La Secretaría General de la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) ha iniciado la coordinación del proyecto “América Latina ante la Segunda Administración Bush”.  

Como parte de este  proyecto, la Secretaría General de FLACSO ofrece otro canal de información con un resumen noticioso semanal sobre lo que se publica acerca de América Latina en algunos de los principales diarios de los Estados Unidos.  Esto permitirá identificar   cuales son los temas que despiertan mayor  interés en Estados Unidos sobre la región latinoamericana y su tratamiento en la prensa estadounidense.  Las noticias han sido clasificadas bajo las categorías de:
 

COMERCIO
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A DANGEROUS JOB IN COLOMBIA
The New York Times
July 12, 2006

With President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia at his side at the White House last month, President Bush promised action, soon, on a bilateral trade agreement. We strongly support free trade, but before an agreement can be completed, Americans need reassurance that Mr. Uribe’s government will do more to protect workers’ rights, instead of standing aside as union leaders are systematically killed.

In the last 20 years, according to a recent report by the Solidarity Center of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., some 4,000 labor union organizers, leaders and activists have been assassinated. Human rights groups use lower numbers, but still in the thousands — far more than anywhere else in the world. The government has investigated fewer than 400 cases, and has produced just five convictions.

MIGRACIÓN
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FRESH PERSPECTIVE ON VALUE OF IMMIGRATION
OUR OPINION: THEY OFFER LOVE, LOYALTY -- AND THEIR LIVES, TOO
The Miami Herald
Jul. 12, 2006

The voices of intolerance grow more shrill and mean as Congress moves toward immigration reform. Those screaming loudest would have you believe that immigrants come to this country only for welfare benefits and to steal jobs. That fiction found no currency at Monday's Senate hearing in Miami. The day was devoted to acknowledging immigrant contributions to U.S. security.
Born elsewhere

Similar hearings are being held nationwide with a different purpose -- to stir up opposition to sensible, comprehensive reforms as proposed by the Senate. Thus, it was fitting that the Senate Armed Services Committee revisited what immigrants do for this country, not only with their labor, but with their loyalty and lives. Just as fitting was the setting of the hearing in downtown Miami, a city where nearly 60 percent of the residents were born elsewhere. Among the many immigrants attending were Miami Mayor Manny Diaz and Police Chief John Timoney, born, respectively, in Cuba and Ireland.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stole the show when he spoke about his father, an immigrant from Italy who worked three jobs. Gen. Pace concluded, "No other country in the world offers that kind of opportunity to those who come here."

HOW EISENHOWER SOLVED ILLEGAL BORDER CROSSINGS FROM MEXICO
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
JULY 06, 2006

WASHINGTON – George W. Bush isn't the first Republican president to face a full-blown immigration crisis on the US-Mexican border.

Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond.

President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents - less than one-tenth of today's force. The operation is still highly praised among veterans of the Border Patrol.

Although there is little to no record of this operation in Ike's official papers, one piece of historic evidence indicates how he felt. In 1951, Ike wrote a letter to Sen. William Fulbright (D) of Arkansas. The senator had just proposed that a special commission be created by Congress to examine unethical conduct by government officials who accepted gifts and favors in exchange for special treatment of private individuals.

General Eisenhower, who was gearing up for his run for the presidency, said "Amen" to Senator Fulbright's proposal. He then quoted a report in The New York Times, highlighting one paragraph that said: "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government."

APPARENT MEXICAN WINNER ATTACKS BORDER WALL
THE WASHINGTON POST
JULY 8, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 7 -- Less than 24 hours after being named president-elect in a disputed official count, Felipe Calderón took a firm stance against building a wall along the United States-Mexico border to stem illegal immigration.

Echoing his campaign theme, Calderón said the best solution to the immigration crisis was creating jobs in Mexico, "not walls or troops," a reference to President Bush's decision to send National Guard troops to support the U.S. Border Patrol.

Calderón's remarks, delivered during his first post-election briefing for the international news media, angered a leading Capitol Hill proponent of increased border security. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) said in a phone interview that he was "insulted" by Calderón's statement, "just as Mexico would be rightly offended if we were to not only condemn their immigration policies but actively work to aid and abet illegal immigration."

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) another proponent of increased border fencing, said Friday in an e-mailed statement that he was "hopeful Mexico's president-elect will also look more closely at the benefits security fencing brings to both sides of the border."

CRACKING DOWN ON BORDERS AND BOSSES
OPINION
THE WASHINGTON POST
JULY 8, 2006

The lure of well-paid jobs continues to be the primary magnet for most people who come to this country illegally. A comprehensive immigration strategy that includes a temporary worker program, as proposed by President Bush, is critical to stemming this flow. This strategy must also include work-site enforcement with real consequences for those who knowingly employ illegal aliens.

My agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was created in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. At first we focused our work-site enforcement efforts on illegal workers at critical infrastructure locations such as nuclear and chemical plants, military installations, airports and seaports. While we continue to maintain these priorities, the agency is also focusing more on traditional work sites.

We believe the most effective strategy in combating illegal employment is criminal prosecution of unscrupulous employers and seizure of their ill-gotten assets. As the immigration debate has heated up, we have heard repeated charges that ICE is failing in its work-site enforcement efforts because the number of employer fines has decreased. In fact, our efforts have grown more robust. What has changed is our strategy.

