Yuri Kadobnov/Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Kremlin in Moscow on June 14. Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to increase oil production by up to 1.5 million barrels per day, which could lead to falling global prices.

Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sat together in the stands at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium last week, locked in animated conversation as Russia's soccer team crushed Saudi Arabia’s 5-0 in the kickoff game of the FIFA World Cup.  It wasn’t just soccer that brought Mr. bin Salman to Moscow with his energy minister, Khalid al-Falih, in tow. 

The next day it was announced that Russia and Saudi Arabia had agreed to “institutionalize” their two-year old bilateral arrangement to coordinate oil production targets in order to smooth out global price fluctuations. Being two of the world’s three biggest oil producers – the third is the United States – their combined weight can be decisive.  In 2016, Moscow and Riyadh agreed to slash production, and prices have since edged up from around $40 per barrel to more than $65 at present. 

The world may not be shifting on its axis yet, but the new relationship between Russia and Saudi Arabia is a clear sign of changes in the wind. Russia is more active in the Middle East than at any time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it is forging fresh ties with a variety of regional countries. Those include some, besides Saudi Arabia, that it never had particularly friendly relations with in the past, including Israel, Iran, Qatar, and Turkey. 

The relative success of Russia’s military intervention in Syria has made it an indispensable player in shaping any future peace settlement, and is part of the reason many Middle Eastern leaders have been beating a path to Moscow in the past couple of years. But growing uncertainties about the US role and its reliability as a partner are clear factors in some countries seeking to diversify their foreign ties.

“There has been something cooking between Russia and Saudi Arabia since King Salman made his completely unprecedented visit to Moscow a couple years ago,” says Sergei Strokan, foreign affairs columnist with the Moscow business daily Kommersant. “It’s driven by common interest in the global oil market, but there is a lot more going on.” 

This week Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to increase production by up to 1.5 million barrels per day, which could lead to falling global prices. That decision that is not likely to go down well with the Saudi-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), many of whose leading members, including Iran, Venezuela, and Iraq, need prices to stay high.  They are threatening to scuttle the deal when OPEC holds its annual summit in Vienna on Friday. But Russia is not a member of OPEC, and its growing collaboration with Saudi Arabia in massaging global oil markets suggests that dealmaking between the two oil-producing giants may be eclipsing OPEC.

“Putin and bin Salman are clearly calculating that since some OPEC countries, like Venezuela and Iran, are under US sanctions, they will not be exporting as much oil as before,” says Yelena Melkumyan, an expert with the Russian State University for Humanities in Moscow. “The production-cutting deal Moscow and Riyadh made in 2016 worked very well, and prices are at a good level now. But Saudi Arabia needs more revenue for its ambitious 2030 economic development vision. Russia has a lot of planned infrastructure-building to fund. Both countries want to increase income, and it’s their priorities – not those of other OPEC countries – that are driving this idea to increase production. That’s the main thing that brings them together right now.”

Saudi Arabia is one of several traditionally US clients, such as Qatar and Turkey, that are currently negotiating to buy Russian weaponry, particularly the S-400 air defense system. That’s a radical departure from past practice for these countries, who have always acquired Western, mainly US, arms. The mere prospect of such sales led the Trump administration’s nominee for assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, David Schenker, to warn those countries could be sanctioned by the US if they go ahead. 

“I would work with our allies to dissuade them, or encourage them, to avoid military purchases that would be potentially sanctionable,” he said at his Senate confirmation hearing. “In other words, I would tell Saudi Arabia not to do it.”

That could backfire, says Mr. Strokan.

“Quite a few countries are hearing these threats of sanctions from the US due to their military and technical relations with Russia. Even big countries, like India, are getting this message. Some of them may decide they need to assert their sovereignty, as well as lessen their dependence on the US, and that can work in Russia’s favor,” he says.

Russia’s main vulnerability, experts say, is that it is trying to be friends with everyone at once. “We seek dialogue, even with difficult partners like Turkey, Israel, and Iran. This is a hallmark of current Russian diplomacy,” says Vladimir Yevseev, an expert with the Institute of World Economy and International Affairs, which is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. 

So far it has proved successful, but there are many ways it could go wrong. 

For example, Saudi Arabia has been angered by Moscow’s warming ties with Qatar, a Gulf state it has been trying to blockade for more than a year. Indeed, bin Salman threatened “military action” this month against Qatar if it acquires the Russian air defense system. 

