Comoros's energy minister suspended fuel price hikes after deadly protests shook the islands. Fletcher and Octavio explore how a war in the Strait of Hormuz can unravel the economy of a tiny country on the other side of the world.
El ministro de energía de Comoras suspendió las subidas de precios del combustible después de que las protestas mortales sacudieran las islas. Fletcher y Octavio exploran cómo una guerra en el Estrecho de Ormuz puede destruir la economía de un pequeño país en el otro lado del mundo.
8 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| combustible | fuel | El precio del combustible subió mucho porque la guerra afectó al mercado internacional. |
| subida | rise / price hike | El gobierno suspendió la subida de precios después de las protestas. |
| reservas de divisas | foreign exchange reserves | Sri Lanka protegió sus reservas de divisas con un impuesto sobre los coches importados. |
| remesas | remittances | Las remesas que los comorenses envían desde Francia son muy importantes para la economía del país. |
| consecuencias | consequences | La guerra tuvo consecuencias económicas en muchos países que no participaron en el conflicto. |
| frágil | fragile | La estabilidad política en Comoras siempre fue muy frágil. |
| dejar | to leave behind / to let | El conflicto dejó consecuencias económicas que todavía se sienten en todo el mundo. |
| afectado | affected | Los países más pobres fueron los más afectados por el aumento del precio del petróleo. |
Here's a question I've been sitting with all week: when does a war in the Persian Gulf become a riot in a place most people couldn't find on a map?
Comoras.
Comoros.
Eso es lo que pasó esta semana.
That's what happened this week.
Las islas Comoras están en el océano Índico, cerca de Mozambique, y la gente allí salió a las calles porque el precio del combustible subió demasiado.
The Comoros Islands are in the Indian Ocean, near Mozambique, and people there took to the streets because the price of fuel went up too much.
And someone died.
One person killed in clashes in Anjouan, five more injured.
The energy minister stepped in and suspended the price hikes, but that's not really where the story ends, is it.
No, claro que no.
No, of course not.
El problema es que el precio del combustible subió por la guerra en Irán.
The problem is that the fuel price went up because of the war in Iran.
Comoras no tiene nada que ver con esa guerra.
Comoros has nothing to do with that war.
Pero paga las consecuencias.
But it pays the consequences.
That's the thing that gets me about this story.
The Strait of Hormuz is roughly six thousand kilometers from Comoros.
Different ocean, effectively.
But they're connected through oil, and that connection has consequences.
Mira, para entender esto, tenemos que hablar un poco de Comoras.
Look, to understand this, we need to talk a bit about Comoros.
Es un país muy pequeño.
It's a very small country.
Tiene menos de un millón de habitantes.
It has fewer than a million inhabitants.
Es uno de los países más pobres del mundo.
It's one of the poorest countries in the world.
I spent a bit of time reporting in that part of the Indian Ocean years ago, and the thing about Comoros that struck me immediately was how completely dependent it is on the outside world for almost everything it consumes.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Comoras no produce petróleo.
Comoros doesn't produce oil.
Importa todo el combustible que necesita.
It imports all the fuel it needs.
Cuando el precio del petróleo sube en el mercado internacional, en Comoras el impacto es muy fuerte porque no hay alternativa.
When the oil price goes up on the international market, the impact in Comoros is very severe because there's no alternative.
And this isn't abstract.
Fuel in a place like Comoros isn't just about filling up your car.
It's generators for hospitals, fishing boats, the electricity grid.
Everything runs on imported fuel.
Sí.
Yes.
Y cuando el gobierno tiene que subir los precios del combustible para cubrir los costos, la gente que tiene menos dinero es la más afectada.
And when the government has to raise fuel prices to cover costs, the people with less money are most affected.
Ellos gastan una parte muy grande de sus ingresos en energía.
They spend a very large portion of their income on energy.
Which explains why people went into the streets.
This wasn't political protest in the traditional sense.
It was a cost-of-living crisis made suddenly and visibly worse by something happening thousands of miles away.
En Anjouan, que es una de las tres islas principales, los enfrentamientos fueron muy serios.
In Anjouan, which is one of the three main islands, the clashes were very serious.
Una persona murió.
One person died.
Eso es mucho para un lugar tan pequeño.
That's a lot for such a small place.
El gobierno entendió que tenía que actuar rápido.
The government understood it had to act quickly.
Anjouan has its own complicated history.
There have been separatist movements there, a short-lived unilateral declaration of independence in the nineties that most people have completely forgotten about.
The government in Moroni can't afford to let things spiral there.
Correcto.
Correct.
Comoras tiene una historia política muy inestable.
Comoros has a very unstable political history.
