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 28 de Diciembre 2006 al 11 de Enero del 2007 han sido clasificadas bajo las categorías de:
 

MIGRACION
ver noticia(s)

Mucho se ha dicho acerca del empleo de leyes contra el robo de identidad para detener a inmigrantes ilegales en las redadas de la semana pasada en seis plantas de procesamiento de carne de la empresa Swift & Company. Para algunos ya era hora que se aplicara todo el peso de las leyes estadounidenses contra ciertas viejas pr?cticas entre inmigrantes. Para otros fue un siniestro e inoportuno ataque contra violaciones migratorias normalmente consideradas delitos menores.

Pero desde mi punto de vista es lamentable en todo sentido. Personas con la intenci?n de conseguir trabajo usaron informaci?n robada, incluidos n?meros de seguro social. Funcionarios estadounidenses con la intenci?n de hacer su trabajo usaron una ley destinada a combatir un crimen mucho m?s serio como justificaci?n para la ofensiva. Ambas partes son culpables de erosionar el estado de derecho - un recuerdo de casa que muchos inmigrantes latinos preferir?amos olvidar.

Imprevisibilidad, ineficiencia, corrupci?n, abuso o impunidad - son todos atributos del caos que reina en pa?ses que la mayor?a de inmigrantes dejan atr?s. En Am?rica Latina un estado de derecho d?bil desanima la inversi?n, genera inestabilidad e interrumpe la actividad econ?mica, manteniendo a la regi?n firmemente estancada en el mundo "en desarrollo".

PEGUEROS, Mexico -- Even as his village emptied, Pedro Martin stayed behind. His schoolmates abandoned the scrub-covered hills of central Mexico for the land they called El Norte-- the North. They mopped floors in Fresno, poured concrete in Tempe and tended other people's children in Galveston, measuring their lives in dollars.

Martin worked at a poultry farm. His wages rose to 2,000 pesos per week, about $185. Meager by the standards of the north, it was enough to build a brick house with white tile floors. Enough to buy a car, and to stay in the village and watch his three boys grow, resisting the gravitational pull the United States exerts on much of rural Mexico.

"Up north, even though they pay more, you're not necessarily living as well," Martin said, as church bells echoed down lanes of pastel-painted houses. "You feel out of place. Here, you can walk around the whole town and it's comfortable. Life is easier."

But now, Martin worries that life in the central Mexican state of Jalisco is about to be shaken by globalization. Already much of Mexico's farm country has been overwhelmed by an influx of crops from the United States in the years following the North American Free Trade Agreement. Over the next two years, the final provisions of the trade pact kick in, opening Mexico to unlimited imports of poultry from its northern neighbor. Mexican farms will compete directly with an American agribusiness nurtured by subsidies on the corn that feeds the birds

POLÍTICA INTERNA
ver noticia(s)

CHÁVEZ MOVES TO NATIONALIZE TWO INDUSTRIES
The New York Times
January 9, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 8 — President Hugo Chávez signaled a vigorous new effort to assert greater control over Venezuela’s economy on Monday by announcing plans to nationalize companies in the telecommunications and electricity industries.

Mr. Chávez, who will be sworn in Wednesday to another six-year term, announced his plans at the swearing-in of his new cabinet to a cheering crowd of supporters, sending a chilling message to foreign investors.

American corporations, including Verizon Communications, have large stakes in Venezuela’s largest telecommunications company, CANTV, and its biggest publicly traded electricity company, Electricidad de Caracas.

“Let it be nationalized,” Mr. Chávez said of CANTV. “All that was privatized, let it be nationalized.”

Financial markets appeared to be caught off-guard by Mr. Chávez’s announcement, as speculators reacted with a sell-off of assets that would be affected by the decision. Shares in CANTV plunged 14 percent in New York trading. Venezuela’s currency, the bolívar, fell as much as 20 percent in black market trading here on Monday, traders said.

The announcement was the latest in a series of bold steps Mr. Chávez has taken since his re-election in December to consolidate his power and move Venezuela toward what he calls a socialist revolution. Mr. Chávez said he would also seek a “revolutionary enabling law” from Congress that would allow him to approve bills by decree, as well as a measure stripping the central bank of its autonomy.

HAVANA, CUBA – In a country that is in the process of bidding a long farewell to its ageing revolutionaries, Mariela Castro brings an expectation of change along with an air of youthful passion. As the director of Cenesex (the National Sex Education Center) Ms. Castro is eager to consider where Cuba should go in a postrevolutionary era.

"We have many contradictions in Cuba," says Castro, the daughter of Raúl Castro, Cuba's de facto leader and brother of ailing President Fidel Castro. A Spanish doctor arrived in Cuba last week, reenergizing speculation about the health of the Cuban leader, who has not been seen in public since undergoing surgery in July. "We need to experiment and to test what really works, to make public ownership more effective, rather than simply adopting wholesale free-market reforms," Ms. Castro says.

