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Summary:
In 2019, the Trump administration announced the “America Crece” or the “Growth in the Americas” plan for Latin America. Just days away from the US election, Honduras Now podcast host Karen Spring speaks with freelance journalist, Jeff Abbott who investigated the “America Crece” program. They discuss how these regional neoliberal development plans have bipartisan support in the US and are unlikely to change regardless of who wins the US elections.
Karen and Jeff also delve into the investment plan’s intentions to counteract Chinese investment in the region; the damaging nature of neoliberal investments like hydroelectric projects on Central American communities, and the total failure of the plan to address the reasons why Central Americans migrate north.
Transcript:
Today, I’ve invited freelance journalist, Jeff Abbott, to the show. Jeff recently published a really important article with the online publication Toward Freedom. And his article was called “América Crece: Washington’s New Investment Push in Latin America.” So Jeff, thank you so much for joining me today. Why don’t you start by sharing where you are in the world, and a little bit about what you do.
Jeff Abbott:
I am reporting here from Guatemala City and the Central Plaza, basically. I’ve been reporting from Central America, specifically Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador since 2014. And my work has appeared in publications like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Progressive magazine out of Wisconsin, where I have a monthly column, and a number of other publications, like Toward Freedom.
Karen Spring:
Yeah. And the article that you just published was so incredibly timely because of how much the plan that you outlined in your article gives us such a good framework to understand US investments in Central America. So before I ask you to describe your article, and just sort of talk a little bit about it, I want you to tell me a little bit about your experiences doing audio recording in Central America, and like what you had to build to help me do this interview today?
Jeff Abbott:
Well, recording audio in Central America is a pain. I mean, you can hardly ever find any quiet spaces. Years ago, I was working with a friend of mine who’s a poet and someone from San Juan Comalapa in Chimaltenango. And she was having me record her poetry for little videos that we were doing. And I started building these forts of mattresses, blankets, and stuff like that. So right now I’m reporting from my closet, where I’m surrounded by a bunch of shirts. And in front of me is my mattress which is propped up by the door to my closet and the door to my bedroom. And overhead is draped my blanket. So I’ve found a way to create little quiet spaces.
Karen Spring:
Yeah, well, saludos from my little audio fort that I have. I have something similar going here to try and block out some of the noise. So I’m glad I’m in the presence of somebody that understands that there’s no such thing as silence in Latin America, and just how hard it is to be able to record.
Jeff Abbott:
And in many ways, in other interviews I’ve done for other podcasts, I’ve kind of given up with trying to be quiet. I mean, I’ve done an interview with one podcast from a coffee shop. And it’s just kind of like, ehhh, it’s a little place where I can do it right now. I’m sorry, there’s a lot of noise. But I did it from my phone, pacing around. So this time around, I’m seated in my little bunker.
Karen Spring:
Yeah, I like your attitude, just sort of embrace the noise around you. And like, forget about trying to be silent. I like that.
Jeff Abbott:
Mm hmm. I mean, what we’re missing here is the sound of chickens. When I was living in Comalapa, there were chickens on both sides of my house, and behind my house. So every interview I ever did always had the sound of chickens and roosters in it. I really missed that.
Karen Spring:
Yeah, it definitely gives you that rural Latin America feel, that’s for sure.
Jeff Abbott:
Exactly. It’s beautiful.
Karen Spring:
So let’s get to your piece that you published in Towards Freedom earlier this month. You outlined this América Crece program. It’s an investment plan that Washington recently announced. So what is América Crece? For those that have never heard about it or know anything about the institutions involved, can you just like outline in general what it is?
Jeff Abbott:
Yeah, so América Crece is the latest United States investment program in Latin America. In the past, we’ve seen smaller projects. Specifically in Central America, we’ve seen Plan Mesoamerica, which came out of Plan Puebla-Panamá. There’s also most recently the plan for the Alliance for Prosperity, which wasn’t directly an investment program, but had elements of investment in the project. So América Crece is the Trump administration’s program alongside the US Chamber of Commerce, which is seeking to promote investment in infrastructure projects across the hemisphere. So from Mexico all the way down to Argentina, only three countries are left out, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
And the program actually began in 2018, I believe, and wasn’t announced until 2019, in December 2019, in a grand ceremony in DC, where the US Chamber of Commerce presented the initiative.
