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 23 al 30 de noviembre del 2006 han sido clasificadas bajo las categorías de:
 

COMERCIO
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WHEN IT COMES to Haiti, the hemisphere's poorest country, the United States has a perverse history of being more generous with its troop deployments than its terms of trade. The time is ripe for a new approach.

For the past two years, Congress has turned a deaf ear to pleas that Washington extend trade preferences to Haitian-manufactured T-shirts, hospital scrubs and other apparel. The effect has been devastating for the nation's garment industry, once one of the few bright spots in an otherwise supine economy. Clothing assembly plants, already hit hard by the political violence of recent years, are closing nearly every month as customers move their business to Asia. A sector that once provided 100,000 jobs now employs only 12,000 to 20,000 and stands in peril of disappearing entirely.

A rescue package pending in Congress would allow duty-free access to U.S. markets for garments assembled in Haiti using fabrics from third countries. The legislation, known as the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act, also called the HOPE bill, is a modest measure; it is certainly no panacea for the Haitian economy. But apparel-making plants that close are relatively easy to reopen, and HOPE, if enacted, could help kick-start the Haitian economy by quickly getting 10,000 or more people working again. In a country as poor as Haiti, where a majority of the population survives on less than $2 a day and four out of five adults are jobless or underemployed, those jobs would be a lifeline for thousands of families.

MEDELLIN, Colombia -- At the CI Jeans factory, where 3,900 people make their livings turning bolts of denim into trousers bound for the United States, the American market -- land of the customer -- appears to be slipping away.

In September, with a proposed trade deal between Colombia and the United States uncertain and orders flagging, the factory fired 320 workers. Now, the pact appears to be in peril. Democrats are set to take control of the U.S. Congress, speaking for a segment of the American public that is worried about globalization. The incoming leaders have pledged to redraft the terms of global trade.

Yesterday, the Bush administration signed the proposed deal, but leading Democrats promptly attacked it, underscoring growing doubts in Washington that Congress will approve the pact. Here in Colombia and next door in Peru, which awaits congressional approval for its own trade treaty, anxiety runs high.

"We watch the news and we're nervous about what might happen with what we send to the United States," said Janeth Palacio Ramirez, 35, who supports her 15-year-old daughter and her elderly parents by punching zipper stops onto 7,000 pairs of jeans a day, earning about $200 a month. "Everything we make here goes there, so if there are problems with exports, we'll all lose our jobs."

MEXICO CITY, Nov. 23 — Public opposition has all but killed Wal-Mart’s plans to open its own bank in the United States. But in Mexico, its push for a bank is sailing through.

The Finance Ministry has given final approval for the bank, Wal-Mart de México said Wednesday, and it will begin operating during the second half of 2007 and be called Banco Wal-Mart de México Adelante.

A possible reason for the different reception in this country from that in the United States is that most Mexicans do not have bank accounts and Wal-Mart plans to offer them the opportunity to have one, making it hard for local activists to stir public outrage.

And in this venture, it is possible at least for now to see Wal-Mart as the little guy. Among its competitors in the banking business are the Mexican units of global giants like Citigroup and HSBC, which have made little effort to attract the bulk of poor and working-class Mexicans.

By most estimates, as many as 80 percent of Mexicans do not have bank accounts.

POLÍTICA INTERNA
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DUELING POLLS CONFUSE VENEZUELAN VOTERS
The Miami Herald
Nov. 29, 2006

CARACAS - With less than a week to go before Venezuela's presidential election, supporters of both President Hugo Chávez and his main rival, Manuel Rosales, are confident of victory -- thanks in part to an opinion-poll war in which the truth appears to have been the first casualty.

''I've worked a lot in elections, in different countries,'' said Carolina Bescansa, a political science professor from the Complutense University in Madrid. ``But I've never seen anything like this.''

There are polls to suit all tastes and political tendencies, ranging from those that project a Chávez victory by more than 30 points in the Sunday balloting to a dubious few that give a clear margin to Rosales, the candidate of a broad opposition coalition.

With both the pro-government and pro-opposition media stressing polls that show their favorites ahead and dismissing other surveys as lies and manipulations, neutral voters have been confused and committed voters have become convinced that only fraud can deprive their man of victory.