One thing we have learned from the old Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is that simply fining employers for hiring illegal workers doesn't work. INS agents invested substantial time and effort in issuing proposed administrative fines against unscrupulous employers, only to see the fines ignored, paid in an untimely manner or reduced to nothing. For many employers, these fines amounted to a cost of doing business. They were no deterrent.

GOP HEARING ALLEGES RISKS OF TERRORISM ALONG BORDER
THE WASHINGTON POST
JULY 8, 2006

LAREDO, Tex., July 7 -- House Republicans brought their get-tough immigration proposal on Friday to the city dubbed the nation's "Gateway to Mexico" to make their case for tightening the border as a way to prevent terrorist incursions.

"It's elementary that to defend ourselves against our determined and resourceful enemies, our border must be secure," said Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), chairman of the House International Relations subcommittee on terrorism. "Border vulnerabilities are opportunities for terrorists."

Some House Democrats denounced the hearing as political grandstanding that would accomplish little, and some local officials said that closing the border would be detrimental to the legal flow of commerce and individuals.

"We face some very serious problems," but lawmakers should "not start scaring people just to get headlines," said Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas, a former FBI agent and U.S. Capitol Police officer.

GETTING BACK TO IMMIGRATION BASICS
OUR OPINION: COMPREHENSIVE REFORMS MUST NOT BE COMPROMISED
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 10, 2006

Dueling congressional hearings have brought immigration to the forefront of public consciousness. Even Miami is hosting a Senate hearing today on immigrants in the armed forces. Yet important basics are being lost as posturing House lawmakers try to dominate the debate.

The current immigration system is unenforceable because it doesn't meet the demands of our economy or national security. To effectively control our borders and immigrant flows, we need a rational policy and an adequate supply of legal workers. Fixing the status of illegal immigrants would free law enforcers to focus on real terrorists instead of busboys and nannies.

EATERY OFFERS A TASTE OF HOME AND NEEDED SUPPORT
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 11, 2006

Tropical Restaurant in Hialeah serves up a daily mix a la libra, by the pound: the feel of home in a new country; the first sliver of opportunity for many Cubans who've recently made the exile leap, and of course, congrí and ropa vieja at a budget price.
Take Rocio De La Torre, waitress, Miami Dade College student, and recent survivor of a dangerous smuggling operation that brought her across the Florida Straits. She now works at Tropical with her mom, Barbarita Herrera.

Tropical, 652 E. Ninth St., is the Versailles restaurant of the new arrivals, a U.S.-flag draped place where there's always a buzz around the timbiriche window, with plenty of seating and kitschy decor, and where language is not an issue, as long as you speak Spanish.

NEW CUBAN EXODUS QUIETER AND BIGGER
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 11, 2006

A sense of isolation came suddenly to Tamara Saavedra as she ended a phone call from her husband and stared at the empty Hialeah video rental store where she works the late shift.

Tears welled up in her eyes, even as a loud Latin music concert played on the television set near her: a somber mood for a woman surrounded by the latest Cuban government-produced DVDs of popular TV shows on the island, Hollywood movie releases and flashing screens of electronic slots.

Saavedra, 31, is a recent arrival from Cuba, one of tens of thousands who have come to the United States since 2000. More Cubans have arrived during the last six years than during the entire Mariel boatlift in 1980, quietly reshaping the Miami area.

POLÍTICA INTERNA
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IN NICARAGUA, OLD US FOE RISES AGAIN
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
JULY 07, 2006

MANAGUA, NICARAGUA – The sudden death Sunday of Nicaraguan presidential candidate Herty Lewites could open the door for yet another leftist leader to win election in Latin America. But in this case, the leader is one the US spent millions combating in the 1980s.

Daniel Ortega is a well-known figure in Washington, which funded contra rebels to battle his Sandinista government.

Democracy has since ushered in a number of leaders since Mr. Ortega last held power in 1990, but he has remained a key power-broker and a perennial presidential candidate.

This time around, Ortega is leading in the polls, yet currently without enough support to win outright in the first round. However, if now he can pick up an additional eight or 10 percentage points from Sandinista voters who were supporting Mr. Lewites' reform candidacy, it could be just enough to push Ortega over the top in the Nov. 5 elections.

Analysts say that if returned to power, Ortega, a fiery leader of Latin America's old-guard left, would act in concert with other regional critics of the United States including Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Bolivia's Evo Morales, and Cuba's Fidel Castro.

"An Ortega win at the ballot box in November would be a humiliating setback for the Bush administration," says Michael Shifter, a Nicaragua expert at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. "Unlike in other Latin American elections, where Washington has shown admirable neutrality, in Nicaragua it has not concealed its intense desire to keep Ortega from returning to power."

BOLIVIA'S FAULT LINES
OUR OPINION: EVO MORALES' POWER GRAB BRAKED AT THE BALLOT BOX
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 05, 2006

Bolivian President Evo Morales' power grab has been defeated by voters, at least for now. In a move reminiscent of Venezuela's authoritarian President Hugo Chávez, Mr. Morales pushed for a mandate to radically rewrite the nation's constitution, but voters said No.

