Jueves 29 de Marzo 2007. Año II, No. SESENTA Y CINCO

La Secretaría General de la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) ha iniciado la coordinación del proyecto “América Latina ante la Segunda Administración Bush”.  

Como parte de este  proyecto, la Secretaría General de FLACSO ofrece otro canal de información con un resumen noticioso semanal sobre lo que se publica acerca de América Latina en algunos de los principales diarios de los Estados Unidos.  Esto permitirá identificar   cuales son los temas que despiertan mayor  interés en Estados Unidos sobre la región latinoamericana y su tratamiento en la prensa estadounidense.  Las noticias correspondientes a la semana del 23 al 29 de Marzo 2007 han sido clasificadas bajo las categorías de:

MIGRACION
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THE BATTLE over immigration reform was joined in Congress last week with the introduction of sweeping legislation that would toughen enforcement, tighten border controls and provide eventual citizenship for millions who entered the country illegally. That the opening legislative salvo came in the House, where real reform went nowhere in the last Congress, and that the bill has bipartisan sponsors generated fresh optimism that the broken-down immigration system may be replaced by a workable one. The optimism will be justified, though, only if the White House, which has been trying to coax a consensus on immigration from divided Republican lawmakers, sticks to its guns and fashions a blueprint for action that is both practical and comprehensive.

The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, and Luis V. Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat, is a sound starting point for the debate. It should appeal to Republicans concerned about enforcement and border security, whose support will be needed in both houses of Congress. And it should also be attractive to Democrats determined to provide a pathway to citizenship for the 12 million illegal immigrants already here and for future immigrants who will enter the country on legal work visas.

POLÍTICA INTERNA
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LINKED KILLINGS UNDERCUT TRUST IN GUATEMALA
The Washington Post
March 23, 2007

GUATEMALA CITY -- It began with four charred bodies on a dirt road.

The victims had been kidnapped, investigators concluded, and two of them burned alive. The men who were found that day in February on a ranch outside Guatemala City turned out to be three Salvadoran politicians and their chauffeur. Among them was Eduardo D'Aubuisson, son of Roberto D'Aubuisson, the late founder of El Salvador's ruling party and the alleged architect of death squads in the Salvadoran civil war.

Three days later, four Guatemalan policemen were accused of the killings and arrested. Three days after that, with international attention trained on this country, the officers' throats were slashed and they were shot in their cells. The prison murders have not been solved.

The back-to-back sets of killings -- each chillingly professional and brazen -- are exposing the depth of corruption and impunity in a nation still struggling to right itself 11 years after the end of more than three decades of civil war. "A Pandora's box" is opening, said Salvadoran police chief Rodrigo Avila.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Alvaro Uribe's former spy chief was freed from jail Friday after a judge ruled his imprisonment for alleged links to far-right militias was illegal on procedural grounds, the latest twist in a scandal battering Colombia's conservative government.

Jorge Noguera, the former head of the Department of Administrative Security, or DAS, was arrested Feb. 22 for conspiring with paramilitary groups, who are blamed for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil war.

His arrest was a major embarrassment to the U.S.-backed Uribe government, which is struggling to defend itself against accusations that it turned a blind eye to paramilitary infiltration of government institutions.

On Friday, appellate Judge Leonor Perdomo ruled that the ex-spy chief was "illegally and unconstitutionally being deprived of his freedom" because chief prosecutor Mario Iguaran had not personally issued the request that Noguera be jailed.

CONTROVERSIAL BRAZIL RIVER PLAN ALLOWED
The Miami Herald
Mar. 23, 2007

BRASILIA, Brazil -- Brazil's environmental agency on Friday approved a $2 billion project to shift the course of a major river in Brazil, a plan bitterly opposed by environmentalists.

The Sao Francisco River project is meant to benefit some 12 million poor people by allowing large sections of the country's arid northeast to be irrigated, but environmentalists say it could dry up the country's fourth largest river for part of the year.

Brazil's environmental protection agency Ibama said that its president, Marcos Barrios, signed a license authorizing the project on Friday. Congress must now approve funding for the project in Cabrodo, about 1,100 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro.

BOLIVIAN NAVY GETS NEW SENSE OF PURPOSE
The Miami Herald
Mar. 24, 2007

PUERTO VARADOR, Bolivia -- The landlocked Bolivian navy finally found its own sea to sail.

A murky inland ocean created by months of catastrophic flooding in Bolivia's lowland east gave the navy's fleet of riverboats a fresh sense of purpose when their crews stepped in to rescue stranded villagers and round up livestock drowning in millions of acres of inundated cow pasture.

But as Bolivians commemorate the loss of their Pacific coast in their annual Day of the Sea on Friday, the floodwaters have finally begun to trickle away, leaving freshwater sailors stuck on their old dream of regaining the seashore Chile seized in 1879.

