Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 187

Girls’s Surprising Definition of Adulthood

“I need to see how other people see me because it’s the only way that I can see myself.”

That’s Jenny Slate’s Girls character Tally Schifrin, a successful Brooklyn writer who might have more in common with the show’s creator, Lena Dunham, than Hannah Horvath does. In last night’s two-part season finale, she explained to Hannah, a jealous nemesis turned confidante after some bike pilfering and blunt puffing, why she Googles herself so often.

“I wake up every morning and I think, ok, what would Tally Schifrin do?,” she said. “Tally Schifrin is not even me now. She’s just like this thing I’ve created. She’s a monster that I’ve made and that I have to feed.”

The feeling of disassociation that she was talking about doesn’t just result from her celebrity status. Tally’s struggles, the impeccably written fifth season of Girls suggested, are on some level universal ones about growing up. The longer you live, the more your identity coalesces. Does that identity serve you, or do you serve it? Once it’s set, can it be changed? These aren’t just questions about self improvement—about buying new clothes, like Elijah does, or exercising more, like Hannah. It’s about seeing who you’ve become to the world and making a possibly radical choice about how to proceed.

For Hannah, that radical choice was to stay calm when she learned that her ex, Adam, was dating her best friend, Jessa. In her subdued but funny performance for The Moth, she said that the worst thing about the situation was knowing that Adam and Jessa rightly expected her to react with outrageous behavior. But Hannah saw how she was seen by others and broke with the caricature, delivering a fruit basket to Adam’s door instead of a bicycle through his window. This doesn’t mean an abdication of the otherwise wacky Hannah persona: She still left a decent-seeming boyfriend, quit a decent-seeming job, and stole a decent-seeming guy’s bike. But she made each of those choices after clear deliberation about the risks and potential rewards. Though her life may appear to be one of chaos, increasingly it seems that control, not inertia, drives it.

Other characters have chosen to defy the dominant conception of themselves in the service of their own happiness. Marnie has said time and again that she’s not a kind of girl who can be with a kind of guy like Ray—but, for now, she’s set that appearances-rooted judgment aside in order to fulfill her desires and need for emotional support. Shoshanna’s rebrand of Cafe Grumpy, requiring an avatar of whimsy to post Mitt Romney ads in a coffee shop, offers a lighter vision of the power of taking command of one’s own identity. The progress that Hannah’s parents have made in finding some peace after Tad came out is a reminder of how the process of periodically realigning the person you’ve become with the person you want to be continues into middle age.

But not everyone is on the path to transcending. Elijah, brutally confronted by Dill with how he is perceived by other people, chose for now to double-down on the aimless party-boy look. Jessa and Adam, too, remain chained to the most destructive generalizations they might make about themselves. All season, they’ve made comments indicating that they believed their relationship would result in an epic blowup because of their personalities. Now, they’ve obliged the doomed-psycho-lovers narrative with a violent fight. When Adam broke through the bathroom door all Shining-like, Jessa chastised him for going over the top—a clear indication that as much as their battle was driven by pure passions, it was also a kind of performance.

Though Hannah’s life seems chaotic, increasingly it seems that control, not inertia, drives it.

The exact reason for that performance came, too, from a clash between self-conception, outward perception, personal choice, and reality. “You know people hate me,” Jessa told Adam in one of the most electrifying scenes of the entire series. “I’m a hatable kind of person. I don’t know why, I can’t help it, maybe it’s because I have a big ass and good hair. But I know—I know!—that I have principles. And one thing that I don’t do is steal people’s boyfriends.”

She then said that her identity slipping in the wrong direction— from someone who doesn’t steal boyfriends to someone who does—was not her fault but Adam’s. He had no words to reply to that accusation, only physical action of the sort viewers haven’t seen in a long time from him. She replied in kind. In a season defined largely by progress for many characters, here was a frightening reminder that growing up can mean backsliding—especially when you allow yourself to be exactly who everyone fears you are.

