embassy’s 2019 thematic programming “Smart Societies – Creative & Inclusive”; for information, visit www.swedenabroad.se/en/embassies/usawashington/current/calendar/.

HOUSE OF SWEDEN

THROUGH JAN. 5, 2020

By the Light of the Silvery Moon: A Century of Lunar Photographs

The year 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969. Photography played a significant role both in preparing for the mission and in shaping the cultural consciousness of the event. An exhibition of some 50 works will include a selection of photographs from the unmanned Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter missions that led up to Apollo 11. NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

THROUGH JAN. 5

Ginny Ruffner: Reforestation of the Imagination

Imagine an apocalyptic landscape. It appears barren, devastated and hopeless. It is not. At the Renwick Gallery, internationally renowned artist Ginny Ruffner creates a seemingly bleak environment that suddenly evolves into a thriving floral oasis by combining traditional sculpture with augmented reality (AR) technology. RENWICK GALLERY

THROUGH JAN. 5

A Monument to Shakespeare

The Folger Shakespeare Library is throwing back the curtains on its origins and exciting future in an exhibition where visitors are invited to play, lounge, be curious and see more of the Folger Shakespeare Library than ever before. Among the treats: rummage through Henry Folger’s desk and read the correspondences that brought the Folger to the nation’s capital; explore large scale reproductions of Cret’s detailed architectural drawings, newly digitized for this exhibition; and visit the first complete edition of Shakespeare’s plays published in 1623. FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY

THROUGH JAN. 12

Mid-Century Master: The Photography of Alfred Eisenstaedt

When he photographed her for the November 5, 1965 issue of Life magazine, Alfred Eisenstaedt cemented Marjorie Merriweather Post’s place among the most notable people of the 20th century. Featuring nearly

fifty Eisenstaedt photographs and ephemera from his career in photojournalism, focusing on his timeless images of life in the mid-20th-century and the era’s most celebrated figures, this special exhibition will explore the relationship between Post and Eisenstaedt and the broader body of Eisenstaedt’s work documenting life in the midtwentieth century.

HILLWOOD MUSEUM, ESTATE & GARDENS

THROUGH JAN. 20

Live Dangerously

“Live Dangerously” reveals the bold and dynamic ways in which female bodies inhabit and activate the natural world. Twelve groundbreaking photographers use humor, drama, ambiguity and innovative storytelling to illuminate the landscape as means of self-empowerment and personal expression. A major section of the exhibition showcases the performative and fantastical works of Janaina Tschäpe. For the first time, NMWA will exhibit all 100 large-scale photographs in the series “100 Little Deaths” (19962002), in which the artist stages her own body within sites from her travels around the world. NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS

THROUGH JAN. 26

None Swifter Than These: 100 Years of Diplomatic Couriers

Learn more about the U.S. Diplomatic Courier Service, which in wartime and peacetime carries the sensitive materials, equipment and information that make diplomacy possible. Today, the State Department’s 100 badged diplomatic couriers travel the globe safeguarding our nation’s most sensitive information and materials. They constantly trouble-shoot and innovate to ensure secure logistic supply chains while supervising the delivery of classified equipment and documents, as well as secure construction materials to nearly every nation where U.S. diplomats work. THE NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM

THROUGH JAN. 26

The Touch of Color: Pastels at the National Gallery of Art

Featuring approximately 70 exquisite examples drawn entirely from the permanent collection, “The Touch of Color: Pastels at the National Gallery of Art” traces the history of pastel from the Renaissance to the 21st century and examines the many techniques that artists have developed to work with this colorful and versatile medium. NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

THROUGH MARCH 8

Visual Memory: Home + Place

This mid-career survey of multimedia artists Scherezade García and iliana emilia García explores how each artist reflects upon constructed notions of human geography and history in a creative multidisciplinary approach. Generating a provocative and incisive rethinking about the

October 2019

possibilities of visual memory, they engage with timeless universal concerns about global migration, settlement and the spaces we occupy.

ART MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAS

THROUGH SPRING 2020

Animals, Collected

The National Building Museum is home to 320,000 objects related to the built environment. Many of these artifacts in the permanent collection have never been displayed. “Animals, Collected” is a chance to explore some of the museum’s most unusual treasures — through the lens of the animal kingdom. NATIONAL BUILDING MUSEUM

THROUGH JULY 5, 2020

I Am… Contemporary Women Artists of Africa

Taking its name from a 1970’s feminist anthem, “I Am… Contemporary Women Artists of Africa” draws upon a selection of artworks by women artists from the National Museum of African Art’s permanent collection to reveal a more contemporary feminism that recognizes the contributions of women to the most pressing issues of their times. With experimental and sophisticated use of diverse media, the 27 featured artists offer insightful and visually stunning approaches to matters of community, faith, the environment, politics, colonial encounters, racism, identity and more. NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN ART

THROUGH SEPT. 13, 2020

Lee Ufan: Open Dimension

“Lee Ufan: Open Dimension” is an ambitious site-specific commission by the celebrated Korean artist Lee Ufan. The expansive installation, featuring 10 new sculptures from the artist’s signature and continuing Relatum series, marks Lee Ufan’s largest single outdoor sculpture project in the US, the first exhibition of his work in the nation’s capital, and the first time in the Hirshhorn’s 45-year history that its 4.3-acre outdoor plaza has been devoted, almost in its entirety, to the work of a single artist. HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN

DANCE OCT. 3 TO 5

Merce Cunningham at 100

To open its contemporary dance season, the Kennedy Center joins the global centennial celebration of one of the most important figures in modern dance, Merce Cunningham, with two masterworks, “Beach Birds” and “BIPED.” Tickets are $25 to $79. KENNEDY CENTER EISENHOWER THEATER

OCT. 8, 15, 22 AND 29

Fall Tango Lessons at the Embassy of Argentina

The Embassy of Argentina invites you to immerse yourself in the world of tango dance with four lessons for beginners with Argentine instructor Luis Angel. When registering, you are sign-

Events | Culture | WD ing in for all four tango classes. Space is limited. To register, visit https://falltangoclasses. eventbrite.com. EMBASSY OF ARGENTINA

OCT. 8 TO 13

Mariinsky Ballet: Paquita

Most famous for its Act III “Grand Pas” wedding scene, Paquita is a glittering showcase of classical technique, dazzling tutus, and non-stop virtuosic turns. This 19th-century treasure is rarely performed in its entirety and, after treating our audiences to the Grand Pas in 2016, the company now brings the U.S. premiere of its lavish new full production. Tickets are $39 to $150.

OCT. 16 TO NOV. 20

Sogetsu Ikebana: Modern Japanese Flower Arranging

The elegance and aesthetic harmony of ikebana—Japanese flower arranging—have inspired poets and artists for more than 500 years. Today, ikebana is evolving into a three-dimensional art form that adorns the interiors of Western homes and public spaces. In this six-session evening course for beginning and continuing students, participants learn some of the basic styles and variations of ikebana as taught by Japan’s Sogetsu School of Ikebana. Tickets are $250. For information, visit www. smithsonianassociates.org.

KENNEDY CENTER OPERA HOUSE

S. DILLON RIPLEY CENTER

OCT. 23 TO 27

SAT., OCT. 19, 9:30 A.M. TO 4:15 P.M.

NEXTsteps

Championing the relevance and advancement of dance in the 21st century, The Washington Ballet continues its commitment to the creative process with its season opener, “NEXTsteps,” a program debuting new, neverbefore-seen ballets by emerging and acclaimed choreographers Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, John Heginbotham, and Jessica Lang. Tickets start at $25. SIDNEY HARMAN HALL

DISCUSSIONS THU., OCT. 3, 6 P.M.

The Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968: The Russian Perspective

Josef Pazderka presents his book, an edited collection that is the first attempt to take a more coherent look at the Russian perception of the Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Admission is free but RSVP is required: https://sovietinvasion1968.eventbrite.com. DELEGATION OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

THU., OCT. 3, 6:45 P.M.

Donald Trump: The Great Disruptor and the 2020 Election

With the third anniversary of Donald Trump’s upset victory in the 2016 election is upon us, it’s a perfect time to join Ken Walsh, White House correspondent and political analyst for U.S. News & World Report, as he takes the measure of the Trump presidency and assesses where he has succeeded, where he has failed, and what his prospects are for winning a second term next year. Tickets are $45. For information, visit www.smithsonianassociates.org. S. DILLON RIPLEY CENTER

SAT., OCT. 5, 11 A.M. TO 2:30 P.M.

Workshop: Exploring Issues of Oppression through Music, Art and Literature

Creator and director of The Jüdische Kulturbund Project Gail Prensky and associate producer Mark Haney will lead the workshop stressing the use of art as a tool for dealing with oppression. This day marks the anniversary of the birth of former Czech President Václav Havel, who through his leadership, helped to peacefully overthrow the communist regime. Admission is free but RSVP is required: https://exploringoppression.eventbrite.com. EMBASSY OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC

The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity

The French Revolution was one of the most significant upheavals in world history. Starting in the summer of 1789, revolutionary fervor spread across France, then Europe and beyond, questioning existing institutions and traditions and championing new ideas about government, liberty, and citizenship. Historian Alexander Mikaberidze examines this pivotal moment that continues to serve as an inspiration of the finest principles of modern democracy, as well as a warning of what can happen when idealism goes wrong. Tickets are $140. . For information, visit www. smithsonianassociates.org. S. DILLON RIPLEY CENTER

TUE., OCT. 22, 6:45 P.M.

La Cocina: The Power of Food

Can a food truck be a symbol of social justice? What happens when natural entrepreneurs are provided the right resources and hands-on technical assistance? The answers can be found in the successes of La Cocina, a nonprofit small-business incubator in the Mission District of San Francisco that is turning home cooks into business women. Chef Heena Patel and La Cocina’s executive director Caleb Zigas join Joe Yonan, Washington Post food and dining editor, to discuss their experiences with the incubator program, the important opportunities it provides to participants and La Cocina’s new cookbook. Tickets are $45. For information, visit www. smithsonianassociates.org. S. DILLON RIPLEY CENTER

MUSIC OCT. 3 TO 5

National Symphony Orchestra: Carmina Burana

The towering first movement of “Carmina Burana” rolls in like thunder, announcing a celebration of spring, the humor of life in the tavern, and the joys and sorrows of love. Although the words were written by medieval monks, Orff’s outrageous cantata is an unstoppable force brimming with decadent debauchery. Tickets are $15 to $99. KENNEDY CENTER CONCERT HALL

TUE., OCT. 8, 7 P.M.

