Jueves 22 de Marzo 2007. Año II, No. SESENTA Y CUATRO

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 15 al 22 de Marzo 2007 han sido clasificadas bajo las categorías de:

COMERCIO
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GUATEMALA CITY -- Day and night, workers at the port of Quetzal on Guatemala's Pacific coast load fruit from surrounding plantations and clothing stitched in local factories onto freighters bound for Long Beach, Calif., a flow of goods that has swelled since a Central American trade agreement with the United States took force last year.

Under a provision that was crucial to getting the deal through Congress, working conditions for the longshoremen, along with laborers throughout Central America, were supposed to improve. Governments promised to strengthen labor laws, and the Bush administration pledged money to help.

But on the evening of Jan. 15, the head of the port workers union became a symbol of the risks that still confront workers who press their rights in Guatemala.

Pedro Zamora, then in the midst of contentious negotiations with management, was driving on the dusty road through his village, his two sons at his side, when gunmen shot him at least 20 times, killing him, said prosecutors in Guatemala City. One boy was grazed in the knee by a bullet; the other was unharmed.

MIGRACION
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ATLANTA - No, Ana Figueroa told the young seamstress, who was posing as a recent immigrant from Mexico. Without papers, she couldn't work at the plant.

A beat passed. Then Ms. Figueroa, who screened employees at Michael Bianco Inc. (MBI), told her to see "Felix" on the factory floor. He would get her papers for $60.

"Usted no oyó eso de mí," she added. ("You didn't hear that from me.") A few days later, the seamstress, who happened to be an undercover informant wearing a microphone, found herself at a sewing machine, stitching survival vests for the US military.

That chain of events, described in a federal affidavit, led to a high-profile immigration-enforcement raid in New Bedford, Mass., two weeks ago. While media accounts focused on the firm's immigrant workers, many of them mothers with young children, the company's owner and three other officials, including Figueroa, were also arrested and now face federal charges with prison terms up to 10 years. (Figueroa's attorney, Ray O'Hara, says she was an hourly employee, not a manager: "She was told what to do, and that was it.")

POLÍTICA INTERNA
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MEXICAN DRUG WAR GETTING BLOODIER
The Miami Herald
Mar. 21, 2007

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico --There was nothing subtle about the message. A black pickup sped up to Tabasco state police headquarters last week and someone inside lobbed a black bag toward the guard post. The bag bounced a few times like a soccer ball and rolled to a stop. Inside was the blindfolded, bloodied head of a man with a mustache.

A few hours later, the headless body of a small-time drug dealer and alleged police informant was found across the state line in Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state.

The gruesome message to police to back off was another sign that Mexico's drug cartels, whose influence used to be confined largely to regions near the U.S. border, are fighting an increasingly gruesome war throughout the country to control the trade.

(AP) -- Fidel Castro will be in ''perfect shape'' to run for reelection to parliament next spring, the first step toward securing yet another term as Cuba's president, National Assembly head Ricardo Alarcón said Thursday.

''I would nominate him,'' said Alarcón, the highest-ranking member of parliament. ``I'm sure he will be in perfect shape to continue handling his responsibilities.''

Mobbed by reporters following a parliamentary session to discuss Cuba's upcoming elections, Alarcón said Castro ``is doing fine and continuing to focus on recovery and rehabilitation.''

A lengthy process of nominating candidates for municipal elections will begin this summer, leading to several rounds of voting. By March 2008, Cuba should be ready to hold parliamentary elections that are expected to include Castro, Alarcón said.

CHAVEZ SHARES THOUGHTS ON BUSH, MARRIAGE
The Miami Herald
Mar. 16, 2007

ABC News' Barbara Walters said Friday that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is an intelligent and passionate man - to say nothing of heavily caffeinated.

Walters interviewed Chavez this week in Caracas, discussing topics ranging from his family life to his disdain for President Bush in clips aired Friday on "Good Morning America."

At one point, she urged Chavez to drink his coffee, saying "I understand you drink too much coffee?"

