MEXICAN LEFTIST REMAINS DEFIANT AS RECOUNT ENDS
The New York Times
August 14, 2006
MEXICO CITY, Aug. 13 — As the courts completed a partial recount of votes in last month’s presidential election, the beleaguered leftist candidate vowed Sunday to keep up a campaign of civil disobedience against the government for years, if necessary, to protest what he sees as a fraudulent election.
Speaking at a rally in the capital’s central square, the candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor who champions the cause of the poor, declared, “The object of our movement is to save democracy and make the Constitution mean something.”
“We are prepared to resist for whatever time is necessary, even for years, if the circumstances merit it,” he added. “Here and now begins a new chapter in the life of Mexico. The simulated republic is finished.”
Last month, the official tally by the Federal Electoral Commission showed that Felipe Calderón, the conservative candidate, from President Vicente Fox’s National Action Party, had won a narrow victory — 243,000 votes of 41 million cast.
MEXICO RECOUNT BEGINS, AND PROTESTS GO ON
The New York Times
August 10, 2006
ZAPOPAN, Mexico, Aug. 9 — An election official was quickly dealing out ballots like giant cards on a felt-covered table on Wednesday when Humberto Mejía’s hand shot into the stack like a striking snake. “Wait!” the lawyer for the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution cried.
He had spotted a ballot for the leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, that had mistakenly been put with the ballots for his conservative rival, Felipe Calderón. “We’ve only counted two polling places this morning,” Mr. Mejía said, “and I have found two more votes for Andrés Manuel.”
It may not seem like much, but since Mr. Calderón won an official tally last month by just 243,000 of 41 million votes cast — a margin of less than one percentage point — every last vote counts.
Across Mexico, judges, election officials and party representatives began the slow process of recounting hundreds of thousands of ballots from about 12,000 polling places. More than 180 magistrates oversaw the opening of packets containing ballots from the July 2 election that are to be counted again in 149 of 300 voting districts and 25 of the 32 states.
S. FLA. VENEZUELANS: CHAVEZ INCITES ANTI-SEMITISM
The Miami Herald
Aug. 10, 2006
Some Venezuelans in Broward are incensed about recent remarks by President Hugo Chávez, who accused Israel of conducting its own Holocaust against Palestinians and the people of Lebanon.
''They [the Israelis] are doing what Hitler did against the Jews,'' Chávez said in an interview with the Al Jazeera news agency broadcast Friday from Dubai.
During his Sunday radio program, Chávez accused Israel of committing a ''new Holocaust'' with the help of the United States, which he described as a ''terrorist'' country.
The comments are just the latest wound to the Venezuelan exile community in South Florida and across the country. Many moved to the United States because they didn't want to live under Chávez's rule, and now fear their country will be more divided, with Chávez alienating its Jewish community.
BRAZIL CONGRESS CHARGES 72 LAWMAKERS WITH FRAUD
The Washington Post
August 11, 2006
A congresional investigative committee charged 72 lawmakers Thursday with allegedly embezzling public health funds and recommended they face impeachment proceedings.
Three senators and 69 representatives in the Lower House were charged. All but nine of the 72 accused congressmen are part of the government coalition backing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is running for re-election in October.
Owners of a company that sold ambulances to 450 municipalities told police they bribed mayors and congressional lawmakers with cash, cars and travel expenses. In several cases they presented checks and deposit slips as proof, according to transcripts of their testimony before investigators.
The congressmen were charged with embezzlement, influence peddling and corruption. They will likely face a congressional ethics committee that could expel them.
The scandal, dubbed the "bloodsuckers case" because of the ambulances link, could refocus attention on corruption ahead of the Oct. 1 general election.
A campaign finance scandal involving the ruling Workers' Party dogged President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for much of last year.
NEW ATTACKS BY A HEAVILY ARMED GANG RATTLE BRAZIL
The New York Times
August 13, 2006
SÃO PAULO, Brazil, Aug. 12 — The powerful criminal group whose street battles with the police paralyzed this metropolis three months ago has begun a new series of attacks, mocking government efforts to reduce its influence, alarming citizens and igniting a partisan political dispute.
The new offensive, which began this week, has killed far fewer people than the more than 180 left dead in May. But the number and variety of targets chosen is larger: more than 200 sites in a score of cities and towns, including government offices, banks and police and bus stations.
The criminal group that has claimed responsibility for many of the attacks, First Capital Command (P.C.C. are its initials in Portuguese), is a prison-based network that in the past has used such shows of strength as a bargaining chip to demand better conditions for its estimated 10,000 members behind bars.