Garage & Tony Ducháček

The legendary Czech rock band Garage & Tony Ducháček reunites for a special performance. Savor a cold brew while enjoying the riffs of this dissident rock

band, browse an impromptu “garage” sale and witness a band that defied a regime – embodying the statement “anyone can play whatever they want.” Jam with the band as they gear up to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, paying tribute to FREEDOM – Na zdraví (cheers)! Admission is free but RSVP is required: https://garagetonyduchacek.eventbrite.com.

EMBASSY OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC

THU., OCT. 10, 7:30 P.M.

25th Anniversary of the Independence of South Africa

For several generations, stories from Africa have traditionally been passed down by word of mouth. Often, the adults would gather the children together by moonlight, around a village fire and tell stories. This was traditionally called “tales by moonlight” Usually, the stories are meant to prepare young people for life, and so each taught a lesson or moral. Come and hear a night where South Africa celebrates its 25th year of independence since apartheid with “tales of moonlight” in a concert setting with music written by world renowned South African composers, performed by top America’s musicians. Tickets are $125, including pre-concert reception. For information, visit www.embassyseries.org. EMBASSY OF SOUTH AFRICA

SAT., OCT. 12, 8 P.M.

Flamenco Legends

Created by 10-time Latin Grammy winner Javier Limón, The Paco de Lucía Project reassembles the original band that toured with the legendary flamenco guitarist for the last 10 years of his career. Tickets start at $52. WOLF TRAP

SUN., OCT. 13, 8 P.M.

Washington Performing Arts: Pink Martini with Special Guest Meow Meow

How do you say “Wow!” in 25 languages? The members of the globe-trotting “little orchestra” Pink Martini surely know, based on their multilingual songbook infused with Argentinean tango, Brazilian samba, Japanese pop, good old American swing and more. Featuring a dozen musicians with songs in 25 languages, Pink Martini performs its multilingual repertoire on concert stages and with symphony orchestras all across the globe. Tickets are $35 to $85. KENNEDY CENTER CONCERT HALL

WED., OCT. 16, 8 P.M.

Washington Performing Arts: Melbourne Symphony

From its first performance in 1906 the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has offered the very best in orchestral music and collaborates with guest artists and arts organizations from across the world. Tickets are $40 to $100. KENNEDY CENTER CONCERT HALL

SAT., OCT. 19, 2 P.M.

Lakota Music Project with the South Dakota Symphony Chamber Ensemble The Lakota Music Project is the flagship community engagement program of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (SDSO). In performing Native and nonNative music, the project seeks to create an environment of openness that treats both cul-

tures with dignity and respect.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

FRI., OCT. 25, 7:30 P.M.

Formosa Quartet Special Concert - Taiwan

Winners of both the First Prize and Amadeus Prize at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, the Formosa Quartet is “one of the very best quartets of their generation” (David Soyer, Guarneri Quartet). Please call (202) 6252361 or visit www.embassyseries. org for ticket information. THE TWIN OAKS ESTATE

THEATER OCT. 1 TO 6

The Improvised Shakespeare Company

In an evening of off-the-cuff comedy, this critically acclaimed Chicago-based ensemble creates a fully improvised Shakespearean masterpiece right before your eyes, based on a single audience member’s suggestion for the title of a show that’s never been written before... until now. Tickets are $39 to $49. KENNEDY CENTER FAMILY THEATER

THROUGH OCT. 6

Cats

Audiences and critics alike are rediscovering this beloved musical with breathtaking music, including one of the most treasured songs in musical theater, “Memory.” Tickets are $49 to $149. KENNEDY CENTER OPERA HOUSE

THROUGH OCT. 6

Doubt: A Parable

The Bronx, 1964: Suspicions surface at a parochial school about a charismatic young priest’s interest in a Catholic school’s first and only black student. Absent hard proof, Sister Aloysius, the school’s starched and self-assured principal, tries to protect the innocent — but is she doing God’s work or is her certitude actually pride? Tickets are $60 to $90 STUDIO THEATRE

THROUGH OCT. 6

Fairview

Beverly insists the celebration for grandma’s birthday be perfect. But her husband is useless, her sister is into the wine and her daughter’s secrets are threatening to derail the day. Meanwhile a group of spectators has put them all under surveillance. Soon the voyeurs launch an invasion on the festivities, forcing the family to battle for their very identities. Tickets start at $34. WOOLLY MAMMOTH THEATRE COMPANY

OCT. 11 TO NOV. 10

The Right to Be Forgotten

The Internet never forgets. A young man’s mistake at 17 haunts him online a decade later. Desperate for a normal life, he goes to extraordinary lengths to erase his indiscretion. But freedom of information is big business, and the tech companies aren’t going down without a fight. Tickets are $40 to $95. ARENA STAGE