"Yes, but you didn't drink yours," Chavez replied through an interpreter.

"You want mine?" Walters asked.

"Give it to me, I will drink it," Chavez said. "I drink a lot of coffee - beyond any advisable or any medical recommendation. But if I had to quit it, I would. As well as I have quit so many intimate things. I left my home, I left my kids. I see them every now and then. I left what is most dearest to me. I had to abandon them."

Chavez added that he has no regrets because he has dedicated his life to helping the poor. U.S. officials and Venezuelan opposition leaders accuse him of steering the country toward authoritarianism.

GROUPS IN BRAZIL AIM TO CALL MILITARY TORTURERS TO ACCOUNT
The New York Times
March 16, 2007

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Frustrated by their own government’s timidity but encouraged by recent court rulings in Argentina and Chile, Brazilian human rights groups are seeking to overturn an amnesty for human rights abuses that went into effect in 1979, when a right-wing military dictatorship ruled this nation.

A family of five jailed earlier in the 1970s has filed a civil action against Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who was then the commander of Center for Operations for Internal Defense here. A judge has agreed to hear the complaint, the first time that a Brazilian military officer has been formally called to account for the torture of political prisoners during the dictatorship.

MEXICO CITY, March 16 -- Depleted reserves, crumbling pipelines, outdated technology and billions of dollars in debt.

It doesn't seem much to celebrate. While Petroleos Mexicanos executives and union leaders prepare to deliver patriotic speeches and sing the national anthem Sunday on the 69th anniversary of the nationalization of Mexico's oil sector, many energy experts say Pemex needs to stop looking backward.

What the company really needs, these analysts say, is a rapid rescue. Government leaders and Pemex executives have been warning about the problems for years. But they haven't taken much action, in large part because the state-owned company is viewed as a national treasure.

When it was nationalized in 1938, Mexicans celebrated in the streets. Some donated their jewelry to help pay for the state takeover. Since then, the company has been the government's biggest source of income, and Mexicans are wary of any changes to its operation that could be seen as a threat to Mexican sovereignty.

Seven months ago, Fidel Castro was considered all but dead. These days, he's reported to be taking long walks with old friends and calling other presidents to discuss global warming.

To hear National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón tell it, Castro is in fact preparing for a comeback. This week Alarcón said to foreign correspondents in Havana that Castro would be in ''great shape'' to run for president of the Council of State, his official title.

''I'd nominate him,'' Alarcón said after a National Assembly session.

As Castro loyalists insist that the ailing leader is getting lots of exercise, eating well and engaged in domestic and world affairs, Alarcón's comments were the strongest suggestion yet that Castro might return to public life.

But his comments raise the question of whether a man who seven months ago was written off for good could return to power -- and whether his acting president brother would let him.

CARACAS, Venezuela, March 17 — Of all the startling measures announced by President Hugo Chávez this year, from the nationalization of major utilities to threats of imprisonment for violators of price controls, none have baffled economists quite like his venture into monetary reform.

First, Mr. Chávez said the authorities would remove three zeroes from the denomination of the currency, the bolívar. Then he said the new bolívar, worth 1,000 old bolívars, would be renamed the “bolívar fuerte,” or strong bolívar.

Finally, at the behest of Mr. Chávez, the central bank said this week that it would reintroduce a 12.5-cent coin, a symbol of Venezuela’s prosperity in the 1960s and 1970s before freewheeling oil booms ended in abrupt devaluations, after three decades out of circulation.

MEXICO’S PRESIDENT RIDES POPULARITY WAVE
The New York Times
March 18, 2007

MEXICO CITY, Mexico, March 16 — President Felipe Calderón is on a roll. You can see it in his relaxed manner these days, his ease at the lectern, whether he is meeting with President Bush or swinging through Baja, California, to unveil new projects.

“I enjoy my work as president,” he said during an interview aboard his official jet on Friday, his eyes bright behind rimless, technocrat glasses. “With all the problems and tensions, which are enormous, I am fulfilling a personal dream for which I have prepared all my life.”