Another test of Mr. Morales' power came in a ballot question regarding provincial autonomy. Here, too, he suffered a setback in Sunday's elections. The results also exposed the ethnic and economic rifts dividing Bolivia.

Mr. Morales failed to gain the two-thirds majority of delegates to the constitutional assembly. This should brake his ability to insert sweeping presidential powers into a new constitution. Mr. Morales may now be opposed in his attempts to codify his government's right to seize private lands and to increasingly control the economy.

SUSPENSE GROWS AS VOTE COUNT IN MEXICO RACE WRAPS UP
THE NEW YORK TIMES
JULY 6, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 5 — Mexico endured a new cycle of suspense on Wednesday as the authorities tabulated their final official count of votes from Sunday's disputed presidential election, in which preliminary results separated the candidates by less than one percent.

With tallies taken from about 93 percent of the polling places, the electoral authorities reported that the count had tilted toward the leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had 36 percent of the vote, while the conservative candidate, Felipe Calderón, had 35 percent.

But with a race this close, elections officials said they would not announce a winner until all the tally sheets had been counted. As the night wore on, Mr. López Obrador's lead steadily narrowed as tallies arrived from the northwestern states that voted heavily in favor of Mr. Calderón. Even some of Mr. Lopez Obrador's advisers acknowledged privately that they were not confident their candidate's lead would hold.

CONSERVATIVE WINS IN MEXICO IN FINAL TALLY
THE NEW YORK TIMES
JULY 7, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 6 — After days of uncertainty, election officials declared Thursday that Felipe Calderón, a conservative, had won the race for president by less than 1 percent of the official count. His leftist rival refused to accept the results and vowed to go to court and demand a recount.

As he pulled ahead in a tally overnight that entranced the nation, Mr. Calderón said he would fight to keep his victory, however narrow, over the populist former Mexico City mayor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Election officials said Mr. Calderón had won by 243,000 votes out of 41 million cast on Sunday.

By the evening, Mr. Calderón, 43, appeared before supporters at his party headquarters and gave a half-hour victory speech, declaring that the forces of peace had won over those of violence. He reached out to the supporters of the other candidates and urged Mexicans of all political parties to come together, declaring that the voters demanded it.

MEXICO VOTE TALLY GIVES FREE-TRADER A NARROW VICTORY
THE WASHINGTON POST
JULY 7, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 6 -- Felipe Calderón, a former energy secretary who promised to boost free trade, narrowly won Mexico's ferociously contested presidential election late Thursday after an all-night count yielded a much-disputed official tally.
Calderón's main opponent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, refused to concede and demanded a recount, and it appeared that the winner of Sunday's balloting would ultimately be decided in court.

The final results showed Calderón with 35.88 percent of the votes, just 200,000 more than López Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor, who collected 35.31 percent. It was the closest presidential election in the country's history.

Even before Mexico's electoral commission released the final tally, López Obrador had demanded a recount and called on his supporters to join him for a rally Saturday in Mexico City's downtown square, the Zocalo.

"We cannot accept the results," he said twice at a packed news conference. "There are many irregularities."

Outside, protesters dressed in bright yellow, the signature color of López Obrador's Democratic Revolutionary Party, chanted: "The Mexican people will rise! No to fraud!"

TENSIONS GROW OVER MEXICO VOTE AS OPPOSITION PLANS RALLY SATURDAY
THE NEW YORK TIMES
JULY 8, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 7 — Mexico hung in limbo on Friday, as tensions rose between those seeking a recount in the presidential race and those seeking to accept Felipe Calderón as the winner and move on.

After a tally showed that the two top candidates were separated by 243,000 votes, the election has exposed deep divides in society, along class and regional lines. The voting has put the strength of the young democracy to its toughest test.

A day after election officials said Mr. Calderón, an advocate of free trade, had won the narrowest of victories, the country seemed more on edge than on a high.

Supporters of Mr. Calderón's leftist rival, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, girded for fights in court and on the streets, beginning with a rally scheduled for Saturday. Mr. Calderón's supporters and allies called on Mr. López Obrador to concede defeat for the good of the country.

The uncertainty caused consternation among citizens of all political persuasions.

MEETING DANGER WELL SOUTH OF THE BORDER
THE WASHINGTON POST
JULY 8, 2006

TECUN UMAN, Guatemala -- Mario Lobo stood on the muddy bank of the Suchiate River just after dawn, staring dispiritedly at the roiling current separating him from Mexico.

The slight, 22-year-old Honduran was still 1,500 miles from the U.S. boundary line. But for Lobo and tens of thousands of other impoverished Central Americans who sneak into the United States each year, the real border begins here, at Guatemala's frontier with Mexico -- and onward through the entire length of Mexico -- as they embark on a succession of ordeals of which the dangerous trek through the desert into Arizona or Texas is merely the final chapter.

Every step requires split-second decisions that can mean the difference between life and death. Should they ford a rushing river or spend precious pennies on a raft ride? Are the bandits on a remote path more dangerous than the immigration checkpoints along the main road? And will hopping a speeding freight train dramatically reduce the journey time, or will a slip and a fall permanently cut it short? Lobo had heard about these perils from others who had made this trip before. Yet as he contemplated the coffee-colored waves of the Suchiate, all other dangers paled in comparison with the one foremost in his mind.

