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 correspondientes a la semana del 09 al 16 de noviembre del 2006 han sido clasificadas bajo las categorías de:
 

COMERCIO
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DEMOCRATS STYMIE URIBE ON TRADE
The Miami Herald
Nov. 15, 2006

WASHINGTON - President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, on a visit hastily arranged after Democrats took control of the U.S. Congress, failed to secure promises from American lawmakers that they would back passage of a much-scrutinized trade deal.

Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel, in line to be the next chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, would not comment on his meeting Tuesday with Uribe. With a visibly tense Uribe looking on, Rangel said it was up to the new Congress to ''review'' the Bush administration's trade deal with Colombia. ''Everything is possible,'' he said.

Uribe arrived Monday to press for the deal, Washington's biggest in the hemisphere since the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, amid speculation it could be scuttled once Democrats take control of Congress in January.

In what could be a sign of a fiery legislative battle over trade, Bush administration officials insisted they would push for swift passage of trade deals reached this year with Peru and Colombia.

WASHINGTON - Weary of navigating the Treasury Department's stringent rules on money transfers to Cuba, MoneyGram International called it quits. Starting mid-September, the cash transfer company stopped serving the island.

''It was too complicated,'' said Cathy Rebuffoni, a spokeswoman for the Minneapolis-based firm, ``and we weren't getting any volumes.''

MoneyGram was the latest big-name financial services company to cut back or end its dealings with Havana under a U.S. crackdown that appears to be hitting Cuba hard, severely disrupting the government's ability to make and receive international payments.

A story Monday in the Cuban state-run Trabajadores newspaper put the total amount ''frozen'' by the U.S. measures at $268 million for 2005 alone but gave no further details. It called the restrictions ''one of the most refined and sweeping'' sections of the U.S. trade embargo on the island.

On Dec. 31, 2006, four countries in the Andean region -- Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia -- will lose important trade benefits with the United States if Congress does not move to extend them. The decision would have a negligible effect on the U.S. economy, but nonextension will hurt U.S. policy objectives of strengthening democracy, development and security in the region.

The benefits are provided under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA) of 2002, itself an extension of the Andean Trade Preference Act of 1991. Congress approved the original law to strengthen the economies of the Andean ridge by providing alternatives to drug production, later broadening the benefits under ATPDEA to allow more than 5,000 products from the four countries to enter the United States duty-free.

Colombia is the largest beneficiary, with about $4.6 billion in ATPDEA trade in 2005. Bolivia's share is the smallest at $160 million.

While these numbers amount to very little in the U.S. context, they are very substantial in terms of the investment, employment and income they generate in the Andean region. Trade between the four countries and the United States has risen by more than 50 percent since 2003 alone, spurred by these preferences.

Many of the U.S. imports under ATPDEA, such as textiles and knitted goods, niche agriculture, cut flowers, furniture and jewelry, are highly labor-intensive. In the case of Bolivia, small-scale exporters based in the city of El Alto take advantage of ATPDEA to provide thousands of jobs to indigenous workers.

ATLANTA -- The good news is that the Democratic Party's victory in last week's congressional elections will put an end to the Bush administration's quasi-imperial arrogance. The bad news is that it will strengthen protectionist-isolationist forces in Washington.

A close look at some of the key Democrats who won House and Senate seats on Tuesday leaves me worried.

They are not the Bill Clinton-styled cosmopolitan Democrats who understand that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that if other countries grow, America will be able to export more goods to them. On the contrary, many of the newly elected Democrats are trade Neanderthals, who may push their own party farther away than ever from Clinton's support for free trade.

Take the case of Sherrod Brown, the Democrat who won a key Senate race in Ohio, the state that gave President Bush his 2004 victory. During his 13 years in the House of Representatives, Brown led the fight against the U.S. trade agreement with Central America and the Dominican Republic, voted against free trade with Chile, and opposed the 1994 free-trade deal with Mexico and Canada.