Desde la independencia en 1975, hubo muchos golpes de estado, más de veinte intentos.
Since independence in 1975, there were many coups, more than twenty attempts.
La estabilidad siempre es frágil.
Stability is always fragile.
Twenty coups in fifty years.
And I want to dwell on that for a second, because it matters here.
When your institutions are already fragile, an economic shock doesn't just hurt wallets, it destabilizes the whole structure.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y por eso el ministro de energía, Aboubacar Saïd Anli, anunció la suspensión de las subidas muy rápido.
And that's why the energy minister, Aboubacar Saïd Anli, announced the suspension of the price hikes very quickly.
No podía esperar.
He couldn't wait.
Fue una decisión política tanto como económica.
It was a political decision as much as an economic one.
But suspending the hikes doesn't make the underlying cost disappear.
Someone still has to absorb the difference between what fuel actually costs on the world market and what Comorians are paying at the pump.
Claro.
Of course.
El estado paga la diferencia, pero el estado de Comoras no tiene mucho dinero.
The state pays the difference, but the Comorian state doesn't have much money.
Es un subsidio que no pueden mantener por mucho tiempo.
It's a subsidy they can't maintain for very long.
Es una solución temporal para un problema que no es temporal.
It's a temporary solution to a problem that isn't temporary.
This is the trap that so many developing economies fall into.
You subsidize fuel to keep people from rioting, you drain your reserves, eventually you can't subsidize anymore, and then you get the riot anyway but now you're also broke.
Es un círculo muy difícil.
It's a very difficult circle.
Y no es solo Comoras.
And it's not just Comoros.
Muchos países en África y Asia están en la misma situación ahora mismo por la guerra en Irán.
Many countries in Africa and Asia are in the same situation right now because of the war in Iran.
Los precios del petróleo subieron mucho desde que empezó el conflicto.
Oil prices went up a lot since the conflict started.
The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly twenty percent of the world's oil supply through a passage that, at its narrowest point, is about thirty-three kilometers wide.
When that gets complicated, the ripple goes everywhere.
Y esta semana, un diputado iraní habló de crear un nuevo sistema para cobrar tasas a los barcos que pasan por el estrecho.
And this week, an Iranian lawmaker talked about creating a new system to charge fees for ships passing through the strait.
Si Iran controla el acceso al estrecho, puede influir en el precio del petróleo en todo el mundo.
If Iran controls access to the strait, it can influence the price of oil around the whole world.
That story landed kind of quietly this week but it's enormous.
Charging transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz would be, depending on how you read international maritime law, somewhere between legally aggressive and completely unprecedented.
Sí.
Yes.
En el derecho internacional, el Estrecho de Ormuz es una vía de paso en tránsito.
In international law, the Strait of Hormuz is a transit passage route.
Los barcos tienen derecho a pasar.
Ships have the right to pass.
Iran no puede, legalmente, cerrar el estrecho o poner un precio al acceso.
Iran cannot, legally, close the strait or put a price on access.
Pero la situación ahora es muy tensa.
But the situation right now is very tense.
The USS Gerald R.
Ford came home this week too.
Eleven months deployed, the longest U.S.
deployment since Vietnam.
That ship's been sitting in those waters as an explicit signal.
When it pulls out, Iran reads that signal as well.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y mientras tanto, Pakistán envió a su ministro del interior a Teherán para continuar las negociaciones entre Iran y los Estados Unidos.
And meanwhile, Pakistan sent its interior minister to Tehran to continue the negotiations between Iran and the United States.
Hay un proceso diplomático, pero es muy frágil.
There is a diplomatic process, but it's very fragile.
Pakistan as mediator is genuinely interesting.
They have relationships in Tehran that Washington simply doesn't.
But back to Comoros for a moment, because I think people underestimate how many countries are in essentially the same position right now.
Muchos países.
Many countries.
Sri Lanka, por ejemplo, también tomó medidas esta semana, un impuesto muy alto sobre los coches importados, por la misma razón: proteger sus reservas de divisas porque el petróleo es muy caro.
Sri Lanka, for example, also took measures this week, a very high tax on imported cars, for the same reason: to protect its foreign currency reserves because oil is very expensive.
Right, and Sri Lanka has been through this before.
The 2022 economic collapse there was brutal, partly driven by exactly this kind of foreign exchange crisis.
They know what the edge of the cliff looks like.
Y Comoras no tiene la misma capacidad para resistir.
And Comoros doesn't have the same capacity to resist.
Sri Lanka tiene una economía más grande, más diversa.
Sri Lanka has a bigger, more diverse economy.
Comoras depende mucho de las remesas de dinero que los comorenses que viven en el extranjero envían a sus familias.