Major Flooding in Houston

Houston is facing “a life-threatening emergency,” as low-lying areas of the Texan city continue to flood from severe storms. Heavy downpour has resulted in as much as 16 inches of rain and authorities have already rescued 150 people from the water, local officials say.

The storm, which started overnight Sunday, is expected to continue until Tuesday. Many residents woke up to the roads already being flooded, The Houston Chronicle reports. Satellite imagery shows the intensity of the storm:

An incredible look at how the devastating #houstonflood unfolded on radar this morning. pic.twitter.com/EIy464FMuq

— Ed Vallee (@EdValleeWx) April 18, 2016

Harrowing video from CNN show drivers escaping their submerged cars through the windows and swimming to safety. Officials have urged residents to remain at home and stay off the roads. “You’ll help yourself and, quite frankly, you will help all the responders out there who are trying to deal with all of these emergencies,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner told reporters Monday.

There are no injuries or deaths, according to latest reports. Officials say around 121,000 homes are without electricity, and an additional 1,000 homes have flooded in Harris County. Hundreds of local flights have also been canceled.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett declared the situation a disaster, which will lead the way for emergency federal funding.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Mexican Food Enters the Fine-Dining Realm

The dollop of pineapple puree that accompanies the cobia al pastor ($24) at New York City’s Cosme looks more like modern art than food—a bright burst of yellow surrounded by the white canvas of a bowl. The tamal de cazuela with sea urchin and charred habanero-leek relish at San Francisco’s Cala ($20) is just as visually striking, arriving at the table with its deep purple spikes still intact.

Say “Mexican food” to many Americans, and burritos bursting with rice and beans or enchiladas drowned in tomatillo sauce probably come to mind. But the dishes rolling out of the kitchens at Cala, Cosme, and emerging restaurants in between are increasingly taking a beloved cuisine into the fine-dining realm. Not only are they challenging the idea that Mexican food means cheap and fast, but they’re trusting that Americans will pay top dollar for quality ingredients prepared in novel and creative ways.

While restaurants like Eduardo de San Angel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the Michelin-starred Casa Enrique, in Queens, New York, have long served upscale Mexican cuisine, over the past few years, a number of restaurants have started to experiment with its customs, moving away from “traditional” or “authentic” dishes toward plates that adapt or entirely reinvent the genre.

Beyond Cosme and Cala, there’s Mexique in Chicago, and Hugo Ortega’s Caracol in Houston. Bracero in San Diego dishes out $17 small plates of carrot aguachile with local tuna, scallops, ginger, ghost pepper, smoked steelhead roe, and cashews. Washington, D.C. has José Andrés’s Oyamel. There are certainly others, and no two seem to look the same. But industry observers and chefs say they see a relatively new recognition among both restaurateurs and diners in the United States that Mexican fare has a place in the fine-dining world.

A cook puts finishing touches on the tlayuda, a Oaxacan specialty, before it goes out to the dining room at Cosme on March 3, 2016. (Emily Jan / The Atlantic)

Gabriela Cámara, who opened Cala in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley last September and is the brain behind Mexico City’s renowned Contramar, said she thinks the shift began about five years ago. Enrique Olvera at Cosme (who also runs the much-lauded Pujol, a short drive from Contramar) pegs the “moment” at about two years ago.

Fine dining as a whole, Cámara said, is a growing industry, but not in the traditional, stuffy, white-tablecloth mold. Instead, it’s evolved into something that Cosme and Cala represent—embracing the casual, the innovative, and even the experimental, as long as quality remains central to the dishes being served.

Cámara said she wouldn’t have been able to make dishes like her halibut ceviche verde with fennel, radish, and sorrel ($22) work without the proliferation of sushi restaurants in the U.S. The migration of sushi, she thinks, opened people up to the concept of not only eating, but paying top dollar for, fresh raw fish.The uni tostada with avocado, bone-marrow salsa, and cucumber at Cosme, a snack-sized portion for one or a few bites if shared, costs $19. The slightly larger crispy octopus dish with hazelnut mole, paired with pickled potatoes and watercress, is $29. The average tab runs around $70 per head.  

