CHÁVEZ GIVEN POWER TO RULE VENEZUELA BY DECREE
The Miami Herald
Feb. 01, 2007
CARACAS - At a special open-air session Wednesday, the Venezuelan National Assembly granted President Hugo Chávez the power to legislate by decree for the next 18 months on a broad range of social, economic and military affairs.
Government supporters trumpeted the legislation as a sign of ''people power,'' but critics in Venezuela fear that the law undermines democracy, and in a rare direct reference to Venezuela, President Bush said he was troubled by the moves of his Venezuelan counterpart.
''I'm concerned about the Venezuelan people, and I'm worried about the diminution of democratic institution[s],'' Bush, who bears the brunt of routine and ferocious attacks by Chávez, told Fox News Channel.
A former army lieutenant who participated in a failed coup in 1992, Chávez won the presidency in 1998. He has since worked hard to fill important military, judicial and legislative posts with his allies and has sought legislation to curb attacks of the press on government institutions.
THOUSANDS IN MEXICO CITY PROTEST RISING FOOD PRICES
The New York Times
February 1, 2007
MEXICO CITY, Jan. 31 — Tens of thousands of workers and farmers filled this city’s central square on Wednesday to protest spiraling food prices, ratcheting up the volume over a problem that has dogged President Felipe Calderón in his first weeks in office.
Left-wing parties joined the unions and peasant organizations that had called the protest. The protesters, some of whom handed out ears of corn, marched up Mexico City’s main avenue to the Zócalo, the site of protests through much of the summer and fall against Mr. Calderón’s election.
The high cost of tortillas and other food staples has consumed politics here over the past few weeks, posing a stubborn challenge to Mr. Calderón as he seeks to project an image as a take-charge leader. It has spilled into the ever-simmering debate here over the country’s commitment to free-market economics.
As marchers gathered at dusk in the city’s main square, a former television personality, Verónica Velasco, read a statement condemning the government’s policies. “While other countries are looking for alternatives to neoliberal policies, in Mexico, the government has lagged behind and insisted in applying a model that, after a quarter century, has shown its inefficiency and inequality,” the statement said.
LEGISLATURE GRANTS CHÁVEZ BROAD NEW POWERS TO SHAPE VENEZUELA
The New York Times
February 1, 2007
LA PAZ, Bolivia, Jan. 31 — Venezuela’s legislature on Wednesday granted President Hugo Chávez the power to rule by decree for 18 months, enhancing his ability to both increase government control over the economy and assert greater personal authority over areas of society he considers crucial to his aspiration to build a socialist state.
The vote, conducted at a plaza in downtown Caracas, was carried out by a legislature in which every member is already a supporter of Mr. Chávez.
Critics of Mr. Chávez said granting him special powers moved Venezuela closer to authoritarianism.
“Heil Hugo,” read the headline of an editorial published in the opposition newspaper Tal Cual that compared the measure to powers granted to Hitler in the 1930s.
Mr. Chávez’s supporters were equally vehement in speaking of what they saw as a need to give the president even greater power than he already has. Cilia Flores, the president of the National Assembly, said the measure was “an instrument of the people and for the people.” It will allow Mr. Chávez to enact laws without submitting his ideas to the legislature for debate and a vote.
CHACALTAYA JOURNAL
BOLIVIA’S ONLY SKI RESORT IS FACING A SNOWLESS FUTURE
The New York Times
February 2, 2007
CHACALTAYA, Bolivia, Jan. 28 — The lodge here at what bills itself as the world’s highest ski resort has fraying black-and-white photos evoking memories of the years when this country had an Olympic ski team.
Bolivia’s die-hard skiers still boast about the place, asking where else one can ski above the clouds at a dizzying 17,388 feet with a view of Lake Titicaca on the horizon.
Where else, they ask, would the après-ski tradition include coca tea and soup made from the grain of the quinoa plant?
Their pride in the ski resort here, the only one in Bolivia, soon gives way to a grim acceptance that the glacier that once surrounded the lodge with copious amounts of snow and ice is melting fast.
Attributing the melting to the growing emission of greenhouse gases causing global warming, scientists say Bolivia’s skiing tradition could be extinguished when Chacaltaya’s modest ski run disappears forever in a few years.