He has reason to look relieved. Just a few months ago, his paper-thin victory gave him almost no mandate in the eyes of many voters, and his leftist rival, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, threatened to thwart his tenure with violent protests, arguing that the election last year had been fraudulent.

MEXICO QUESTIONS POLICE OFFICIALS ABOUT AMBUSH
The New York Times
March 19, 2007

MEXICO CITY, March 18 — Three high-ranking state police commanders and a former police chief were being held for questioning on Sunday in the attempted killing of the Tabasco State secretary of public security, after hundreds of soldiers and federal agents raided the police headquarters there the day before.

The raid was the latest in a series of similar operations President Felipe Calderón has ordered to counter the influence of drug cartels in state and local police forces. “It’s part of the general strategy to go into the states that have problems with narcotics traffickers,” said Miguel Monterrubio, a spokesman for the president.

On March 6, gunmen yet to be identified tried to kill Francisco Fernández Solís, the secretary of public security who took office only a few months ago. Mr. Fernández Solís survived the ambush but his driver was killed.

BRAZIL'S AIR TRAFFIC SYSTEM AGAIN FAILS
The Miami Herald
Mar. 19, 2007

Brazil's airlines were trying to make up for lengthy flight delays Monday after its troubled air traffic control system failed over the weekend, stranding travelers just months after a breakdown that enraged thousands of passengers.

A control center in Brasilia that monitors flights through the nation's populous southeast region had suffered a communications equipment failure, Brazil's Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Then power went out at the airport in Brasilia, making the problem worse, officials confirmed Monday. Unusually heavy rains in Sao Paulo put even more strain on the system.

Nearly 30 percent of the flights scheduled for takeoff by Monday afternoon across Latin America's largest nation were delayed, the official Agencia Brasil news service said. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva held an emergency meeting with high-level advisers and ordered them to put in place "effective and efficient" backup systems to put an end to the travel woes.

Laura García doesn't have a car and the change in her pocket won't cover a 15-cent bus fare. But standing by a crumbling overpass, sweating in her shorts, sunglasses and skimpy top, the 18-year-old says a free ride is only an outstretched thumb away.

''People will take you. You can always find drivers to help,'' said García, who studies law in Havana and was going to see her parents in Pinar del Rio, a 90-minute ride west.

Hitchhiking is a way of life in communist Cuba, where cars are scarce, a gallon of gas costs a third of a civil servant's monthly salary, and public transportation is unreliable and overcrowded. Lately things have worsened, with even acting President Raúl Castro admitting in December that public transport was ``practically on the point of collapse.''

Last year, the government announced the purchase of 7,000 buses from China, and hundreds more Chinese buses are said to be on the way since Castro took power from his ailing brother Fidel in July.

PANAMA POLICE SEIZE 21 TONS OF COCAINE
The Miami Herald
Mar. 19, 2007
By Alexandra Olson

Panamanian police seized a boat off the nation's Pacific coast carrying 21.4 tons of cocaine in one of the biggest maritime cocaine busts anywhere on record, officials said Monday.

National police working with agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency seized the boat on Sunday near the island of Coiba, said a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

Police arrested 12 men on the boat, including Mexicans and Panamanians, and another two suspects in Panama City in connection with the drugs, the official said.

AYACUCHO, Peru --Three suspected leftist rebels were shot to death in a clash with troops in Peru's highland jungle Tuesday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

An army platoon was met with gunfire from the suspected rebels while conducting an early morning patrol near the town of Huachocolpa, 165 miles southeast of the capital Lima, the military officials said in a statement.

An army official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with journalists, said the men were remnants of the Shining Path rebel group.

A soldier and an army officer were wounded in the clash, he said.

The rebels were part of a group headed by a guerrilla known as "Alipio," who allegedly runs protection for cocaine traffickers operating in the coca-growing region, the army official said.