''We are against job-killing trade agreements that betray our values and destroy our communities,'' Brown said in his victory speech Tuesday. Brown recently wrote a book entitled The myths of free trade, in which he claims that trade preferences for Latin American countries are hurting the U.S. economy.

MIGRACION
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VATICAN DECRIES FENCE PLANNED FOR U.S. BORDER
The New York Times
November 15, 2006

ROME, Nov. 14 — In a speech discussing immigrants and refugees, a top Vatican official on Tuesday took aim at Washington’s plan to build a fence along the Mexican border, saying it was inhumane.

“Speaking of borders, I must unfortunately say that in a world that greeted the fall of the Berlin Wall with joy, new walls are being built between neighborhood and neighborhood, city and city, nation and nation,” said Cardinal Renato Martino, in presenting Pope Benedict XVI’s message for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees.

Cardinal Martino discussed child labor and forced prostitution, and according to Reuters was asked about President Bush’s recent signing of legislation enabling the construction of a 700-mile border fence. The cardinal, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, responded by praising Mexican and United States bishops who opposed the plan.

President Bush may have won at least something in last week's election. A Democratic Congress could lean more closely toward his ideas on dealing with illegal immigration. But before the two now try to look bipartisan and pass something quickly, they should scrutinize the tea leaves in the ballot results.

Mr. Bush was a bit hasty just two days after the election in pledging to Mexico's visiting president-elect, Felipe Calderón, that he'll work harder for his "comprehensive" solution on illegal immigration. The election signals on this issue were mixed.

In many races, illegal migration was a major topic for both parties, and not always a winner. In Pennsylvania, two Democratic challengers won after accusing GOP incumbents of being soft on illegal immigration. A few Republicans who appeared to be not just against illegal migration but anti- immigrant lost seats. One TV ad for losing GOP incumbent Randy Graf in Arizona rattled off crime statistics and criticized an "open door" border policy as it showed a blond child walking toward a door slowly opening.

But also in Mr. Graf's Arizona, the state hit hardest by the rise in illegal migrants, four ballot initiatives that would restrict education and various state services for illegals, and also make English the official state language, won by a nearly 3 to 1 margin.

Those votes aren't anti-legal immigrant or anti-Mexican. They send a message to all elected officials about the dangers of massive illegal migration and the slow pace of assimilation for the illegals who manage to stay in the US.

ROME, Nov. 14 — A top Vatican official called the Bush administration’s plans for hundreds of miles of new security fences on the United States-Mexico border “inhuman.”

“Speaking of borders, I must unfortunately say that in a world that greeted the fall of the Berlin Wall with joy, new walls are being built between neighborhood and neighborhood, city and city, nation and nation,” said Cardinal Renato Martino, according to news agency reports.

Cardinal Martino, who heads the Vatican’s Council for Justice and Peace, was presenting Pope Benedict XVI’s message for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees at a news conference today.

When he was asked specifically about President George W. Bush’s plan to sign legislation approving the construction of 700 miles of security fences along the border, Cardinal Martino offered praise for the Catholic bishops in Mexico and the United States who have spoken against it. He called the plan “an inhuman program, which is what the construction of that wall and all others is,” according to Reuters.

POLÍTICA INTERNA
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NICARAGUAN NEWS MEDIA GIVE ORTEGA TIME
The Miami Herald
Nov. 13, 2006

MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Nicaraguan President-elect Daniel Ortega says he will not return to the days when his Sandinista government sent censors to La Prensa or parked tanks in front of the newspaper's offices.

Even though the former Marxist revolutionary refused to talk to most media during the campaign, media moguls are taking a wait-and-see approach to the new leader.

"Our doors remain open to properly interpret his government. The ball is in his court," said Xiomara Chamorro, political editor of La Prensa, the country's largest circulation daily. "But we're giving him the benefit of the doubt," said Chamorro, whose reporters had no access to Ortega during the campaign.