The crispy octopus with hazelnut mole, pickled potatoes, and watercress at Cosme (Emily Jan / The Atlantic)

While the National Restaurant Association doesn’t have hard data on the number of upscale restaurants in the U.S., or upscale Mexican spots specifically, its research suggests that half of Americans eat Mexican food at least once a month, and that almost everyone is familiar with at least some form of Mexican food.  

But there’s quite the variation when it comes to conceiving what Mexican food looks like. As the journalist Gustavo Arellano has noted, tacos first arrived in the United States during the Mexican Revolution. As their popularity grew, restaurants serving Mexican Americans a taste of home expanded to serve a broader array of patrons, who sought out food they saw as “authentic.” (For decades, many Americans put Tex Mex and even Taco Bell in that category.) “The idea of authenticity has driven the popularity of Mexican food among Americans for 100 years,” Arellano told the Christian Science Monitor in 2014. “Once they’ve eaten a dish enough that it’s no longer ‘authentic,’ they go and try to find the next authentic food. At one point, people thought Taco Bell was authentic Mexican food. It was exotic. Now it’s the new synonym for McDonald’s.”

“If you think that the best is in the past, I think that’s kind of depressing.”

That constantly morphing definition of what constitutes “authenticity” may have carved out space for people like Olvera and Cámara to create Mexican food that either disregards or redefines the term. The National Restaurant Association found that two-thirds of young people say they eat a wider variety of ethnic foods today than they did five years ago, suggesting many diners have more adventurous palates. Moreover, gourmet food often finds its way to social media, making the visual component more important than ever (that dot of pineapple puree at Cala appears regularly in Instagram posts). Hugo Ortega, who’s opened several high-end Mexican restaurants in Houston, puts it this way: “Some of us have been digging into this for years, but it’s happening now because the audience is ready.”

At the same time, chefs and food writers have finally discovered what Mexico City has known for decades: that the city is a vibrant mecca bursting with innovative cuisine. “Mexico City became a favorite for chefs,” Olvera said. “They realized Mexican food is not what they thought it was.” The evolution in upscale dining, the growing popularity of ethnic cuisine in the U.S., and the increasing ease of access to Mexico itself—have coalesced to allow a growing number of high-end, often seafood-focused Mexican restaurants in the United States to flourish. “It’s the moment that allows it,” Cámara said.

Lunchgoers share plates at Cosme, in New York City's Flatiron District, on March 3, 2016, where a tab can run you upwards of $70. (Emily Jan / The Atlantic)

And there is a definite “moment.” The New York Times put Cosme at the head of its list of top restaurants in 2015. The sleek Flatiron District spot (Olvera is partial to the clean modernity of Japanese design), “dared New York to see Mexican food in new ways,” wrote the restaurant critic Pete Wells. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Michael Bauer wrote of Cala, “I haven’t been to every Mexican restaurant in the United States, but I’ve been to many that were considered the best. From my experience none can beat the sophistication of Gabriella Cámara’s [sic] Cala,” naming it his favorite new restaurant of the year. The high-end Mexican spot Hugo’s and the seafood-focused Caracol, both by Ortega, who for several years has been a James Beard-award finalist, both rank in the top 10 of the Houston Chronicle’s 2015 roundup of restaurants.