MEXICO'S BITTER ELECTION OFFERS SOME LESSONS
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 09, 2006

MEXICO CITY -- Here are five lessons to be learned from Mexico's July 2 presidential election, which, according to official figures, was won by center-right candidate Felipe Calderón but is being contested by left-of-center candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

First, Mexico's three-party system badly needs a runoff election in order to elect politically stronger presidents. If he overcomes the legal challenges to his victory, as expected, Calderón will be the weakest president in Mexico's recent history.

While former President Ernesto Zedillo won the 1994 elections with 50 percent of the vote, and President Vicente Fox won the 2000 election with 43 percent of the vote, Calderón was proclaimed the winner with less than 36 percent of the vote.

Calderón's party (PAN) will have a 42 percent minority in Congress and will need the support of the once-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to pass key reforms. Mexico's failure to pass energy, labor and fiscal reforms over the past five years has left the country increasingly behind China, India and Central Europe in the global race for investments.

CONTENDER ALLEGES MEXICO VOTE WAS RIGGED
THE WASHINGTON POST
JULY 9, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 8 -- Downtown Mexico City swelled Saturday with the accumulated frustration and rage of the poor, who were stoked into a sign-waving, fist-pumping frenzy by new fraud allegations that failed populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador hopes will overturn the results of Mexico's presidential election.

López Obrador ignited the smoldering emotions of his followers Saturday morning, alleging for the first time that Mexico's electoral commission had rigged its computers before the July 2 election to ensure the half-percentage-point victory of Felipe Calderón, a champion of free trade. In a news conference before the rally, López Obrador called Calderón "an employee" of Mexico's powerful upper classes and said a victory by his conservative opponent would be "morally impossible."

LEFTIST PREDICTS UNREST WITHOUT COMPLETE RECOUNT OF MEXICAN ELECTION
THE NEW YORK TIMES
JULY 9, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 8 — While the announced winner of last Sunday's presidential election, Felipe Calderón, kept a low profile on Saturday, his leftist rival led a rally of at least 150,000 people, charged the polling had been marred by fraud and suggested there would be civil unrest without a vote-by-vote recount.

"If there is not democracy, there will be instability," said the rival, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, at a news conference just hours before he addressed his angry and defiant supporters in Mexico City's central plaza.

At 5:50 p.m., he took the stage in the Zócalo, the historic central square in front of the National Palace, to fire a broadside at what he described as an oligarchy of top-level politicians and businessmen.

"We are aware we are confronting a powerful group, economically and politically, that are accustomed to winning at all costs, without moral scruples," he told the crowd. He maintained that this group had "conspired against democracy" and that "they are the ones who now want to put a servant in the presidency."

MEXICO FACES ITS OWN RED-BLUE STANDOFF
THE NEW YORK TIMES
JULY 9, 2006
MEXICO CITY

NO matter who wins the election in Mexico, where the leftist and conservative candidates are locked in a legal battle over the outcome, the voters have pulled the curtain back on a new political landscape for the country. In the end, who won may not be nearly as important as who lost. The candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled the country with an iron hand for 70 years, did not win a single state. Worse, the P.R.I., as the party is known, lost its hold on Congress, slipping from the largest faction to third largest.

In short, the declining former ruling party finally crashed and burned. And from the wreckage have risen two invigorated, growing — and quite evenly matched — parties, Felipe Calderón's National Action Party, or P.A.N., and Andrés Manuel López Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution, the P.R.D.

"What's happened, I think, is that in fact we have a new panorama," said Daniel Lund, a pollster and political analyst. "Two parties have emerged that are not the dual heirs of the P.R.I."

WINNING IS JUST THE HALF OF IT IN MEXICO
The Monitor's View
The Christian Science Monitor
July 10, 2006

The July 2 presidential election in Mexico isn't over yet, but one thing matters more than who won: Just how Felipe Calderón, the declared winner, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who's challenging the official results, finish out the election process.

The rest of Latin America, as well as the United States, have a strong stake in whether Mexico's fragile and still-emerging democracy can maintain the integrity of its voting system and in electoral disputes. The region's history of leaders both left and right trying to hijack elections to stay in power needs to become history. Mexico can help lead the way.

That means Mexicans must respect the authority of their two electoral bodies: the Federal Electoral Institute, which counts the votes and has a favorable reputation; and the Federal Electoral Tribunal, which declares the winner by Sept. 6 and hears legal challenges to the vote. The tribunal already has a solid track record of overturning local elections found fraudulent.
Both candidates have not been shining lights in this respect.

BOLIVIA EDUCATION MINISTER CALLS FOR BAN
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 10, 2006

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Bolivia's education minister called for an end to religious education in the country's schools, drawing criticism from the Roman Catholic Church which could see its schools affected by the proposed change.

Education Minister Feliz Patzi said at an assembly on education reform that the government aims to make education secular in Bolivia, where Catholicism has been the official religion since the country's founding in 1825.

"Secular means that there is no monopoly on religious teaching," Patzi said. "Secular means that there is no indoctrination."

Reforms drafted by the education assembly in Sucre, about 335 miles south of La Paz, eventually will be submitted to congress for approval. The assembly is made up of representatives from 26 government-linked organizations and has until Friday to develop proposals.