And the initiative is really tied to US interests in energy production, integration of the region, which, you know, we’ve seen since the 1970s. And in this current era, it’s really, you know, viewed as being – well not even viewed, it’s explicit – that it’s a response to Chinese investment in the hemisphere.
In 2018, the US Senate and Congress passed a bipartisan bill called the Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act, or the Build Act, which consolidated OPIC, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and a number of other agencies, to form a new investment corporation called the Development Finance Corporation, DFC. And it increased the budget from $29 billion to $60 billion.
And with their signing a number of agreements, memorandums of understanding, between governments of Latin America about this money, Honduras signed a $1 billion agreement, the United States, El Salvador has, Guatemala has, and most of the other countries have as well, as far as I know.
Karen Spring:
One of the things that I noticed about, you know, just in your summary now, and then also in your article, is that you say that the plan makes it very clear that it’s about countering Chinese investment in Latin America. I mean, they’ve had, as you mentioned, other projects before, like Plan Mesoamerica. They also had the Alliance for Prosperity in 2014, which was an Obama-Biden initiative. But they never really made it explicit about it countering Chinese investments. So why would you say this one is similar or different, in that sense?
Jeff Abbott:
The Alliance for Prosperity always had an element of anti Chinese investment within it. In 2018, El Salvador signed an agreement with China to recognize one China, not recognizing diplomatic relations with Taiwan anymore, in order to gain millions of dollars in investment. The United States responded, specifically, Republicans responded, by threatening to remove El Salvador out of the Alliance for Prosperity. But with this, with América Crece, there is a specific acknowledgement of the “threat to China.” I mean, early on, like when they first announced it, that was my first gut instinct, confirmed it with other analysts and didn’t really see anything about it. But I’ve gone back and looked, and it’s been the, you know, the analysis of so many other people, this is a direct response to China. In the last 10 years, Chinese investment in the region has increased billions of dollars. And they’re involved in most Latin American countries, there’s only a handful that are not working with China, Guatemala is one, Honduras is another, Nicaragua, surprisingly, is another, but most other countries have recognized one China. And it’s the timing and just the language around it. And then also the language from the embassies. There was a document that was published by the US Embassy in Guatemala, talking about the threat that China represents. And I’ve also spoken with Guatemalan business leaders here, who have mentioned that they were explicitly told by the United States not to do business with China,
Karen Spring:
Which is, you know, and this is happening in Honduras, too. And I’m just going to read you a tweet, as I think all the embassies are sort of given this order to discuss this issue, and to discuss it with their key allies in these countries. And the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa in Honduras tweeted on September 21, “The construction companies of the People’s Republic of China are damaging the environment and threatening economies and the sovereignty of countries in the world.” And when I saw that quote, I was just like, I don’t understand how that’s any different than what American companies do. But it’s, very clearly, very in line with what the United States is trying to do through this América Crece investment push.
Jeff Abbott:
Exactly. And also, for years I’ve had my question about why the United States has been so involved with the Berta Cáceres case, and you know, in that light it makes me wonder, you know, are they really trying to back COPINH and like trying to get, quote unquote, “justice for Berta” because it’s a Chinese company?
Karen Spring:
Well, actually, the Chinese company was, it started with a Chinese company Sinohydro, and then Berta Cáceres went along with Rio Blanco and the communities, and the resistance pushed that company out. But Sinohydro was a big partner of DESA which was the company building on the Agua Zarca dam. But Sinohydro is building a huge three-part or three-phase dam in eastern Honduras, in the department of Olancho, and close to the La Mosquitia, which is this area, really isolated area of Honduras, and it’s a huge, huge dam, I think it will be the biggest if they put in all three phases of the dam. It’ll be the biggest dam in Honduras. And it’s interesting that you, you know, talking about it in relation to Rio Blanco, and the embassy’s support for – quote, unquote, “support” – there in Rio Blanco. But if you look at what what’s going on with the Patuca dam, which is what it’s called, the Sinohydro dam in construction in eastern Honduras, that dam construction project has been linked to so many corruption cases and money laundering schemes, like drug money laundering schemes. And so, you know, you have these very wealthy, politically powerful people in Honduras teaming up and, like, you know, helping build that Patuca dam through these contracts, and, you know, a whole bunch of different mechanisms. But it’s interesting, because, you know, initiatives that the United States supports, like the MACCIH, the anti corruption body, and other NGOs that sort of denounced corruption in Honduras, and talk about, you know, the involvement of these projects in corruption, have really mentioned the Patuca project as being a source of major corruption. And, for me, it’s interesting because I think that a lot of the United States’s corruption efforts in Honduras is linked to making sure that American companies are given equal if not favorable consideration when they’re bidding for contracts for some of these large infrastructure and energy projects, which the América Crece program promotes.