THROUGH OCT. 13

Life Is a Dream

(La Vida es Sueño)

Set in Poland in the 17th century when its influence and power in Europe had waned, “Life Is a Dream!” explores tyranny, fate and free will. Weaving together the stories of Segismundo, who was imprisoned at birth by his father King Basilio to prevent the fulfillment of a prophecy, and Rosaura, who acts to restore her honor and control her destiny, this famous Spanish Golden Age drama addresses the universal question “Who is the master of one’s fate?” Tickets are $45 to $48. GALA HISPANIC THEATRE

OCT. 15 TO NOV. 17

Everybody

Everybody — a role assigned each night from a small cast of actors by lottery live on stage — is a happy person, a free person, a person who believes nothing but the best lies ahead. Then Death comes calling and Everybody must go on the journey of a lifetime. Please call for ticket information.

SHAKESPEARE THEATRE COMPANY

OCT. 16 TO 20

From Gumbo to Mumbo

A dreadlock-rocking Southeast D.C. video game geek meets up with a New Orleanian science teacher who uses comedy to contemplate his place in Trump’s America. Together, they conjure a dynamic cauldron of hip hop, poetry and theater to colorfully redefine masculinity, question social and political issues, and celebrate love and the search for home. For ticket information, visit www.keegantheatre.com. DOWNTOWN CULTURAL ARTS CENTER IN BALTIMORE, MD.

THROUGH OCT. 20

Jitney

August Wilson’s “Jitney” opens Arena Stage’s season-long festival celebrating the Pulitzer Prize-winning giant with Ruben Santiago-Hudson directing his 2017 Broadway production. The dramatic story of a Pittsburgh jitney station, a symbol of stability, struggles against an oppressive lack of opportunity and unnerving neighborhood gentrification that threatens the way they live and work. The drivers resist powerful forces while coming to grips with their pasts to fulfill their own hopes and dreams for the future. Tickets are $41 to $95. ARENA STAGE

THROUGH OCT. 20

The Tempest

When the magical and powerful Prospero creates a sea storm, he gets more than he bargained for as romantic drama, deception and quests for vengeance emerge from the depths. Synetic’s legendary, cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” returns, with the famed water-filled stage and visual poetry that made the original production an unforgettable sensation when it premiered in 2013. Tickets start at $20. SYNETIC THEATER

OCT. 20 TO 27

Stormy Weather

The InSeries reimagines Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” a work plagued with the prejudices and injustices of his time, which have stretched into our own. Here, however, Sycorax reclaims her agency and takes charge of

the narrative of her life and her people, while the play’s other enslaved African characters, Ariel and Caliban, are played by a female-impersonating chanteuse Nigel Rowe and D.C. native Jabari Exum. Tickets are $46.

ATLAS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

OCT. 26 TO NOV. 16

Washington National Opera: Otello Verdi’s epic retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy traces the collapse of a great hero. As Iago manipulates Otello, the general will confront his deadliest enemy: his jealous heart. Tickets are $45 to $299. KENNEDY CENTER OPERA HOUSE

THROUGH OCT. 27

Fences

Set in segregated Pittsburgh in the 1950s, Fences depicts the life of Troy Maxson, a former Negro League baseball star now scraping by as a sanitation worker. A towering figure facing thwarted aspirations, Troy attempts to assert control in his life through his relationships with his wife and son. But even as he takes responsibility for their safety and well-being, he betrays them each in ways that will forever alter their lives. Tickets are $15 to $70. FORD’S THEATRE

MON., OCT. 28, 7 P.M.

The Border (La Frontera) & The Lost Children (Los Ninos Perdidos)

“The Border” (2004) is a haunting two-character play that puts the spotlight on the intergenerational conflicts between two exiles: the ghost of a Spanish Republican grandfather exiled in Mexico and his rebellious grandson itching to cross the southern border into the U.S. without documentation. Meanwhile, “The Lost Children” takes place in an abandoned and dilapidated Catholic orphanage in Spain. Through a poignant combination of realism, fantasy, black humor and a heavy dose of the macabre, this four-character tragicomedy weaves in and out of a painful present and an even darker past. Admission is free but RSVP is required and can be made at www.spainculture.us/ city/washington-dc/spotlight-oncontemporary-spanish-theaterwomen-dramatists/. FORMER RESIDENCE OF THE AMBASSADORS OF SPAIN

WED., OCT. 30, 6 P.M.

Daddy Is Hero

The renowned puppet theatre company LokVar will perform “Daddy Is Hero,” a humorous, immersive story about a family: love between parents and a brother and sister who stick together even though they fight. Love helps them to overcome dragons, illnesses and more. KENNEDY CENTER MILLENNIUM STAGE

THROUGH NOV. 3

Escaped Alone

In a serene British garden three old friends are joined by a neighbor to engage in amiable chitchat — with a side of apocalyptic horror. The women’s talk of grandchildren and TV shows breezily intersperses with tales of terror in a quietly teetering world where all is not what it seems. Please call for ticket information. SIGNATURE THEATRE

OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 41

WD | Culture | Spotlight

Diplomatic Spotlight

October 2019

Gideon Malone; Wolf Trap Foundation President and CEO Arvind Manocha; ball co-chairs Manjula Pindiprolu and Srikant Sastry of Grant Thornton; ball co-chairs Annie Pacious of the U.S. and Patrick Pacious, president and CEO of Choice Hotels International; Gouri Mirpuri and Ambassador of Singapore Ashok Mirpuri.