MEXICO CITY, Nov. 22 — Just before leaving office, the administration of President Vicente Fox has quietly put out a voluminous report that for the first time states unequivocally that past governments carried out a covert campaign of murder and torture against dissidents and guerrillas from the late 1960s through the early 1980s.

The 800-page report is the first acceptance of responsibility by the government for what is known here as the “dirty war,” in which the police and the army are believed to have executed more than 700 people without trial, in many cases after torture. It also represents the fulfillment of Mr. Fox’s vow when elected in 2000 to expose the truth about an ugly chapter in Mexico’s history.

“The Mexican government has never officially accepted responsibility for these crimes,” said Kate Doyle, the director of the Mexico project of the National Security Archive, a private research group at George Washington University.

OF RUBBER AND BLOOD IN BRAZILIAN AMAZON
The New Cork Times
November 23, 2006

RIO BRANCO, Brazil — Alcidino dos Santos was on his way to the market to buy vegetables for his mother one morning in 1942 when an army officer stopped him and told him he was being drafted as a “rubber soldier.” Men were needed in the Amazon, 3,000 miles away, to harvest rubber for the Allied war effort, he was told, and it was his patriotic duty to serve.

Mr. dos Santos, then a 19-year-old mason’s assistant, protested that his mother was a widow who depended on him for support, but to no avail. He would be paid a wage of 50 cents a day, he recalls being told, and receive free transportation home once the conflict was over, but he had to go, that day.

More than 60 years after the end of World War II, Mr. dos Santos and hundreds of other poor Brazilians who were dragooned into service as rubber soldiers are still in the Amazon, waiting for those promises to be fulfilled. Elderly and frail, they are fighting against time and indifference to gain the recognition and compensation they believe should be theirs.

DIVIDED VENEZUELANS UNITED ON COSTLY POLICY OF CHEAP GAS
The Washington Post
November 23, 2006

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Jesús Vivas drives a 26-year-old clunker with rusted fenders, ripped upholstery and a tattered carpet. With a wheeze, a plume of smoke and a walruslike roar, the wreck he calls a taxi accelerates down congested streets. About the only thing that works well is a new radio, which blares accordion-laced folk music.

But he's not worried. Operating his four-door Malibu across Caracas, day and night, costs less than $4, thanks to gasoline that, at 17 cents a gallon, is considered the cheapest in the world. "Gasoline prices here in Venezuela are very good," said Vivas, 25, in the kind of characteristically understated comments Venezuelans make about fuel costs. "We cabbies circulate all over. Here in Caracas it's cheap, and you can go the whole day."

The credit, as every Venezuelan knows, goes to government subsidies and price controls -- part of a policy that dates back decades and has infused people here with a sense of entitlement to Venezuela's vast oil deposits. In this famously polarized country, where President Hugo Chávez's government and a strident opposition never have anything good to say about each other, there is agreement about at least one thing: gas. The country's policy is unalterable, a hip-hip-hurrah for cheap fuel that is seconded by truckers, industrialists and suburban soccer moms in their SUVs.

POLL: 59% WOULD REELECT CHÁVEZ
The Miami Herald
Nov. 24, 2006

CARACAS - A strong majority of Venezuelans plan to cast their ballots for President Hugo Chávez on Dec. 3, with most saying the fiery opponent of President Bush has handled government and foreign relations well, according to a poll that revealed deep divisions along class lines.

About 59 percent of likely voters said they would vote for Chávez for a third term, while 27 percent said they would support opposition candidate Manuel Rosales. Thirteen percent of those surveyed by the polling firm Ipsos for The Associated Press said they were undecided or wouldn't answer.

Since Chávez was elected in 1998, the leftist president has become perhaps Latin America's most controversial leader while gaining notoriety worldwide as a critic of the U.S. government.

At home, the poll showed, Venezuelans are generally content with the country's direction, with 61 percent of all respondents saying Venezuela is moving in the right direction and 31 percent saying it's on the wrong track.

The survey found sharp differences in voting preference depending on income. The wealthiest likely voters solidly supported Rosales, while the middle class appeared split and the poorest overwhelmingly backed Chávez over Rosales -- 70 percent to 16 percent.