CASTRO SAYS HE IS BATTLING TO RECOVER
The Miami Herald
Dec. 31, 2006

HAVANA - Ailing leader Fidel Castro saluted Cubans on the eve of the revolution's 48th anniversary, thanking them for their support during his illness and telling them he had not lost his battle to recover.

''I am grateful to you for your affection and support,'' said the message read by a newscaster on state television and radio Saturday. ``Regarding my recovery, I have always warned that it could be a prolonged process, but it is far from being a lost battle. I collaborate as a disciplined patient, attended by the consecrated team of our doctors.

Castro, 80, traditionally sends a similar message to Cuban citizens every New Year's Eve to mark the anniversary of the Jan. 1, 1959, triumph of the revolution that brought him to power.

''I have not stopped being in the loop on main events and information,'' he added. ``I have had exchanges with our closest comrades always when cooperation has been necessary on vitally important issues.''

CUBA'S SANTERÍA PRIESTS PREDICT 'FUNEREAL' FUTURE
The Miami Herald
Jan. 03, 2007

In separate and virtually competing new-year predictions, two groups of Cuban Santería priests are predicting a ''funereal'' future but also an ''ideal'' moment for an economic recovery.

The island's babalawos have long been split into several groups, with one group relatively loyal to the government. But their annual predictions nevertheless are anxiously awaited by the many Cubans who practice the mixture of African and Catholic religions.

This year, the predictions were awaited with special interest because of Fidel Castro's still-unknown ailment, which has kept him out of the public eye since July 26 and sparked speculation that he's seriously ill.

On Monday, the Yoruba priests who make up the relatively independent Commission for the Year's Letter announced that 2007 would be marked by wars and ''military interventions'' although the island will see an economic improvement based on the discovery of oil and mineral deposits.

IN PERU, A MOVE TO GET FARMERS TO TRADE IN FISH RATHER THAN COCA
The Christian Science Monitor
January 04, 2007

PUCALLPA, PERU – Teofilo Tapullima knows first hand the dangers that lurk beneath the muddy waters of Peru's Amazon jungle: Piranhas, fresh-water rays, and the giant paiche fish, to name a few.

He recently found out just how tricky a paiche can be when he had to net one at the research institute where he works outside Pucallpa, in northern Peru.

"It came flying at me and slammed into my forehead. It gave me a headache, but luckily it was a small fish. If it had been a big one, I probably would have been blinded," he says.

A throwback to prehistoric times, with armored scales and a flat head, the paiches must come to the surface to breathe, making them easy targets for harpoon fishermen. But overfishing to meet demand for their delicious, flaky, boneless meat is wiping out paiche populations, and is now spurring efforts to save the fish, including a fish-farm venture that aims to provide local coca leaf growers with an alternative livelihood that does not fuel the illicit drug trade.

"This fish will be history in 10 to 15 years, unless something is done," says Fausto Hinostroza, who runs the Research Institute of the Peruvian Amazon, where Mr. Tapullima works.

MEXICAN U.N. INSIDER GETS MANAGER’S POST
The New York Times
January 4, 2007

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 3 — Ban Ki-moon, on his second day as secretary general, appointed a high-level United Nations insider, Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, to the top management post, a signal that he does not plan aggressive reforms in the much-criticized bureaucracy.

Ms. Bárcena, 54, is a career diplomat from Mexico who served for most of last year as the chief of staff for Kofi Annan, Mr. Ban’s predecessor. Before that, since July 2003, Ms. Bárcena had been the deputy executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, a United Nations development agency based in Chile.

United Nations diplomats pointed out that Ms. Bárcena, although a well-regarded diplomat, had little of the front-line administrative experience needed to run the unwieldy United Nations system, which employs 16,500 people worldwide.

A QUIRK IN MEXICAN LAW COULD KEEP NEW PRESIDENT FROM TRAVELING ABROAD
The Washington Post
January 5, 2007

MEXICO CITY -- The Mexican presidency comes with some nice perks -- a grand residence called Los Pinos and a plush jumbo jet dubbed the Presidente Juárez.

But getting the Presidente Juárez into the air isn't always easy. A quirk of Mexican law forces presidents to seek congressional approval every time they want to visit another country. If Congress says no, the president is stuck at home.

This could be a problem for Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderón, whose predecessor and political ally, Vicente Fox, was twice grounded by Congress shortly before leaving office in December. Calderón's National Action Party, which holds a minority of seats in Congress, is trying to change the law before he suffers similar humiliation at the hands of a hostile lawmakers.

PRESIDENT OF VENEZUELA FIRES DEPUTY AND INTERIOR MINISTER
The New York Times
January 5, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 4 — President Hugo Chávez abruptly fired his vice president and his interior minister on Wednesday night, issuing a rare public acknowledgment that violent crime and prison killings were severe problems.