Iran and Russia have improved their relations, forging a de facto military alliance in Syria, but that could prove a serious impediment for Moscow in further developing ties with Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main adversary. Some experts suggest that Saudi offers to procure Russian arms may be more an effort to buy influence in Moscow than any desire to switch suppliers.

“Saudi efforts to lobby in Russia are not likely to have any impact,” says Dr. Melkumyan. “There has been no change at all in the Kremlin’s position in Syria, which is fixed on certain principles that the Saudis are not likely to shift with a few billion dollars in arms purchases. As for Iran, I sincerely doubt that Russia could change its position on anything, even if it wanted to.” 

The military exercises that the United States holds with South Korea every summer, code-named Ulchi Freedom Guardian, have been a vital part of the two countries’ alliance since the 1970s. They’re also one of the largest military exercises in the world. They lasted for 11 days last year and involved some 17,500 American forces and 50,000 South Korean troops.

The main goal of the exercises, which rely heavily on computer simulations, is to ensure that the two militaries are prepared for a sudden crisis, namely an attack by North Korea. They also send a strong message about American commitment to its allies in the region – a commitment that has been called into question following President Trump’s dismissal of the exercises as a waste of money, and their formal suspension earlier this week.

Pyongyang routinely decries such exercises as rehearsals for an invasion. It had threatened to call off its June 12 summit with the US, and did call off a meeting with Seoul, over the “Max Thunder” drills in May. This summer’s exercises would have been “very provocative,” Mr. Trump said at the Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last week. That's where he first indicated he would suspend the “war games,” “unless and until” talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program show signs of trouble.

But to critics, suspending Freedom Guardian – particularly without consulting Seoul – threatens to erode the trust holding two longtime allies together. And as countries like Japan and South Korea lose confidence in American commitments to the region, they say, others stand to win: China and North Korea.

The US president has surprised many people in his negotiations with North Korea. In late May, he abruptly canceled his June 12 meeting with Mr. Kim, only to announce eight days later it was back on. Both then and again last week, officials in Seoul were caught off guard. “The meaning and intention of President Trump’s remarks requires more clear understanding,” the office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in said in a statement after the summit.

The Pentagon officially announced the military exercises’ suspension on Monday. The South Korean Defense Ministry followed on Tuesday, saying it was necessary to put them on hold to support ongoing talks with Pyongyang.

“South Korea and the US made the decision as we believe this will contribute to maintaining such momentum,” Choi Hyun-soo, the ministry's spokeswoman, told the Associated Press.

Eroding the relationship

Analysts warn that Trump’s seat-of-the-pants decision-making threatens to erode the relationship between Washington and Seoul. More broadly, it raises questions about whether his outreach to Kim signals an American retreat from the region.

“If this had been coordinated beforehand with South Korea and Japan, and then it was announced, that would have been one thing. But it was completely the opposite,” says Lisa Collins, a fellow at the Office of the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “I think there's a lot of concern that not consulting our allies was a huge mistake on the part of Trump that just basically gives more leverage to China and North Korea in the end.”

To some extent, South Korean officials have grown accustomed to Trump’s unpredictability, Ms. Collins says. But, she says, “there are people in Seoul who believe that there is enough history in the alliance and enough people in the Trump administration who can influence Trump to keep the alliance grounded. At least for now.”

Trump's perspective on the alliance has been clear since his 2016 campaign, when he first said he wanted to withdraw American troops from South Korea. Without any forewarning to Seoul, he reiterated his desire to eventually do so after the summit in Singapore.

Officials in Seoul have sought to minimize the damage. The decision to suspend Ulchi Freedom Guardian appears to leave room for routine training between American and South Korean troops that takes place throughout the year. Defense officials in both countries told reporters that no decisions have been made on any other military exercises, including live-fire drills that usually take place in the spring.

Driving a wedge

Still, analysts say that the decision to suspend the exercises, combined with Trump’s stated desire to withdraw American troops from South Korea, have exacerbated concerns about the country’s long-term security, and the region’s. Lee Seong-hyon, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute in Seongnam, South Korea, warns that while it’s too early to know the full implications of the suspension, it could alter the balance of power in East Asia.