2019 Wolf Trap Ball This year’s Wolf Trap Ball, held in partnership with the Embassy of Singapore and attended by over 750 guests, raised a record-breaking $1.73 million in support of Wolf Trap Foundation’s arts and education programs. The 2019 ball partnership was of special significance, as Singapore has just become the first international affiliate of the acclaimed Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts. Arvind Manocha, president and CEO of the Wolf Trap Foundation, said that Virginia-based Wolf Trap offers “the single-broadest offering — inside and outside — of concerts and events,” ranging from the National Symphony Orchestra, to Bell Biv DeVoe, to “The Barber of Seville,” to Sting, whose concert Ambassador of Singapore Ashok Mirpuri and his wife Gouri recently attended. “Wolf Trap is more than just a concert venue,” the ambassador said. “It’s the country’s only national park dedicated to both educating and entertaining its guests in the performing arts.”

Ambassador of Singapore Ashok Mirpuri; Tim Keating, executive vice president of government operations for Boeing; Ann Keating; Gary Hughes; and Jim Purekal

The décor reflected Chinese, Indian and Malay influences representative of Singapore’s diverse culture.

Former Ambassador of Ireland Anne Anderson and Frank Lowe.

Bob Van Hoecke, CEO of Regulatory Economics Group LLC, and Richard Bynum, president of greater Washington and Virginia for PNC.

Bob Corn, Virginia Delegate and Democratic Caucus Leader Eileen Filler-Corn, Julia Marsden, and Virginia Senator David Marsden.

Fred Schaufeld of SWaN & Legend Ventures; Karen Schaufeld of 100 Women Strong; Hillary Baltimore; and Tom Baltimore of the ball host committee.

Jeffrey Houle of DLA Piper, Anne Kline of Revere Bank, Jon Shames of Ernst & Young and Virginia Shames.

Tina Mather of the ball host committee; Habib Debs, chairman and CEO of Advanced Technology Systems; diplomatic co-host Gouri Mirpuri; ball cochair Annie Pacious of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; former Virginia first lady Dorothy McAuliffe; and Ambassador of Singapore Ashok Mirpuri.

Kenneth Aneckstein of Gordon Feinblatt LLC, Lisa Lipsky of Grant Thornton LLP, Kathy O’Connor of O’Connor Consulting Services and Kevin O’Connor of Grant Thornton LLP.

Matt Stanton of Constellations Brands, Katie Stanton, Sonia Ensign and Victoria Williams.

Shannon Kelly, director of government affairs for the Wolf Trap Foundation, and Dan D’Aniello, cofounder and chairman of the Carlyle Group.

42 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

Left, Joseph Green, CEO of the Junior Achievement of Greater Washington, and Dr. Ludy Green.

Left, guests dined on a Singaporeinspired menu under 650 lanterns and a reproduction of a Supertree as found in Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay.

Sara Beesley of the Wolf Trap Foundation, Josh Sherman, Elizabeth Schill Hughes of the Wolf Trap Foundation and Gary Hughes. Left, Sally Navarrette and Karen Kelly

Left, Reza Golesorkhi of Joseph Greenwald & Laake and Mary Cull Hoernig of the Department of Commerce.

Olu Rhodes-Vivour, director of business development for Amida, and Sarita Rhodes-Vivour, director of medical surgical services for Universal Health Services.

Kristen Schott of Modern Luxury and Avery Lewis of Linda Roth Associates Inc.

Srikant Sastry, Ambassador Ashok Mirpuri, Secretary David Bernhardt, Pat Pacious Left, Virginia Delegate Marcus Simon and Rachel Simon. PHOTO: © TONY POWELL

Ambassador of Singapore Ashok Mirpuri.

Spotlight | Culture | WD

The Washington Ballet Annual Gala The Washington Ballet (TWB) raised $850,000 at its annual spring gala held at The Anthem. This year’s theme of “Illuminate and Ignite” shined a spotlight on the company’s ballet dancers and supporters. The Anthem was ablaze with prismatic design, from the abstract table decorations to the laser lights that sent beams of color in dazzling patterns high above the floor. Again this year, the gala offered Jeté After Dark, where over 100 young professionals enjoyed cocktails and food in the upper gallery and dessert and dancing following dinner. Event highlights included the presentation of the Lois H. England Philanthropy Award by The Washington Ballet Artistic Director Julie Kent to Robert and Marion Rosenthal, while Virginia Johnson, artistic director of The Dance Theatre of Harlem, received the Mary Day Award for her historic contributions to dance.

Gala co-chairs Jean-Marie Fernandez, Amy Baier and Carrie Marriott join emcee Eun Yang of NBC4 Morning News. PHOTOS:

Honoree Virginia Johnson, artistic director of The Dance Theatre of Harlem; Julie Kent, artistic director of The Washington Ballet; and Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

Gala co-chair Amy Baier, Bret Baier of Fox News and Abeer Al Otaiba, wife of the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates.