“A new fact in these attacks are the cities in the interior” that have been chosen as targets, said Col. Elizeu Teixeira Borges, commander of the São Paulo military police. “They’ve even attacked a church, which makes no sense.”
BRAZILIAN GANG SEIZES REPORTER, DEMANDS PRISON CHANGES
The Washington Post
August 14, 2006
SAO PAULO, Brazil, Aug. 13 -- A Brazilian gang kidnapped a television reporter and forced his station to broadcast a message Sunday demanding improvements in the state prison system.
The prison-based First Capital Command gang -- better known by its Portuguese initials, PCC -- has waged a war against the government in recent months, launching hundreds of attacks against government buildings and other properties throughout the state of Sao Paulo. The attacks began in protest of a plan to transfer gang leaders to a remote prison, but the gang's message broadcast on Globo television early Sunday decried the prisons' overall living conditions, health and legal services, and isolation policies.
"Brazil's penal system is actually a human deposit, in which human beings are thrown as if they were animals," the group stated in the video, which lasted more than three minutes.
On Saturday morning, Globo television reporter Guilherme Portanova, 30, and an unidentified technician were kidnapped after leaving a bakery near the station's offices in Sao Paulo. The technician was released in the evening with the copy of the message on a DVD, and he informed the network that Portanova would be killed if it was not broadcast.
A VENEZUELAN COMEDIAN HOPES TO UNSEAT CHÁVEZ
The New York Times
August 14, 2006
CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 13 — Just when laughter seemed in short supply in the political opposition’s dreary struggle to unseat President Hugo Chávez, along came Benjamín Rausseo, Venezuela’s best-known stand-up comedian.
Mr. Rausseo, who plays a rube on television with a particularly raunchy sense of humor, also happens to be a self-made millionaire at the helm of a business empire including theme parks, hotels and recording studios. Now he is a contender in presidential elections scheduled for December.
He has an impoverished past that many Venezuelans can identify with, working as a shoeshine boy, waiter and taxi driver before he turned 20. When he began his campaign last month, he declared himself the ideal outsider with the potential to defeat Mr. Chávez, 52, a widely popular but polarizing figure with similarly humble rural origins.
BOLIVIA SUSPENDS A TAKEOVER OF OIL AND GAS
The New York Times
August 14, 2006
LA PAZ, Bolivia, Aug. 13 (AP) — Bolivia says it has suspended the nationalization of its oil and gas industry pending an overhaul of the state petroleum company, which lacks the funds and operating capacity to take over production from foreign companies.
A statement issued Friday by Bolivia’s hydrocarbons ministry said that “full effect” of nationalization would be temporarily suspended, because of the “lack of economic resources” for the company, known by its initials, Y.P.F.B.
When President Evo Morales nationalized the oil and gas industry on May 1, seizing the assets of international companies that had long controlled most of the country’s considerable oil and gas reserves, he called for the company to be remade within 60 days as “transparent, efficient and socially controlled.”
The state-owned company has asked the Central Bank of Bolivia for $180 million to help assume complete control of the production facilities.
In addition, the ministry announced plans to modernize the company, which was partly privatized in 1997 but nationalized again in 2004.
CUBA STAYS CALM WITH CASTRO ON SIDELINES
The New York Times
August 14, 2006
MEXICO CITY, Aug. 13 — The decline of Fidel Castro, who turned 80 on Sunday and appeared in photographs for the first time since his unspecified intestinal surgery last month, was supposed to be a kind of second Cuban revolution. The notion, put forward by Cuba specialists for years, was that the entire system hung on one man.
But in the last two weeks, with Mr. Castro turning over power to his brother Raúl, at least for now, a different reality has emerged on the island. There was calm and normalcy, not chaos and hysteria that was predicted. Instead of an intervention by the United States, the Bush administration called on the Cuban people to take their future in their own hands. And rather than upheaval within the Cuban government, it appears that the political system may not change much at all.
“American policy toward Cuba has always been based on the fragility of the Cuban system,” said Philip Peters, an expert on Cuba at the Lexington Institute, a policy group based in Virginia that promotes free-market economics. “There is this predicate in our policies that the Cuban system is one that can be pushed over with one finger, and that has not been the case.”
If Mr. Castro dies, the country’s stability may be more overtly shaken. But so far it appears that Mr. Castro, who has governed Cuba for 47 years, may once again defy the experts and prove his influence, some call it control, over the government and its people, whether he survives or not.
