MEXICO FORGETS ZAPATISTA DEMANDS AT ELECTION
THE WASHINGTON POST
JUNE 19, 2006
ACTEAL, Mexico (Reuters) - On the election campaign trail for elections six years ago, Mexico's President Vicente Fox famously said he would resolve the Zapatista rebel Indian conflict in "15 minutes."
That never happened and now, as another presidential vote looms, ending a military and political deadlock in the southern state of Chiapas barely figures on the national agenda.
Tens of thousands of soldiers are still stationed near the rebel strongholds that dot the highlands and jungles of Chiapas, where on January 1, 1994, the Zapatistas briefly overran several towns to put an end to centuries of discrimination.
Before the fighting ended a few days later, 150 people were killed. Peace agreements were reached in 1996, but were never fully implemented -- leaving the rebels and their supporters angry and suspicious, although they stuck to a promise not to pick up their guns again.
"We were cheated then, and now we're not even talked about," said Agustin Vasquez, 39, a Tzotzil Indian who heads a group of villages sympathetic to the Zapatista cause, but which remain committed to non-violence.
Mexico's 13 million Indians tend to be the poorest people in the country, with high rates of illiteracy and malnutrition. That, and skewed land distribution in Chiapas, were major factors leading to the 1994 revolt.
MEXICO POLICE AND TEACHERS CLASH AHEAD OF POLLS
THE WASHINGTON POST
June 15, 2006
OAXACA, Mexico (Reuters) - Thousands of Mexican police firing tear gas fought a running battle with striking teachers in a southern city on Wednesday in the latest violence between protesters and security forces before July elections.
Backed up by a helicopter clattering overhead, police on foot briefly dislodged teachers from the main square in the city of Oaxaca where they had been camped for three weeks demanding higher wages.
Witnesses and press reports said shots were fired during clashes in downtown streets. One policeman was shot in the leg before the teachers retook the square, popular with tourists visiting the picturesque city.
State Gov. Ulises Ruiz denied a report by the teachers' union that police had killed three or four people and then taken away the bodies.
"They should tell us where they are because no policeman knows anything about this and no hospital has it registered. I think this is another lie," he told a radio station.
The incident, and others, have fanned tension in the run-up to the July 2 presidential vote, a close battle between leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative Felipe Calderon.
COMMUNISM WILL REMAIN AFTER CASTRO, BROTHER SAYS
MIAMI HERALD
JUN. 16, 2006
HAVANA - Fidel Castro's brother said the Communist Party will remain in control of Cuba if there is a leadership change, according to comments published in state-run media Thursday.
Raul Castro, defense minister and designated successor of his 79-year-old brother, dismissed claims that Cuba's political system would change dramatically after his brother is no longer president, saying the party would quickly fill any political vacuum.
"Only the Communist Party -- as the institution that brings together the revolutionary vanguard and will always guarantee the unity of Cubans -- can be the worthy heir of the trust deposited by the people in their leader," he said in a speech Wednesday marking a military anniversary. "Anything more is pure speculation."
IMF TO TACKLE REFORM, DEBT RELIEF
MIAMI HERALD
JUN. 16, 2006
WASHINGTON - A high-level mission from the International Monetary Fund arrives in Haiti today to negotiate an economic-reform program that could lead to massive debt relief for the beleaguered nation.
Anoop Singh, the head of the IMF's Western Hemisphere department, will initially lead the mission and meet with Haitian President René Préval and other officials. Much of the negotiating will be done by a team of about 10 IMF staffers led by Przemek Gajdeczka, an advisor who has overseen Haiti for more than three years.
Haiti owes about $1 billion to the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, of which a large portion could be written off either immediately or over a number of years, depending on how aggressively Haiti carries out key reforms.
According to IMF officers and other observers, Haiti needs to set up an independent Central Bank more committed to battling inflation, improve the way it manages its fiscal accounts, boost its tax intake and end rampant smuggling in ports.
CRITICS: DIRTY TRICKS TAINT MEXICO VOTE
THE WASHINGTON POST
JUNE 16, 2006
MEXICO CITY -- Felicia Gonzalez says she was undecided in the last presidential election until campaign workers knocked on her door and offered her nearly $200 in cash and a basket full of rice, beans, cooking oil and sugar. That was more than the 35-year-old cleaning woman makes in a month, so suddenly her choice was easy.
"I thought, why not? Who else was going to come along and offer me that much money?" she said.