LEFTIST STARTS LEGAL BATTLE OVER MEXICO VOTE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
JULY 10, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 9 — A day after calling for mass demonstrations, Mexico's leftist presidential candidate began a legal battle on Sunday evening to try to overturn the results of the close presidential race.

The candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor who campaigned on promises to reduce poverty, formally challenged the results in a single election district in the capital that went to the conservative winner of the election, Felipe Calderón. The act was largely symbolic, but his aides said other challenges would be submitted to local election boards and to the Federal Electoral Tribunal before midnight Monday.

Mr. López Obrador's lawyers contend that the initial count of the ballots, on election night a week ago, was careless. In some cases, they also assert that poll workers purposefully inflated Mr. Calderón's totals. Mr. López Obrador is calling for a complete recount in about 50,000 of the 130,000 polling places, where he contends he has evidence of irregularities or fraud.

MEXICO'S DEMOCRACY FACES HISTORIC TEST
OUR OPINION: CHALLENGE RESULTS, BUT DON'T IMPUGN ELECTORAL PROCESS
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 11, 2006

The political drama playing out in Mexico has turned into a historic test of the honesty and utility of the country's relatively new electoral institutions. So far, they have performed as well as can be expected -- better, actually. Still, challenger Andrés Manuel López Obrador could well bring the house down on himself and everyone else with claims that impugn the official results and the integrity of the process as well.

Legal redress

With a margin of less than 1 percent separating Felipe Calderón -- the top finisher, according to the official count -- and Mr. López Obrador, the legal challenge he filed yesterday was to be expected. When the results are this close, the challenger has a duty to pursue all legal means of redress. But although he has promised to respect the outcome, Mr. López Obrador has resorted to mass demonstrations and demanded a virtually impossible recount of all 41 million votes, tactics designed to overturn the results by applying overt political pressure.

This is a mistake for Mr. López Obrador, who fought a losing battle throughout the campaign to shed the image of a hothead. If he wants to remain a viable political leader, he must respect the country's electoral institutions.

It is no secret, of course, that Mexico has a history of vote fraud. But this is a new era. The formerly dominant PRI, the party once known as "the steamroller" because it regularly crushed all political opponents, has been relegated to third place behind Mr. Calderón's center-right PAN and Mr. López Orbrador's populist PRD.

MEXICO'S CALDERON PLANS TRANSITION
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 11, 2006

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's presumptive president-elect began forming his transition team Tuesday and announced plans for a victory lap through Mexico, while his opponent finished filing a legal challenge alleging election fraud.

With both ruling-party candidate Felipe Calderon and his leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador claiming they won the closest presidential race in Mexican history, the struggle for the hearts and minds of the country stretched from foreign embassies to dueling news conferences.

Calderon asked his campaign director Josefina Vazquez Mota to reach out to other political parties and help build a coalition government.

"We have begun working toward the transition between the administration headed by President Vicente Fox and the administration I will have the honor of leading starting Dec. 1," Calderon said.

Calderon said he had spoken with governors from most of Mexico's 31 states since the July 2 election. He said his National Action Party would finance his nationwide tour to build unity after the divisive results, which split Mexico between the poor south and the industrialized north.

LEFTIST SCREENS VIDEOS HE SAYS PROVE FRAUD IN MEXICO VOTE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
July 11, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 10 — On the morning after his campaign filed a legal challenge to last week’s presidential elections, the leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, stepped up his public campaign against the vote, screening two videos that he said proved the election was flawed.

One video showed what he described as a voter in President Vicente Fox’s home state of Guanajuato illegally stuffing a ballot box in the race for Congress.

The other video, he said, showed that election officials in the state of Querétaro had wrongly given his conservative opponent, Felipe Calderón, 200 more votes than he had actually won at one polling station.

It was not possible to verify the authenticity or content of the videos, or whether the content had any bearing on the race for president. Still, the screening of the videos at a news conference added to Mexico’s strong sense of political uncertainty.

CONSERVATIVE CHILE MORE TOLERANT OF GAYS
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 11, 2006

Santiago, Chile - gay rights activists say they are finding greater public tolerance in one of latin america's socially conservative strongholds and hope chilean lawmakers will approve anti-discrimination legislation.

Chile's congress is debating striking down regulations against "offenses to morals and good customs" that police have used to harass gays, even for behavior such as holding hands in public.

Activists say such treatment remains common. it was only in 1998 that chile repealed a prohibition on sex between consenting, same-sex adults.

The issue of gay rights captured the country's attention in 2004 when the supreme court denied a lesbian mother and judge, karen atala, custody of her three daughters in favor of her ex-husband.

Emma de ramon, atala's partner and director of a gay parents advocacy group, said she believes there can be progress for gays under new socialist president michelle bachelet.

Bachelet stated her intentions to do away with discrimination against gays and others in a speech in may, saying she wanted "a chile for everyone" which "doesn't discriminate and which doesn't forget those who have been left behind."

DISPUTED ELECTION TROUBLES MEXICANS
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 11, 2006

MEXICO CITY - The fate of Mexico's hotly contested presidential election is in the hands of a special electoral court, which must declare a winner. But for many Mexicans, that result, no matter who wins, amounts to a stain on the country's young and fragile democracy.