COMING TO GRIPS WITH MEXICO'S BLOODY PAST
OUR OPINION: PRESIDENT FOX PASSES HOT POTATOES TO SUCCESSOR
The Miami Herald
Nov. 24, 2006

Of nearly all the countries in Latin America with a hidden history of involvement in political repression and human-rights violations, none has been more reluctant to confront its past than Mexico. That's why a recent government report that three Mexican presidents from the 1960s to the 1980s were involved in massacres, tortures and the murder of political opponents is both useful and necessary.

Public hearing needed

Useful because it opens the door to a full-scale examination of how a nation that claimed democratic status could have tolerated such abuses. The report must be followed up by public hearings that allow Mexicans to know all the sordid details: Who gave what orders? Who carried them out? Only then will the people of Mexico be able to come to terms with their nation's history.

S. FLA. GROUPS UNITE IN DRIVE TO OUST CHÁVEZ
The Miami Herald
Nov. 25, 2006

Argenis Ecarri is ready for the Venezuelan presidential elections.

Three months ago, he and 53 of his friends went to their homeland's consulate and changed their voter registration so they could cast ballots in South Florida on Dec. 3. The friends have also organized carpools to the polls on election day and a tailgating party once they get there, all in an effort to help opposition candidate Manuel Rosales defeat firebrand President Hugo Chávez.

''What's at stake is our country's democracy and the possibility of one day returning there,'' said Ecarri, 37, a Doral resident. ``If Chávez wins, our hopes of that are pretty slim.''

That sense of urgency has gripped the broader anti-Chávez Venezuelan community in recent months, driving previously feuding organizations to unite to work for his defeat.

ECUADOR’S PATH AND ALLIANCES AT STAKE IN RUNOFF ELECTION
The New York Times
November 26, 2006

QUITO, Ecuador, Nov. 25 — No one can accuse Ecuador, which will elect its eighth president in 10 years on Sunday, of dull politics.

Rafael Correa, a candidate in Sunday’s runoff, strums a guitar before audiences between promises to whip Ecuador’s political elite with his belt and shut the last American military base in South America. He chastises the Bush administration in the polished English he learned while earning a doctorate in economics at the University of Illinois.

Álvaro Noboa, his rival, is a billionaire who hands out free computers and fistfuls of dollars at his rallies. Mr. Noboa, a banana tycoon who is Ecuador’s richest man, dropped to his knees this month at a campaign stop to ask for votes as a self-described “messiah of the poor.”

But the contest is far more than entertaining; the outcome could actually redraw power relations in Latin America.

IN ECUADORAN VOTE, RHETORIC GIVES WAY TO POPULAR PLEDGES
The Washington Post
November 26, 2006

QUITO, Ecuador, Nov. 25 -- No matter who wins Ecuador's presidential election on Sunday, many outside the country will view it as a decision between dueling political stereotypes: Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez's dream of a unified region liberated from U.S. influence, or that of free-market backers embracing a globalized economy.

For most who will actually make the choice, it's nothing of the sort.

Public opinion polls show leftist economist Rafael Correa and banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa locked in a near dead heat, and in recent weeks broad ideological rhetoric has given way to specific promises of concrete and cash. Each candidate has tried to one-up the other with vows of massive government housing projects, new jobs and low-interest loans.

In a country where no president has served a full term in more than a decade, voters want to see some tangible results from their next leader, and it matters little what overarching political philosophy stands behind his pledges.

The campaign since last month's first-round election has been bitterly divisive, with repeated allegations of electoral fraud, increasing the possibility that either candidate would face a rough honeymoon. Throw in serious doubts about the pre-election promises -- some are simply unfeasible, according to analysts -- and many fear that the election will do little to ease Ecuador's chronic political instability.

LEFTIST CANDIDATE IN ECUADOR IS AHEAD IN VOTE, EXIT POLLS SHOW
The New York Times
November 27, 2006

QUITO, Ecuador, Nov. 26 — Rafael Correa, an urbane economist who has rattled nerves in Washington with plans to limit American military activities in Ecuador and renegotiate the country’s foreign debt, seemed headed to an easy victory on Sunday in the presidential election, according to several exit polls.