LABOR LEADER, MILITARY OFFICERS ESCAPE VENEZUELAN PRISON
The Miami Herald
Aug. 14, 2006
CARACAS - A dissident Venezuelan labor leader who was serving a nearly 16-year sentence for leading a crippling oil strike against President Hugo Chávez has escaped from prison, the attorney general said Sunday.
Carlos Ortega, the jailed president of the one million-member Venezuelan Workers Confederation, or CTV, escaped along with three military officers from the Ramo Verde military prison, Attorney General Isaias Rodríguez said on state television.
Rodríguez said the government was ordering troops to secure airports and embassies nationwide to prevent the fugitives from fleeing or seeking asylum at a diplomatic compound.
''This is to prevent . . . one of the most horrible crimes that have been committed against Venezuela from going unpunished -- a crime of conspiracy along with a coup in which one of the leading figures was Carlos Ortega,'' Rodríguez said.
VENEZUELA THREATENS TO NATIONALIZE CANTV
The Miami Herald
Aug. 15, 2006
CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday threatened to nationalize Venezuela's largest telecommunications company if it does not comply with a court order to make owed pension payments.
Chavez said he would give Compania Anonima Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela, or CANTV, a grace period to comply, but did not specify how long that period would be.
"If they don't want to comply with that, I am going to nationalize CANTV," Chavez said in a televised speech.
CANTV has shares traded on both the Caracas and New York stock exchanges. It is the dominant provider of fixed line telephone service in Venezuela and also has large shares of the mobile phone and Internet markets.
THE PARTY AT THE HEART OF MEXICO CITY'S PROTEST
The Christian Science Monitor
August 15, 2006
To its critics, the massive ongoing occupation of downtown Mexico City, led by presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is a hotbed of anarchy and a breeding ground for violence in the wake of the country's disputed July 2 election.
Yet a visitor could easily mistake this historic moment in Mexico's budding multiparty democracy for, well, a night at the summer fair.
Along more than five miles of the blockade, circus-size tents cover couples dancing salsa and merengue. Children whirl on kiddy rides. A comedian draws laughs from a crowd eating corn-on-the-cob and drinking cola. There are any number of one-man guitar shows, folding chairs provided.
The demonstration was called two weeks ago by the leftist leader, who trails conservative Felipe Calderón by little more than half a percentage point, to demand a full vote-by-vote recount to clear up doubts of fraud. An electoral court denied the request, wrapping up a review of 9 percent of polling places Sunday, a move many expect won't alter the results. Obrador told a crowd Sunday to be prepared to resist as long as necessary: "We could be here for years if the circumstances merit it."
CUBANS GET AN EYEFUL OF CASTRO RECUPERATING
The Miami Herald
Aug. 15, 2006
HAVANA - Cubans crowded newsstands Monday at a new and more downbeat batch of photos of ailing leader Fidel Castro -- this time showing him confined to a bed even as he greets friend and ally Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
The seven new photos published in Cuba's leading Granma newspaper and a video of Castro came one day after the smaller Juventud Rebelde on Sunday ran the first photos of Castro since his intestinal surgery, apparently sitting on a chair.
But Monday's images showed Castro lying in a hospital bed, looking tired and with sheets covering him to his torso. The government later released a 10-minute video of the Chávez meeting, dousing speculation about the photos' veracity.
For many Cubans, the latest images confirmed that the man who has ruled them for 47 years was still alive, but did little to ease their anxiety over a future without him.
AMID UNCERTAINTY ABOUT LEADERSHIP, NO CUBAN EXODUS
The Christian Science Monitor
August 15, 2006
CAIBARIEN, CUBA – The beach here is not impressive. The waters are choppy, the sand dirty, the boardwalk narrow. But these are not Caibarien's main draw. One hundred and fifty miles east of Havana, and about the same distance from Florida, this is a beach for the dreamers and the desperate - and those in between - who look out across the gulf, see a better life, and set off to live it.
Thousands of Cubans risk all to attempt to cross the sea and reach the US every year - and the small fishing town of Caibarien, surrounded by mangrove-covered cays where boats can lurk and hide, is where many of their journeys begin. Some of the so-called balseros, or rafters, die at sea. Many are intercepted en route, returned to the island, and fined or even sent to jail. But those who physically reach the shores of America, can - thanks to the so-called "wet foot/dry foot" policy - stay.
When Cuban President Fidel Castro temporarily transferred power to his brother Raúl two weeks ago due to illness, some observers predicted an exodus of balseros taking advantage of the uncertainty of the moment, and making a dash for US shores. And there was talk that Washington was considering relaxing its immigration policies to accommodate this.