Mr. Chávez, who announced the dismissals in a telephone call to a talk show on state television, cited grisly prison melees and an inability to prevent a rapid increase in killings as reasons for the removal of Jesse Chacón as the minister of the interior and justice. Mr. Chávez did not give a reason for firing José Vicente Rangel, long one of his closest confidants, as vice president.

“There are failings in internal security and infrastructure,” Mr. Chávez said, referring in particular to the clashes this week between rival gangs at Uribana Prison in western Lara State that left 16 inmates dead. An additional six inmates from Uribana were killed after being transferred to another prison in Portuguesa State. Twenty-five inmates have been killed this week in prisons across Venezuela.

SILENCING MEDIA CRITICS IN VENEZUELA
OUR OPINION: HUGO CHAVEZ MOVES CLOSER TO AUTHORITARIAN RULE
The Miami Herald
Jan. 05, 2007

Inexorably, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is moving to silence his critics, the latest target being the private media. Last week, he took steps to make good on longtime threats to shut down broadcasters who don't agree with his ''revolutionary'' vision. He announced that he would not renew the license of Radio Caracas Televisión, one of the country's oldest TV stations and a fierce government critic.

The attack on RCTV violates the right to free expression and what would be the rule of law in countries with functioning legal institutions. In Venezuela, however, the president decides who gets to broadcast or not. ''There will be no new [television] concession for that coup-plotting television channel called RCTV,'' Mr. Chávez declared. ``No media outlet will be tolerated here that is at the service of coup-ism, against the people, against the nation, against national independence, against the dignity of the republic.''

This is Mr. Chávez's latest step on the road to authoritarian reign. In eight years of heavy-handed rule, Mr. Chávez has amassed almost limitless power, a shift sealed last month with his reelection by an overwhelming majority. He controls the Congress, Supreme Court, Electoral Council and almost all state governments. Laws passed by his congressional fan club give him sweeping power to rule by decree, seize private property and control the press.

COLOMBIAN FAMILY'S POLITICAL CLOUT FUELS DEBATE
The Miami Herald
Jan. 08, 2007

BOGOTA - In Colombia, where strong political families are a tradition, the Araujo clan stands out. From the highest courts to the inner halls of President Alvaro Uribe's administration, Araujos can be found at senior levels.

But recent investigations into the political influence of illegal paramilitary groups in the northern region where the family is based have put the Araujos under scrutiny, have shaken the Uribe government and could impact U.S.-Colombian relations.

The Araujos have denied any wrongdoing, saying some family members were forced to attend meetings with the notoriously violent right-wing paramilitary groups in the province of Cesar or face repercussions. But multiple documents seized by authorities in a raid on paramilitary offices and various testimonies before prosecutors indicate a strategic collaboration to extend the paramilitary reach through coercion and fraud.

Political opponents of Uribe have called for the dismissal of Foreign Minister María Consuelo Araujo after prosecutors questioned her brother, Sen. Alvaro Araujo, about his meetings with paramilitary leaders. Uribe has stood by his minister.

CHILE COPPER WINDFALL FORCES HARD CHOICES ON SPENDING
The New York Times
January 7, 2007

SANTIAGO, Chile — President Michelle Bachelet is learning the hard way that it really is possible to have too much of a good thing. Record prices for copper, Chile’s main export, have given her government a multibillion-dollar windfall but have also produced unexpected economic side effects and set off a sharp political debate about how to use the money.

Within Ms. Bachelet’s center-left coalition — mainly her Socialist Party and the Christian Democratic Party — pressure has been growing to apply the bonanza to the “equality agenda” she has promised. But the president and her cabinet have been hesitant to do anything that may undermine Chile’s reputation for cautious fiscal management.

Chile must apply the unanticipated revenue only “in an ethically and economically sound manner,” Paulina Veloso, Ms. Bachelet’s chief of staff, said in an interview. “You can’t spend a fortuitous bonanza the way you can permanent income.”

MEXICO’S NEW PRESIDENT SENDS THOUSANDS OF FEDERAL OFFICERS TO FIGHT DRUG CARTELS
The New York Times
January 7, 2007

TIJUANA, Mexico, Jan. 6 — President Felipe Calderón ran last summer on a promise to create jobs, but in his first five weeks as chief executive he has made it clear his first priority is to turn his government into the scourge of organized crime.

The president has sent thousands of federal police and troops into the drug-plagued states of Michoacán and Baja California to break up criminal organizations and stop the brutal violence they perpetuate. The federal forces have burned marijuana crops, arrested suspected drug gang members and disarmed local police forces the authorities say are crippled by corruption.

“We will continue with the operations that let us re-establish the minimum conditions of security in some parts of the republic, so that little by little we can take back our streets, our parks, our schools,” Mr. Calderón said in a New Year’s message to the nation.