“It's more than weakening the US-ROK alliance,” Mr. Lee says in an email, referring to the Republic of Korea, South Korea’s formal name. “It will weaken the US leadership role in the region.”

Since the end of World War II, the US has maintained a firm foothold in East Asia and provided security assurances to its allies there. It has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea and 54,000 in Japan. Long considered a stabilizing force in the region, the US, according to Lee, may now be abdicating that role, much to the delight of China.

“China sees the US alliance structure in the region as the major institutional device by Washington to contain China,” Lee says. 

Under President Xi Jinping, China aims to supplant the US as the predominant power in Asia. Beijing has long called for an end to joint military drills between the US and South Korea and the removal of American troops from the Korean Peninsula.

The decision to suspend this summer's military exercises "could be something that actually helps China and North Korea more than it helps the negotiation process with North Korea,” Collins says.

“North Korea and China will take any opportunity they get to drive a wedge between the US and South Korea,” she adds. “Their ultimate goal is to have the alliance broken up and for US military forces to leave the region.”

While Trump continues to test the US-South Korea relationship, Mr. Xi has been working to shore up China’s alliance with North Korea. On Wednesday, Kim concluded a two-day tour of China, his third visit since March, during which Xi lauded the “positive” outcome of the Singapore summit and promised strong support.

"No matter how the international and regional situations change, the firm stance of the [Chinese Communist Party] and the Chinese government on consolidating and developing the relations with [North Korea] remains unchanged,” Xi told Kim, according to Xinhua, China’s state news agency. “The Chinese people's friendship with the [North Korean] people remains unchanged, and China's support for the socialist [North Korea] remains unchanged.”

So much has happened so fast, Joyce Hamilton says, that she has to double-check exactly when her small role in the 2018 border crisis began.

Checking her calendar in a park across the street from the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville earlier this week, her guess is close: 15 days ago.

There had been nothing in the news then, and no one had been talking about it until she heard from a friend of a friend that asylum-seekers were lined up on the bridge connecting Reynosa, Mexico with Hidalgo, Texas – a few miles south of McAllen.

At first she was surprised, says Ms. Hamilton, a retired educator who lives in Harlingen – then eager to learn what supplies the asylum-seekers needed.

Ever since the Trump administration implemented its “zero-tolerance” immigration policy last month – prosecuting everyone caught crossing the border without proper documents, including those requesting asylum – the situation on the US-Mexico border, particularly here in the Rio Grande Valley, has been changing quickly.

After hearing of the line at the bridge, Hamilton and a group of her friends packed their cars with water, snacks, clothes, sun umbrellas, and fans to fight the 100-degree afternoon heat and brought the supplies through the turnstiles into Mexico. There, about 40 asylum-seekers told them they had been waiting at the border for upwards of five days.

When she returned with friends four days later, the line had doubled.

“They were just kind of pleading for specific clothing items, and alimentos, food for the kids,” she says. “They’re not MS-13. It’s not gang people,” she adds. “These are good people from little villages in central America trying to get away from violence.”

Hamilton, who resolved to bring supplies every few days after her second trip to the bridge, says she has found it hard to keep up with the changing situation on the border.

Just Wednesday, President Trump ordered an end to the most controversial aspect of the zero-tolerance policy: the separation of undocumented families caught crossing the border.

Henry Gass/The Christian Science Monitor

Ms. Hamilton talks with US Custom and Border Patrol officers on the Gateway International Bridge. She was bringing supplies for asylum-seekers who were sleeping on the bridge.

The changes at the border notwithstanding, advocates for migrants and asylum-seekers see no let-up in the demand to enter the United States. Almost all the migrants are coming from the “Northern Triangle” of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala – where murder rates exceed even those in active war zones – and are unlikely to be deterred by months in immigrant detention or long waits on bridges over the Rio Grande, the advocates say.

“It’s a life-or-death decision for them,” says Efrén Olivares, director of the racial economic justice program at the Texas Civil Rights Project in Alamo, Texas. “It’s going back to the threat of ‘If I ever see you again I’m going to shoot you in the head’ – after they’ve shot your brother in the head.”

Meanwhile, if the reversal of family separations means children as young as 12 months should no longer be detained without their parents, it is unlikely to mitigate – and may even exacerbate – other consequences of the zero-tolerance policy, experts and advocates say. There is no clear plan for how to reunite the more than 2,300 children already separated from their families, the Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday.