After his election last week, Ortega moved rapidly to mend fences with the Roman Catholic Church and the business community, two of the three sectors hardest hit under his rule from 1985-1990.

The 61-year-old Ortega has yet to reach out to members of the news media, though he has publicly promised to embrace freedom of expression and has been tolerant of the feisty, opposition media.

"They can say what they want. There is freedom of expression here even to say any crude thing, any slander," he said in his victory speech following his Nov. 5 election. "I harbor no sentiment of hatred or revenge against those sending this kind of message, this dirty campaign."

SAN BENITO, Nicaragua -- As a young insurgent fighting to overturn Nicaragua's Marxist-led Sandinista revolution during the 1980s, Mart?n Laguna chose the alias "Comandante Amargura," Spanish for "Commander Bitterness," to protest his suffering at the hands of a government that had gunned down his father and confiscated his family's cattle ranch.

But 16 years after the Sandinistas' fall ushered in a new era of democracy in Nicaragua, Laguna's old code name seems just as apt.

Official promises to compensate him for the expropriated property never came through, so he has joined about 100 other former fighters squatting in flimsy shacks on this desolate plain outside the capital, Managua.

Jobs are scarce, so he feeds his four children by scavenging for firewood to sell by the highway.

And as if those humiliations weren't enough, last week Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader whom Laguna risked his life to overthrow, won back the presidency through a democratic election.

NEWSPAPER EDITOR KILLED IN MEXICO
The New York Times
November 12, 2006

ZIHUATANEJO, Mexico, Nov. 11 (AP) — A newspaper editor was found dead in a hotel room in this Pacific resort city a day after his paper ran articles about organized crime and corruption in the city government.

The body of the editor, Misael Tamayo Hernández, of the daily El Despertar de la Costa, was found early Friday with his hands tied behind his back in a room at the Venus Motel, Zihuatanejo police officials said.

He was lying on a bed, nearly naked and covered only with a sheet, and investigators found three puncture marks on his body, one in his right hand and two others in a forearm. The cause of death was a heart attack, forensic investigators said.

Mr. Tamayo Hernández, who was well respected among local journalists, published an article on Thursday alleging that city officials gave illegal discounts on water services to individuals and businesses. The Thursday paper also contained articles on organized crime.

VENEZUELANS SQUARE OFF OVER RACE, OIL AND A POPULIST POLITICAL SLOGAN
The New York Times
November 12, 2006

CARACAS, Venezuela, Nov. 11 — “Mi negra” is an almost untranslatable term of endearment used in rich and poor households in this racially mixed country, with a definition somewhere between “My dark-skinned woman” and “My dear.”

Now, it also has another meaning. In a reference to the color of oil, President Hugo Chávez’s main electoral challenger chose Mi Negra as the name of a banking card he proposes that would transfer oil revenues directly to the poor.

Few other projects point so succinctly to the populism that permeates the campaigns of both Mr. Chávez and the top contender to unseat him, Manuel Rosales, governor of the oil-producing Zulia State, leading to the elections on Dec. 3.

Mr. Rosales, a career politician who frequently checks his BlackBerry for messages and speaks with monotone disdain of Mr. Chávez’s militaristic populism, cultivates an image of managerial efficiency.

CLASSES RESUME AT UNIVERSITY IN OAXACA
The Miami Herald
Nov. 13, 2006

OAXACA, Mexico - Classes resumed briefly Monday at the university used as a headquarters by leftist protesters, but lessons were suspended again amid security concerns in the southern Mexican city wracked by six months of unrest.

The protesters set up their headquarters at Oaxaca's Autonomous Benito Juarez University early this month after police drove them from the city's main plaza, which they had occupied for months in a bid to force Oaxaca's state governor to resign.

Some students complained Monday as classes resumed that they were intimidated by masked protesters who shouted "traitors." The leftist protesters also say they fear for their safety after almost daily shootings at them by pro-government armed groups driving by the university in cars and trucks.

Amid the insecurity, university spokesman Carlos Pazaran said there would be no further classes until safe conditions were guaranteed.