That's the sort of campaign fraud election officials pledged to eradicate from Mexico's long-corrupt political system. While they have made progress, many say foul play still taints the system weeks before the July 2 presidential election.
Mexico's special prosecutor for electoral crimes, Maria de los Angeles Fromow, said her office has received at least 250 complaints, including the alleged diversion of government funds to campaigns.
President Vicente Fox himself has been widely criticized for intervening in the campaign.
Fox has repeatedly issued thinly veiled criticisms of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and ran a taxpayer-funded advertising blitz promoting his administration.
"What Fox is doing may not be illegal, but it certainly is immoral," said Sergio Aguayo, a political analyst at the elite Colegio de Mexico.
MEXICAN UNIONS THREATEN TO LAUNCH STRIKE
THE WASHINGTON POST
FRIDAY, JUNE 16, 2006
MEXICO CITY -- Unions representing Mexican miners, university employees and telephone workers threatened Friday to stage nationwide strikes on June 28 _ just four days before presidential elections _ to protest alleged government interference in union affairs.
The National Mining and Metal Workers Union said in a statement unions representing 4 million workers have handed in strike notices to the Labor Department's arbitration board.
Mexico holds presidential and congressional elections on July 2.
The miners union said the Mexican Electricians Union, which represents about 40,000 workers at a state-run utility company, is discussing measures to support the planned strikes.
The statement said the stoppages are aimed at demanding the government stay out of internal union affairs and recognize Napoleon Gomez Urrutia as leader of the miners union. The government accuses Gomez Urrutia of corruption.
Since February, government labor authorities have recognized dissident Elias Morales as leader of the 250,000-member miners union.
The dispute over the leadership has led to strikes at the country's two largest copper mines _ La Caridad and Cananea _ and at a large steel works in the Pacific coast port city of Lazaro Cardenas.
MEXICO'S POPULIST TILTS AT A PRIVILEGED ELITE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
JUNE 17, 2006
MEXICO CITY, June 16 — It is the fourth stop on a long, rainy day of campaigning, but when the leftist candidate rolls into the small coastal town of Tonalá, in southern Mexico, the soaked crowd comes alive with deafening chants of "Obrador! Obrador!"
The candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, gray-haired and slightly stooped, with a nasal voice and a boyish, freckled face, seems to suck up their energy, amplify it, and hurl it back in the form of a simple message. For too long, he booms, politicians, business owners and their families have gotten rich and evaded taxes while the working class has remained mired in poverty.
"The poor pay taxes on everything they buy," he says, cutting to the heart of his theme. "Those of the pure upper class, the influential, don't pay the taxes."
With less than three weeks before the July 2 election, Mr. López Obrador, a leftist former Mexico City mayor, is locked in a dead heat with Felipe Calderón, the conservative candidate from President Vicente Fox's National Action Party. After seesawing for weeks, all opinion polls now suggest the race is too close to call.
Win or lose, Mr. López Obrador remains the focus of the election, a polarizing figure who has dragged Mexico's enduring class conflict into the light. In recent speeches, he has vowed to end what he calls "the privileges" of a powerful oligarchy that has dominated politics here for centuries.
WORLD CUP GIVES MEXICANS A BREAK FROM THE CAMPAIGN
WASHINGTON POST
JUNE 17, 2006
MEXICO CITY, June 16 -- Tens of thousands of fans swarmed across El Zocalo, this city's massive downtown square, on Friday to watch Mexico's second World Cup game on stadium-size screens, but many of them also said they came to escape. Politics is what they were running from -- mudslinging, smash-mouth politics.
The tournament has given Mexicans entranced by the fortunes of their hard-luck team all the excuses they needed to blissfully tune out a Mexican presidential campaign growing nastier by the day. Griping about political smears is out. Gossiping about Oswaldo Sánchez, Mexico's heartthrob goaltender, is in.
"Look, we need a distraction," said Gerardo Rodriguez, a candy seller who steered his two sons, each dressed in bright green replica jerseys, through the crowd. "No one is talking about the campaign -- that's all garbage. It's pure soccer now."
Not exactly.
With only 16 days before the July 2 election, politics has found its way into even the World Cup. Candidates are angling to capitalize on the tournament, or at least not to get hurt by it. They squeeze into Mexican team jerseys and pose. They use soccer balls as their preferred props at campaign rallies.