“We’re certainly happy that children aren’t being ripped from their parents, but it really does appear that the executive order is trading one humanitarian crisis for another,” says Jennifer Nagda, policy director at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. “Children won’t now face immediate separation or long-term separation from their parents, but it appears they’re going to be locked up together in detention facilities” while their cases are processed, she adds.

Lined up on the bridge

Most days on the Gateway International Bridge between Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, the only sign that you’ve crossed an international border is a change in the tiling of the walkway near the center of the bridge.

Earlier this week, however, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers had set up a small wooden desk at the line, with about a dozen asylum-seekers waiting on the Mexican side. They had all spent weeks traveling here from Central America, and days sleeping and waiting on the bridge.

One of them was Marcos, who said he rode buses for 20 days to escape violence in his native Guatemala. Next to him was a Guatemalan family of four who said they left because of the volcanic eruption there this month.

Alla, a teenager from Honduras in a tattered New York Yankees t-shirt who traveled here with his mother and two younger siblings, wandered back and forth between asylum-seekers sitting or sleeping against the fence and the long line of people making routine crossings from Matamoros.

Henry Gass/The Christian Science Monitor

A Honduran woman, who asked to not be named, and her three-year-old son waiting on the Gateway International Bridge to seek asylum in the US. They had spent three days sleeping on cardboard boxes on the bridge, having fled "violence and killings" in their home country.

Near the feet of the CBP officers, a young woman from Honduras, who asked not to be named, waited with her 3-year-old son amid boxes of water, baby formula, and bread, clutching her own backpack.

“I think [the situation] is really bad for the kids,” says Ernie Mascorro, a Brownsville resident who was waiting to enter the US after visiting family in Reynosa.

“Where they’re coming from, they’re poor and afraid,” he adds. “This is not going to stop.”

Even after fleeing to Mexico, many migrants don’t even feel safe, propelling their journey north. Last year a shelter in Tapachula, Mexico, on the Guatemala border, for example, reported gang members in the shelter that were essentially stalking refugees.

US support for immigration

While families caught crossing the border will no longer be separated, Mr. Trump’s executive order made clear that the policy of prosecuting every illegal entrant will continue.

Yet recent US polls have found strong public support for immigration as well as strong public opposition to family separation. A record-high 75 percent of Americans think immigration is “a good thing for the US,” according to a Gallup poll conducted in the first two weeks of this month and released Thursday. On Monday, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 66 percent of voters opposed the family separations policy. Ninety-one percent of Democratic voters opposed it and 55 percent of Republican voters supported it.

That public pressure – and political pressure from Republican Party and religious leaders – seems to have prompted Trump’s reversal on family separations.

Besides the fact that migrant families will no longer be separated, there is significant confusion over what the rest of the executive order will mean for the situation at the border. The administration has not clarified if or how families who have already been separated will be reunited.

SOURCE:

Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geographica, New York University, US Geological Survey, Natural Earth, US Customs and Border Protection

|

Jacob Turcotte and Henry Gass/Staff

The government currently faces strict requirements when it comes to detaining children – including keeping them in the “least restrictive conditions” possible while they are detained and placing them with a relative “without unnecessary delay” – but the order directs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to try and modify those requirements.

Advocates are also concerned about a section saying the Department of Defense could make “existing facilities available” to house detained families.

“They’re going to detain the families throughout the immigration proceedings, families are going to be detained, imprisoned, incarcerated for over a year,” says Mr. Olivares of the Texas Civil Rights Project. “In some ways the executive order makes things worse.”

Back on the Gateway International Bridge, the two tote bags of supplies that Hamilton had brought are empty. In line to reenter the US, she leans against a railing in exhaustion.

“I feel like they’re between a rock and a hard place, and I’m sorry that we’re part of that rock and hard place,” she says. “These are people trying to get away from danger, they’re not bringing the danger. I just really wish that people would see that.”

Correspondent Whitney Eulich contributed reporting from Mexico City.

Henry Romero/Reuters/File

A Mexican runner dressed in a pre-colonial costume runs with a torch of the Pan American Games during the Ceremony of the Ignition of the New Fire, at the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan outside Mexico City May 25, 2015. Changes to the AP World History exam will eliminate content before AD 1450, removing pre-colonization periods from the curriculum.