A win by Mr. Correa, 43, could bring Ecuador into a group of Latin American nations with leftist presidents, including Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua, which are allied with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Mr. Correa has close ties to Mr. Chávez, whose government is prepared to offer Ecuador assistance to strengthen its national oil company.

“Chávez must be smiling in Caracas,” said Vicente Albornoz, director of Cordes, an economic research group here. “But what I’m more worried about is Ecuador going through a period of conflict and instability.”

PROTESTERS SET BUILDINGS ON FIRE IN EMBATTLED OAXACA
The New York Times
November 27, 2006

OAXACA, Mexico, Nov. 26 (AP) — Leftist protesters trying to force out the Oaxaca state governor set fire to another building Sunday after a night of burning government offices and vehicles in running street battles with the police that injured at least 43 people.

The violence broke out late Saturday after masked youths broke away from a protest march by about 4,000 people and began attacking the police and buildings in Oaxaca city.

Youths hurled rocks, fireworks and gasoline bombs in a failed attempt to encircle the federal police holding the main square.

In late October, security forces took the square back from protesters who had held it for months demanding that Gov. Ulises Ruiz resign, accusing him of corruption.

The police on Saturday drove off attackers with tear gas and jets of water from tanker trucks, then advanced in massed ranks to drive protesters out of a camp at a smaller plaza two blocks from the main square.

EXILE SEEKS RETURN OF $1.5M HE SAYS WAS FOR ANTI-CASTRO PLOT
The Miami Herald
Nov. 27, 2006

José Antonio Llama spends much of his retirement stewing in his art-filled Miami home about one incomplete mission: the death of Fidel Castro.

But the 75-year-old Cuban exile is haunted by another obsession: Recovering nearly $1.5 million that he says his former allies owe him for his purchase of planes, boats, a helicopter and explosives.

Llama, who once owned an air-conditioning business, claims he put up all that money for a secret ''war council'' that consisted of members of a powerful exile lobbying group, the Cuban American National Foundation. He further alleges they reneged on their spoken promise to share the cost of paramilitary activities against the Cuban government and its communist leader.

EXIT POLLS SHOW ECUADOR'S CORREA HAS WIDE LEAD
The Miami Herald
Nov. 27, 2006

QUITO - Three exit polls showed Ph.D economist Rafael Correa defeated billionaire businessman Alvaro Noboa in Sunday's runoff for president. If the results hold, it would be another startling setback for U.S. free-trade policies in the region and another victory for Latin America's leftist politicians.

Official results were not yet available, but the 43-year-old Correa and virtually every local media organization took the polls to indicate a surprising victory for a man who has never been elected to a public office here and was behind in these same polls up until the last few days of the second round of the elections.

''We've begun to recuperate the country,'' Correa told his followers and the media in a packed Dann Carlton Hotel in Quito. ``This isn't the end of the job, this is the beginning.''

FIRST RETURNS INDICATE WIN FOR ECUADORAN REFORMER
The Washington Post
November 27, 2006

QUITO, Ecuador, Nov. 26 -- Early returns suggested that a young reformer promising to break free from the country's traditional power brokers defeated the nation's wealthiest man in Sunday's election to become Ecuador's eighth president in a decade.

The race between economist Rafael Correa, 43, and banana magnate Alvaro Noboa, 56, offered voters a choice between conflicting views of the nation's role in a globalized world. If Correa wins, Ecuador will join Venezuela and Bolivia as Andean countries led by presidents who are critical of U.S. influence in the region and advocate a greater state role in the economy.

Correa opposes U.S.-backed trade pacts that he says work against Ecuador's interests. He promises not to renew U.S. rights to a military base used for anti-drug operations. And he has threatened to not pay foreign debts he considers illegitimate and to instead use the money to increase social spending. Noboa had argued that an unrestrained free market was key to wooing foreign investment, and he pledged to cut ties with Venezuela's Hugo Ch?vez, whom Correa considers a friend.

[With about 21 percent of the ballot counted early Monday, Correa had 65 percent compared to 35 percent for Noboa, the Associated Press reported, citing Ecuador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal. The results were consistent with an unofficial quick count by a citizens election watchdog group and exit polls.]