FALKLAND ISLANDS AN UNSETTLED ISSUE 25 YEARS AFTER WAR
The Washington Post
January 8, 2007

BUENOS AIRES -- As they organize separate 25th anniversary ceremonies to remember their war over the Falkland Islands, Argentine and British officials have found that remembering is the easy part.

Resolving, however, is a much trickier proposition.

The windblown archipelago is once again claiming headlines here, climbing back near the top of Argentina's international agenda a quarter-century after its military surrendered the territory to Britain.

Last week Argentina aimed yet another rhetorical dart at Britain, publicly reasserting its claim to islands it says were stolen by the English in 1833. The British should be getting the message by now: President Nestor Kirchner's government in the past year has issued official complaints concerning rights to the islands at a rate of more than one per month.

Cuba recently released from prison a Guatemalan man with alleged connections to Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles, who is being investigated by a federal grand jury in New Jersey on his alleged role in bombings on the communist island in the 1990s.

Jazid Ivan Fernandez Mendoza, 36, was released from a Cuban prison Dec. 12 and returned to Guatemala eight days later, according to Guatemala's ministry of the exterior.

A Cuban government official in Guatemala said in a telephone interview Monday that Fernandez, a Guatemalan citizen, had been released more than a year before his sentence was up.

BOGOTA, Colombia, Jan. 8 -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on Monday announced plans to nationalize the country's electrical and telecommunications companies, take control of the once-independent Central Bank and seek special constitutional powers permitting him to pass economic laws by decree.

"We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it," Chávez, who won a third term in a landslide election in December, said in a speech in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.

CARACAS - as he prepared to begin a new six-year term that he says will move Venezuela further toward socialism.

Among the new appointees were former Electoral Commission Chief Jorge Rodríguez as vice president and Chávez's brother Adan Chávez as education minister.

Chávez also created three new ministries overseeing telecommunications, sports and indigenous peoples.

Chávez was reelected by a wide margin last month and announced the first of the Cabinet changes last week while seeking to found a single socialist party to replace more than two dozen pro-Chávez parties.

CARACAS, Venezuela - As Venezuela embarked on another six years under Hugo Chavez, the president announced plans to nationalize power and telecommunications companies and make other bold changes to increase state control as he promised a more radical push toward socialism.

Chavez, who will be sworn in Wednesday to a third term that runs until 2013, also said he wanted a constitutional amendment to strip the Central Bank of its autonomy and would soon ask the National Assembly, solidly controlled by his allies, to approve "a set of revolutionary laws" by presidential decree.

"We're moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform of our national constitution," Chavez said in a televised address after swearing in his new Cabinet on Monday. "We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it."

The changes are in keeping with pledges he made after his re-election last month to take a more radical turn toward socialism. His critics have voiced concern that he would use his sweeping victory to tighten his grip on power, following in the footsteps of Fidel Castro.

Cuba, one of Chavez's closest allies in the region, nationalized major industries shortly after Castro came to power in 1959. Bolivia's Evo Morales, another Chavez ally, moved to nationalize key sectors after taking office last year.

CARACAS - In the clearest sign yet that Venezuela is moving toward a strong form of socialism, President Hugo Chávez Monday announced he will nationalize the country's telecommunications and electricity companies, which include a major U.S.-owned firm.

''The nation should recover its ownership of strategic sectors,'' Chávez said during the swearing in of his new Cabinet. ``All of that which was privatized, nationalize it.''

The electricity and telecommunications companies were sold to private investors before Chávez was first elected in 1998.

Chávez, who won a second six-year term in a landslide election victory in December, also hinted at moves to increase state control over privately run oil refineries, change the laws governing private business and revoke the constitutional autonomy of the Central Bank of Venezuela.

''The Central Bank of Venezuela shouldn't be autonomous,'' he said, arguing that autonomy has allowed the bank to maintain reserves in foreign countries and bolster a ``neoliberal model.''

''We're moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform of our national constitution,'' Chávez said. ``We are in an existential moment of Venezuelan life. We are moving toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it.''

Hugo Chávez intends to shut down Radio Caracas Televisión. He won't renew its license. The reason alleged by the government is that the company supported the muddled coup d'etat of April 2002.

But that's not true. Col. Francisco Arias Cérdenas backed the coup passionately, as anyone who takes the trouble to find the video with his statements on YouTube can see, yet Chávez appointed him ambassador to the United Nations.

What Chávez rewards or punishes is the degree of submission to his exalted person. He acts not on principles but on strategic calculations. If you kneel, he'll bedeck you with honors and even make you rich. If you oppose him, he'll destroy you. It's the ''silver or lead'' proposition of South American drug lords elevated to state policy.

After winning the December 2006 election, Chávez prepares to give some turns to the authoritarian screw. It is likely that soon he will find ways to shut down or curb Globovisión and the newspapers El Universal and El Nacional. Because he has total control over the judicial system and the feared Finance Ministry, he will be able to punish the media by imposing million-dollar fines or inventing fiscal crimes.