At its peak in the 13th century, the Mongol Empire covered more than 9 million square miles, ranking as the largest contiguous land empire ever recorded. But despite the Mongols’ historical dominance, their future – at least in high school history classes – is notably less certain.  

In late May, the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) program, which develops tests that offer college credit to high-performing high schoolers, announced changes to its World History exam. Advanced students typically spend their sophomore year preparing for the test in a class that covers 10,000 years of human history. But driven by teacher concerns over this tremendous breadth, the College Board has removed any content prior to the year AD 1450, starting in the 2019-2020 school year.

Since then, a chorus of protests from students and teachers has echoed across the country. One petition started by a ninth-grade AP World History student to reverse the change has amassed more than 10,000 signatures online. The new exam, opponents argue, eliminates valuable opportunities to study non-Western cultures outside of the context of European influence. The stakes are highest, they say, for students of color – whose own cultural histories hang in the balance.

“What gets lost if you start [studying history] at the European Renaissance is you miss the whole point that these African and Asian cultures develop a lot of that science and math that then influences Europe. As a black or brown student, you don’t learn that it was your cultures that figured that out,” says Amanda DoAmaral, a former AP World History teacher and founder of Fiveable, an online AP prep startup.

“Part of what we [try] to do is just really reflect our students in what we’re teaching. And I think that’s true for all students... You still have to be there in the curriculum somewhere,” she says.

An unwieldy topic

The AP World History Development Committee has consistently seen disappointingly low and uneven test results on the national level, says Richard Warner, a history professor at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind., and a committee member.

“From the College Board’s perspective, the unwieldiness of 10,000 years of history argued for making it a modern history course so that they could handle it a little bit better,” Dr. Warner says.

In a 2017 College Board survey of 1,243 AP World History teachers, 79 percent stated that “there is too much required content to cover in one academic year.”

But not all AP World History teachers agree with that assessment. And many see the wide scope of the course as an essential part of building frameworks of understanding across time periods and world regions, says Laura Mitchell, a history professor at the University of California, Irvine and a former AP World History test-development committee chair.

A week ago, Dr. Mitchell released a letter signed by all former chief readers and test development committee chairs that advocates against the College Board’s decision.

And despite the concern over breadth, 88 percent of 888 AP World History instructors in a teacher-led survey conducted after news of the exam changes broke disagreed with the new test format. Of that group, 53 percent opted for a new design that would include Period 3, a unit within the course that covers history from AD 600 to AD 1450.

The College Board has also developed a pre-AP curriculum that would include earlier world history. A statement provided to the Monitor by the College Board says the organization believes that the Period 3 content is “so important that teachers and students must be given the time to study the topics ... with great care, including reading and analyzing the primary and secondary sources and writing essays that use evidence accurately and effectively.”

But because this new course wouldn’t result in college credit, there’s a disincentive for advanced students to take it, says Dylan Black, the student behind the online petition. And although the course itself would be free for schools to offer, some would be subject to fees of up to $6500 if they chose to provide professional development and unit exams from the College Board.

Impact on students of color

Tanariea Deloney is a sophomore at Skyview High School in Vancouver, Wash. As a black and Native American student, she says she has rarely seen herself represented in a positive light in history classes. But with AP World History, that changed dramatically. The course highlights powerful and wealthy kingdoms in West Africa, like the Mali Empire, and the technological advancements of indigenous communities in the Americas.

“[It is] really important to me that I am knowledgeable about my culture... instead of just coming into class and starting with ‘Oh, so your culture got wiped out by these people,’ or ‘Your people were slaves,’ ” she says.

Others in her class recognize that the benefits of the course apply to everyone. “It's very important for people of color to know where they came from and what their ancestors did and the accomplishments they made, but it's also very important to [white people] as well,” says Amy Cisneros, another Skyview AP World History student. “It's very important to know about other cultures to bring diversity to their opinions. It helps to open up people’s eyes....”

For most public school students in the US, says Mitchell, World History is the sole opportunity to explore regions outside of Europe before colonization.

That lack of representation came to the fore in a video distributed by Ms. DoAmaral at this year’s AP World History Open Forum – where the changes were announced. On screen, she addresses Trevor Packer, the head of the Advanced Placement program, saying “Period 3 is so important to… showing our black and brown and our Native students that their histories matter, their histories don’t start at slavery, their histories don’t start at colonization.”