UPHEAVAL PREDICTED IN MEXICO
The Miami Herald
Nov. 14, 2006

OAXACA, Mexico - Flavio Sosa is remarkably relaxed for a wanted man

As the most visible leader of a leftist movement that has rattled the Vicente Fox administration, chased state police out of this southern Mexican city and challenged hundreds of federal troops -- Sosa faces arrest warrants on riot and conspiracy charges.

He also has received death threats, no small worry in a city where there have been at least nine political killings since August, mostly of Sosa's fellow leftists.

But sitting in a colonial plaza, just two blocks away from an encampment of police clutching rifles and riot shields, the 41-year-old activist couldn't stop smiling.

''It's no use living my life in fear and being scared every time I go out in the street,'' he said. ``This movement is beautiful. I'm proud to be a part of it.''

A former migrant worker, Sosa is one of the founders of the Oaxaca People's Assembly, a leftist front trying to oust state Gov. Ulíses Ruíz. The assembly formed in June after Ruíz's police violently broke up a protest by striking teachers demanding higher wages.

FOR 35 CENTS, CHILEAN WORKERS GET A LIFT AND A RICKETY THRILL
The Washington Post
November 14, 2006

VALPARAISO, Chile

This city naturally pulls everything to its harbor in the mornings. Dockside jobs draw men and women down concrete stairways that plunge through crayon-bright neighborhoods, twisting between thousands of painted-tin houses that cling to the hillsides.

But the reverse takes hold later in the day, inverting a fundamental law of nature: Everything that goes down, must also go up.

Instead of spending 15 or 20 knee-buckling minutes laboring back up the steepest flights of winding stairs, anyone with about 35 cents can get help from the city's network of 15 "ascensores" -- cable-pulled elevator carts that follow tracks laid on some of the city's more precipitous slopes.

Each lift features two carts on parallel tracks, and each cart can carry up to seven people at a time. Both carts are attached to the same steel cable; therefore, when the pulley is hoisting one up the hill, it is simultaneously releasing the other one down at the same speed. The carts are antique, rickety, creaking and beautifully merciful on knees and lungs.

LOSING ITS YOUNG TO AN AMERICAN DREAM
The Washington Post
November 14, 2006

GOVERNADOR VALADARES, Brazil -- Maria Lierje was at the kitchen table the other day, wearing a shirt with the image of a saint she believes helps her cope with lost causes. Next to her was one such case, eating spongecake and wiping milk from the dusky adolescent shadow on his upper lip.

Guilherme, her son, is 14, so he probably has another few years before he sets off on a daredevil journey to the United States. In the meantime, she tries to remind him of the five months her oldest son spent in a Texas jail after trying to cross the Rio Grande, and of his uncle, who nearly died of hunger while trying to cross the border.

"What can I do?" she asked. "I tell him he can make a good life here, that it's not that bad. But he's a man. I can't change his mind."

Getting to the United States is a coming-of-age tradition for the men of this family, and for many others in this country, apparently: U.S. immigration officials believe Brazilians were the fastest-growing group of illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border between 2000 and 2005. Last year, only Mexicans and Hondurans are believed to have crossed in greater numbers.

Brazil's distance from the United States makes emigrating a complicated process that requires both resources and familiarity with a business sector that helps coordinate border-crossing attempts. The process became more complicated last year when, with encouragement from the United States, Mexico began requiring tourist visas of Brazilians. The result, according to U.S. Border Patrol officials, has been a dramatic decrease in apprehensions at the border -- from more than 31,000 in fiscal 2005 to an estimated 1,500 in the most recent fiscal year.

HUMAN RIGHTS FAILURES OF HAITI TRANSITION DETAILED
The Miami Herald
Nov. 15, 2006

From the prolonged jailing of thousands of Haitians to the nearly 2,000 killed under its watch, the U.S.-backed interim government that led the country following the 2004 ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide failed to protect the rights of the country's people, according to a report Tuesday.