Comoros depends a lot on remittances, the money that Comorians living abroad send to their families.
The remittance economy.
The diaspora in France especially.
There are more Comorians in Marseille than in some parts of the islands themselves.
That money coming back home is, in some years, a larger share of GDP than anything the government generates.
Sí.
Yes.
Las remesas son muy importantes.
Remittances are very important.
Pero cuando el petróleo es caro y todo el mundo tiene menos dinero, también las remesas bajan.
But when oil is expensive and everyone has less money, remittances go down too.
Es otro impacto indirecto de una guerra que Comoras no eligió.
It's another indirect impact of a war that Comoros didn't choose.
There's a word for this in economics, contagion.
But that word makes it sound like a disease, something random, something no one caused.
What's actually happening in Comoros right now has a very specific cause with a specific address.
Es verdad.
That's true.
Y esta es la parte más difícil.
And this is the hardest part.
Los países que más sufren las consecuencias económicas de la guerra en Irán son los países que menos poder tienen para cambiar la situación.
The countries that suffer the most from the economic consequences of the war in Iran are the countries that have the least power to change the situation.
No pueden influir en las negociaciones.
They can't influence the negotiations.
Solo esperan.
They just wait.
I covered the 1973 oil embargo as a very young journalist, just starting out, and the thing I remember is how differently it hit depending on where you were standing.
Americans waited in long lines.
In some parts of the developing world, the heating simply stopped.
Y eso no cambió mucho.
And that hasn't changed much.
En 1973, en 2008, ahora: siempre es lo mismo.
In 1973, in 2008, now: it's always the same.
Los países ricos tienen reservas, tienen opciones, tienen tiempo.
Rich countries have reserves, have options, have time.
Los países pobres no tienen nada de eso.
Poor countries have none of that.
La crisis llega más rápido y dura más tiempo.
The crisis arrives faster and lasts longer.
The question going forward is whether the ceasefire negotiations, the Pakistan-mediated talks, whatever framework eventually emerges from the Iran war, will account for that at all.
Historically, peace deals don't include compensation for the Comoroses of the world.
No, nunca.
No, never.
Y la gente en Anjouan que protestó esta semana, ellos no piensan en los acuerdos de paz internacionales.
And the people in Anjouan who protested this week, they're not thinking about international peace agreements.
Piensan en cómo van a pagar la electricidad el mes que viene.
They're thinking about how they're going to pay the electricity bill next month.
Esa es la realidad.
That's the reality.
That's it exactly.
And that gap, between the abstractions we use to discuss geopolitics and the very concrete thing that happens when a family can't afford to run a generator, that gap is what I think about a lot.
Oye, Fletcher, antes de terminar, quiero hablar de una cosa del español de hoy.
Hey, Fletcher, before we finish, I want to talk about something from today's Spanish.
Usé la expresión 'las consecuencias'.
I used the expression 'las consecuencias'.
¿Sabes lo que significa exactamente?
Do you know what it means exactly?
Consequences, yeah.
But I noticed you used it differently from how I'd expect.
You said something like the war has consequences for Comoros, but you could also say the crisis left consequences.
Is there a distinction there, or am I reading too much into it?
Buena pregunta.
Good question.
En español, 'tener consecuencias' es hablar del presente, de algo que todavía continúa.
In Spanish, 'tener consecuencias' is talking about the present, about something that's still ongoing.
Pero 'dejar consecuencias' es diferente, es cuando el evento terminó pero el efecto permanece.
But 'dejar consecuencias' is different, it's when the event finished but the effect remains.
Por ejemplo: 'La guerra dejó consecuencias económicas en todo el mundo'.
For example: 'The war left economic consequences across the world'.
So it's really about the temporal relationship between the cause and the effect.
'Tener' is still happening, 'dejar' is the residue after it's done.
That's actually a really precise distinction that English kind of blurs over.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y 'dejar' en español tiene muchos usos así, cuando algo termina pero deja una marca.
And 'dejar' in Spanish has many uses like that, when something ends but leaves a mark.
'El invierno dejó frío en las casas', 'el accidente le dejó una cicatriz'.
'The winter left the houses cold', 'the accident left him a scar'.
Siempre hay una huella que continúa.
There's always a trace that continues.
Dejar.
I'm going to try to use that this weekend in Madrid and probably conjugate it completely wrong.
But the idea is in my head now, and that's something.
Thanks, Octavio.
And thanks to everyone listening.
Perfecto.
Perfect.
Y si lo conjugas mal, yo te corrijo.
And if you conjugate it wrong, I'll correct you.
Como siempre.
As always.
Hasta la próxima.
Until next time.