BUENOS AIRES -- As they organize separate 25th anniversary ceremonies to remember their war over the Falkland Islands, Argentine and British officials have found that remembering is the easy part.

Resolving, however, is a much trickier proposition.

The windblown archipelago is once again claiming headlines here, climbing back near the top of Argentina's international agenda a quarter-century after its military surrendered the territory to Britain.

Last week Argentina aimed yet another rhetorical dart at Britain, publicly reasserting its claim to islands it says were stolen by the English in 1833. The British should be getting the message by now: President Nestor Kirchner's government in the past year has issued official complaints concerning rights to the islands at a rate of more than one per month.

CARACAS, VENEZUELA – As he begins his third presidential term Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has laid the groundwork for a sharp leftward shift and launched a clampdown on dissent, in what analysts see as a broad-based effort to strengthen his grip on power.

Emboldened by his resounding reelection victory on Dec. 3, Mr. Chávez announced plans this week to nationalize power and telecom companies as part of an accelerated move toward socialism. This comes after he had begun to act on longstanding threats to close media outlets aligned with the opposition, refusing to renew the broadcast license of Venezuela's oldest commercial television station, RCTV.

In the past week, he has purged his cabinet of ministers deemed insufficiently radical, bringing in a new group of loyalists that includes his brother, Adan. He has begun to merge the more than 20 parties in his governing coalition into a single force under his control. And, under a controversial new law, he is set to take control of nongovernmental organizations that could oppose his government.

CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 9 — Verizon Communications had been looking to lighten its exposure to Latin America for some time when it struck a deal in April to sell investments in three properties in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

Now, it probably wishes it had disconnected its Latin lines even sooner.

The company could possibly lose up to several hundred million dollars, thanks to President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who threatened to nationalize the country’s main telephone and electricity companies.

Investors reacted with alarm here and in markets in the United States and throughout Latin America on Tuesday as they measured the impact of the plan by Mr. Chávez to nationalize crucial areas of the economy. Memories of past nationalizations during another turbulent era, in places like Cuba and Chile, helped drive down the Caracas stock exchange’s main index by almost 19 percent.

RELACIONES BILATERALES
ver noticia(s)  

FUND BANKS ON CUBA
The Miami Herald
Jan. 05, 2007

Miami investment advisor Thomas J. Herzfeld created his closed-end fund for the day -- near or distant -- when political change opens Cuba to investment.

But it's doing just fine in the meantime.

Shares of the Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund, which trades on the Nasdaq index under the ticker CUBA, rose 124 percent in the past year, according to the Closed-End Fund Association. That makes the fund the No. 2 performer among 673 peers. Only the Greater China Fund fared better, with a 167 percent return, according to the trade group.

The small fund, which has assets of about $14 million, scouts for companies with ties to Florida and the Caribbean that will do well without a change in Cuba but will likely get a boost once the embargo ends.

''We have no interest in violating the embargo,'' says Herzfeld, chairman of the fund, which he launched in 1994. ``We needed to develop a strategy in the period in between when we raised the money and when the embargo is lifted.''

HAVANA CONDEMNS HUSSEIN EXECUTION
The Miami Herald
Jan. 02, 2007

HAVANA - (AP) -- Communist Cuba on Monday condemned the execution of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and called for the end to the war it said had caused the suffering of millions of innocent Iraqis. Hussein's execution by hanging over the weekend was ''an illegal act in a country that has been driven toward an internal conflict in which millions of citizens have been exiled or lost their lives,'' the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official National Information Agency.

The statement acknowledged that Cuba ''has not yet abolished the death penalty because of the brutal war imposed on it by the United States,'' referring to the U.S. government's policy to undermine the communist country, including trade and travel sanctions.

WASHINGTON - Even with Fidel Castro seriously ill and power transferred to his brother, the ailing leader's presence is widely felt and is keeping the country from taking any new economic or political direction, says the U.S. government's top diplomat for Latin America.

''We see that this regime has made this successful transfer of power and is trying to consolidate itself, but it can't define itself or separate itself from Fidel,'' Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, said in an interview. ``My guess is that we're not going to see that until Fidel Castro is dead and buried.''

''Fidel Castro is in this odd moment where he is neither alive nor dead politically. He is alive physically, but he's not in charge day to day, and he's obviously not present day to day, but it appears that he still has the ability to sit up in bed and give orders occasionally,'' Shannon said.

Castro's medical condition has been a state secret since he underwent surgery for intestinal bleeding in late July and temporarily ceded power to younger brother Raúl Castro. He has not been seen publicly since July 26, fueling intense speculation about his future.

EL PASO Silvestre Reyes is straight out of Border Country, that place of lawmen and bandits, pluck and luck.