“This is a tragedy I can hardly bear to witness,” said Franz Gutiérrez, 65, who has been a member of the Bolivian Andean Club, which operates Chacaltaya, since he was a teenager. Guiding a group of about a dozen skiers on the opening day of this year’s season, Mr. Gutiérrez reminisced about how he skied nearly every weekend until Chacaltaya’s glacier began melting significantly a decade ago.
“It is magical,” he said, “to ski at an altitude at which planes don’t fly in parts of the world.”
ANGRY ABOUT TORTILLAS, MEXICANS TAKE TO THE STREETS
The Christian Science Monitor
February 02, 2007
MEXICO CITY - For Lucilea Cornejo, the rising price of the corn tortilla in Mexico is more than a matter of injustice.
"It is inhuman – the tortilla is the base of our diet, and this is the answer of a pueblo that is hungry," says Ms. Cornejo, a pensioner amid farmers, union members, and leftists protesting prices that have doubled in places. "Mad? We are indignant."
Mexican President Felipe Calderón has won accolades from Mexico and the US for his battle against drug cartels and organized crime since he took office Dec. 1. But in a country founded by people who worshiped corn gods and in which tortillas are a staple, this issue could prove his tougher fight.
Protesters in the center of Mexico City Wednesday held cobs of corn and signs reading, "We are people of maize." A tractor-trailer hummed down the main avenue, Reforma, as passengers chanted, "Without corn, we aren't a country."
IN CUBA, DISSENT BY INVITATION ONLY
The Miami Herald
Feb. 03, 2007
One by one, Cuban artists and intellectuals in Havana did something unprecedented this week: They stood before the government and criticized a particularly harsh era of censorship -- out loud and in the open.
Perhaps even more surprising than the conference held Tuesday to discuss a dark period of Cuban cultural oppression was what happened outside: a protest by those shut out of the invitation-only event. Also out loud and in the open.
''I don't know how important it can be, but what's true is that I have never seen anything like that in Cuba,'' Cuban writer Ena Lucía Portela told The Miami Herald in an e-mail. ``It was rudimentary, passionate, incoherent, but it was the closest thing to freedom of expression I have seen in this country in my entire life.''
In a move that Cuba experts say signals a significant shift in Cuban domestic policy, the government led by interim President Raúl Castro appears to be cracking open the door to debate. After Castro publicly asserted he was open to discussion, and later convened a committee to study flaws of socialism, experts say there has been a clear changing of the guard in Cuba, one that allows at least controlled discussion.
CHÁVEZ COUP ATTEMPT COMMEMORATED
The Miami Herald
Feb. 05, 2007
CARACAS - New Russian-made fighter jets roared overhead on Sunday as Venezuelan soldiers marched alongside tanks, commemorating a bloody coup attempt led by President Hugo Chávez as a lieutenant colonel 15 years ago.
Speaking to troops and spectators before the parade, Chávez called the coup attempt on Feb. 4, 1992, ''a lightning bolt that illuminated the darkness'' and vowed to turn Venezuela into a socialist state.
''Fifteen years later, here we are: the people and soldiers together,'' said Chávez, who wore military fatigues and his trademark red paratrooper beret. Borrowing a phrase from his close ally Cuban leader Fidel Castro, he added: ``Fatherland, socialism or death!''
Thousands of civilians also marched through the capital Sunday to celebrate the failed 1992 coup. Waving Venezuelan flags and chanting ''The people united, will never be defeated!'' throngs of Chávez supporters wearing red -- the color of Venezuela's leftist ruling party -- converge at Tiuna Fort, a military base where the memorial parade was held.
THE PULSE OF RIO DE JANEIRO'S SLUMS LURING FOREIGN GUESTS
The Christian Science Monitor
February 6, 2007
RIO DE JANEIRO - It is the first Friday of the month and, as usual, dozens of people are milling about Englishman Bob Nadkardi's house listening to a jazz jam session.
But although this is Rio de Janeiro, there is hardly a Brazilian in sight. The reason is the venue. If this was the ritzy Ipanema area, the place would be filled with well-off Cariocas, as people from the city are called, enjoying sounds that run from beebop to bossa nova.
But Mr. Nadkardi's sprawling, unfinished, labyrinth of a home is set on top of a favela, one of the thousands of shantytowns that dot Brazil's big cities.