You talked a little bit about corruption in your article. So I don’t know if there’s anything that you want to comment about how you sort of see the relationship between this discourse of combating corruption that the United States really promotes and an investment plan like América Crece, and then everything that’s come before it?
Jeff Abbott:
Yeah, I mean, for me, it’s a little bit hard to talk about, because like, it’s not clear, because like, the DFC has put in quote, unquote, mechanisms to root out corruption. But with infrastructure, that’s the number one source of corruption. It wouldn’t surprise me if the companies are involved in corruption as well. But showing that’s a whole other thing, right? In Guatemala, you know, corruption is the name of the game, just like in Honduras, and it’s just endemic.
Karen Spring:
Yeah, and it’s, and for me, if you get involved in any sort of infrastructure projects in Honduras, and energy projects, in particular, you’re basically guaranteeing to be involved in some way, shape, or form with corruption and officials that are acting in a corrupt manner. There’s no, like neoliberal development in Honduras through these investments has always been, like, corruption is necessary to be able to promote them.
Jeff Abbott:
Exactly. And like, you go back to Guatemala, like, back in the 1970s and 1980s, there is the push for the expansion of energy production in the region. There were five major hydro projects that were meant to be built. Only three of them got built – one in Chiapas [Mexico], one in Guatemala, and one in Honduras. The two others, which were in Guatemala, one of them was declared unconstitutional in, I think, 2016, the Xalalá dam. And then the other one was abandoned the 1990s. And there’s a report from a German energy company which stated that the Chulac project was, you know, a form, that – Chulac was the largest project in the entire region, it was 430 megawatts. And it was on the Cahabón River, just a little bit northwest of Panzós, in Alta Verapaz near Izabal. And that project, you know, they claimed the project was just a money laundering operation, and the project was abandoned in ’93. And the World Bank report on it was because of, you know, geological issues, the rock in the region couldn’t support the project. But then there’s, you know, this report says, like, Oh, no, it’s money laundering. So it’s, I mean, I say it jokingly, but you know, you want to get rich, you do an infrastructure project, a hydro or highway.
Karen Spring:
Yeah, it’s the same here in Honduras. And just like on the flip side of all this investment, and these large investment plans that, for me, whenever I’m trying to figure out something on the ground here in Honduras, and I’m working alongside communities that are fighting hydroelectric dams, or mining projects, or tourism projects, I always look to these investment frameworks like América Crece, I look to the Alliance for Prosperity, to understand how these all fit into this broader US plan for neoliberal development in Honduras.
And so, you mentioned like two specific projects that you investigated and you report them in your article, that you were able to understand, or that you know that the América Crece program will invest in, and there are tons more.
And so, what in Guatemala, and it’s similar to Honduras, but I’m going to ask you this question is, you know, what do these projects mean for communities? What do they mean for communities that aren’t properly consulted or that don’t see, don’t share this vision of development?
Jeff Abbott:
It means dispossession. It means being evicted from lands. It means social conflict. Losing, you know, the ability to produce for your family. I think probably 99% of all hydro projects are highly contested in Guatemala.
And to the point where, through all this we have to, you know, recognize that the United States sees energy as a geostrategic question. In 2016, there was an investigation done by the Army Corps of Engineers, which sought to see the possibility of utilizing the Guatemalan military to protect the production and distribution of energy in the country. I don’t know the results of that investigation, because Southern Command never confirmed that they did the investigation. I only know about it, because the soldier who did the investigation contacted me. And I met with him and talked with him. And he gave me the proposal and all that.
Karen Spring:
Jeff, is it that Southern Command was supposed to secure and protect energy projects in the United States? Or are you talking the entire region, the entire Western Hemisphere?