MEXICAN CANDIDATES TOUGH ON DRUG ISSUE
THE WASHINGTON POST
JUNE 18, 2006
MEXICO CITY -- With Mexico's presidential election two weeks away, the drug wars are a central issue in the race, and the main candidates are all trying to look tough on the issue, while splitting over whether U.S.-style solutions are needed.
The candidate who speaks most closely to American concerns is conservative Felipe Calderon. He advocates extraditing more drug lords to the United States, and replacing Mexico's secretive court system with open, U.S.-style trials.
Roberto Madrazo of the former ruling party claims the toughest law-and-order platform: One of his campaign ads depicts a criminal wetting his pants out of fear of Madrazo's proposals for stiffer sentencing. "Criminals can't play around with me," Madrazo tells voters.
Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, running neck-and-neck with Calderon in the polls, has broken with the left's anti-military tradition by suggesting a bigger role for the army in fighting the drug trade. But he says poverty reduction is the only real way to fight crime, and remains largely silent on U.S.-style trials and extradition.
Taking on the cartels, even in campaign rhetoric, is a risky business here. With shootouts, executions and even beheadings becoming more common in border cities such as Nuevo Laredo and resorts such as Acapulco, candidates have to watch their backs.
Ana Maria Salazar, a former Pentagon anti-drug official, noted that the candidates have refrained from singling out any cartels by name.
MEXICO'S ONCE-MIGHTY PARTY STRUGGLES
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
JUNE 19, 2006
MEXICO CITY – For most of the 20th century, power and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) were one and the same in Mexico. All the mayors were PRI. All the congressmen. All the senators, governors, presidents.
There was nowhere to go but down. And, starting in 1989 when the first non-PRI governor was elected, that is exactly where the party went.
The PRI lost its absolute majority in Congress in 1997, a result not only of fresh competition, but also of its reputation for corruption, its lack of a clear ideology, and a perception as being out-of-touch, say analysts. In 2000, Mexicans elected Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), ending 71 years of hand-picked PRI presidents and an era of one-party politics.
Now, the PRI is heading into the July 2 national elections with its presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo trailing in third place and its defectors numerous enough to fill Mexico City's Azteca Stadium twice over. But while many here are wondering whether it's finally over for the biggest party in town, others caution against prematurely predicting the PRI's demise.
COLONEL'S DEATH GIVES CLUES TO PINOCHET ARMS DEALS
THE NEW YORK TIMES
JUNE 19, 2006
SANTIAGO, Chile — Chileans have learned to live with the political traumas bequeathed them by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, which ended in 1990 and left about 4,000 people dead or missing. But two years ago, they were surprised to discover that he had also amassed an illicit fortune.
The source of that wealth, estimated at $28 million or more, was never clear. But Chilean officials say an investigation begun last year into the mysterious death of a high-ranking military officer, Col. Gerardo Huber, is providing important clues.
Colonel Huber's death was ruled a suicide after his body was found on the banks of a river here early in 1992, just as he was poised to testify in a case of a covert arms deal gone bad. That multimillion-dollar transaction was handled by what current government officials suspect was a syndicate that generated wealth for General Pinochet and his inner circle.
More than that, government officials say, the Huber case suggests that General Pinochet and his associates were willing to use the military intelligence service not only to eliminate political threats to their power — standard practice for them during the dictatorship — but also to protect the fortunes they were surreptitiously accumulating.
MEXICAN LEFTIST TO AVOID CHAOS IF DEFEATED: AIDE
THE WASHINGTON POST
JUNE 19, 2006
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would not stir up trouble on the streets if he is narrowly defeated in a presidential election, but would instead fight any vote fraud in the courts, a top campaign aide said on Monday.
Investors worry that Lopez Obrador, a former Indian welfare officer, could summon angry supporters onto the streets if he loses on July 2, causing political gridlock and maybe even violence that could rock financial markets.
But Ricardo Monreal, a top campaign aide and political dealmaker, said the left would steer clear of rabble-rousing.
"We will not shut down or occupy offices, cause chaos or problems," he told Reuters. "We will go to the courts."
Lopez Obrador is neck-and-neck in opinion polls with conservative rival Felipe Calderon, who earlier stole the leftist's lead by comparing him to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and warning he would wreck Mexico's economy if elected.
The Mexican left, which has accused Calderon of underhand tactics in the campaign, lost a presidential election in 1988 that was widely believed to have been rigged by the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI.
President Vicente Fox beat the PRI out of power for Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN, in 2000 elections.