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 19 -- Sitting in a dreary 7-by-5-foot cell, Rafael Garc?a predicts that he'll soon be murdered. It's a common threat in one of Colombia's toughest prisons, but it's made all the more real for the uncommon prisoner.

Garcia is a star witness for prosecutors, revealing secret links between Colombian officials and right-wing paramilitary groups. His testimony has helped trigger the biggest political scandal faced yet by the government of President ?lvaro Uribe, the Bush administration's closest ally in Latin America and recipient of more than $4 billion in American aid.

Once a high-level official in the government's intelligence agency, Garc?a has outlined for investigators how the intelligence chief, Jorge Noguera, funneled classified documents to paramilitary commanders, and how those commanders rigged elections to place their allies in Congress, giving an organization designated a terrorist group by the State Department unprecedented influence in government.

The $205.6 million seized from a luxury Mexico City house was the largest drug cash seizure "the world has ever seen" and resulted from U.S.-Mexico cooperation, the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said Monday.

DEA chief Karen Tandy said in statement that U.S anti-drug agents working with Mexican police in an "historic partnership" against methamphetamine producers led to Thursday's seizure.

The money found hidden inside walls, suitcases and closets in one of Mexico City's wealthiest neighborhoods came from the profits of methamphetamines sold in the United States, she said.

"This is like law enforcement hitting the ultimate jackpot. But luck had nothing to do with this windfall," Tandy said, calling it "the largest single drug-cash seizure the world has ever seen."

GUATEMALA CITY --Four people were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of being among those who orchestrated the killings of three Salvadoran politicians and their driver, Guatemala's interior minister said.

Authorities, however, gave conflicting versions over what they believe were the motives behind the slayings.

Interior Minister Carlos Vielman said the four suspects were tied to drug traffickers and had ordered corrupt police officers to kidnap the politicians and bring them to an isolated, rural area outside Guatemala City to search their vehicle for drugs.

The charred bodies of the three Salvadoran politicians, all members of the Central American Parliament, were found along a rural road on Feb. 19. Two lawmakers were burned alive, and the driver and the third lawmaker were killed before their bodies were set afire, an autopsy showed.

QUITO, Ecuador --Ecuador's constitutional crisis took a new twist as alternate lawmakers were escorted into Congress under the cover of darkness Tuesday and sworn in to replace some of the legislators fired by the country's highest electoral court.

The 21 alternate lawmakers were shuttled to the congressional building before dawn as hundreds of national police stood watch, allowing the 100-seat legislature to begin a session with a quorum for the first time in two weeks.

The crisis deepened in early March when a majority of congressmen voted to oust the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal for approving President Rafael Correa's version of an April 15 referendum plan on the need for a new constitution. The tribunal responded by dismissing 57 lawmakers, accusing them of trying to block the referendum.

Correa, a leftist whose party holds no seats in Congress, is pushing for a new charter to limit the power of traditional political parties, which he blames for the country's corruption and political instability. Ecuador has had eight presidents in the last decade.

EL ALTO, Bolivia --The women attending Esperanza Mitta's community meetings moved here from tiny mountain villages and worn-out mining towns, and now they are fashioning a modern metropolis out of whatever they have in hand.

Toilet paper serves as decorative bunting on the walls of their meeting hall. A rocky vacant lot, surrounded by several leafless trees, serves as their ''central plaza.'' A nearby soccer goal, recently used by neighborhood vigilantes to hang a thief, is considered a local law enforcement tool.

For all the ways they have changed this city, though, the women have altered their own lives even more.

''We don't have educations, so we get together and talk about how we can teach ourselves skills,'' said Mitta, 51. ``A lot of the women just need to work out some of the fears that they have about living in a city, and they all do it, little by little.''

For the first time in the world's history, more people next year will live in cities than in rural areas, according to U.N. population experts. Women are leading the urban push, leaving the countryside at higher rates than men, lured in large part by domestic service jobs. They tend to gravitate to places like this: a sprawling expanse in a developing nation struggling to provide basic infrastructure.