Jeff Abbott:
In Guatemala, specifically, I’ve asked other US officials about other countries, and they deny that it even occurred.
Karen Spring:
It’s interesting that you mentioned that because when Berta Cáceres and COPINH and Rio Blanco were fighting the Agua Zarca dam, the US Embassy is sort of known to be one of the main commanders of the TIGRES, the special police force that is the Honduran police force the TIGRES, and the TIGRES were sent in to protect DESA’s infrastructures and the construction of the Agua Zarca dam. And so that’s very similar to what you’re saying, if the Southern Command had that intention in Guatemala.
Jeff Abbott:
Yeah, I actually asked an official who was serving in the US Embassy in 2018 when I was there at the memorial for Berta Cáceres, and he would not confirm that it is occurring.
Karen Spring:
Interesting. Okay, so you mentioned in the beginning of your, when you’re talking about and outlining your article, you said that América Crece is similar to Plan Puebla-Panamá. It’s similar to the 2014 Alliance for Prosperity. And, I mean, this, the Alliance for Prosperity, what we already talked about was an Obama-Biden administration initiative, just quote unquote, like in response to the unaccompanied minors that were flocking to the US-Mexico border from the Northern Triangle.
And so, for me, it’s really concerning that there’s really no difference between the Alliance for Prosperity, which again, focused so much on quote unquote, citizen security, economic opportunities, increased investment in the private sector, with the intention of, you know, reducing migration. So, I mean, the US elections are days away. And this is an initiative, América Crece is an initiative under the Trump administration. Do you see there being any changes in foreign policy, US foreign policy, in Central America or Latin American more broadly from this election?
Jeff Abbott:
Well, first off, I want to add one thing to the Alliance for Prosperity thing, which is often overlooked, there was an energy element to the Alliance for Prosperity.
Karen Spring:
It’s interesting because the Alliance for Prosperity when they implemented it in Honduras, it was right when the Honduran Congress privatized the national electrical energy company, which was held by the state, busted the union, that gave tons of jobs, and then privatized energy, and then started handing out all of these energy generation contracts to private companies that started building them all around the country.
And that’s how the conflict in Rio Blanco started with COPINH that led to the murder of Berta Cáceres and several others, and a whole bunch of resistance to dams, including the Jilamito dam, which you mentioned in your article that this América Crece program is going to finance.
So you’re right. It’s not investigated enough at all, but it’s definitely in there. But energy is always a huge focus of these programs.
Jeff Abbott:
And energy transfers, energy moves, energy isn’t, you know, the, you know, with a service station, you can, you know, re-energize and keep it going keep it moving.
Karen Spring:
So do you think that it’s the way that the United States is trying to get basically as much access as possible to energy markets all across the western hemisphere because they’re concerned about their own energy production.
Jeff Abbott:
That’s one thing I’ve played with for a while, I can’t find a connection specifically to that. In Guatemala, what’s really interesting is up until the 1960s, 1970s, energy nationalization in Guatemala really began in the 1950s under the revolutionary government, specifically during the times of Jacobo Árbenz. Energy wasn’t nationalized for a while after, but it was still nationalized. But, prior to that, the company that owned all the energy production and distribution in Guatemala was a US company.
And I think, in my opinion, this is entirely my opinion, I think that the United States is concerned about their own energy generation, given the movement that’s occurring, especially on the West Coast right now to removing dams. Due to the environmental impacts, I think there is a concern, and it’s just, you know, exporting the externalities.
Karen Spring:
Yeah. And I think it’s, I think you’re right, noting that a US company held, basically owned the energy production before it was nationalized in Guatemala, because, for sure, the United States is looking to open up markets for its own companies. And it’s very profitable.
Jeff Abbott:
And here in Guatemala, Honduras I’m not sure about, El Salvador, yes, you know, there’s US companies that have come in. Duke Energy is here in Guatemala on the Pacific coast. They have a plant in Escuintla, I think it is.
Karen Spring:
And so who is Duke Energy for us Canadians that don’t know that much about the US and energy players?
Jeff Abbott:
Oh, hang on, let me pull it up. Cuz I don’t know. I don’t remember all the details off the top my head.