Money, as always, is a driving force, and has implications when it comes to who gets to, or has the right to, serve “ethnic cuisine.” For centuries, immigrants from all over have arrived in the United States and opened restaurants, sometimes to serve people from their homelands, sometimes for a wider audience, often as a way to preserve their heritage. Particularly when it comes to Mexican cuisine, the establishments opened by Mexicans have tended to be low on overhead (think tiny burrito outposts in San Francisco’s Mission District, or the plentiful breakfast taco stands in Austin and San Antonio). In many cases, these establishments were developed first and foremost to serve working-class Mexicans, and featured traditional meals that reminded diners of home, or low-cost-but-filling tacos and burritos. It’s mostly been non-Mexicans like Rick Bayless, the Oklahoma native who was tapped to cook at a White House state dinner for Mexican President Felipe Calderón, or the Spaniard José Andrés, who have garnered attention for the expansion of upscale Mexican cuisine.

A few dishes are prepared to go out for the dinner rush at Cosme, in New York City's Flatiron District, on Thursday, March 3, 2016. (Emily Jan / The Atlantic)

While this smacks of cultural appropriation to some—just read the beginning of The New York Times’ review of Cosme for a taste—it doesn’t bother Olvera a bit. “If you think that the best is in the past, I think that’s kind of depressing,” he said. It’s that mindset that allows him to enjoy something like a Korean taco, or a lobster taco ($39 for three) at Empellón Cocina, the brainchild of the Massachusetts-born Alex Stupak. (Olvera said he was initially “kind of offended” when Stupak served him a taco, but then realized he was “doing something fantastic.”) The idea that Mexican food has been somehow appropriated by others in a negative way, he said, is absurd. “If you’re against that, you’re not Mexican. It’s that simple,” he said bluntly, noting that mole borrows ingredients from all over the world. “Cuisines are always evolving.”

It’s worth pointing out that Olvera learned to cook at the vaunted Culinary Institute of America in New York’s Hyde Park, and has more connections and access to capital than many Mexican Americans who may resent the fact that white chefs like Bayless benefit financially because of unequal access to opportunities they will never have. But Mexico’s burgeoning middle class is now producing more wealth and more opportunities for Mexicans to both launch and dine at restaurants north of the border. Cámara, Olvera, and Ortega are all immigrants. Cámara moved from Mexico to the United States recently, while Olvera still splits his time between the two countries. Ortega immigrated as a boy in the 1980s.

Cámara is “really not concerned with making a cultural point in terms of rescuing traditions.”

One reason it has taken longer for Mexican food to break into the fine-dining landscape than, say, Chinese or Italian cooking, likely has to do with immigration patterns. There have been hundreds of high-end Italian and Chinese restaurants for decades. But Italian immigration to the United States peaked in the early 1900s, and that cuisine aligned more closely with the existing European-American palate. Most Italians in the United States today were born and raised here, and they’ve had greater access to education and economic opportunity than more recent immigrants. (It’s worth acknowledging that the traditional trattoria has also evolved beyond the checkered tablecloth stereotype in recent years, too.) Chinese immigrants have tended to have higher incomes than Mexican immigrants, and some have had the ability to self-fund high-end restaurants. Increasing economic opportunities may give rise to other Mexican fine-dining establishments. So far, though, few are as innovative and upscale as Cala and Cosme, and also conceived and run by Mexicans.

Ortega said that while he has relished receiving family recipes dating back to the 1940s from friends, and mourns “some of the wonderful recipes that, just like time, have disappeared,” he does not feel responsible for preserving them, or filling some representative role. His approach to old recipes is more investigative; he’s interested in what he can learn from them and incorporate into creations all his own. Cámara too understands where the tendency to look for greater meaning comes from, but said she’s “really not concerned with making a cultural point in terms of rescuing traditions or presenting myself as a true representative of Mexican food ...  It’s so heavy with history that I really think I am just trying to make a good restaurant.” Where it used to be difficult to get quality, authentic ingredients for some dishes, San Francisco, she said, offers the ability to import a few ingredients and put together a complex dish that goes beyond tacos.