Dancers Victoria Arrea and Corey Landolt perform “Shadow Lands” on stage.

Annie Totah, Lizette Corro and Aaron Jackson.

Michael Olding, director of the George Washington Cosmetic Surgery Center, dances with Ambassador of Kosovo Vlora Çitaku.

Jovadi Jewelry Show

Ljiljana Vidovič, Jovadi founder Ella Peters and Indira Gumarova.

John Cecchi of Cecchi Homes, Evan Jones, Dave Dorros of Cushman & Wakefield, Tripp Donnelly and Nels Olson.

Therell Smith, whose dance career lasted over 40 years, joins Kathy McGuire and Elvi Moore.

Camila Amaral and her father Ambassador of Brazil Sergio Silva do Amaral.

Indira Gumarova, wife of the Czech ambassador, and Ljiljana Vidovič, wife of the Slovenian ambassador, came out to support Ella Peters, founder and creative director of Jovadi fine jewelry, at a cocktail reception and trunk show held at Peters’s residence. The event featured a display of her latest jewelry and fashion collections, along with a Rolls Royce, Lamborghini and McLaren Sterling on display outside. Proceeds benefited Every Child Fed Foundation to treat severely malnourished children in Africa.

Eric Larsen, Susi Larsen, Lisa Barry and James Gale.

Rynthia Rost of GEICO, former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, TWB Artistic Director Julie Kent and philanthropist Annie Totah.

Jewelry designs by Jovadi.

Lala Abdurahimova, wife of the ambassador of Azerbaijan; Debbie Meadows; and Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).

Thomas Coleman of the Department of Homeland Security stands in front of a McLaren Sterling.

OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 43

WD | Culture | Spotlight

Diplomatic Spotlight

October 2019

The Baltic Way

Turkish Jazz Night

On Aug. 23, people braved the rain to join hands in a symbolic human chain on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol to re-enact “The Baltic Way,” a unique historical event that took place in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania three decades ago. On Aug. 23, 1989, more than 2 million people, or 25 percent of the entire population of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, joined hands in a chain that spread almost 400 miles, a similar distance as from D.C. to Boston. The people joined hands in a peaceful protest against the Soviet occupation that had begun in 1940.

Washingtonians gathered at the Turkish ambassador’s residence for the Ertegun Jazz Night to celebrate International Jazz Day and honor the legacy of Turkish Ambassador Munir Ertegun and his two sons, Nesuhi and Ahmet Ertegün, who later founded Atlantic Records. In the 1930s and ’40s, the Erteguns welcomed jazz greats to the Turkish Residence for private jam sessions that became the first integrated concerts in what was then still a segregated city.The recent performance featured Sean Jones and His AllStars, who played a repertory of classics by the greats, including Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Ray Charles and Dizzy Gillespie — all of whom either played in the very same room in the ’30s and ’40s or recorded with Ahmet Ertegun.

PHOTO: MANTAS KUBILINSKAS

PHOTO: PAULINA BUZAITE

PHOTO: MANTAS KUBILINSKAS

Third Secretary of the Embassy of Latvia Arturs Saburovs holds the umbrella as Lithuanian Chargé d’Affaires Kestutis Vaskelevicius speaks to the audience.

PHOTO: MANTAS KUBILINSKAS

Deputy Chief of Mission of the Estonian Embassy Marko Koplimaa and Eurasian security analyst Gavin Wilde brave the rain.

PHOTO: MANTAS KUBILINSKAS

Over 100 people join hands on the National Mall. PHOTO: RIMAS CIKOTAS

A man carries a Latvian flag.

PHOTO: PAULINA BUZAITE

Erika Olson, director of the Office of Nordic, Baltic, and Arctic Security Affairs at the State Department, delivers remarks as Karl Altau, managing director of the Joint Baltic American National Committee, looks on at left.

Ambassador of Turkey Serdar Kiliç welcomes Sean Jones and His All-Stars.

Institute for Education Summer Social On Aug. 23, the Institute for Education (IFE) held its fourth annual IFE social secretary lunch at the Congressional Country Club. Social secretaries from over 30 embassies came to meet and mingle at the event, organized by IFE CEO and founder coach Kathy Kemper along with Gwenda DeMoor, social secretary for the Belgian Embassy, and Kiyomi Buker, social secretary for the Japanese Embassy, both of whom were given an authentic gold-engraved White House candy jar, one of the presidential favorites, as a token of appreciation. “It is such a special treat for us to meet our fellow social secretaries and assistants in person before the busy fall event season starts,” Buker said. “Because of all our work behind the scenes, we look forward to enjoying an event as a guest every now and then.”

From front left, Norma Ces of the Embassy of Ireland; Elisabeth Herndler of the Embassy of Luxembourg; Tais Howland of the Embassy of New Zealand; Elle Berdy of the Embassy of Monaco; Janet Pitt; and Rama Toure of the Embassy of Monaco.

Sean Jones and His All-Stars perform.