BRAZILIAN PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFULS DEBATE
The Miami Herald
Aug. 15, 2006
BRASILIA, Brazil - President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who holds a commanding lead in the polls, was conspicuously absent from the first debate of presidential candidates ahead of Brazil's Oct. 1 elections.
As Monday's televised debate began, the camera focused on five candidates seated behind a large semicircular table and then came to a stop in front of the empty sixth seat that had been reserved for Silva. His opponents accused him of fleeing a challenge.
"I cannot accept his arrogance, nor the fact that he thinks he is better than the other candidates, which he is not," said Sen. Heloisa Helena, a candidate of the leftist Party of Socialism and Liberty. "He fled the debate. He was scared to debate."
Former Sao Paulo Gov. Geraldo Alckmin of the centrist Social Democracy Party, running a distant second in opinion polls, has accused Silva of "trying to escape" the debates.
MEXICO’S PRESIDENT DEFENDS VOTE TALLY ELECTING HIS ALLY
The New York Times
August 15, 2006
MEXICO CITY, Aug. 14 — With the country locked in a battle over the results of last month’s elections, President Vicente Fox for the first time defended the vote that narrowly favored his party’s candidate as clean and fair, rejecting allegations of widespread irregularities.
“The process has been transparent in the eyes of the world,” the president said Sunday evening in an interview at his residence inside Los Pinos, the presidential compound. “It was watched by the media. There were observers. The entire world was watching the electoral process. There is nothing hidden.”
On Monday, Felipe Calderón, the candidate of Mr. Fox’s conservative National Action Party, once again declared victory, while supporters of the leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, scuffled with police officers outside Mexico’s legislature. Mr. López Obrador has vowed to carry on his campaign of civil disobedience to press for a full recount of the July 2 ballot.
PROTESTERS CLASH WITH MEXICAN POLICE OVE
The Miami Herald
Aug. 15, 2006
MEXICO CITY - Protesters scuffled with riot police outside Congress on Monday after supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador tried to set up a protest camp to demand a full recount in last month's election.
Lopez Obrador's backers also picketed the Federal Electoral Tribunal as it met to resolve election disputes, and they maintained around-the-clock tent camps across large swaths of central Mexico City.
Lawmakers from Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, later filed a complaint against police and said Sen. Elias Moreno Brizuela had suffered a rib injury, Congressman Juan Jose Garcia suffered minor head wounds, and three other legislators apparently were bruised or shaken.
COLOMBIA STRUGGLES TO IDENTIFY ITS 'DISAPPEARED'
The Christian Science Monitor
August 16, 2006
SAN ONOFRE, COLOMBIA – For two-plus years, Victoria Berríos suffered over the fate of her son Jose Luis Terán, who disappeared in this small ranching town on the northern coast in 2002 when Colombia's paramilitary forces ruled the region. When officials told her last year that they had found an ID card with her son's name on it in a clandestine grave, Ms. Berríos thought that finally she would be able to mourn and find peace.
But more than a year-and-a-half later, Ms. Berríos has yet to find resolution. Her son's bones, along with those of 89 other bodies dug from secret graves near this town are lying in boxes awaiting analysis and identification.
"I feel cheated. It's almost worse than not having found him at all," says Ms. Berríos.
With former paramilitary fighters and witnesses now willing to speak, authorities have been inundated with information about clandestine graves of victims of Colombia's brutal conflict.
That has given hope to thousands of families. But the avalanche of reports is overwhelming authorities and their slow progress is frustrating victims' families. Officials and experts are looking to other countries to learn from their experience.
SHAKE-UP BYPASSES TAINTED COLOMBIAN GENERAL
The Miami Herald
Aug. 16, 2006
BOGOTA - President Alvaro Uribe has named a new head of the armed forces and retained a loyal army chief despite recent scandals that prompted speculation he would be fired, Colombia's defense minister announced Tuesday.
In a widely anticipated military shake-up, Gen. Freddy Padilla will become chairman of Colombia's Joint Chiefs of Staff under the new Uribe administration, replacing Gen. Carlos Ospina, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said during a military ceremony Tuesday.
Gen. Jorge Ballesteros and Adm. Guillermo Barrera were tapped to head up Colombia's air force and navy, respectively.
MEXICO'S MOMENT OF TRUTH
Will a fair vote stand?