"There was manipulation," said Veronica Mendoza, a Mexico City voter who cast her ballot for the apparent winner, conservative Felipe Calderón, yet admits feeling disappointed in the acrimony surrounding the outcome. "I don't know if there was theft, but there was manipulation."

Six years ago, Mexicans celebrated the end of seven decades of often-corrupt rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI in its Spanish initials. Vicente Fox, of the National Action Party, or PAN, a boot-wearing rancher with the rugged good looks of the Marlboro man, had become the first non-PRI politician to win the presidency since 1929, and Mexicans hoped his victory would usher in a new era of untainted elections.

FORMER AIDE SAYS PINOCHET AND A SON DEALT IN DRUGS
THE NEW YORK TIMES
July 11, 2006

SANTIAGO, Chile, July 10 — Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s former intelligence chief, now one of his bitterest enemies, has implicated the disgraced dictator and one of his sons in a cocaine manufacturing and smuggling scheme and contends that it was one of the sources of General Pinochet’s illicit $28 million fortune.

Gen. Manuel Contreras, who ran the Directorate of National Intelligence, the Chilean secret police, during the 1970’s, made the charges in a document submitted last week to an investigating magistrate here. He also accused General Pinochet of embezzling money from secret government accounts that the dictator controlled during his 17 years in power, which ended in 1990.

According to General Contreras’s account, the cocaine was processed with General Pinochet’s authorization at a Chilean Army chemical plant in Talagante, south of here, during the 1980’s. General Pinochet’s son Marco Antonio and one of his business partners then arranged for the drugs to be transported to Europe and the United States, with payoffs going into secret bank accounts the Pinochet family held abroad, General Contreras’s account said.

PINOCHET FAMILY SUING OVER COCAINE ACCUSATION
The Miami Herald
Jul. 12, 2006

SANTIAGO, Chile - The son of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet filed a defamation suit Tuesday against the general's former intelligence chief, rejecting published accusations that Pinochet became rich off the production and sale of cocaine.

Gen. Manuel Contreras was head of Pinochet's repressive police force from the 1973 coup until 1976, the period encompassing the worst human rights abuses against leftist opponents of the past dictatorship.

"There is a whole family affected, you understand, with this slander and defamation," Marco Antonio Pinochet told a Santiago court, adding that Contreras' accusation -- published in a newspaper report -- was especially distressing to his elderly parents. Accompanied by his attorney, Luis Pacull, the younger Pinochet filed the suit in a Santiago courthouse. Pacull said Contreras' claims were especially serious given that Contreras used judicial channels to allegedly defame the family.

A local newspaper reported Sunday that Contreras claimed in a document that Pinochet's family gained extensive wealth from trafficking cocaine processed at a military facility on the outskirts of Santiago in the 1980s.

COLOMBIA WANTS TO RESTRICT U.N. WATCHDOG, ACTIVISTS SAY
The Miami Herald
Jul. 12, 2006

BOGOTA - President Alvaro Uribe's government is lobbying to restrict a U.N. agency that has been the most trusted monitor of violence-racked Colombia's human rights record, according to foreign diplomats and rights activists.

The four-year mandate of the U.N. human rights office expires in October, and diplomats say Colombian officials are trying to remove its right to publicly criticize human rights abuses and publish an annual report on them.

Colombia has one of the most-criticized human rights records in the hemisphere and the United Nations' Bogotá office, one of 34 such missions around the world, has verified 8,100 human rights abuses since it was founded in 1997, including the killings of 29 civilians by security forces who claimed the victims were rebels.

Authorities last week announced the arrest of 18 soldiers in the case, and rights groups say that was, in part, a result of the United Nations' disclosure of the case.

The government has been lobbying foreign governments to have the office restricted to technical support of government agencies, according to the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

CASTRO BROTHERS' PLAN: THE PARTY MUST GO ON
By JAIME SUCHLICKI
The Miami Herald
Jul. 12, 2006

The recent reestablishment of the secretariat of Cuba's Communist Party, the purges and replacements of party officials and the growing prominence of Raúl Castro in the Cuba-controlled media strongly suggest that the younger brother is increasingly managing and running the government's day-to-day operations.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of subsidies to Cuba some 15 years ago, Fidel Castro streamlined the party and eliminated its secretariat. Only the politburo remained as the principal decision-making body within the party, under Fidel's and Raúl's leadership.

In the years following the end of communism in Europe, the military in Cuba increased significantly its control over society and the economy. Most major state enterprises and key sectors of the economy fell under the control of active or retired military officers. During these years the party took a back stage role and became more bureaucratized and corrupt.

The reappearance of the secretariat earlier this month, led by Fidel and Raúl and composed primarily of party officials from the various provinces, signals the revival of the Communist Party, the only party allowed in Cuba, as a key player in the succession process. As Raúl has emphasized, the future leadership of Cuba after Fidel's disappearance should not be embodied in a personalized caudillo, but rather it should be represented by Cuba's key communist institutions.

AN ELECTION WATCHED FROM AFAR
The Washington Post
July 12, 2006

SAN ANTONIO, July 11 -- The ladies at the sewing cooperative run by the nonprofit organization La Fuerza Unida are U.S. citizens by choice but Mexican at heart.

Six years ago, they followed the controversial election in which George W. Bush became president. Now they're reliving presidential electoral drama, but this time it is south of the border.