Chef Enrique Olvera sits in his restaurant, Cosme, in New York City's Flatiron District on Thursday, March 3, 2016. Olvera's flagship restaurant is in Mexico City. Cosme is his first venture in the United States. (Emily Jan / The Atlantic)

Cámara said she isn’t denigrating tacos; in fact, a taqueria at the back of her restaurant offers them as a to-go lunch option. Olvera’s favorite thing to eat is avocado tacos, and Ortega said he’s not interested in criticizing tacos, either. The bad part, he specifies, is that “people think tacos are everything. It’s just one little element [of Mexican cuisine] that got to be popular.” Cámara points out that the complexity and richness of Mexican food has long been noted and admired by the likes of Diana Kennedy, the British expat renowned for chronicling Mexican cuisine. It’s just that other people are finally waking up to the fact.

Olvera suppresses a grimace when asked if Cosme represents something bigger. “I do this because I love it and there’s no other reason,” he said. Olvera also pushes back at the idea of his restaurant serving as a vehicle to elevate people of color in an industry that is still largely white and male at the top. “I never hire for any reason but passion and talent,” he said. But he does acknowledge that he, Cámara, and a handful of others are paving the way. “I think we’ve opened a door for other Mexican chefs,” he said.

The Fight Against ISIS in Mosul

The announcement came as U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter made an unannounced stop in Iraq on Monday.

The Associated Press adds:

Of the additional troops, most would be Army special forces, who have been used throughout the anti-Islamic State campaign to advise and assist the Iraqis. The remainder would include some trainers, security forces for the advisers, and maintenance teams for the Apaches.

The decisions reflect weeks of discussions with commanders and Iraqi leaders, and a decision by President Barack Obama to increase the authorized troop level in Iraq by 217 forces — or from 3,870 to 4,087. The advise-and-assist teams — made up of about a dozen troops each accompanied by security forces — would embed with Iraqi brigades and battalion, likely putting them closer to the front lines and at greater risk from mortars and rocket fire.

The decision marks the first time not only for U.S. troops to be placed closed to the front lines for the first time against ISIS, but also the first time Apache helicopters are being deployed against the militant group in Iraq. ISIS captured Ramadi, Mosul, and Raqqa last year, but Iraqi troops, with U.S. support, have retaken Ramadi, and are working to defeat ISIS in Mosul and Raqqa.

When a Company Tells People Not to Eat Its Products Every Day

This week, NASA scientists announced their plans to find the perfect crop to plant on Mars. The early favorite seems to be the potato.

For some, a planet Mars stocked with only one starchy food is a dream beyond any of Isaac Asimov’s wildest imaginings. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, Mars the company is trying to deter people from their unhealthy habits. Mars, which owns foods brands like Dolmio and Uncle Ben’s, has announced an initiative that would label certain foods—for now, mostly pasta sauces— that are high in sugar, salt, and fat as “occasional” foods.

“As these products are not intended to be eaten daily, Mars Food will provide guidance to consumers on-pack and on its website regarding how often these meal offerings should be consumed within a balanced diet,” wrote Mars’s president, Fiona Dawson.

According to the company, the “occasional” label is reserved for foods that it suggests should only be eaten once a week. The other 95 percent of its products will carry a label designating them as “everyday” foods. As the BBC noted, the U.K.-based National Obesity Forum offered some semi-enthusiastic praise for the initiative, calling it “hugely unusual” and “very imaginative.”

What is both unusual and imaginative about this maneuver is that it essentially amounts to an admission by Mars that some of its products are terrible for you. However, it also comes at a time when government bodies are seeking to define or classify the relative unhealthiness of certain foods—and when companies might see an advantage in getting out ahead of potential regulations.

Last month, a first-in-the-nation regulation went into effect in New York City that requires restaurants to label saltier menu items at chain restaurants that contain more than the daily suggested sodium intake. New York, along with a number of other local governments across the country, already demand that chain restaurants post calorie counts. (In March, a federal version of that regulation was postponed for the second time until 2017.)