NICARAGUA'S TOTAL BAN ON ABORTION SPURS CRITICS
The Washington Post
November 28, 2006

MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- Jazmina Bojorge arrived at Managua's Fernando Vélez Paiz Hospital on a Tuesday evening, nearly five months pregnant and racked with fever and abdominal pain. By the following Thursday morning, both the pretty 18-year-old and the female fetus in her womb were dead.

The mystery of what happened during the intervening 36 hours might not ordinarily have catapulted Bojorge into the headlines of a nation with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the Western Hemisphere.

But a week before her death on Nov. 2, Nicaragua's legislature had voted to ban all abortions, eliminating long-standing exceptions for rape, malformation of the fetus and risk to the life or health of the mother. Now, outraged opponents of the legislation have declared Bojorge its first victim.

"It's clear that fear of punishment kept the doctors from doing what they needed to do to save her -- which was to abort the pregnancy immediately," said Juanita Jiménez of the Women's Autonomous Movement, an advocacy group that is leading the campaign to reverse the ban. "This is exactly what we warned would happen if this law was passed. We've been taken back to the Middle Ages."

ELECTRONIC VOTE DISTRUSTED IN VENEZUELA
The Miami Herald
Nov. 28, 2006

CARACAS, Venezuela - Under pressure from opponents of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's elections council has adopted safeguards for the country's electronic voting machines to prevent tampering in Sunday's election - conditions so strict that experts say they surpass some standards in the United States.

The opposition boycotted Venezuela's legislative elections a year ago, saying it couldn't trust that the electronic machines would be used fairly. But after thorough checks of hardware and software and some key concessions by electoral officials, presidential challenger Manuel Rosales says he's satisfied - as long as the agreed-upon rules are respected.

"The Venezuelan people and I hope that the electoral council doesn't step outside the rules, that it maintains impartiality," Rosales said Monday. "I'm going to defend the transparency and the results of this process, even if it's with my last breath."

LAWMAKERS MIX IT UP IN MEXICO CONGRESS
The Miami Herald
Nov. 28, 2006

MEXICO CITY - Leftist and ruling party lawmakers came to blows in Congress Tuesday amid preparations for the inauguration of President-elect Felipe Calderon, who named to his Cabinet a career ambassador and a governor tied to a violent crackdown on demonstrators.

Tuesday's fight was likely a preview of protests to come as Calderon prepares to be sworn in Friday, taking charge of a fiercely divided nation after beating leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador by less than a percentage point.

The congressional chaos began after conservative legislators took over the podium, amid rumors that leftist lawmakers planned to seize Congress, as they did before President Vicente Fox's Sept. 1 state-of-the-nation speech.

The leftists quickly followed, and scuffles broke out as Jorge Zermeno, the president of the lower house, called repeatedly for calm. He then suspended the session until Friday's inauguration, but lawmakers from both parties remained in the chambers, refusing to leave. Party leaders were in talks to end the standoff.

A LOOK AT 4 NEW MEXICO CABINET MEMBERS
The Miami Herald
Nov. 28, 2006

FOREIGN SECRETARY PATRICIA ESPINOSA

Previous office: Mexican ambassador to several European countries, including Germany, Slovakia, Slovenia and most recently, Austria. She has served in the foreign service for more than 25 years.

Education: Bachelor's degree in international relations from Mexico's prestigious Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City.

INTERIOR SECRETARY FRANCISCO JAVIER RAMIREZ

Previous Office: Governor of Jalisco state from 2001-2006, left office early to join Calderon's team.

Education: Law degree from the University of Guadalajara.

ECONOMIST MAINTAINS STRONG LEAD IN ECUADOR VOTE
The Washington Post
November 28, 2006

QUITO, Ecuador, Nov. 27 -- Electoral officials Monday reported that economist Rafael Correa maintained a comfortable lead over his opponent in Sunday's presidential election, supporting several exit polls that had earlier predicted his victory.

With nearly 86 percent of ballots counted, Correa led with 68.9 percent of the vote, while banana baron Alvaro Noboa had 31.1 percent. Correa had already claimed victory and named several cabinet members on Sunday, but Noboa said Monday that he would not concede defeat until all votes were counted.

Correa, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, reiterated Monday that he would not renew U.S. access to a military base in Ecuador and would reject a U.S.-backed hemispheric free-trade agreement. Earlier, he had said he planned to renegotiate the country's foreign debt and rewrite the constitution.