''Even if it is true that this government did not commit crimes of a political character like the former regime, one is forced to admit that it failed in its obligation to protect the rights of everyone,'' the Port-au-Prince-based National Human Rights Defense Network said in the report.

The independent group's report examines the situation in Haiti following Aristide's ouster amid a bloody rebellion to June 2006, when the country's newly elected legislature swore in new cabinet ministers.

The report points out that during the two years interim Prime Minister Gérard Latortue, a Boca Raton resident, and interim President Boniface Alexandre governed Haiti, hundreds of Haitians were jailed, close to 2,000 were killed in ''assassinations'' and the country experienced a rash of kidnappings and rapes.

RELACIONES BILATERALES
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CUANDO LAS TÁCTICAS INTIMIDATORIAS FALLAN
The Washington Post
November 9, 2006

Daniel Ortega, el ex líder guerrillero sandinista que la administración Reagan trató infructuosamente de derrocar en los 80, se ha erguido desafiante ante Washington una vez más.

La Casa Blanca y algunos miembros del Congreso hicieron varios intentos para convencer a los nicaragüenses de que Ortega es una amenaza para la democracia en su país y para sus intereses comunes con Estados Unidos. Aún así, Ortega fue declarado ganador el martes. Washington quería a un candidato conservador pero lo que logro en cambio fue una lección temprana sobre los defectos de aplicar tácticas intimidatorias en campañas políticas.

En la edición del 10 de octubre de La Prensa, uno de los principales diarios en Nicaragua, el Secretario de Comercio de Estados Unidos Carlos Gutiérrez declaró en una columna de opinión que "los amigos deben ser francos unos con los otros" y que la ayuda de su país y el comercio entre las dos naciones "están en peligro" si Ortega gana. El embajador estadounidense Paul Trivelli habló abiertamente acerca de la necesidad de "reevaluar" la relación con Managua si Ortega ganaba. Y los representantes al Congreso estadounidense Dana Rohrabacher, Ed Royce, Pete Hoekstra y Tom Tancredo amenazaron por su parte con bloquear todas las remesas enviadas por inmigrantes nicaragüenses desde Estados Unidos.

HAS ORTEGA REALLY, TRULY CHANGED?
Opinion
The Miami Herald
By Marifeli Perez-Stable
Nov. 09, 2006

It's official: Daniel Ortega is Nicaragua's president-elect. In a five-man field, the Sandinista's 38 percent took him past the finish mark. His nearest rival -- dissident Liberal, Eduardo Montealegre -- trailed by nine percentage points. On Monday, a young Nicaraguan woman -- a supporter of Edmundo Jarquín's reformist Sandinistas -- told me: ''I'm in shock over the people's choice.'' That, indeed, is the only starting point for taking stock and moving forward.

Ortega won fairly. Neither fraud nor scattered irregularities -- e.g., polls opening late or citizens turned away due to registration problems -- decided the outcome. Since 1990, the Sandinistas have garnered 38-42 percent of the vote in presidential elections and, thus, the Nov. 5 outcome turned on their base. Jointly, Montealegre (29 percent) and José Rizo (26 percent) -- former president Arnoldo Alemán's candidate -- pulled a stomping 55 percent, also the usual Liberal range. Only this time, Nicaraguans had to choose one of the two.

The notorious pacto also bolstered the Sandinistas. Since the late 1990s, Ortega and Alemán have controlled most major political institutions. While initially the dominant partner, Alemán slowly lost the upper hand as his legal troubles mounted. He is under house arrest -- really, he roams all of Managua, where he is sometimes spotted having a fine meal -- for embezzling $100 million from the public treasury.

CARACAS, Venezuela, Nov. 8 — Since President Hugo Chávez returned to power after a brief coup in 2002, the United States has channeled millions of dollars to Venezuelan organizations, many of them critical of his government. This aid has become a key issue in the presidential election next month amid claims of American interference in the domestic political system.