Meanwhile, a bill in Vermont that will require the labeling of products that contain genetically-modified ingredients (GMOs) is set to go into effect in July and the United Kingdom, France, and Mexico have recently enacted taxes on sugary drinks.

It’s unclear whether other companies will follow Mars’s lead or if these new labels will have any real impact. A number of studies have seriously questioned the efficacy that New York City’s calorie counts in changing consumer behavior.

One upshot of the decision is that Mars gets to determine the language (“occasional” is hardly “obesogenic”) in an increasingly sharpening public debate on public health. Mars also gets to decide how its measures are implemented. Curiously absent from mention in Mars’s new strategy is the company’s vaunted chocolate division, which produces Starbursts, M&M's, and Snickers.

Carnival's About-Face on Cuban Americans

Carnival cruise lines announced Monday it would start allowing Cuban-Americans to sail to their native country days after being sued for discrimination. The company previously said it would adhere to a Cuban law, from the Cold War era, that allowed Cuban-Americans to only return by plane.

Francisco Marty, a Bay of Pigs veteran, filed a class-action lawsuit last Thursday against Carnival, saying the cruise line is discriminating against Americans born in Cuba. But Carnival called it “a Cuba decision,” according to CNN, and not one the company has control over. It added that it would work with the Cuban government to change the regulation.

But on Monday, the company said it will allow anyone to book a cruise, “regardless of their country of origin.”

“We want everyone to be able to go to Cuba with us,” CEO Arnold Donald said in a statement.

Carnival’s cruise to Cuba, which includes stops in Havana, Cienfuegos, and Santiago de Cuba, is the first in more than 50 years to depart the U.S. Carnival was the first cruise line approved by the Cuban government to sail to the island. Tickets start at $1,800.

As the United States and Cuba continue to normalize relations, flights and cruises to the communist-controlled island are gearing up to start. But there are still some challenges along the way.

When Secretary of State John Kerry visited Miami last week, he said Cuban-Americans have the right to travel and not adhere to a “discrimination policy” that is not in accordance to international law.

“The United States government will never support, never condone discrimination,” Kerry told the Miami Herald. “And the Cuban government should not have the right to enforce on us a policy of discrimination against people who have the right to travel.”

There is still a divide among Cuban-Americans, especially those in Miami, about whether the Obama administration should continue engaging the Cuban government.

This isn’t the first time countries have limited travel based on nationality. After Tunisia said it wouldn’t allow Israeli citizens to enter the country, Norwegian Cruise Line stopped port calls. Similarly, the U.S. criticized Kuwait Airways policy of not allowing Israeli citizens to fly from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and London’s Heathrow Airport.

Will ‘Brexit’ Make Britain Poorer?

“The U.K. would be permanently poorer if it left the EU,” Britain’s Treasury said Monday, citing lower GDP, reduced economic openness, less trade, and lower productivity if Britons vote to leave the bloc on June 23.

George Osborne, the British chancellor of the exchequer, explained the rationale behind the Treasury’s analysis, and reiterated his view that Britain is better off inside the EU. Citing three scenarios for Britain if it leaves the bloc—membership, like Norway, within the European Economic Area; a negotiated bilateral agreement like Turkey or Switzerland; and WTO membership without a specific EU agreement—Osborne wrote:

The conclusions of this document are clear: none of the alternatives support trade and provide influence on the world stage in the same way as continued membership of a reformed EU; and all of them come with serious economic costs that would affect businesses, jobs, living standards and our public finances for decades to come. To put it simply, families would be substantially worse off if Britain leaves the EU.

It’s unclear if the Treasury’s analysis will persuade Britons to remain in the EU. Those campaigning to leave the bloc dismissed the Treasury’s report. Polls are even between supporters of staying and leaving.

OPEC and Falling Oil Prices

Global prices fell 5 percent after the cartel of oil-producing nations was unable to agree on a production freeze at a meeting in Doha, Qatar.