Karen Spring:
Okay, well, while you’re looking that up, I want to go back to the fact that the US elections are a couple of days away. So, you see the Trump administration, what they did by creating the DFC, which is called the US International Development Finance Corporation. It’s a new initiative, like you mentioned. And then you have, you’re looking at this Biden plan, the Obama-Biden administration Alliance for Prosperity. So do you have any hope? Do you think at all that, like there’s any difference between Trump and Biden’s foreign policy for Latin America?
Jeff Abbott:
No. Simply put, no. Honestly, I think that if Biden wins, it’s going to be more of the same. We’re gonna, you know, they’re gonna, the Trump administration, you know, they didn’t reverse, but they rebranded the Alliance for Prosperity, and then launched the América Crece program. We have to remember that the América Crece program, or the América Crece Initiative, has bipartisan support in the United States.
And Biden, on his website, in his plan for Central America, talks about increasing investment in Central America. Which, you know, to my eyes looks exactly like América Crece.
So I think, you know, if there’s a change of administration, let’s hope there is a change of administration, it’ll still be more of the same. And honestly, like, Democrats in general, keep going back to the same narrative. Nancy Pelosi came to Guatemala last year, in August, I think it was. And in her speech, when she was leaving, she just stated, again, basically what the tenets of the Alliance for Prosperity were.
And so I think that the problem with US officials is that they don’t understand the reason why people are migrating. In these countries, we’re living in neo-feudal countries that have an economic elite that’s so disattached and is trying to protect their little kingdoms. And the talk about investment doesn’t mean that it will actually lead to quote, unquote, “development” for the communities, because the development is completely different from what the communities want. But even what development there is is still going to be tied to the national elite. And it’s still going to have this, you know, really regressive model which resists unions, or which looks to actively destroy unions, you know, keeping wages low, and meaning that people live and work for nothing. It’s going back to how things were 100 years ago, in the times of like, United Fruit Company.
Karen Spring:
Yeah, I think you’re drawing the connections between what the United States considers development and what the communities, or people in these Central American countries that are not part of the wealthy and economic elite, is really important.
And when I was reading your article, I was like, okay, so he mentions Biden, the Alliance for Prosperity, and so I wanted to see, because the Alliance for Prosperity was justified, or sorry, Biden’s plan on his website, for if he wins the presidency, talks about reducing migration and getting to the root causes of migration. So, but that’s what he wanted to do with the Alliance for Prosperity in 2014. So I looked it up. Did migration actually go down? And nope, not at all. And I mean, yeah, I mean, I looked it up to the National Immigration forum says, quote, “between fiscal years 2015 to 2018, the proportion of family units and unaccompanied children apprehended at the southern border increased substantially, accounting for 63% of all apprehensions of the Northern Triangle migrants in the fiscal year of 2018.” So, basically that means that, so the Alliance for Prosperity was supposed to reduce unaccompanied children and families from going north, but they increased from 47% of all apprehensions at the US border in 2015, and they went up to 63%. And I mean, you know, these are statistics, but we know that they’re now migrant caravans and we know that there’s massive amounts of people fleeing Honduras, and then obviously Guatemalans and people from El Salvador are joining them.
And you’ve done a lot of coverage on these migrant caravans. And I think it’s interesting to draw this connection too, while we’re talking about migration, is that there was a recent article that went out that talked about how Customs and Border Protection were actually in Guatemala, the Senate report said that they were in Guatemala apprehending migrants, and sending them back to Honduras.
So you have tons of experience covering migration and the caravans. I don’t know if you want to comment a little bit about what you’ve heard, when you’re interviewing migrants and why people are fleeing?
Jeff Abbott:
Oh, of course. One thing I want to say is like with the Alliance for Prosperity, there is no way of seeing what the impacts were. It’s not transparent whatsoever. While it was, you know, activated, I talked to representatives from the municipality of Nebaj, which was one of the pilot projects for the program, and they had no idea what was happening with the money being sent here for that program. Neither did local organizations that work with communities. So there was a ton of money coming down here, but there’s nothing to show for it.
And in terms of migration, I mean, the causes of migration are so numerous, you know, there’s people who’ve suffered from violence, and there’s people who’ve suffered from a lack of opportunity, the most recent caravan at the beginning of October, you know, I talked to people that lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and had no means of survival. And there isn’t, you know, the aid never arrived. Here in Guatemala, like, migration initially fell a little bit, but, you know, the numbers have been going up ever since. And it’s because, you know, these countries haven’t responded in a way to support people to live, there is no buen vivir, there’s no good life here. There’s no well-being for communities.