"Just imagine if we had a sea," said Sgt. Albaro Machaca, leaning on the railing on a riverboat parked at Puerto Varador on the swollen Mamore River in Bolivia's still-swampy eastern lowlands. "We'd have had ships where we could have really learned to sail, to really become sailors. Just imagine the ships ..."

CARTAGENA, Colombia -- A colonial gem with the country's priciest real estate, this Caribbean city is Colombia's pride - increasingly popular as a port of call for cruise ships, and aspiring to be the new Cancun with a frenzy of luxury construction.

Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, the king of Spain - the list of celebrities visiting this month alone is rich, the catalog of Colombian notables acquiring Cartagena homes a veritable who's who. An evening carriage ride in the majestically preserved walled city, which has U.N. World Heritage status, is a magical vault into the past.

But Cartagena's efforts to set itself apart from so many other Latin American cities ringed by poverty are failing. No longer, it appears, can it claim immunity from the violence of Colombia's half-century-old civil conflict.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Alvaro Uribe on Sunday rejected allegations in a leaked CIA report that his army chief collaborated extensively with right-wing militias accused of some of the worst atrocities in Colombia's long-running civil conflict.

The leaked CIA report was the basis for a Los Angeles Times article published Sunday that linked Gen. Mario Montoya, a close ally of the president, to a paramilitary group headed by one of the nation's biggest drug traffickers, whose extradition has been requested by the U.S.

The CIA document, which according to the newspaper was based on intelligence gathered by an allied Western agency, said that as head of the army's 4th brigade Montoya worked with the militia to carry out a deadly raid in a poor neighborhood in the city of Medellin in 2002.

CARACAS, Venezuela, March 25 — Colombia’s government disputed a published report on Sunday of leaked C.I.A. intelligence linking the chief of the army to paramilitary death squads, saying any accusations against him should be made formally through the judicial system.

The information in the report, if confirmed, would represent the highest-level connection yet publicly established between military officials in the government of President Álvaro Uribe, a strong ally of the Bush administration, and the paramilitary squads, which are illegal and considered terrorists by the United States. A scandal over ties between some of Mr. Uribe’s allies and the paramilitaries has been dogging him for months.

ALEMÁN'S SENTENCE EASED; DEAL WITH ORTEGA SUSPECTED
the Miami Herald
Mar. 27, 2007

MANAGUA -- The recent easing of the already relaxed conditions for former President Arnoldo Alemán's ''house arrest'' have sparked concerns that President Daniel Ortega doled out a political favor in a bid to consolidate his power and remain in office indefinitely.

Alemán, serving a 20-year sentence for misappropriating $100 million during his 1997-2002 presidency, is now allowed to move freely around the country and not just in Managua, as he did over the past many months.

But the March 16 decision by the director of the penitentiary system has been attacked as a clear example that the unlikely power-sharing pact forged years ago between the conservative Alemán and the leftist Ortega is alive and well.

ARMED FORCES LEAD CUBA TO DEMOCRACY
Opinion
The Miami Herald
Mar. 27, 2007
BY ERNEIDO OLIVA*

It is clearly evident that the Cuban Revolution is fading without its leader, Fidel Castro, even though his critical health issues over the past year remain a ''state secret.'' But even if he overcomes all his health problems, as many of his followers have assured us, he will never be viewed again as the charismatic and strong dictator who held Cuba in his tight reign of misery, corruption and despair for 48 long years.

Bedridden and without hope of recovering soon, Fidel transferred his omnipotent powers to his brother, Raúl. However, the ''Dauphin'' does not appear to have his brother's motivation, personal strength or leadership abilities to continue as the head of a country that is in desperate need of political, economic and social reform.

CHILE'S BACHELET SWEARS IN NEW MINISTERS
The Miami Herald
Mar. 27, 2007

SANTIAGO, Chile -- President Michelle Bachelet swore in six new Cabinet ministers Tuesday in a shake-up prompted by a public transportation debacle that has damaged her popularity.

Bachelet, who took office a year ago as Chile's first female president, fired her chief of staff and three other ministers Monday in a bid to stem protests over a botched public transportation system launched six weeks ago in the capital of Santiago.

The Transantiago - a wholesale overhaul of Santiago's antiquated transport system - began badly, leaving large areas of the city of 6 million, especially working-class neighborhoods, virtually without transportation. Protests broke out daily, with angry people blocking traffic and clashing with police.

Four years since Cuba cracked down on dissent, the more than 300 political prisoners in the country need the world's attention. They remain behind bars for speaking their minds, defending human rights or demanding a voice in their governance. Yet there still is no sign that the regime intends to free them even though there was a power shift at the top eight months ago. If anything, repression has worsened, and hope for constructive change has faded.

Cuba's forgotten political prisoners are victims of a dictatorship that unjustly accuses them of ''crimes'' that do not exist in the free world. Their mistreatment and unjust punishment must be condemned. The international community should ramp up pressure on the government to release them.