Mr. Packer did not respond to the Monitor’s requests for comment. 

At Tanariea’s school, AP World History students regularly create banners at the end of the year to celebrate finishing the challenging course. This year, the banners abandoned typical congratulatory praise to embrace messages like “#SavePeriod3” and “#NotMyCollegeBoard.” The signs were dotted with world flags and some featured symbols from early world history, including Mesopotamian Ziggurats and Egyptian pyramids, and were distributed via a Twitter account called “@SaveAPWorld1,” started by a classmate.

Evaluating the responses

For now, the College Board is still considering how to respond to the outpouring of responses it has received, says Warner. Packer tweeted statements two weeks ago that suggested further changes to the test may be released in July. The World History Development Committee has been meeting to explore revisions to the exam, including pushing the start date back to AD 1200 – which would include the rise of the Mongols.

But even as he works to respond to voices of concern and outrage, Warner values the investment students and teachers have in the course.

“I take it in a very positive way… They're passionate about it… [H]opefully they don't stop with this one initiative in terms of trying to make some kind of arrangement of peace with the community here. Hopefully we will be able to find other ways to bring people together on it,” he says.

The kayak refused to obey.

I had done everything as instructed: I’d measured my grip on the paddle by holding it above my head with my arms at 90-degree angles. I’d swept the blade in a wide arc across the water to turn the kayak. And I’d used my torso, along with my arms, to add power to the stroke.

Still, the little red boat hurtled towards the jumble of rocks downstream.

Not that such insubordination surprised me. Kayaking, along with anything that resembles sport, does not number among my strengths. But I’d had the idea that reporting about Los Angeles – in particular, the swiftly gentrifying riverside neighborhood of Frogtown – from the rapids of the L.A. River would be a fine way to close out my two-year stint as the Monitor’s West Coast correspondent.

Thus I spent Memorial Day in a bright crimson kayak, scraping myself off of watery impediments (often rocks, more often other people’s boats) about once every five minutes, for the entire hour-and-a-half expedition.

This fitful creep downriver was every bit as aggravating as you might imagine, but it did have one benefit: It gave me time to think about my story.

The tale of Frogtown is, on the surface, a familiar drama of longtime residents watching as developers descend upon their “undiscovered” neighborhood. Abandoned buildings become renovated loft spaces, old warehouses are reborn as breweries, street corners breed hipster cafés – and the locals are slowly priced out.

Dig a little deeper, though, and what you find is a community that has, for most of its history, held fast to its local character while enduring the convulsions of growing cosmopolitanism. It’s a place that daily navigates between the values of hometown pride and family loyalty, and that sweeping California spirit of opportunity, innovation, and reinvention.

Winding through the narrative is the L.A. River. The waterway features prominently in Frogtown’s history and is the focal point for present and future plans. As I paddled down this remarkable city artery, watching waterfowl perch on rocks and fish flit in and out of the water, I could understand why.

“We knew there was something special down here,” says Steve Appleton, who runs L.A. River Kayak Safari, the tour group I was with. “The river is this great receptacle for people’s desires. They want it to be this and that. I’m one of those people that took it on as something that receives my hopes and desires for the city. It’s a historic location of Los Angeles.”

Frogs as thick as locusts

A few days before Memorial Day, I met with Bob Berg, who has lived off and on in Frogtown for 74 years. He is one of the neighborhood’s longest-standing residents. We sat in the dining room of the one-bedroom bungalow on Newell Street that he shares with his wife, Janet. The house faces Mr. Berg’s childhood home.

Jessica Mendoza/The Christian Science Monitor

Bob Berg, a longtime resident of Frogtown, stands outside his home on May 22, 2018, in Los Angeles.

The retired police officer still remembers trekking across the river – no one called it the L.A. River back then – on the way to Irving Junior High School, just off Fletcher Road. “We went right across the river, just walked across ... even if it was up to our knees,” he recalls.

Frogs (or toads) populated the area in the thousands, and kids would make a game of taking mason jars down to the banks to collect tadpoles. Some say the neighborhood, whose official name is Elysian Valley, came to be called Frogtown because the amphibians would emerge from the river “so thick it was like locusts,” Berg says. “You could not walk without stepping on them. They just blanketed the entire neighborhood.”