Oil prices slide after #DohaTalks fail to bring production freeze https://t.co/3UoWpi3s8m via @WSJ

— Georgi Kantchev (@georgikantchev) April 18, 2016

Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC producer, had said it would freeze production if all other members of the cartel agreed. But Iran, which recently has seen international sanctions against it eased, refused to curb production to levels reached in January. Relations between the two countries, who are arch regional rivals, are likely to be hit further. Oil prices were coming off a 12-year low reached in January ahead of the Doha meeting, but the failure of the talks are likely to send them lower.

Brazil's Impeachment Battle

After months of legal fighting and a weekend of heated debate, the lower house of Brazil’s Congress has voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff over allegations she hid federal budget troubles while campaigning for her second term two years ago.

An hours-long voting process ended Sunday night with 344 of the 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies backing impeachment, two votes beyond the two-thirds majority required to advance the measure, according to The Guardian. The measure now moves to the Federal Senate, the upper house, for another vote. If the Senate votes in favor of impeachment, Rousseff would be suspended and replaced by Vice President Michel Temer, a member of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, as soon as early May. An impeachment trial that could last six months would follow and end in a final vote.

The lower house debated the impeachment proceedings in long sessions, broadcast live on television, that were described as raucous and punctuated by yelling, name-calling, and shoving matches between legislators, according to reporters in Brasilia.

Outside the legislature, thousands of pro- and anti-impeachment demonstrators gathered Sunday, waving signs and flags. A metal wall more than a mile long was set up to separate the protesters, according to the Associated Press.

Rousseff, the leader of the center-left Workers Party, which has been in power since 2003, had vowed to fight to “the last minute.” Rousseff, who is halfway through her second term, is the first female president of Brazil.

Rousseff does not face corruption charges, but the lawmakers behind the effort to remove her say her government used accounting measures in 2014 to mask a growing budget deficit. Critics allege Rousseff used upfront payments on some federal government’s economic and social projects that were not immediately reimbursed—a practice known as “backpedaling”—to portray economic growth during Rousseff's reelection bid. Rousseff has denied any wrongdoing, arguing that such practices are widely used.

Last October, a federal audit court ruled Rousseff violated finance laws, paving the way for members of the lower house to establish a special committee and begin impeachment proceedings. Earlier this month, the committee recommended that the legislature seek impeachment, which opened the matter to a full vote. The effort to oust Rousseff is led by Eduardo Cunha, the president of the Chamber of Deputies and whom The Guardian describes as Rousseff’s “political nemesis.”

Rousseff has called the impeachment proceedings a “coup” against her. Her government filed a motion with Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court Thursday to annul the results of Sunday’s vote, arguing that the process had been “contaminated,” but the court rejected the request. In recent weeks, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, the country’s largest political party, and the Progressive Party, to which Cunha belongs, abandoned the ruling coalition, raising the likelihood that Rousseff would not survive the vote.

Rousseff’s approval rating is 10 percent, and polls show a majority of Brazilians believe she should be impeached. The leader drew outrage last month for appointing Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, her predecessor and political mentor who is widely known as “Lula,” to a Cabinet position. Lula is under investigation for his involvement in the Petrobras scandal, the biggest corruption scandal in Brazil’s history, in which executives of the state-run oil company Petrobras and politicians got rich off a decade worth of bribes and kickbacks. Recorded phone calls, released by prosecutors investigating the scandal, suggested Rousseff gave Lula the high-level job to help shield him from prosecution.

Rousseff was not implicated in the Petrobras scheme, but some members of her party were, and the alleged corruption occurred while she served on Petrobras’s board of directors.