“Washington thinks it can buy regime change in Venezuela,” said Carlos Escarrá, a constitutional lawyer and a leading legislator in the National Assembly who has been pushing for tighter regulation over the American financing of Venezuelan groups. “This is an affront to our sovereignty as a nation that is not docile to Washington’s interests.”

He echoed recent comments from other high-ranking officials and from Mr. Chávez, who has a double-digit lead in most polls over his main opponent, Manuel Rosales, the governor of Zulia State. Mr. Chávez rarely refers in public to Mr. Rosales by name, instead framing his campaign as a choice between his government and the Bush administration.

Mexican President-elect Felipe Calderón said yesterday that Democratic gains in Congress could lead to "room for improvement" in U.S.-Mexican relations, a suggestion that headway may be made on immigration and other bilateral issues.

At a White House meeting with President Bush today, Calderón, who takes office on Dec. 1, is expected to express Mexico's disappointment with the decision by the outgoing Republican-controlled House and Senate to approve a 700-mile fence along the Mexican-American border, an effort to stem the flow of millions of migrant workers.

During a meeting yesterday with Washington Post reporters and editors, Calderón said the outcome of Tuesday's midterm elections allowed for "some room for improvement in terms of bilateral relations."

"I know President Bush is facing a difficult moment," he said. "But I think there is an opportunity. After the elections, I hope Americans and Congress will have a chance for rational debate."

Calderón, a Harvard-educated economist and a member of the conservative National Action Party, made job creation a central platform of his campaign. He returned to that theme yesterday, saying that new jobs and foreign investment in Mexico would be more effective than a fence as a tool against migration.

MEXICO CITY – The nearly 700 miles of fencing President Bush authorized for the US-Mexican border two weeks ago could overshadow other issues when Mexican president-elect Felipe Calderón makes his first visit to the White House on Thursday.

Unlike recently elected leftist leaders in Latin America, Mr. Calderón is a pro-business, US-friendly candidate who narrowly won July's presidential election against a leftist leader.

Yet, the additional fencing Mr. Bush approved threatens to create a political barrier even before Calderón officially takes office on Dec. 1.

On a recent trip to Canada, Mexico's president-elect compared the fence to the "Berlin Wall," the former barrier between Communist East and democratic West Berlin.

"The most important thing for him is to end the monothematic tone [between the two nations]," says Luis Rubio, president of the Center of Research for Development, a think tank in Mexico City. He says the US-Mexican relationship, dominated by drug trafficking in the 1980s, now is being driven by differences over US immigration policy.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government believes that Cuban leader Fidel Castro has terminal cancer and has less than 18 months to live, government officials say.

The information is not based on insider reports but rather on publicly available materials such as videos and still photographs of Castro released by the communist government, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The officials said the government is convinced that Castro suffers from terminal cancer but does not know what type of cancer or what part of his body it is affecting. It was not clear when the 18-month period began or ends.

On July 31, Castro handed most of his powers to his brother Raúl Castro after undergoing intestinal surgery for a still undisclosed ailment. Castro has never flatly denied earlier reports that he suffers from cancer.

Since then, the Cuban government has periodically released videotapes and photographs of the 80-year-old Castro, including Oct. 28 footage that showed him pointing to media reports published that day to deny widespread speculation that he had died.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Agency for International Development's Cuba democracy programs spent millions without proper oversight or competitive bidding, leading to questionable purchases like a chain saw, cashmere sweaters and Godiva chocolates, according to a congressional report.

The scathing report cites ''weaknesses in agency policies and procedures and in program office oversight'' as well as ''internal control deficiencies.'' Staffing shortages at USAID also meant long delays in conducting program reviews.

The Miami Herald obtained an advance copy of the 60-page report. It is to be issued today by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress.

Ten years ago, a Republican-led Congress pressed President Clinton to help bring democracy to communist Cuba in the wake of Cuban MiGs' shoot-down of two unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes and mounting U.S. fears of yet another rafter crisis.