To many Brazilians, favelas are dirty, violent, frightening places. But to many foreigners, they are exciting, interesting, and romantic. More and more outsiders are coming from overseas to live, work, and just visit favelas, observers say. In doing so they are highlighting the difference between Brazilians who regard favelas with fear, rejection, and even disgust, and foreigners who embrace them as vibrant crucibles of modern Brazilian culture.
2 CUBAN DISSIDENTS RELEASED FROM JAIL
The Miami Herald
Feb. 06, 2007
The warden at Las Canaletas jail in Matanzas, Cuba, approached political prisoner Julio César López as he napped, and uttered two surprising words: ``You're free.''
''I had prepared for this moment in my mind many times: If they tried some kind of trick or threat, I was going to turn right back around to my cell,'' López said by telephone from Havana on Monday. ``But actually they were very diplomatic and told me I was being released.''
López was one of 30 political activists arrested July 22, 2005, just before a planned protest in front of the French embassy in Havana. The rally never took place, and instead López spent 1 ½ years in jail without charges or a trial.
He and another of the protesters, Raúl Martínez, were released Saturday without explanation, dropping the number of political prisoners in Cuba to 280, said Elizardo Sánchez, of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights. That number stood at 333 one year ago, but Sánchez is hesitant to call it a trend.
HIM OR HER? PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE COULD BE EITHER
The Miami Herald
Feb. 07, 2007
BUENOS AIRES - Argentina's first couple, a power pair often compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton, seem to be enjoying the speculation over whether it will be a his or hers candidacy in this year's presidential election.
Unlike Sen. Hillary Clinton, a New York Democrat now running for president of the United States whose political ambitions were criticized when she was first lady, Sen. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner established her own political career long before her husband, Néstor Kirchner, became president. And with both Kirchners enjoying soaring approval ratings, they've been floating the idea that she should run to replace him while he's still in office.
Cristina Kirchner flew off without her powerful husband this week to pick up some foreign-policy credentials, going to Paris where she met privately Monday with another rising female politician: France's socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal.
VENEZUELA: CHRONICLE OF A WRECK FORETOLD
OUR OPINION: CHAVEZ ON THE ROAD TO DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED DICTATOR
Opinion
The Miami Herald
Feb. 07, 2007
Seeing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's recent moves to amass absolute power is like watching a train heading toward a mountainside. We know it is going to crash, and people will be hurt. But the wreck seems unstoppable, as long as Venezuelan oil revenues sustain him.
Cuba the model
Mr. Chávez already controlled the National Assembly and virtually every other institution in the nation when he was reelected in December with 61 percent of the vote. Now he is moving to consolidate power and silence all opposition. His stated goal is to create ''21st century socialism'' modeled after Fidel Castro's Cuba. If Mr. Chávez is successful, Venezuelans will live in a society as destitute, corrupt and repressive as Cuba is today.
Last week the assembly granted Mr. Chávez sweeping powers to legislate by decree for the next 18 months. Thus, he can enact laws without debate or oversight in 11 areas, from the budget to the critical energy section. Also in the works are constitutional reforms to allow Mr. Chávez's indefinite reelection and to affirm Venezuela as a socialist state.
AT LEAST 7 KILLED AS GUNMEN ATTACK STATE OFFICES IN MEXICAN RESORT CITY
The Washington Post
February 7, 2007
ACAPULCO, Mexico, Feb. 6 -- More than a dozen armed assailants staged and videotaped simultaneous attacks against two offices of the state attorney general Tuesday in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, killing at least seven people.
The attacks took place before 11 a.m. in two neighborhoods about nine miles north of the tourist zone, said Enrique Gil Mercado, special prosecutor for the attorney general's office in the state of Guerrero, which includes Acapulco.
Four of the victims, including three agents and a secretary, were killed at an office in the Emiliano Zapata neighborhood. Three others, including two agents and a secretary, were killed in the Ciudad del Renacimiento neighborhood, Gil said.
About eight men armed with assault weapons participated in each attack. Gil said he did not know how many people were wounded. He said all the attackers escaped, including one who fled on foot. Authorities initially said city police stations had been attacked, but later revised the information.
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