So these governments implement the measures to stop the spread the virus, but they don’t take into account how people need to eat, or have access to other means of survival. And one of the big things I found here during the pandemic was communities up along the border were separated from their lands, due to the pandemic, they, you know, there’s communities, there’s a large amount of communities across Guatemala, that rent land in Mexico to sow their crops, and they couldn’t make it to their lands during the planting season. So you know, in the future what we’re going to see is a massive crisis of hunger across the the western Highlands because people couldn’t get to those lands.
And there is a massive crisis in the countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, the quote unquote, “Northern Triangle,” which I try not to use that term. But the US hasn’t actually ever engaged with the reason why people migrate. They don’t engage with the disenfranchisement that you find. They don’t engage with massive land conflicts, because people, if they have land, and they can sustain their families, they’re not going to migrate. Most people don’t want to migrate. But it’s a short sighted neoliberal response.
Karen Spring:
Yeah, I think that you really nailed that. This problematic neoliberal development promoted by the United States. So for people, and this will probably be my final question for you, but for people that are in resistance, what do you think has to be done to stop the negative impacts of América Crece, and any other proposals that promote neoliberal development in Central America?
Jeff Abbott:
Mobilization. It has to be active, purposeful mobilization. Sadly, in this day and age, you have to interact with the apparatuses of the state, which, you know, is a whole other problematic. But I think for communities in resistance, the idea is, fight them on every level, push back against them.
And then, you know, for people who are outside of the region, it’s understanding what are the impacts. What does it mean, if they build a hydro project in the community? Like, what does it mean if a community – what day was it? – Thursday, last week – I went to a community that is right above a hydroelectric project in Tucurú, Alta Verapaz. And the community is completely cut off from the water, and the water of the river Chixoy, which passes in front of them, isn’t even running at the normal rate, because there’s a dam there. And so they’ve lost access to this resource that should be for the benefit of all.
And I think that, on this end, it’s resistance, protesting, mobilizing, utilizing the courts, utilizing international conventions, etc. But then that’s not going to be enough. It has to be people in other countries, you know, the United States, Canada, Europe being like, you know, no, like, we’re not going to accept these policies that displace people. I think, in many regards these policies are ones that are of dispossession, of displacement, of theft, and it’s theft of the means of survival, the theft of the means of production. Because they’re independent, they’re autonomous. And when talking about migration, we have to also realize that it’s also one of the forces of internal migration as well, you know, the urbanization of these countries. And urbanization means more poverty, because they can’t find stable livelihoods in these cities. So you have a lot of informal labor that emerges out of all of this. And with that, it’s an ever expanding crisis. Because, you know, migration isn’t just [inaudible] provide for family. All too often people go to the cities, can’t make a living, find way more crime in the cities than in their communities, get more unstable, and then decide to go to the United States. I mean, that’s not 100% of the case. But that’s often the case. Right? So I think it’s that.
Karen Spring:
Yeah, I think I would echo kind of what you were saying, too, is just a call for joining forces in the quote unquote “Global South” and the quote unquote, “Global North” and resisting. And with Biden, if Biden wins the elections, it’s definitely not over for all of us folks that are working, you know, been working for years to see the United States, promoting more and more of the same, and it getting more and more aggressive, potentially, as well.
So Jeff, I just want to thank you so much for joining me today. I know I have so much respect for freelance journalists, because freelance journalism is so difficult. So thank you so much for writing this amazing piece. I encourage people all to read it. It’s called “América Crece: Washington’s New Investment Push in Latin America,” by freelance journalist Jeff Abbott, published in the online newspaper Toward Freedom. So thanks so much, Jeff, for joining me today.
Jeff Abbott:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
Karen Spring:
So that’s the show for today, folks. US elections are T-minus 4 days. I’m crossing my fingers here in Tegucigalpa. As always, check out our show notes at HondurasNow.org. Make a donation to the podcast or give me a sweet rating in Apple podcasts. Thanks so much for listening today. I’m deeply appreciative of all that get in touch. Thank you for your support. You all keep me going and keep me inspired. Until the next episode, hasta pronto.