Co-hosts Gwenda DeMoor of the Belgian Embassy and Kiyomi Buker of the Japanese Embassy join IFE founder and CEO Kathy Kemper and IFE Deputy Director Elise Ravenscroft.

Marina Lukovic Nikolic of the Embassy of Serbia; Anna Gawel of The Washington Diplomat; Pernilla Scott of the Embassy of Sweden; Giovanna Di Berto of the Embassy of Italy; and Tamara Brunhart of the Embassy of Liechtenstein.

Asdis Hreinsdottir of the Embassy of Iceland; Barbara Wellink of the EU Delegation; Katrina Chan of Bloomberg New Economy; Kelly Wheeler of the Embassy of Oman; and Siti Nurasyikin Azman of the Embassy of Singapore.

Cyrus Chestnut, Sharon Clark, Lena Seikaly, Paull Carr, Kris Funn, Charlie Young, Sean Jones and Lenny Robinson. Tarja Thatcher of the Embassy of Finland; Lotta Suomi of the Embassy of Finland; Kiyomi Buker of the Embassy of Japan; Claudia Wilson of the Embassy of Austria; Petra Kujik of the Embassy of the Netherlands; and Liliana Gutan of the Embassy of Moldova.

PHOTOS: RALUCA BARBULESCU

Social secretaries from over 30 embassies pose for a group picture.

44 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

Phumzile Gamdeze of the Embassy of Swaziland and Judith O. Ratlou of the Embassy of Botswana.

Honorary guest Virginia Ali, co-founder and owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl, listens to the concert.

Stefka Yovcheva and Velislava Panova of the Embassy of Bulgaria.

Maurice Jackson, history professor at Georgetown University and co-editor of “DC Jazz: Stories of Jazz Music.” John Edward Hasse, music historian and curator emeritus of American music at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History; Ambassador of Turkey Serdar Kiliç; and trumpeter Sean Jones.

PHOTOS: EMBASSY OF TURKEY

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nism no longer had to be confronted everywhere in the world and that budget deficits mattered. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the onset of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was a surge in hiring. Much of that was for security, where spending has increased 1,000% in the E6FZM0026 last two decades. 0026_BW_ads Having spent his entire career with one oil Newspaper company and an education that consisted of a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, Tillerson BW was the least qualifiedColor/Space: person in American hisLive:of state. He is the only tory to serve as secretary 1.812" (w) x 5.187" (h) person to have enteredTrim: the offi ce without having Bleed:elective office or the spent a day in government, PA Notes: Pageof3his of 7days military. His time in uniform consists as a boy scout and his time as CEO of ExxonMobil was spent maximizing the company’s profits CEclimate APPROVALS As is deals W/C by denying change and making Executive with any dictator withCDoil. It would be hard to find anyone in WashingCreative Director ton who will miss him besides the small group of DesignedDirector equally unqualifi people he picked to help him run the State Department. But he no doubt went Associate CD - Art into the job sure he would be as great there as CD -Th Copy he had beenAssociate in business. at combination of arrogance and ignorance will have earned his place Art Director on the bottom rung of history. It’s alwaysWriter amazing to see people who have had success outside of government think they will be Copy Edit / as equally successful in it. If someone with an Fact Check

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outstanding record as a diplomat announced that for a second career they were going to build a high-rise hotel or an oil refinery, how many people would rush to invest in the project? The business of government is not the same as sellCONTINUED • PAGE 18 ing condos to Russian oligarchs who want their money laundered or digging holes in the ground to look for crude. Democrats, are satisfied with the USMCA The only thing that can be said in Tillerson’s as it is and want House Speaker Pelosi to defense is that it was a job where no one could allow for a vote right away. succeed. His boss was the first major party can“We should be passing that right now,” didate in history with no time in government, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy elected office or the military. That, plus Trump’s (R-Calif.) said in a Sept. 9 interview with aversion to learning anything on the job and his CNBC. “It would guarantee, at a minireliance on his gut instincts for decisions, makes Bill to: E6FZM0026 Executive CD: mum, 180,000 more jobs. GDP will go a coherent foreign policy impossible. Creative Director: S. Pytel REQ 58802 up.” Trump’s governing style is basically medieval. 12-20-06 Art Director: M. Denais That claim was based on the U.S. InDecisions are made solely based on what is good CE: 5/0 Writer: M. Bobryk ternational Trade Commission’s estimate for the king’s grip on power. Those who surround Production Artist: MRS Account: K. Black that the USMCA could create about him are equally self-serving and constantly jockFix and Print Production: K. Warmack 180,000 jobs after six years and that GDP eying forTask: his ear to have the last word and curry Coordinator: J. Radzinski checkedabsolute loyalty would x7890 increase by 0.35%, but only if the his favor.Spell He demands from his agreement were fully implemented and minions, gives none in return and trusts only a enforced. few family members. That’s why his daughter and Both McCarthy and Vice President son-in-law run whatever parts of the governis As isthat if W/C Mike Pence say Pelosi brings the ment they want to dabble inAsand why W/C his cabinet ( ) Knowledge Mgt. Sr. Fulfillment Artist KMG current USMCA to the floor, it has the and staff is composed of grifters and sycophants. votes to pass. “It so much comes down to Tillerson lost Fulfillment ArtistTrump’s trust and any influence USPS Operations Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who I believe has over him with the moron comment even though Printaccurate. ProductionFor if it is one thing that naked CE Legal been dealing with our administration in it was good faith on this issue,” Pence recently monarchs no Art Buyerdon’t like, it is to be told they have Account Supervisor told Maria Bartiromo of Fox News. “We’re clothes. WD Account Executive Product Info (Art /Copy) going to continue to engage Speaker Pelosi, but again, I truly do believe if Speaker Dennis JettHQ is a professor of international affairs Program Mgt. Supervisor Pelosi puts the USMCA on the floor it will at Penn State University. His 28-year career Supervisor Legal pass, then it will pass the Senate and the in Postal the U.S. Foreign Service included assignments American people are going to have a treas QA ambassador to Peru and Mozambique and Coordinator Review in Argentina, Israel, Malawi and Liberia. Changes Only Full Read OKAY TO SHIP Second Read Proof Stage