GUATEMALA CITY --A newly created international council of experts will oversee and protect extensive police archives exposing atrocities committed during Guatemala's 36-year civil war, a top human rights official said Wednesday.

The official, Sergio Morales, said the so-called International Consultative Council will include archive specialists from Argentina, Uruguay and the U.S., including Kate Doyle of the Washington-based National Security Archive, a private, nonpartisan research group.

"We want the archive to last so that anyone with interest in knowing what happened to their families can come in the future and investigate," Morales said.

The archives are closed to the public while experts restore and catalog all the materials, many of which have been damaged by water or time. So far, they have restored only 2.1 million documents, 2.5 percent of the total number of archives detailing 105 years of police activity in Guatemala.

KINGSTON, Jamaica --The death of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer is being treated as "suspicious" by police.

During a late-night news conference at the team's hotel Tuesday night, deputy police commissioner Mark Shields read a statement which said, "Having met with the pathologist, other medical personnel and investigators there is now sufficient information to continue a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Woolmer, which we are now treating as suspicious."

Asked if Jamaica police were pursuing a murder investigation, Shield said: "No, we are not saying that."

The news conference in Jamaica was called after reports emerged in Pakistan's print and electronic media of a murder plot.

SANTIAGO, Chile --Authorities on Tuesday began exhuming the remains of dozens of victims of repression under the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in a renewed effort to determine their identities.

The remains of 13 people were unearthed with help from three foreign experts on the first day of exhumations ordered by Judge Carlos Gajardo. Some of the remains are being uncovered for a second time after the coroner's office acknowledged last year that the misidentified remains of some victims were handed to the wrong relatives.

The victims were originally buried in unmarked tombs at Santiago's General Cemetery in the first few weeks after the bloody 1973 coup led by Pinochet. Some coffins contained the remains of two victims.

Forensic bungling during the first exhumation forced families to relive their grief and outraged the nation. The coroner's office said 48 of the 126 bodies exhumed from the cemetery since 1991 were misidentified. In 67 other cases, officials were either not able to identify the bodies or had doubts about the identities. Only 11 bodies were identified correctly.

CARACAS --There are few people President Hugo Chávez trusts more than his older brother, Adán. So when Chávez named Adán as education minister, it was clear he wanted to steer his socialist revolution into the classroom.

The appointment set off alarm bells for some since Adán, a self-professed Marxist, has spent the past three years as ambassador to Cuba, where the public schools follow the communist line and private schools are banned.

But the Venezuelan government has denied any intention to turn schools into ideological training centers, and a new type of school already under the president's control is far from radically changing the Venezuelan classroom culture.

''There is no need to fear the changes,'' Adán Chávez told state television on Feb. 14, shortly after he took over the education ministry. ''It's false that we're going to dress the children in red,'' the president's iconic color.

RELACIONES BILATERALES
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MEXICO CITY, March 16 -- Mexican President Felipe Calderón said Friday that U.S. border policies are marred by many "absurd" paradoxes that hurt the Mexican economy and force more Mexicans to migrate illegally to the United States.

In an interview en route from Mexicali, Mexico, to Mexico City on his presidential jet, Calderón criticized construction of more border fencing and accused U.S. border agents of slowing the flow of commerce between the countries by sometimes failing to staff enough crossing booths.

He also argued against plans to line with concrete the massive All-American Canal, which connects the Colorado River to farms in California. Calderón said the project would cut off groundwater that flows into Mexico and possibly hurt the businesses of Mexican farmers enough that they would need to migrate illegally to make a living.

The border debate has become increasingly personal for Calderón, after recent revelations that some of his relatives have migrated. During President Bush's visit to Mexico this week, Calderón said he has relatives "working in vegetable fields" and restaurants in the United States. "They probably handle what you eat," he said at a news conference.

A new book on convicted Cuban spy Ana Belén Montes prompted calls by lawmakers Friday for the Bush administration to reveal more on the damage done by a spy who may have caused the death of a U.S. green beret.

Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said Montes ''may well turn out to be one of the most notorious spies to infiltrate'' the Defense Intelligence Agency, where she worked as the top Cuba analyst with access to secret documents and intelligence gathering methods for years.

Ros-Lehtinen and fellow Miami Republican Reps. Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart have requested ''a top-to-bottom assessment'' of the damage caused by Montes, who was arrested shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

CARACAS, Venezuela, March 18 — Colombian officials said over the weekend that they would consider seeking the extradition of senior executives of Chiquita Brands International after the company pleaded guilty in United States federal court to making payments to paramilitary death squads.

Chiquita, one of the world's largest banana producers, agreed to pay a fine of $25 million last week to the United States Justice Department to settle the case. Chiquita told the Justice Department that from 1997 to 2004, a subsidiary in Colombia had paid $1.7 million to right-wing paramilitary groups, which are classified by the United States government as terrorist organizations.

The company said that the payments had been motivated by concern for the safety of employees, and that similar payments had also been made to left-wing Colombian groups.

COLOMBIA SEEKS 8 IN CHIQUITA PAYMENTS
The Miami Herald
Mar. 20, 2007

BOGOTA, Colombia --Colombia's chief prosecutor said Tuesday he will demand the extradition of eight people allegedly involved with Chiquita's payments to right-wing paramilitaries and leftist rebels in a region where it had profitable banana-growing operations.

The prosecutor also said in an interview with local RCN radio that his office had opened a formal investigation into allegations that Alabama-based coal producer Drummond Co. Inc. collaborated with paramilitaries to kill union members.

A civil lawsuit in the U.S. makes similar allegations, which the company has denied.

Chiquita Brands International pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. federal court to one count of doing business with a terrorist organization. The plea is part of a deal with prosecutors that calls for a $25 million fine and does not identify the several senior executives who approved the illegal protection payments.

The agreement ended a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company's financial dealings with right-wing paramilitaries and leftist rebels the U.S. government deems terrorist groups.

SHUFFLE OF U.S. OFFICIALS AFFECTS CUBA
The Miami Herald
Mar. 20, 2007

WASHINGTON --Two top officers on the State Department's Cuba desk are moving to Iraq, adding to a government reshuffle involving a total of six key Cuba posts.

Stephen McFarland, who heads the Cuba desk, and his number two, Timothy Zuniga-Brown will join the Iraqi provincial reconstruction teams, which operate outside Baghdad's Green Zone and are considered dangerous for U.S. personnel.

The changes come as Cuban leader Fidel Castro remains largely out of public view after having temporarily handed power to his younger brother Raúl due to health troubles.

U.S. officials say there is nothing unusual about those departures or the changes in other U.S. agencies.

The top tier of government that sets Cuba policy is unchanged, the officials emphasize.

''It is just rotation stuff,'' says Eric Watnik, a spokesman for the Western Hemisphere department at the State Department, noting that McFarland and Zuniga-Brown had completed two years in their jobs and volunteered for the Iraqi postions.

John Regan, the Cuba desk's No. 3, will head the desk until the replacements arrive this summer, Watnik said.

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 20 -- Colombia's attorney general said Tuesday that his office would try to seek the extradition of eight executives from Chiquita Brands International, the Ohio banana company that last week admitted to paying $1.7 million to right-wing death squads that have killed thousands in this country's long civil conflict.

In deal with the Justice Department, Chiquita last week agreed to plead guilty to doing business with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a coalition of paramilitary groups whose members have massacred peasants and murdered leftist activists for years. In agreeing to pay a $25 million fine, the company characterized the payments as extortion that helped protect banana workers in the northwest Uraba region near the border with Panama.

In forceful, lengthy comments to RCN Radio, Attorney General Mario Iguaran said his office did not view Chiquita's link with the paramilitaries as "an extortionist, victim-of-extortion relationship." He said his office, which has been investigating Chiquita, would carefully study the plea deal and determine if the U.S. executives, whose names were withheld by the court and the banana company, could be extradited to Colombia.