Many of Correa's economic and foreign policy views are similar to those advocated by other leaders in the region, including Bolivia's Evo Morales and Venezuela's Hugo Ch?vez, whom Correa describes as a friend. Correa said his first act after a January inauguration would be to call for a popular referendum to convene a constituent assembly. Both Venezuela and Bolivia have convened similar assemblies in recent years to rewrite constitutions that their presidents said encouraged the consolidation of power in the hands of traditional political elites.

ECUADOR'S PRESIDENT-ELECT UNCOMPROMISING
The Miami Herald
Nov. 28, 2006

QUITO, Ecuador - Ecuador's president-elect Rafael Correa was once a Boy Scout, later a social worker in an impoverished highland Indian village and now describes himself as a Christian leftist.

Childhood friends still recall Correa's natural leadership abilities and strong character on the soccer field.

But during his run for the presidency, the tall and charismatic nationalist picked up a reputation for also being confrontational and uncompromising, traits that could add to Ecuador's political instability when he takes office in January.

Correa, a friend of Venezuela's firebrand President Hugo Chavez, defeated banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, 56, in Sunday's presidential runoff.

He has called Ecuadorean democracy a "partydocracy" designed to benefit parties rather than people, a view shared by many voters fed up with corruption, greed and incompetence in the political establishment.

SURGE IN VIOLENCE SHOCKS EVEN WEARY MEXICO
The Washington Post
November 29, 2006

ZIHUATANEJO, Mexico -- Andrés Sauzo collects newspapers, astoundingly grisly newspapers.

There's the one with the close-up shot of a severed human head. There's the one with the wide-angle of a man hacked to death with a machete.

But the worst in his bulky archive of drug-war gore rolled off the presses the day after someone found pieces of what used to be Sauzo's 24-year-old namesake. A hit man had decapitated Sauzo's son, then chopped off his arms and legs. The killer was so unconcerned about being brought to justice that he scrawled his own name and nickname -- "El Barby" -- on a note left with the mutilated corpse.

Still, Sauzo's mother, Cristina Gomez, didn't bother to go to the police. "Why waste my time?" she said in an interview. "This is the way it is in a town without laws."

Gomez's reaction and the audacity of Sauzo's murder -- one of 11 decapitations in the state of Guerrero this year and one of 2,000 killings in a nationwide war between rival drug cartels -- are symptomatic of the unraveling of the rule of law that has plagued Mexico for years.

But in the past year, the number of spectacularly gruesome killings and the intensity of civil unrest have spiked to such alarming levels that even Mexicans who were once hardened by years of violence are now shocked.

MEXICAN PRESIDENT-ELECT PICKS HARD-LINE INTERIOR MINISTER
The Washington Post
November 29, 2006

MEXICO CITY, Nov. 28 -- Mexican President-elect Felipe Calderon named a hard-line conservative as interior minister Tuesday, and lawmakers slapped and pushed one another in a deepening political crisis three days before Calderon takes power.

Francisco Ramirez Acuña was chosen to spearhead the new government's handling of unrest, with Mexico reeling from leftist street protests over Calderon’s election, violence in the popular tourist city of Oaxaca and a spate of bombings in the capital.

Ramirez Acuña, a close ally of the president-elect from the right wing of the ruling National Action Party, also will play a key role in trying to win support in Congress for tax, energy and labor reforms.

Calderon faces open hostility from left-wing parties who claim he stole the July 2 presidential election and have vowed to prevent him from being sworn in on Friday.

In the lower house of Congress, rival deputies shoved and slapped each other and traded insults. They then chanted abuses in a standoff that lasted more than an hour after leftist deputies tried to seize control of the main podium.

CASTRO: I'M TOO SICK TO PARTY
The Miami Herald
Nov. 29, 2006

Cuban leader Fidel Castro Tuesday missed the opening event of his 80th birthday celebrations, instead sending a note to a large gathering of supporters in Havana that he was ``in no condition, according to the doctors, to face such a colossal gathering.''

In a brief written statement read aloud to an audience of hundreds of guests at the Karl Marx Theater, Castro said he faced a dilemma: Only the mammoth theater could fit all of the invited guests, yet doctors said he couldn't be around so many people.