Grows up on a cotton farm along the Rio Grande, oldest of 10, struggling with English as a kid. Helicopter gunner in Vietnam, some college, marries his high school sweetheart (honeymoon at the Mesa Motel), lands a solid government job -- Border Patrol. He works like hell for 26 years, gets shot at by Mexican train robbers, rises from agent to bridge inspector to chief for West Texas and Arizona.

"Outdoor work," he calls it, for someone with "a flair for a little danger" -- but unexpected work for the boy who used to warn undocumented farm workers when la migra came around.

Next, a grateful citizenry sends its tough but soft-spoken lawman to Congress, reelects him five times, the first Latino to represent his 80 percent Hispanic district.

Reyes is, in short, that most cherished of political properties, the real guy, a man of the people, not just someone who pretends to be.

HAVANA - American activist Cindy Sheehan will join an international delegation traveling to Cuba next week to protest treatment of terrorism suspects five years after the first prisoners arrived at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, organizers said Thursday.

Zohra Zewawi, the mother of a terror suspect still held at the base, will also be in the group protesting outside the U.S.-run prison in southeastern Cuba, peace activist Medea Benjamin said in a release.

''I am traveling all the way from Dubai because my heart is overflowing with grief over the abuse and ongoing detention of my son,'' Zewawi said in a statement distributed by Benjamin's Global Exchange group of California, a lead organizer of the trip with the U.S. group CODEPINK: Women for Peace.

Zewawi said her son, British citizen Omar Deghayes, had been tortured and blinded in one eye since he was imprisoned in September 2002 and still had not been charged or tried.

Sheehan, 49, of Vacaville, Calif., became an anti-war activist known as the ''peace mom'' after losing her 24-year-old son Casey in Iraq in April 2004. She has drawn international attention after camping outside President Bush's Texas ranch to protest the war in Iraq, and has been arrested many times for trespassing.

TIJUANA, Mexico, Jan. 5 (AP) — The police suspended their patrols in this violent border city on Friday after soldiers sent by President Felipe Calderón seized most of their weapons in a crackdown on drug gangs and police corruption.

The Tijuana public safety secretary, Luis Javier Algorri, said that without weapons, it was too dangerous for the force of 2,000 officers to patrol the streets of Tijuana, where 13 officers were fatally shot last year.

“This is an unfortunate situation because it leaves agents defenseless and does not allow them to serve the community,” Mr. Algorri said at a news conference.

There have long been allegations by federal investigators that a network of crooked officers helps smugglers ship drugs into the United States. On Tuesday, Mr. Calderón sent 3,300 soldiers and federal police officers to Tijuana, and by Thursday soldiers were sweeping through police stations, confiscating officers’ guns for inspection. On Friday, soldiers monitored those leaving and entering Tijuana, while the federal and state police manned checkpoints within the city.

HAVANA - Peace activists visiting Cuba to protest the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay expressed hope Sunday that the new Democratic congressional leadership will help ease long-standing U.S. trade and travel sanctions against the communist-run island.

''I think it is about time we end the embargo and open up relations between the Cuban and American people,'' said Cindy Sheehan, who became an anti-war protester after her 24-year-old son Casey was killed in Iraq in April 2004. ``It hurts both sides.''

U.S. restrictions bar most Americans from spending money in Cuba, effectively preventing them from traveling here legally. The restrictions also bar virtually all trade between the countries, except for some U.S. sales of food and medicine to the island.

CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 8 — Political opponents of President Evo Morales of Bolivia have in recent days stepped up criticism of the country’s strengthening military relationship with Venezuela after Bolivian officials acknowledged that more than two dozen uniformed members of the Venezuelan military had recently entered the country without congressional approval.

Jorge Quiroga, a former president of Bolivia and a prominent critic of Mr. Morales’s alliance with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, accused Mr. Morales in a statement on Saturday of “trampling national sovereignty.”

Legislators from Santa Cruz, a redoubt of anti-Morales sentiment in eastern Bolivia, previously criticized the unannounced arrival of about 30 Venezuelan military officials at Trompillo Airport there on Dec. 28.

HAVANA - Wives and mothers of Cuban political prisoners urged American peace activist Cindy Sheehan on Monday to visit the island's state-run jails during her weeklong trip to Cuba to call for the closure of the U.S.operated Guantánamo prison.

The Ladies in White, a group of women demanding the release of their loved ones, described what they called ''inhumane'' conditions at Cuba's prisons in a letter for Sheehan that was sent to international reporters. The group said it was trying to get a copy to Sheehan as well.

''At the same time you and your noble followers fight for the closure of the U.S. prison at the Guantánamo naval base . . . just a few miles away at the provincial Guantánamo prison in Cuban territory, peaceful and defenseless political prisoners suffer inhumane conditions, [living] without potable water and with poor nutrition, deficient medical assistance, insects and rodents, limited visits and precarious communication,'' the letter said.