46 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019

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mendous win for our economy.” If Congress doesn’t ratify the USMCA, however, Trump has threatened to withdraw from NAFTA. NAFTA allows parties to withdraw after giving six months’ notice of intent to do so. However, most trade experts think he can’t do that unilaterally because NAFTA was codified into federal law by way of implementing legislation. They say the law would have to be repealed for the U.S. to withdraw from NAFTA. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the USMCA (also see “Amid Tariffs and Elections, Ratification of New NAFTA Is EverMoving Target” in our July 2019 issue). Canada has said it will only ratify the deal in tandem with the U.S. But Ottawa is having elections on Oct. 21 and if a new governing coalition comes to power, the USMCA will have to be reintroduced in the new parliament. The U.S. also faces electoral constraints. “Democrats suggest mid-fall is a more likely timeline for legislative action,” according to the CSIS brief. “But the longer negotiations between the administration and Democrats drag on, the more likely the USMCA will be caught up in the 2020 election. The prevailing view is that if it is not voted on by the end of 2019, it will not likely be taken up until after the 2020 election, almost a year later.” WD John Brinkley is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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China CONTINUED • PAGE 15

nition software, cloud computing and 5G (fifth generation) wireless cellular networks, the Chinese government has the ability to keep track of more people than ever before — and the wealth to do it. “There’s a technological totalitarian impulse under Xi,” Daly argues, adding that every “street and alley in Beijing is covered by a 24-hour camera.” While Daly said this surveillance “impulse” is not new in China — it goes back at least as far as the Qing Dynasty in the 17th century — Xi has been very interested and effective in employing the most advanced technology to keep a watchful eye on his countrymen. If government cameras will be focused on citizens, it remains an open question how focused the 70th anniversary celebrations will be on Xi specifically, Daly said. He believes the celebrations “will probably be very partyfocused” and thinks the important questions will be how militarized the event is, whether or not anything is said about Taiwan and how the Chinese media report on it. For Daly, the lead-up to Oct. 1 has been as interesting as the event itself. Among other things, the official Chinese state media censor has banned “entertainment-driven” pro-

PHOTO: PIXABAY

The Lujiazui finance and trade zone of Shanghai is seen from across the Huangpu River.

grams (i.e. historical dramas, game shows, reality programs) from Chinese television in the two months leading up to the 70th anniversary. Instead, broadcasters have been told to select “patriotic programs” from an approved list that focuses “on different historical aspects that show the great struggle of the Chinese nation as its people have stood up and become richer and stronger,” according

to a Reuters news report. For his part, Daly will be watching the anniversary celebrations from across the straits in Taiwan. He says he’ll be looking for “how [the Chinese leadership] are performing in power. What are they saying about the nature of all the progress China has made, and what does it mean? Those will be the interpretable things,” he suggests.

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Yun Sun said that overall, the West’s response to the Chinese National Day festivities will not be positive. “[M]ost Western observers will focus on the Chinese show of force and Xi’s show of authority,” she wrote. “They probably will see an authoritarian leader trying to consolidate his legitimacy and authority in front of the world by portraying an image of unanimous support from his people and cheering foreign dignitaries.” Sun suggests that the involvement of foreign dignitaries will be an important element to watch for, as it will offer clues about other countries’ participation in China’s own narrative. According to Sun, most Western observers are very likely to conclude that “China today is a bigger problem” than it was decades ago, and certainly than it was in 1949, when U.S. President Harry Truman vowed never to recognize the new government in Beijing. (The PRC was not formally recognized by the United States until 1979, under President Jimmy Carter.) Meanwhile, Chinese and U.S. leaders can celebrate at least one thing together on Oct. 1. There will be no new tariffs on Chinese goods. President Trump moved the next round of punitive tariffs against America’s economic rival to Oct. 15, tweeting that the action was “a gesture of good will” that was “due to the fact that the People’s Republic of China will be celebrating their 70th Anniversary on October 1st.” How long that goodwill lasts, however, is another question entirely. WD Deryl Davis is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

OCTOBER 2019 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 47

48 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | OCTOBER 2019