Today, the program -- funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) -- has spent at least $55.5 million, for studies on a future Cuba without dictator Fidel Castro, for exile groups to lobby foreign governments to sanction the island and to ship children's books, food, medical equipment, laptops and clothes to dissidents and their families.

None of that money has reached the dissidents in cash -- a policy designed to protect Cuba's opposition from being branded mercenaries and imprisoned.

Instead, most of the USAID money has remained in Miami or Washington -- creating an anti-Castro economy that finances a broad array of activities, ranging from university studies to spending millions to ship goods surreptitiously to the island's opposition. At least $13 a pound -- and as much as $20 per pound -- is paid to an intricate network of ''mules'' to smuggle medicines, laptops and books into Cuba. That's 13 to 20 times more than it costs to ship to many other Caribbean countries.

REGIONAL
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CALDERÓN TO SET NEW PATH, REDEFINE RELATIONS WITH U.S.
The Miami Herald
Nov. 15, 2006

WASHINGTON - Mexico's President-elect Felipe Calderón hardly seems like one to chart a new foreign policy course.

He hails from the same conservative National Action Party, or PAN, as President Vicente Fox, a free-trade defender and the man Calderón will replace on Dec. 1.

Calderón is U.S.-educated like former Presidents Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo, who also nurtured closer ties with the United States -- a nation that absorbs most of Mexico's exports as well as millions of its migrants.

Yet Calderón is set to steer Mexico on a new foreign policy path that aggressively courts South American nations and reframes the relationship with the Bush administration to downplay the immigration issue -- a departure from Fox's priorities, analysts say.

Observers and Mexican officials say Calderón will also seek to mend ties with Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba and even seek to position Mexico as a mediator between Washington and some left-wing governments opposed to U.S. policies.

NEW YORK - The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to urge the United States to end its 45-year-old trade embargo against Cuba after defeating an Australian amendment calling on Fidel Castro's government to free political prisoners and respect human rights.

It was the 15th straight year that the 192-member world body approved a resolution calling for the U.S. economic and commercial embargo against Cuba to be repealed ``as soon as possible.''

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque told the assembly ``the economic war unleashed by the U.S. against Cuba, the longest and most ruthless ever known, qualifies as an act of genocide and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and the charter of the United Nations.''

Delegates in the General Assembly chamber burst into applause when the vote in favor of the the resolution flashed on the screen -- 183-4 with one abstention. That was a one-vote improvement over last year's vote of 182-4 with one abstention. Joining the United States in voting ''no'' were Israel, Marshall Islands and Palau, while Micronesia abstained.

The assembly voted on the resolution soon after adopting a resolution to take ''no action'' on the Australian amendment, which meant it could not be added to the Cuban draft. That vote was 126-51 with five abstentions.

Nicaragua’s top Sandinista is back — and with him international anxiety. Daniel Ortega won the presidency of Nicaragua on Sunday, raising fears that Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro now have another faithful acolyte.

But while Mr. Ortega’s election is bad news, it is not because he is still a Marxist revolutionary. He is an old-style Latin American strongman who, we fear, will further weaken Nicaragua’s democratic institutions and retard economic progress. Washington’s challenge will be to figure out how to help curb Mr. Ortega’s authoritarian impulses without pushing him into Mr. Chávez’s arms.

Mr. Ortega, who was voted out of power in 1990, won this time because his opponents could not agree on a single candidate. The 39 percent of the country that voted for him was yearning for any change that could dig the country out of its deep poverty. He still had to use a series of political maneuvers and dirty tricks to ensure his victory.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov. 10 — For most of the world, the cold war ended when the Berlin Wall came down. Not so in the Caribbean basin.

Here the stubbornness of old cold warriors in Washington and the equal tenacity of leftist governments in Cuba and Venezuela have kept a miniature cold war going. Just as it was 20 years ago, Nicaragua now finds itself smack in the middle of the conflict with the election this week of Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist rebel leader, as president.