''We exhort you to visit the prisons of Cuba, chosen randomly, and not those prepared'' by authorities, it added.

Sheehan arrived in Havana on Saturday with a dozen other peace activists and plans to attend a human rights conference in the city of Guantánamo on Wednesday. Thursday, the group is to hold a protest outside the U.S. Navy's Guantánamo Bay base, where nearly 400 men are being held on suspicion of links to al Qaeda or the Taliban.

LA PAZ, Bolivia - (AP) -- A Cuban dissident arrested last month in Bolivia for criticizing President Evo Morales' close ties to Havana was deported Tuesday to Colombia rather than to Cuba, as he had feared.

Cuban doctor Amauris Samartino held permanent-residence status in Bolivia but was arrested in late December in the city of Santa Cruz, 340 miles east of La Paz, under a law forbidding immigrants to be involved in Bolivian politics.

Cuba had refused to accept Samartino, who with 11 fellow dissidents fled Cuba in 1999 on a boat bound for Florida. Picked up by U.S. immigration authorities, the group was taken to the Guantánamo Bay detention center before U.S. officials helped find them a home in Bolivia.

The United States also declined to take Samartino, but U.S. officials helped arrange his temporary placement in Colombia, whose right-wing government is Washington's closest ally in the region.

HAVANA - Roberto Andrade sat in a hospital waiting room beside rows of patients, each with a bandage on one eye, and explained why he considers himself a diplomat of sorts.

The Salvadoran bus driver had cataract surgery on both eyes, courtesy of the Cuban and Venezuelan governments.

''In my country, a surgery like that costs $8,000,'' Andrade said. ``I make $12 a day. I would never, ever, be able to save that much. Now I am an ambassador: I go around El Salvador telling everyone how well I ws treated.''

Andrade, 56, is one of nearly half a million people -- most of them Venezuelans -- to undergo eye surgery in Cuba in the past two years. He also represents the latest boom in Cuba's growing economy: a medical service industry that treats low-income people from around Latin America.

Although the financial details of the program are not known, Operation Miracle is part of a broader oil-for-doctors program that experts say is helping funnel some $2 billion in Venezuelan subsidies a year to Cuba. President Hugo Chávez's oil-rich government is delivering 90,000 barrels of oil a day, and Cuba in turn provides medical services.

Restrictions on travel to Cuba

From Hialeah to Westchester, Cuban Americans wonder what the recent changes in leadership -- in both Havana and Washington -- will mean for the communist island.

Some hold out hope for a thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations. Democrats took the leadership posts in Congress last week for the first time in more than a decade -- just five months after Fidel Castro temporarily ceded authority to his brother, Raúl Castro.

In Hialeah, the local political beachhead for Cubans who recently have arrived from the island, many new arrivals think Democrats should lift tight restrictions on travel and remittances, which prohibit visits to family in Cuba more than once every three years and to send more than $100 a month to close relatives, such as a parent or spouse.

Those restrictions were imposed by the Bush administration in 2004, just a few months before the president's reelection.

HAVANA - (AP) -- The number of political prisoners held in Cuba dropped in the second half of last year, but harassment of dissidents continues, a veteran human rights activist said Tuesday.

Elizardo Sánchez of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation said in his twice-yearly update that his group counted 283 prisoners of conscience, down from 316 in early July.

The commission counted 333 political prisoners in Cuba a year ago.

Sánchez attributed the drop to ''selective'' releases of prisoners, like Héctor Palacios, an opposition leader who was recently set free on medical parole.

He was one of 75 dissidents arrested in a crackdown in 2003. Fifteen of those arrested have since been freed for health reasons.

But Sánchez said that even as some prisoners have been released, Cuba's communist-run government continues to harass dissidents with short detentions, interrogations and monitoring.

CHULA VISTA, Calif. - A border city that has long watched illegal immigrants pass through on their way to low-wage jobs up north is increasingly welcoming a very different kind of arrival: wealthy Mexicans seeking refuge from kidnappings and other violence.

Francisco Villegas Peralta is among the new residents of Chula Vista, where new boulevards run past gated communities and trendy malls.

He said he knew he had to get out of Tijuana, Mexico, one July morning when three SUVs trailed him from his house through Tijuana's streets. He escaped, and moved soon after with his wife and three children to a one-story house in one of this city's more modest neighborhoods.

''I feel a sense of relief as soon as I cross the border,'' his wife, Lorena Flores, said in the living room of their sparsely furnished home, which the couple bought for $585,000. She rarely visits Tijuana; Villegas drives there daily to check on his five restaurants.

The lawlessness along the border prompted Mexico's new president to send troops to disarm local police in Tijuana last week. Some officers are suspected of being in cahoots with drug smugglers.