"It's my country; those are my roots and those are my people," said Petra Mata, 60, a coordinator of La Fuerza Unida who arrived in San Antonio 17 years ago and has been a U.S. citizen for several years.

A seamstress by trade, she now helps run a workers' advocacy group created after Levi Strauss and Co. closed its three factories here in the 1990s and moved its operations overseas, leaving almost 3,000 seamstresses -- mostly Mexican immigrants, like her -- without work.

Following that "trauma," as she calls it, Mata learned the value of becoming involved in civic life, in fighting for workers' rights and in voting in this country. But that does not mean that Mexico's closest presidential election in its history is just a political footnote for her. It is of intense personal interest to her and the seamstresses at La Fuerza Unida because they have parents, siblings and extended family still living in Mexico. Because, as Rebeca Herrera said, "we're divided in two."

CALDERÓN SAYS HE WOULD ACCEPT PARTIAL RECOUNT
The Washington Post
July 12, 2006

MEXICO CITY, July 11 -- Felipe Calderón, a free-trade booster who was declared the winner of Mexico's disputed presidential election last week, said Tuesday that he would accept a partial recount but that a complete recount would be "absurd" and illegal.

Calderón's main opponent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, has alleged widespread election fraud, called massive street protests and asked Mexico's special electoral court to order a recount of votes cast in all 130,000 polling stations. In his first international media interview since being declared winner, Calderón said Tuesday that he would abide by the decision of the court, even if it orders a recount of as many as 50,000 polling places.

"I will respect what the tribunal says," said Calderón, of the National Action Party.

During the wide-ranging interview at his Mexico City campaign headquarters, Calderón also took exception to remarks made Monday by President Bush's spokesman, Tony Snow, about Calderón's opposition to building more walls on the U.S.-Mexico border. Snow told reporters that the "last time I checked, Calderón did not have any official authority over the activities of the United States government."

In the interview, Calderón said, "President Bush's spokesman is someone who does not have the authority to tell me what I should be saying."

REGIONAL
ver noticia(s)

VENEZUELA GETS BACKING FOR U.N. COUNCIL SEAT
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 07, 2006

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - Venezuela's firebrand President Hugo Chávez took a major step toward securing a crucial bloc of votes for a seat on the U.N. Security Council Thursday after the 15-member Caribbean Community made it clear they would not support Guatemala's U.S.-backed candidacy.

A formal declaration of CARICOM's support for Venezuela would come later, but leaders of the regional bloc meeting here said Guatemala's long-standing territorial claims against Belize, a CARICOM member, made them oppose its candidacy.

"The very strong view within CARICOM is that the claim that Guatemala continues to make on Belize is unacceptable," said CARICOM Chairman and St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Denzil Douglas.

Guatemala is claiming half of Belize as part of a centuries-old dispute.

RELACIONES BILATERALES
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BRAZIL, VENEZUELA VYING FOR LEADERSHIP
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 08, 2006

RIO DE JANEIRO - When the television cameras are on, Brazilian and Venezuelan leaders talk cooperation and Latin American unity, yet tensions are growing between the two countries over who will lead South America.

Leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, a harsh critic of the United States, has attempted to unite Latin America under his leadership. In the process, he has angered Brazilian officials with what they see as confrontational tactics.

The tensions began in May when Bolivian President Evo Morales nationalized his country's natural gas fields. Most of those fields were run by Brazil's state energy company, Petrobras.

Chávez, a close Morales ally, had encouraged the nationalization. The announcement by Morales drew howls of protest in Brazil, where the news magazine Veja cried, "Brazil took a kick in the butt given by Hugo Chávez and his Bolivian puppet, Evo Morales."

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized Chávez for backing the nationalization. Venezuela's state energy company, PDVSA, later said it would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Bolivian gas production while Petrobras was on its way out.

BORDER FIGHT FOCUSES ON WATER, NOT IMMIGRATION
THE NEW YORK TIMES
JULY 7, 2006

CALEXICO, Calif. — For more than 100 years, as their names imply, Calexico and its much larger sister city, Mexicali, south of the border, have embraced each other with a bonhomie born of mutual need and satisfaction in the infernal desert.

The pedestrian gate into Mexico clangs ceaselessly as Mexicans lug back bulging bags from Wal-Mart and 99 Cent Stores in Calexico. The line into the United States slogs along, steady but slower, through an air-conditioned foyer as men and women trudge off to work and, during the school year, children wear the universal face that greets the coming day.

Now, the ties that bind Calexico and Mexicali are being tested as a 20-year dispute over the rights to water leaking into Mexico from a canal on the American side is reaching a peak. Though the raging debate over illegal immigration in the United States has not upset border relations here, some say the fight over water could affect the number of Mexicans who try to cross here illegally.

HAITI MAY BAR FORMER CITIZEN
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 07, 2006

Lionel Jean-Baptiste may not be deported after all.

The first naturalized American in recent times stripped of citizenship after being convicted in a drug case will not be allowed to return to his native country because he renounced Haitian citizenship when he swore allegiance to the United States, a senior Haitian official said.

Ralph Latortue, the Haitian consul general in Miami, said he will not issue a travel document to Jean-Baptiste if and when the immigration service requests it.