Mr. Ortega faces a balancing act no politician would envy, both inside the country and on the world stage. On the one hand, to satisfy his supporters, he must fulfill promises to “eradicate poverty,” curb “savage capitalism,” and remain friendly with his leftist allies, Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Venezuela, in particular, could be a source of cheap oil and money for social programs.

On the other hand, he can ill afford to lose more than $50 million a year in United States aid or credit from the International Monetary Fund. Neither can Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, jettison the newly approved free trade agreement between Central American countries and the United States. Just to survive economically, this nation of some 5.6 million people needs to continue exporting textiles and fruit to the United States and receiving remittances from Nicaraguans in the north.

Daniel Ortega will soon find out how difficult it is to have and to hold a populist government these days in one of the poorest countries in Latin America. When the news came that he had won the election, I phoned a Nicaraguan-American friend and asked her what she planned to do. Her answer was swift and to the point: ``First, I'm going to cry; next, I'm going to take my money out of the bank and transfer it to Miami.''

It's a natural reaction. Spaniards have a saying that explains that attitude: ''Being distrustful is a sign you've been plucked.'' Of course, they don't say ''plucked,'' but I think most newspapers would reject the verb commonly used in Madrid. My friend and her family were severely ''plucked'' during the Sandinista decade and are not willing to relive that experience.

Between now and Jan. 10, 2007, the date set for the transfer of power, thousands of Nicaraguans -- first discreetly, later nervously -- will withdraw their money from the banks, exchange them into dollars and transfer them to other, less dangerous storage sites. Hundreds of other Nicaraguans will put their planned investments on hold, while foreign investors will wait for a long time before they take their capital into the country -- if they even consider doing so.

Let us not forget that in the 1980s Ortega obliterated the farm crops, wiped out cattle ranches and set off the most crushing hyperinflation in the history of world finance. That crash, similar to the one suffered by the Weimar republic in Germany, set Nicaraguan society back 40 years in terms of production and consumption standards.

Now and then, the insufferable hypocrisy that pervades international policy toward Cuba becomes undeniably evident. One such moment occurred last week when the U.N. General Assembly voted 183-4 with one abstention to condemn the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba.

This annual ritual has become an absurd farce that allows U.N. members to protest U.S. foreign policy in a meaningless vote. It has nothing to do with sound diplomacy, common sense or moral judgment. But in its anti-U.S. zeal, the assembly this year also managed to insult Cuban political prisoners. For that it deserves a kick in the pants.

The issue was an Australian amendment calling on the Castro government to free political prisoners and respect human rights. The proposal lost by a vote of 126-51 with five abstentions.

There's room for argument over the embargo. But surely a call for the Cuban government to ''respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and comply fully with its obligations'' under human rights treaties should be a no-brainer.

Cuba always refuses to cooperate with U.N. human rights resolutions and ranks among the worst human rights violators in the world. U.N. human rights monitors have been among Cuba's sharpest critics.

Imagine an election where government revenues are used to buy campaign ads and government workers are threatened with dismissal if they vote for the wrong candidate. These practices would be illegal in any self-respecting democracy -- and they also violate the very premise of free elections. Yet this is the heavy-handed scenario that exists in Venezuela today.

This evidence of President Hugo Chávez's abuse of power comes only weeks before the Dec. 3 presidential election. A blurry video provided by opposition members shows the head of the state oil company, PDVSA, threatening workers at a meeting. ''Here we are helping Chávez, who is our leader, who is the maximum leader of this revolution,'' Rafael Ramírez says. ``And we are going to do all that we have to do in order to help our president. And whoever doesn't feel comfortable with this idea should give up his job.''

Afterward, Mr. Chávez reinforced Mr. Ramírez's threat, noting that other government workers, like the military, were revolutionary, too. ''PDVSA workers are in the revolution, and whoever is not, it's better they go somewhere else,'' Mr. Chavez said. ``Let them go to Miami.''