The Frogtown of Berg’s childhood is one of “Leave It to Beaver” wholesomeness, where everybody knew everybody and kids could play in the streets without fear. That began to change in the 1960s, after the completed I-5 sundered the neighborhood from bordering communities and swallowed the small businesses that had lined Riverside Drive. Immigrant families, mostly Mexican Americans, began settling in Frogtown, setting off a period of white flight to the suburbs.

As the neighborhood changed, so did residents’ relationship with the river. Gabriel Gapol, who moved to Frogtown with his mom and brother when he was 6, still remembers swimming with tadpoles as child. By the time he was a teenager, much of the riverbank was gang territory, claimed by Mr. Gapol’s own Frogtown gang. “There used to be overgrown bushes there. We used to turn those into hideaways,” says Gapol, who will be 60 this year, in a phone interview from Tacoma, Wash. “That was like our safe haven, the L.A. River. Rival gang members knew that was our territory.”

With the gangs came violence. Shootings became commonplace – Gapol, who now works closely with a Christian ministry, admits being involved in his share of them – and an entire generation would age into adulthood before Frogtown would begin to grow out of its reputation as a rough part of the city.

David De La Torre’s mother forbade him and his two sisters from venturing alone too far from home. “She feared for our safety,” says Mr. De La Torre, today a prominent community member who runs the neighborhood watch. “We get home from school, we do our homework, we stay indoors.”

Still, no matter what era they grew up in, most folks raised in Frogtown look back on their childhood with fondness. They talk about the bakeries that lined Blake Avenue filling the morning air with the smells of bread and cinnamon. Berg reminisces about long bike rides on his old Schwinn, Gapol about cruising in lowriders with his friends. And everyone attributes a warmth and friendliness to the people around them, then and now.

“Even if my parents don't speak English, there are neighbors that will come by and say ‘hi’ as they’re walking their dog or driving through,” says Helen Leung, a local community organizer whose family still lives on Blake Avenue. “It reminds me of the days when people just talk to one another and it doesn’t matter what your background is.”

Jessica Mendoza/The Christian Science Monitor

David De La Torre talks about growing up in the neighborhood of Frogtown at the Rio de Jardin Community Garden on May 22, 2018, in Los Angeles.

L.A.’s hottest new neighborhood

The headlines began to appear around 2014. From The Eastsider LA in February: “Modernica furniture owners take over former Twinkies bakery.” From LA Weekly, in August: “LA’s Hottest New Neighborhood, Frogtown, Doesn’t Want the Title.” And from Curbed LA, in May 2015: “Here's How Frogtown Wants Its Inevitable Gentrification To Go.”

“The movement is really fast in terms of houses being flipped, properties being turned over, and businesses opening up,” says Ms. Leung. We’re sitting in a conference room at the headquarters of LA Más, a nonprofit whose goal is to serve low-income communities through policy and design, and of which she’s co-executive director. At the time the office was in a teal building at the cul de sac on Coolidge Avenue, right by the river.

“I never would have imagined five years ago … ‘La Colombe’s going to open up and there's gonna be a fancy delicious sandwich shop and houses are gonna sell for over a million dollars,’ ” Leung adds, referring to a high-end Philadelphia-based coffee company with a store on Newell Street. “I would have never guessed that.”

The transformation was mainly due to efforts by the city and county to revitalize the L.A. River. The idea was to revive interest in the mostly channelized waterway, develop green space around it, and provide Angelenos with new access to the natural environment. As with similar projects across the country, the strategy has triggered a wave of investment in riverside property. In Frogtown, locals toggle between welcoming the influx of new money and new people into their struggling neighborhood and resenting the rapid changes.

“Some of the challenge is having those newcomers come into the area with no appreciation for who lives here,” De La Torre tells me. New businesses provide trendy lunch spots and hangouts, but not always at a price point that’s accessible to locals. And despite the “billion-dollar investment” in the river, he says, Frogtown still lacks basic services like public transit and street lights. “It's not uncommon to see my mom and others in the community walking, hauling their groceries in their hands.”

“But I will tell you,” De La Torre adds with a trace of a smile, “my children, who are the younger generation, they love it. They love being able to enjoy a beer at the Frogtown Brewery or having a sandwich at Spoke Cafe.”