Latortue said a clause in the 19-year-old Haitian Constitution prohibits issuance of travel documents to Haitians who have renounced citizenship.

"Article 13, related to nationality, says any Haitian that chooses to be a citizen of another country loses automatically the Haitian nationality," Latortue said. "Since he lost the Haitian nationality, he cannot be deported to Haiti."

PLAN FOR CHANGE IN CUBA GETS OK
THE MIAMI HERALD
JUL. 11, 2006

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Monday approved a long-awaited update on U.S. policies to hasten and assist a Cuban turn to democracy after Fidel Castro's reign, including possible assistance to Havana's military and an $80 million-plus fund to boost the opposition to Castro.

"We are actively working for change in Cuba, not simply waiting for change," Bush said in a statement unveiling the 95-page report by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, a multiagency panel he created in 2003.

Arguing that vital U.S. interests are at stake in pushing for a transition to democracy, instead of a succession by new communist leadership after the 79-year-old Castro leaves power, the report underlined Bush administration pledges to promote freedom and democracy worldwide.

The text -- accompanied by a two-page "Compact with the People of Cuba" that promises to "work with the Cuban people to attain political and economic liberty" -- predicts a clash between an "energized" opposition and an "intrinsically unstable" attempt at succession.

"The opposition movement is creating momentum for democratic change in Cuba," said the State Department's Cuba transition coordinator, Caleb McCarry. "With our offer of advice and assistance . . . we hope to add to this momentum."

COLOMBIA'S AMBASSADOR TO U.S. RESIGNS
The Miami Herald
Jul. 12, 2006

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia's ambassador to the United States resigned Tuesday in anger over President Alvaro Uribe's selection of a disgraced former Colombian leader as ambassador to France.

Andres Pastrana, the main defender in Washington of Colombia's cooperation in the war on drugs, said Uribe's support for Ernesto Samper, whose U.S. visa was revoked because of alleged ties to drug traffickers, "left him without a choice but to resign."

"This changes Colombia's policy and it changes it radically," said Pastrana, after more than six hours of closed-door meetings with officials in Bogota.

Pastrana's resignation, which caught Uribe and most Colombians by surprise, was deplored by the president in a written statement. In a swift, impromptu shuffling of the nation's top diplomats, Uribe named foreign minister Carolina Barco as the new ambassador in Washington.

The government's announcement Monday that it was nominating Samper for the Paris post sparked outrage among many Colombians and allies in Washington in the war on drugs. In his statement, Uribe said Samper had declined the France ambassadorship so as not to harm Colombia's national interests.

VENEZUELA LEADER BLASTS U.S. REPORT
The Miami Herald
Jul. 12, 2006

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez rejected a U.S. government report accusing Venezuela of funding efforts by Cuba's Fidel Castro to subvert democracy in Latin America, saying it indicated Washington's aggressive intentions toward Havana.

"They've launched what I consider a new imperialist threat," Chavez said Tuesday in a televised speech. "They've publicized a plan of transition, they think Fidel is going to die."

"This is what I say to U.S. imperialism: Now is when Venezuela will support the Cuban revolution," Chavez added. "Long live Fidel - brother, comrade and partner!"

Chavez was responding to Monday's release of a report by the Presidential Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba that accused Havana of forestalling a transition to democracy in the communist country and charged that Chavez is using Venezuela's vast oil revenues to prop up Castro.

"There are clear signs the (Cuban) regime is using money provided by the Chavez government in Venezuela to reactivate its networks in the hemisphere to subvert democratic governments," the report said.

Denouncing moves by the Castro government to strengthen its grip on power, it said "the current regime in Havana is working with like-minded governments, particularly Venezuela, to build a network of political and financial support designed to forestall any external pressure to change."

The commission urged the U.S. government to spend $800 million to help non-governmental groups hasten a transition to democracy.

SEGURIDAD
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POST-9/11 LAW KEEPS COLOMBIAN REFUGEES OUT OF US
The Christian Science Monitor
July 11, 2006

LAGO AGRIO, ECUADOR – The group of men who ate in Maria's restaurant in her Colombian border town seemed no different from other rural workers. But when she asked them to pay, their tall, bearded leader kicked down her door and tried to kidnap her two sons. Then the men, who Maria now knows belonged to a left-wing guerrilla group considered terrorists by the United States, ordered Maria to abandon her home and business within 48 hours.

Now living in refugee housing near this gritty Ecuadorian border town, Maria, who didn't want her real name used for fear of retribution, wonders what happened to her sons since that fateful day nearly a year and a half ago. She also fears the guerrillas will pursue her into Ecuador - as has happened to other Colombian refugees. She wants to be resettled in the US or Spain, where she can "live in peace and work."

Not long ago, her ordeal may well have qualified Maria for admission to the US as a refugee, like thousands of other victims of Colombia's decades of war.

But, like many other aspects of US law, 9/11 changed all that. Maria says she did not know who the men she served lunch were, and could have suffered violence for refusing them. But under a part of the USA Patriot Act that officials have begun enforcing more vigorously over the past year, the food Maria gave the guerrillas qualifies as "material support" of terrorists, and bars her from resettlement in the US. Critics say this law unfairly brands people victimized by terrorists as terrorist allies.

Refugee rights advocates estimate the material support rule has barred some 2,000 Colombian refugees from the US.