HAVANA --Their faces smile down from billboards along major highways, their poetry and humor are bound into books, and minor developments in their lives are meticulously recorded by Cuba's state media. Five Cuban spies imprisoned in the U.S. for being unregistered foreign agents are vilified in Miami as dangerous conspirators. But here they're considered "Heroic Prisoners of the Empire" who only sought to protect Cuba from anti-communist terrorists. During Cuba's annual May 1 workers parade, hundreds of thousands of people will focus on their plight.

And Fidel Castro is closely watching their federal appeals.

Castro's government sent Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez to South Florida to gather information about anti-communist exile groups and send it back to the island using encrypted software, high-frequency radio transmissions and coded electronic phone messages.

REGIONAL
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CHAVEZ PRESSES TO UNIFY SOCIALISTS
The Miami Herald
Mar. 18, 2007

President Hugo Chavez on Sunday urged some of his political allies who are resisting his plan to form a single socialist party to leave his movement and go their own way, saying he hopes the split will be amicable even if they defect to the opposition.

Chavez aims to create the United Socialist Party of Venezuela to replace some two dozen smaller pro-government parties in the country, but the idea has faced resistance from the Podemos, Fatherland for All and Venezuelan Communist parties.

Chavez, who has pledged a renewed push to transform Venezuela into a socialist state since he was re-elected in December, said he already considers the leaders of Podemos, including a handful of state governors and lawmakers, to be "almost in the opposition."

"If you want to go, leave," Chavez said during his television program "Hello, President." "In reality, you aren't indispensable."

Venezuelan financial aid to Latin America has surpassed U.S. commitments in the region, President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday, shortly after President Bush completed a tour seen by some as an attempt to curtail Chavez's spreading influence in the region.

Chavez, who argues that Latin America has long suffered from U.S. domination, has used his government's booming oil revenues to finance a slew of infrastructure projects, oil shipments and donations in what he describes as a bid toward greater regional sovereignty.

For the first time Wednesday, he provided the estimated value of oil deals with 17 Caribbean and Latin American countries.

Venezuela is now sending some 200,000 barrels a day of oil under the deals, which provide low-cost, long-term financing, and allow recipients to settle part of the bill in non-cash payments such as nutmeg and bananas, according to Chavez.

MERIDA, Mexico, March 14 -- He dispensed with the formal state dinners and traveled through shanty neighborhoods. He met people struggling to make ends meet and called a visit to a Guatemalan village "one of the great experiences of my presidency."

For President Bush, the six-day voyage through Latin America that ended Wednesday proved to be unlike any of his previous foreign trips. It was one in which he tried ever so haltingly to escape the palaces and diplomatic salons long enough to see how people live and to emphasize that it matters to him.

The inspiration for the unusual itinerary was more about the vagaries of geopolitics than newfound curiosity, but the trip exposed the president to sights and sounds that he rarely encounters overseas. The rhetoric of security and terrorism that usually flavors his visits was replaced with discussion of "the human condition" and how to lift millions of neighbors out of deep, enduring poverty.

Ask people in Buenos Aires what Argentina's increasing chumminess with Venezuela means to them, and the most likely response will be a shrug or a blank stare.

Though 30,000 people attended a rally here last week to hear Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez bash President Bush and U.S. ''imperialism,'' it appears that it was shared antipathy toward Washington -- rather than support for Chávez -- that motivated them.

''Economically, it's the big companies, not the people, who are profiting,'' said Alberto Lissarrague, a Socialist Party activist who attended the March 9 event, referring to Argentine-Venezuelan energy and financial deals over the past couple of years that have helped Argentina consolidate its recovery from its 2001-02 economic crisis.

The two countries have teamed up on oil exploration and Venezuela has sold diesel to cover serious shortages of the fuel, essential to Argentina's vast agricultural sector.