REGIONAL
ver noticia(s)

Con Washington empantanada por la guerra y polarizada por el partidismo, líderes latinoamericanos tendrán este año la oportunidad de dar un paso al frente y tomar las riendas en cooperación hemisférica. Retos internos, sin embargo, probablemente impedirán que líderes regionales presenten soluciones prácticas a la desigualdad, la inmigración, el narcotráfico y la violencia pandillera, por nombrar solo algunos de los problemas que claman por una acción común.

Particularmente desalentadores son las señales de que el Presidente brasileño Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva no será el activista internacional que fue en su primer mandato. Lula demostró ser un innovador particularmente con la creación del G-20, el grupo de países en desarrollo establecido en el 2003 para resistir medidas proteccionistas que hacen el comercio internacional más injusto para los más pobres.

Ahora el G-20 parece haber perdido su fuerza y Lula, quien empezó su segundo mandato esta semana, da señales de su retirada hacia un papel internacional más modesto. Un rezagado crecimiento económico, creciente violencia pandillera y una erosionada influencia política -- debido al escándalo de corrupción sufrido por su Partido de los Trabajadores -- probablemente mantendrán postrado a Lula. De hecho el sábado pasado, Lula, quien hizo 17 viajes al exterior en sus primeros 12 meses de gobierno, canceló viajes a Nicaragua y Cuba programados para la próxima semana.

''I promise I won't give long speeches,'' Raúl Castro told a gathering of university students recently. There's only one commander-in-chief, and no one should copy Fidel's style.

The Comandante's policies -- not marathon speeches -- are the main problem. Ideological battles, revolutionary ethics and true socialism lie at the heart of his legacy. Pluralism, autonomous institutions and markets are anathema. What will Raúl do? Will he muddle through a status quo that hasn't restored living standards to 1989 levels? Might he resume modest economic reforms or even embrace a radical restructuring?

The tea leaves aren't saying much yet. The elder Castro is still watching over Cuba, or so says his New Year's message. Raúl may deem it prudent to tread lightly as the moment of truth approaches. Still, some signals are emerging. A collective leadership is truly taking shape under the younger Castro. An anti-corruption campaign is in progress. Discipline and concrete results seem to be the new catch words. The doble moral -- people saying one thing in public while privately believing another -- is under attack, again.

Sixty miles outside Buenos Aires, construction crews soon will be swarming over a partially built concrete dome abandoned 12 years ago, resuming work on Argentina's long-delayed Atucha II nuclear power plant. They will be in the vanguard of surging interest in nuclear power worldwide.

Faced with evidence that coal- and oil-fired electric plants are overheating the planet, and alarmed by soaring demand for electricity, governments from South America to Asia are turning once again to a power source mostly shunned for two decades as too dangerous and too costly.

Globally, 29 nuclear power plants are being built. Well over 100 more have been written into the development plans of governments for the next three decades. India and China each are rushing to build dozens of reactors. The United States and the countries of Western Europe, led by new nuclear champions, are reconsidering their cooled romance with atomic power. International agencies have come on board; even the Persian Gulf oil states have announced plans for nuclear generators.

"Energy and climate changes can't remain tied to carbon or hydrocarbon," the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said in October. "They are polluting, and we'll have to find substitute energies, including nuclear energy." It creates heat through nuclear reactions rather than combustion, giving off no carbon dioxide, the most important of the so-called greenhouse gases that trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere.

BOGOTA, Colombia, Jan. 9 -- Financial markets from Buenos Aires to Caracas reeled on Tuesday following Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez's announcement that he plans to nationalize some private companies, and the White House warned that it expects U.S.-based corporations to be compensated for any losses.

The U.S. Energy Department also expressed concern after Ch?vez, who has pledged to accelerate his socialist "revolution," said Monday that he would nationalize telephone and electric utility companies and increase state control over four major oil projects in which American and other foreign companies have invested $17 billion.

At the White House, Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said that "if any U.S. companies are affected, we would expect them to be promptly and fairly compensated." He also said that a nationalization plan, if it proved far-reaching, could be harmful to Venezuela.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Tony Snow lambasted Ch?vez's plan, saying: "Nationalization has a long and inglorious history of failure around the world. We support the Venezuelan people and think this is an unhappy day for them."

EDITORIAL
VENEZUELA INC.’S HOSTILE TAKEOVER
The New York Times
January 10, 2007

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela — the very portrait of a modern Latin American strongman — is not content to exercise near-total political and military control of his country. Now he is tightening his grip on the Venezuelan economy. That’s bad news for foreign investors, but even more so for the Venezuelan people who will have to pay the price for an economy plagued by increasing inefficiency and corruption.

Mr. Chávez announced this week that he would nationalize electricity and telecommunications companies. Venezuela’s biggest telecommunications company is partly owned by Verizon Communications. Its largest publicly traded electricity company is controlled by another American company, the AES Corporation. Mr. Chávez also declared his intention to take control of four multibillion- dollar oil projects with significant investments from foreign companies.