That I could paddle along the river in a kayak is itself a bone of contention. Mr. Appleton, an artist who came to Frogtown in the early 2000s, launched L.A. River Kayak Safari in 2013, when the city designated the two-mile stretch of river that borders the neighborhood on the east as a recreation zone. He says he wanted to give people a chance to experience their natural environment in a way that’s almost impossible elsewhere in the city. Sitting where I was, watching a black-necked stilt alight on a rock, I couldn’t help but think he’d achieved his goal; the last time I’d associated “wildlife” with L.A. was a rattlesnake warning while on a hike in Griffith Park. (I never saw any, thankfully.)

At about $75 a pop, however, Appleton’s kayak tour isn’t exactly cheap. De La Torre, who’d done the tour himself, notes: “It was terrific. But that's still an expensive endeavor for most families that have a priority for that income.”

‘A really special place’

“I’ll be honest,” Berg says with a sigh, “I miss the old days.”

It’s hard to blame him. From my vantage point on the water, the ongoing transformation of Frogtown was clearly visible atop the concrete channel. Faded bungalows stood shoulder to shoulder with newer structures. Bikers zoomed along the new asphalt path that had not long ago been a dirt road. In one quiet stretch, I could look up and see bulldozers where the Bimbo Industrial Bakery had once stood. A hundred small-lot houses are being built on the site.

Still, locals like De La Torre and Leung say they’re hopeful that it doesn’t have to mean the death of the community’s small-town spirit and charm. “I think this is a really special place,” Leung tells me. “I hope that there continues to be businesses and residents who move in who really appreciate that.”

The sun was setting when we reached the end of the river trail. The air had turned cool, almost chilly. Ahead of us the 5 Freeway rose over the river, its roar drowning out the sound of birds and wildlife. We were back in the city, and although my arms ached and my shorts were soaked, I couldn’t help but feel wistful. Soon I would be leaving L.A. – and California – for Washington, D.C.

When I’d mentioned this to Berg, who retired in Frogtown after nearly four decades in law enforcement, he shook his head in disbelief. “People say, ‘You could afford to go anywhere else.’ Yes, I can. But why,” he asks, “would I want to do that?”

Reuters

A protester waves a pair of handcuffs in front of Social Democrat Party leader Liviu Dragnea in Bucharest, Romania, October 3, 2017.

By itself, this news out of Romania on Thursday may not mean much outside Romania: A court sentenced the country’s most powerful politician, Liviu Dragnea, to 3-1/2 years over a fake jobs scandal. As a triumph for rule of law in one of Europe’s most corrupt countries, the sentence was a big one.

Yet these days, such news also shows that countries like Romania are not battling corruption alone. Global norms on transparency and accountability are being better enforced by international institutions. And prosecutors in different countries are working more closely to nab corrupt individuals and share techniques of investigation.

Romania is one example. Since joining the European Union in 2007, it has been under special watch by the EU to build up an independent judiciary. To win EU membership, it ratified the United Nations Convention against Corruption in 2004. It also set up a body of independent prosecutors, called the National Anticorruption Directorate, to fight corruption. Thousands of officials have been convicted.

Last year, when Mr. Dragnea’s ruling Social Democrat party tried to roll back anti-corruption measures, tens of thousands of people took to the streets. Many appealed for more EU pressure. This month, when the party tried again to weaken anti-graft laws, more than 10,000 people protested nationwide.

Perhaps just as significant, a top official from the US State Department was in Bucharest this week giving a warning.

“You have made significant progress [against corruption] and now is not a moment in history when we would want to see Romania take a step back from there,” said Wess Mitchell, assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs. “You are not alone in this fight. Every country in the world has to fight corruption.” The United States provides funds for Romania to reform its legal standards.

The momentum for international cooperation on corruption really took off in 1997 when a group of advanced countries known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development adopted an anti-bribery convention. In addition, the US had shown leadership by using the long arm of a particular law to reach for offenders across borders. Its 1977 law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, has led to the conviction of many foreign firms and led to more cooperation and joint enforcements with other nations’ prosecutors, notably in Brazil with its recent explosion of bribery cases.

Last year, the International Monetary Fund insisted for the first time that a country – Ukraine – set up a special court to deal with anti-corruption cases as a condition for receiving financial aid.

The aspiration for clean governance is a universal sentiment. Fulfilling that desire can become just as universal.