''I opted for the variant of speaking to all, using this means,'' said the statement. ``My thought about glory and honor, as expressed by [José] Martí, is well-known, when he said that all [glory and honor] fit inside a grain of corn.''

Castro's note also said the United States' leadership had created a crisis of such magnitude that ``the American people themselves will almost surely not allow him [President Bush] to finish his term.''

RELACIONES BILATERALES
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U.S. DIPLOMAT MEETS NICARAGUA'S ORTEGA
The Miami Herald
Nov. 28, 2006

MANAGUA, Nicaragua - A U.S. diplomat met Nicaraguan President-elect Daniel Ortega on Tuesday, opening a new chapter in relations with a leader Washington once tried to help overthrow.

The United States opposed Ortega's Sandinista government in the 1980s, and backed the Contra rebel insurgency aimed at toppling the Marxist revolutionary.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon said he was optimistic after the more than hourlong meeting in which he and Ortega talked about democracy and the need to fight poverty in Nicaragua.

"I think we are developing an important dialogue for relations between the two countries," Shannon said. The United States will continue to work with Nicaragua and the Nicaraguan people to do "everything we can for a better future."

Ortega did not comment on the meeting.

After meeting Ortega, Shannon had lunch with current President Enrique Bolanos. The U.S. official's trip to Nicaragua was part of a Central American tour that also includes stops in El Salvador and Panama.

APPARENT WINNER IN ECUADOR VOWS TO END U.S. USE OF BASE
The Miami Herald
Nov. 28, 2006

QUITO - The leader in Ecuador's presidential election Monday repeated his promise to end the U.S. military's counternarcotics operations out of an airport in Manta, while his rival cried fraud.

Four exit polls, including one from the Organization of American States (OAS), found that Rafael Correa, a leftist economist with a doctorate from the University of Illinois, won Sunday's runoff election by at least 13 percentage points. The OAS had 80 observers here, and its counts are traditionally very close to the actual results.

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Ecuador's electoral governing body, late Monday had Correa winning 65 percent of the vote to Alvaro Noboa's 35 percent, with 58 percent of the votes counted.

Nonetheless, Noboa, the billionaire who has failed to win runoffs on two other occasions, accused Correa of rigging the exit poll results and indicated he would await official results and perhaps file a request for a manual recount.

WASHINGTON - The director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, Monday appointed a conservative specialist on links between national security and economics to head a kind of one-stop shop for the intelligence community on Cuba and Venezuela.

As ''mission manager'' for the two countries, Norman A. Bailey will oversee three to five staffers who will pore over information from 16 U.S. government agencies to spot information gaps, help craft intelligence strategies and track the implementation (of those strategies).

The post was announced earlier this year by Negroponte amid rising U.S. concerns over the two countries. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has been trying to forge an international front opposed to U.S. policies, and is considered a crucial supporter of Cuban leader Fidel Castro by providing subsidies estimated by U.S. officials at $2 billion.

The administration has five other mission managers specializing in Iran, North Korea, counterterrorism, counterproliferation and counterintelligence.

Four of Cuba's most prominent dissident groups are calling on the Bush administration to lift at least some restrictions on travel to the island and direct U.S. aid to pro-democracy groups there, saying the restrictions ''in no way help'' their struggle.

The dissidents' statement was intended to support the Miami organizations that handle some of the U.S. aid but wound up causing a stir, particularly among hard-line exile groups that support the travel restrictions. It also raised a question of whether the administration would still push its plan for an extra $80 million to aid an opposition that disagrees with its principal policies.

The six-paragraph statement released over the weekend comes in the wake of a Government Accountability Office report that questioned oversight and spending in $65 million by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for Cuba democracy programs.

WASHINGTON - A watchdog group has alleged a Cuban-American lobbying organization that favors tougher sanctions against Cuba broke Federal Election Commission regulations by having illegal links to a nonprofit group.

But the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee denied the allegations and noted that the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has filed several complaints against it, has received donations from groups opposed to U.S. sanctions on the island.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics filed a complaint in September asserting that several members of Cuba Democracy Advocates Inc. had illegal links to the PAC, which is supposed to operate independently of any other organization. Leopoldo Fernández Pujals founded two nonprofit U.S. organizations in 2000 to oppose the communist government, using some of the proceeds of his $366 million sale of Spanish fast-food chain Telepizza in 1999, according to the FEC complaint.