IN THE 6 1/2 weeks since he narrowly lost Mexico's presidential election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador has turned the nation's politics into a public spectacle. A fiery populist with a messianic streak, Mr. López Obrador has led thousands of his supporters to pitch tent cities in downtown Mexico City, occupying the Zocalo, its main square, and a two-mile stretch of the Paseo De La Reforma, one of its major boulevards. He has denounced the election as a fraud and the product of a vast conspiracy, without furnishing even remotely convincing proof. Now, after a partial recount has apparently failed to yield any significant shift in his favor, he threatens to paralyze Mexico with a campaign of civil disobedience "for years, if that is what circumstances warrant."
His goal, Mr. López Obrador nobly insists, is to "save" Mexico's fragile democracy. In fact, by daily demonstrating his disdain for the country's electoral institutions while showing no actual failure on their part, Mr. López Obrador threatens to subvert the democracy he claims to champion.
VIDEO OF FRAIL CASTRO SOBERS CUBANS
The Miami Herald
Aug. 16, 2006
HAVANA - The government video of a weakened Fidel Castro convalescing in bed brought home a growing awareness to many Cubans on Tuesday that neither he nor the country will likely be the same again.
The images released Monday night of Cuba's 80-year-old "unconquerable commander in chief" reassured anxious Cubans that he was alive, comfortable and recovering after surgery.
But the post-surgery photographs and video also are helping Cubans "gradually grow accustomed to" the idea of a Cuba without their "Maximum Leader" at the helm, according to historian Manuel Cuesta-Morua, a government opponent.
"The video gives a positive idea, that he is recovering," said Cuesta-Morua, who describes himself as a social democrat who wants more civil liberties in Cuba. "At the same time, it gives me the impression that he doesn't have the ability to return to his duties."
CUBANS BRACE FOR LIFE WITHOUT CASTRO
The Miami Herald
Aug. 16, 2006
HAVANA - The government video of a weakened Fidel Castro convalescing in bed brought an undeniable truth home to Cubans on Tuesday: Neither he nor Cuba will ever be the same.
The images released Monday night of Cuba's 80-year-old ''unconquerable commander in chief'' reassured anxious Cubans that he was alive, comfortable and recovering after surgery.
But the post-surgery photographs and video also are helping Cubans ''gradually grow accustomed to'' the idea of a Cuba without their ''Maximum Leader'' at the helm, according to historian Manuel Cuesta-Morua, a government opponent.
''The video gives a positive idea, that he is recovering,'' said Cuesta-Morua, who describes himself as a social democrat who wants more civil liberties in Cuba. ``At the same time, it gives me the impression that he doesn't have the ability to return to his duties.''
With the details of Castro's illness being treated as a ''state secret,'' Cubans and the world are in the dark about how sick he really is, what ails him, and what kind of surgery he had two weeks ago before announcing July 31 he was temporarily ceding power to his younger brother Raúl.
PROTESTERS-ARMY FIGHT BREWING IN MEXICO
The Miami Herald
Aug. 16, 2006
MEXICO CITY - A potentially dangerous confrontation between the Mexican army and thousands of protesters loomed larger Tuesday as federal officials insisted on holding annual Independence Day celebrations on the same streets occupied for weeks by supporters of the leftist presidential candidate.
Both sides expressed defiance, refusing to give up their claim to the heart of Mexico's capital.
Mexicans celebrate their independence from Spain every year with cries of ''Viva México!'' on the night of Sept. 15, as the president rings a bell from a balcony of the National Palace as multitudes gather in the central square, or Zócalo. The next day, the Mexican army assembles in the square and marches down wide Reforma Avenue, to the cheers of thousands of families.
THE END OF THE REVOLUTION
Opinion
The Miami Herald
Aug. 16, 2006
By Jorge Castañeda
Fidel Castro turned 80 on Sunday, and his era has come to an end. The biological denouement in Havana is not yet discernible -- Is he dead? Will he recover? -- but he has relinquished power, temporarily to his brother, Raúl, but also permanently through the admission of his own mortality.
Obsessed as he has always been with history and his role in it, Castro has meticulously orchestrated his succession. So painstakingly have the steps been laid out that some observers speculate that the brouhaha over his illness is a dress rehearsal, not the real thing. Still, his best-laid plans will probably go astray.
He may write his epitaph, but not his biography. He may control Cuba's archives, but not everybody else's. He hopes his revolution will last forever, but he undoubtedly knows it will not. He may try to ensure that his legacy at home and abroad remains intact, but because his persona and influence are inseparable, it will not.
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