Rousseff and her supporters have pointed out that her potential successors and many opposition lawmakers are facing corruption charges or allegations in the Petrobras scandal. Members of the vice president’s party are allegedly “deeply involved” in the scandal, according to the Financial Times. Cunha, second in line to replace Rousseff, was charged with money laundering and corruption last year for allegedly accepting a $5 million bribe. Renan Calheiros, the president of the Senate and third in line to the presidency, has been implicated in the scheme in testimony from a Workers Party politician who was charged in the investigation. More than half of the members of the congressional impeachment committee are under investigation for corruption or other serious crimes.

The impeachment battle has coincided with Brazil’s worst recession in decades. The country faces rising inflation and a shrinking GDP, trends that economists predict will continue this year. Officials are hurrying to organize the Olympic Games in Rio, which are less than four months away, and trying to manage the country’s growing outbreak of the Zika virus, which has infected thousands of mothers and led to severe neurological defects in hundreds of newborns.

The Rising Death Toll in Ecuador's Earthquake

Updated on April 17 at 10:42 p.m. EST

The strongest earthquake to hit Ecuador in decades has killed at least 246 people, injured scores more, and destroyed buildings and roads along the nation’s northwestern coast.

The 7.8-magnitude quake struck Saturday night off Ecuador’s Pacific coast, ravaging the fishing ports and beach towns in the area and cutting electric power. It was felt across the country, including in the capital, Quito, about 100 miles from the quake’s epicenter. Dozens of aftershocks followed.

Officials estimated Sunday morning the death toll was about 77 people, but Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said in a Twitter post Sunday afternoon the number had risen to 233. The toll increased to 246 Sunday night.

More than 1,500 people were injured in the earthquake, which officials said was the most powerful since 1979. A tsunami warning was lifted Saturday night, but coastal residents were advised to seek higher ground as a precaution, Reuters reported.

Emergency workers scoured debris of flattened buildings Sunday in search of survivors who may be trapped. Ecuador’s Vice President Jorge Glas said 10,000 armed forces personnel and 4,600 members of the national police have been dispatched in rescue efforts, the AP reported.

Deaths were reported in the cities of Manta, Portoviejo, and Guayaquil, Ecuador’s most populous city. One of the hardest hit was Pedernales, located north of both Manta and Quito, a town of about 40,000; dozens of buildings collapsed and people slept in the streets after the quake hit, fearful of more tremors, according to the AP. Correa said Sunday Pedernales was “destroyed.”

“We’re trying to do the most we can but there’s almost nothing we can do,” said Gabriel Alcivar, the mayor of Pedernales. “This wasn’t just a house that collapsed, it was an entire town.”

Manta resident Ramon Solorzano told Reuters he was leaving the town with his family. “Most people are out in the streets with backpacks on, heading for higher ground,” he said. “The streets are cracked. The power is out and phones are down.”

Shelters and field hospitals have been set up in Portoviejo and Pedernales, and more than 3,000 packages of food and nearly 8,000 sleeping kits were being delivered there, the AP reported. Venezuela, Chile, and Mexico prepared to send aid to Ecuador.

“Everything can be rebuilt, but lost lives cannot be recovered, and that’s what hurts the most,” Correa said Sunday on Ecuador’s state television, before flying from Rome to Manta, a coastal Ecuadorian city, according to Reuters. “The material part is the least important, what is fundamental is guaranteeing human life.”

Ecuador is located along the “Ring of Fire,” the name given to a long, winding chain of volcanoes and trenches in the Pacific Ocean where seismic activity is common. Days before Ecuador’s earthquake, two powerful quakes shook southern Japan; the first, which measured 6.2 on the richter scale, hit Thursday, and the second, which measured 7.1, hit Friday. The twin tremors have killed least 41 people and wounded more than 900. Japan is also located along the Ring of Fire, but powerful earthquakes that occur large distances apart are likely not related because “Earth’s rocky crust is not rigid enough to transfer stress efficiently over thousands of miles,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

In 1979, an 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Ecuador and Colombia, triggering a tsunami. Several hundred people were killed. In March 1987, a series of tremors of magnitudes between 6 and 7 in Ecuador killed 1,000 people.