REGIONAL
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NEWS ANALYSIS
ECUADOR VOTE: LEADER FORGES MIDDLE ROAD AMONG LEFTISTS
The New York Times
November 28, 2006

QUITO, Ecuador, Nov. 27 — The walls in the office of Rafael Correa, the economist who seems almost certain to be this oil-exporting country’s next president, are decorated with photos of leftist leaders in Latin America whom he admires, including Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia.

But when Mr. Correa starts talking about his ideas, in rapid-fire Spanish interspersed with tangents in English, French and even the occasional phrase in Quechua, he conveys a more sophisticated image than the nationalists who have risen to power elsewhere in the region out of the armed forces or trade unions.

“Foreign investment that generates wealth and jobs and pays taxes will always be welcome,” Mr. Correa, 43, said in an interview here, sounding precisely like someone with postgraduate degrees from universities in the United States and Belgium. (His are from the University of Illinois and Catholic University of Leuven, where he met his Belgian wife, Anne Malherbe.)

Mr. Correa, between declarations of admiration for the American political system and the Democratic Party in the United States, added that investors could look forward to his government, which would “strictly follow the rule of law.”

QUITO, ECUADOR – One is a billionaire banana tycoon who puts cash in the hands of the downtrodden while on the campaign trail. The other presidential contender in Ecuador's runoff election Sunday says the poor don't need handouts; they need a new social order.

Alvaro Noboa, the richest man in Ecuador, and his opponent Rafael Correa, who has emerged as Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez's newest darling, have wildly different views on how to direct their nation's future. Mr. Noboa says he'll maintain close ties with the US, while Mr. Correa attacks anything that suggests US dominance in his country and the region.

While this oil-rich South American nation of 13.4 million is not a major player on the world stage, Ecuador's presidential outcome could shift regional geopolitical balances - from military cooperation to free trade. "Ecuador is in a strategic position in political, regional, and economic terms," says Polibio Cordova, a pollster at Cedatos-Gallup in Quito, the nation's capital.

In recent trips to several Latin American countries, I have been asked the same question: Is the region bound to get rich because it has the world's biggest reservoir of water, which may become the most precious commodity in the 21st century?

Before we get into whether this theory -- which has become very popular on Latin American Internet blogs -- has any basis, let's look at the facts.

There is no question that there is a global water problem: The World Health Organization says that 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe water. On the other hand, Latin America has more water than any other region in the world: 42 percent of the planet's water.

Still, many Latin American countries, especially Mexico, suffer from water shortages. Rapid urbanization, unregulated industrialization, poor farming practices, corruption and massive leakages have crippled water distribution systems in many countries in the region.

Some Latin American presidents, such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales, claim that Latin America is already a much-coveted region because of its water resources. Chávez said in a Sept. 29 speech that ``water is more important than oil.''

QUITO, ECUADOR – The apparent victory of Rafael Correa - a left-leaning economist and friend of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez - in Ecuador's presidential runoff election Sunday is the latest triumph for leftist governments in Latin America.

"Hopefully, we will get much, much closer to Mr. Chávez," Mr. Correa said after declaring victory Sunday night.

At press time, three exit polls, a quick count, and official results from more than half of the ballots showed Correa with close to 60 percent of the vote.

The election, which pitted Correa against billionaire banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, was watched closely in the US. Correa had promised to disregard a free trade agreement with the US and close down a US military base in the country. Correa's win means Ecuador joins Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, and Venezuela on the list of countries that have also elected leftist presidents in recent years.

But Eduardo Gamarra, a Latin American expert at Florida International University, says that while Correa will forge closer relations with Latin America's leftist leaders, he is unlikely to become as radical or isolationist as his opponents have painted him. "[Ecuador's] relationship with Chávez will be stronger, the relationship with Evo Morales [Bolivia's leftist leader] will be stronger," Mr. Gamarra says. "But these countries have gone too far on the side of democracy and the economic side to turn back. Ecuador cannot think of closing its doors."