MEXICAN WORKERS PLAN 24-HR STRIKE AS ELECTION LOOMS
THE WASHINGTON POST
JUNE 19, 2006
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Mexican telephone and university workers are threatening a 24-hour strike just days before July presidential elections to pressure the government to end a long-running mining dispute.
On June 28 the workers will walk off the job, joining thousands of teachers and miners, some of whom have been on strike for months in a series of labor conflicts that have seen running street battles with riot police.
The sometimes violent conflicts have caused two deaths and dozens of injuries, creating industrial instability ahead of closely-fought July 2 presidential elections.
The telephone workers union said the June 28 strikes at Mexico's main telephone company Telmex, would affect only customer service and administrative functions. Telmex is owned by the world's third richest man, Carlos Slim.
"If you want to make a phone call you won't have any problem, but if you have to make a payment or your phone is broken there will be nothing you can do about it that day," union spokesman Eduardo Torres said on Monday.
The powerful electricity workers union is expected to organize protests to support the strike, although its members will not walk off the job completely.
TWO VIEWS OF JUSTICE FUEL BOLIVIAN LAND BATTLE
WASHINGTON POST
JUNE 20, 2006
OKINAWA, Bolivia -- Choei Yara sleeps in a boxy room in the back of his roadside dry goods store, and the lump under his thin pillow is a loaded .45-caliber pistol. It is intended for a specific emergency: an attack so sudden that he'd be unable to reach the pump-action shotgun that leans against a bare concrete wall, just five feet away.
He's not afraid of the store being robbed, but he believes that the piece of paper stating that he owns about 1,400 acres of fertile soil is the kind of thing that can drive men to violent extremes. Property in Latin America is more unevenly distributed than anywhere on the planet, and Bolivia is no exception. But this month the country began a project to shuffle ownership rights affecting 20 percent of its land area, giving most of it to the poor. And tensions are starting to boil.
Those with land are starting to dig in to protect their turf. Those without it, emboldened by the recent government announcements, are taking over more properties on their own, without government approval.
"I've worked this land for 30 years, and I have never had a problem until this past year," said Yara, 63, whose family was among the Japanese immigrants who founded this community in eastern Bolivia after World War II. "But now I get death threats from the landless peasants, and they are threatening to kidnap my family. No one respects private property anymore, not even the government."
ARGENTINA SEEKS JUSTICE FOR 'DIRTY' PAST
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
JUNE 20, 2006
BUENOS AIRES – For Mirta Baravalle, to know justice is to know the story behind her daughter's disappearance.
For decades, she and fellow members of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights group, have demanded to know the fate of their children, Argentines who vanished during a period of state terrorism known as the "Dirty War."
Now, for the first time in 30 years, answers - and justice - for Ms. Baravalle may be forthcoming. This week, the first in a series of trials against the alleged perpetrators of Argentina's worst era of state repression begins. The suspects, who have lived freely under controversial amnesty laws for decades, are variously accused of kidnapping, torturing, and killing thousands between 1976 and 1983.
Trials against Dirty Warriors have long been avoided here in favor of a contentious version of reconciliation with the military. But the atmosphere has changed over the past decade, thanks to activism by groups like Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, "truth trials," and a political shift to the left, which some see as the coming of age of the generation that was persecuted 30 years ago.
COLOMBIA'S DISPLACED TRICKLE HOME
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
JUNE 20, 2006
DIAMANTE, COLOMBIA – "I missed the water," recalls one farmer shyly. "I missed the avocados," says another. "I missed the silences," admits a third. The little group sits quietly in the shade and looks out at the fields they had to leave behind when the rebels came. It's been a long journey back home.
There are an estimated 3 million internally displaced people in Colombia today: more than anywhere else in the world save Sudan.
Fleeing a relentless civil war that has killed tens of thousands, these so-called desplazados stream out of the countryside and crowd into urban slums - looking for jobs they are ill prepared to fill, leaning on relatives unequipped to help.
Last year, an average of 850 people fled their communities every day in this nation of 44 million, according to CODHES, a Colombian watchdog group that tracks desplazados.
But the trickle of those desplazados who do return home and successfully rebuild their lives - here in Diamante, 290 miles northwest of Bogotá, and in small villages and towns elsewhere around the country - is a whiff of what the government hopes a more peaceful future will bring.
ARGENTINA READIES DIRTY WAR TRIAL
MIAMI HERALD
JUN. 20, 2006
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - A 76-year-old former police investigator went on trial Tuesday on charges of involvement in murder, kidnapping and torture under the former military dictatorship, in the first Dirty War prosecution in two decades.
As Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz was led into a federal courtroom in La Plata, some 35 miles southeast of the capital of Buenos Aires, some 500 demonstrators shouted "genocide!" and "murderer!"
Human rights activists lauded the trial, the first since the Supreme Court overturned two 1980s-era amnesty laws last June. Etchecolatz did not make a statement.
Etchecolatz, former chief investigator for the Buenos Aires provincial police, faces charges in connection with five killings, kidnappings and torture during the so-called Dirty War against political dissent during a 1976-83 military junta, authorities said.
Under the junta, authorities say, some 13,000 dissidents, labor leaders, intellectuals and other opponents of the regime were illegally detained and subsequently made to "disappear." Human rights groups put the toll at more than twice that number.
MERCADO LOOKS FOR LIBERAL VOTES IN MEXICO
MIAMI HERALD
JUN. 20, 2006
MEXICO CITY - She supports same-sex marriages and decriminalizing abortion, and admits to smoking pot one time - and inhaling. The chances are next to nil that plainspoken feminist Patricia Mercado, Mexico's most liberal presidential candidate, will win election. But some say she may ruin the main leftist Democratic Revolution Party's best shot at the presidency.
Less than two weeks before the July 2 election, Democratic Revolution's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is running even for the lead with conservative Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party. Polls show some 12 percent of the 71.6 million voters are undecided.
Analysts and pollsters say Mercado's Social-Democratic and Rural Alternative Party will win over those leftists who feel Lopez Obrador is not liberal enough.
At a rally Sunday, she said Democratic Revolution "has remained behind and its platform has not grown, while Alternative represents a progressive platform."
MEXICO LEFTIST SEEKS TO CALM NERVES, LEADS POLL
THE WASHINGTON POST
JUNE 20, 2006
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told Mexico's business sector on Tuesday he was not an enemy as he tried to calm nerves ahead of a July 2 presidential election that is balanced on a knife edge.
Mexico's rich fear Lopez Obrador would target them and ruin the economy with populist policies but he has been conciliatory in recent days after more than five months of campaigning marred by mutual attacks.
"I am not against businessmen. I can't be against people who invest and create jobs," the leftist said in an interview on Mexico's main breakfast news show.
Lopez Obrador gave a similar message on Monday night in the conservative bastion of Monterrey, a northern city near Texas that is home to some of Mexico's biggest companies like cement maker Cemex.
"There can be no fiscal deficit and we are not going to load the country with debt," he told a rally there. "Trust me that we are also not going to spark inflation," he said.
CHÁVEZ FOE NOW FACING TRIAL
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUN. 21, 2006
CARACAS - (AP) -- A judge has reopened the trial of opposition leader Henrique Capriles for failing to control protests at the Cuban Embassy during a short-lived 2002 coup against President Hugo Chávez.
Caracas Judge María Pérez Carreno announced late Monday that Capriles, mayor of the Baruta district of Caracas, would stand trial for his role in the protests. She dropped charges of holding diplomatic officials against their will and ordered Capriles to appear in court on June 30.
Capriles has denied wrongdoing, saying he went to the embassy on April 12, 2002, to try to calm hundreds of rowdy demonstrators who cut electricity to the embassy compound and broke car windows.
CUBA'S ALARCÓN BLAMES U.S. FOR JAILINGS
MIAMI HERALD
JUN. 15, 2006
It promised to be a face-off to ignite journalistic fireworks: prominent New York Times journalist Mirta Ojito grilling Ricardo Alarcón, the speaker of Cuba's National Assembly, at the Hispanic journalists convention in Fort Lauderdale Wednesday.
But while Ojito did ask questions that at times left the usually loquacious Alarcón fumbling for words and made him squirm, he said almost nothing that has not already been heard before from Cuban government officials.
Even when asked why Cuba has more journalists in prison than any other country in the hemisphere, Alarcón managed to blame the United States. He went on to assert that civil rights are not abused in Cuba, Cuba's socialist system trumps U.S. capitalism, and Cuba's black population is well represented in the upper echelons of Cuba's government.
Alarcón gave his most passionate response when asked what role Cuban exiles will play in a post-Castro Cuba. He first said he looks forward to hostility ending between Washington and the Cuban government, so that Cubans can reunite. But he delivered a warning to exiles seeking to influence the Cuban government.
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