People living in a democracy may find it hard to imagine being imprisoned for signing a petition, advocating for free elections or loaning books from a home library, but this is what Cuba does. Four years ago this month, the regime began rounding up 75 activists. They were tried in kangaroo courts and sentenced to as much as 28 years in prison. The sweep was so egregious that Amnesty International declared all 75 activists prisoners of conscience.

GUATEMALA INTERIOR MINISTER RESIGNS
The Miami Herald
Mar. 27, 2007

GUATEMALA CITY -- Guatemala's interior minister resigned on Monday in the wake of a scandal over police investigators' alleged involvement in the grisly murder of three Salvadoran politicians last month.

While President Oscar Berger rejected a congressional declaration expressing a lack of confidence in Carlos Vielman, "he can't force anyone to stay," government spokeswoman Krista Kepfer said. Both Berger and Vice President Eduardo Stein lauded Vielman's performance.

Vielman's replacement was to be named by the president later Monday.

GUATEMALA CITY -- Guatemala named an anti-crime crusader as its first female interior minister on Tuesday.

Adela Camacho de Torrebiarte, 57, will lead the country's police in her new post.

Since 2004, she has served on an advisory security council made up of private citizens who proposed policies to the government. She also was a founding member of the nonprofit Anguished Mothers, formed in the 1990s to pressure authorities to do more about the rising wave of kidnappings.

This is her first government position.

She replaces Carlos Vielman, who stepped down on Monday in the wake of a scandal over police investigators' alleged involvement in the grisly murder last month of three Salvadoran politicians.

GUATEMALA CITY -- (AP) -- Guatemala's interior minister resigned on Monday in the wake of a scandal over police investigators' alleged involvement in the grisly murder of three Salvadoran politicians last month.

While President Oscar Berger rejected a congressional declaration expressing a lack of confidence in Carlos Vielman, ''he can't force anyone to stay,'' government spokeswoman Krista Kepfer said.

Both Berger and Vice President Eduardo Stein praised Vielman's performance.

Vielman's replacement was to be named by the president later Monday.

The charred bodies of three Salvadoran members of the Central American Parliament, which is based in Guatemala, were found along a rural road on Feb. 19. Autopsies determined that two were burned alive, while the third legislator and their driver died before their bodies were set on fire.

COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA - Like scores of his friends and family, Cesar Torrio, a lawyer in Cochabamba, voted for change – for Evo Morales in Bolivia's presidential election in December of 2005. "We all wanted change," says Mr. Torrio, "and Evo was the only one who could bring it."

Now he shakes his head. "This is not what we wanted. He is re-creating a nation with just one identity."

President Morales, an Aymara Indian and former coca-leaf grower, ushered in a new era of hope in Bolivia, quickly becoming a symbol of the poor in his alpaca sweater and promising a new nation for the long-oppressed indigenous majority. Across Bolivia the indigenous celebrated the promises they had fought so long for: a new constitution, control of natural resources, and a shift away from free-market policies in a nation where two-thirds of the population still lives in poverty.

But the indigenous were not the only ones to rejoice. Thousands of middle-class voters, who were tired of the deep divisions in the country, reached out for a figure they likened to South Africa's Nelson Mandela. Analysts say that without their support, Morales could not have won 54 percent of votes.

Today, some of those voters are questioning their choice. While Morales remains a popular president, lawyers, teachers, police officers, and taxi drivers interviewed across the country claim he is governing for the indigenous only and say they disagree with his policies. Many are going to Spain. Others wonder where they fit within the "new Bolivia."

CAP-HAÏTIEN, HAITI - They are derisively called "sangine," which in Creole means "one without soul." Sleeping in alleys and living in the shadows, the street children of Haiti spend their days skipping school, hustling to get enough food to survive, often running afoul of the law, and getting high on paint thinner to try to forget their lot. Their communities and families, if they have them, are too poor to help.

The children are among the most visible signs of Haiti's poverty, even more apparent than the nation's 65 percent unemployment rate. Foreigners visiting the nation are often overwhelmed by the sight of them. But not American Douglas Perlitz.

About 10 years ago, Mr. Perlitz visited Cap-Haïtien – Haiti's second-largest city – where he was soon being followed by "a pile of street kids," he says.

Perlitz, a pastoral minister and volunteer at a nearby hospital, would occasionally come back to town to get to know the kids. Although he didn't speak the language, Perlitz would play basketball and soccer with them, befriending the friendless. One child, Wilnaud Pierre, only 8 years old, especially touched his heart.

ASUNCION, Paraguay -- An outbreak of dengue fever linked to a hot, wet South American summer has prompted charges here of a botched government response and spurred fears that the disease is spreading to neighboring countries.

More than 18,000 people in Paraguay have contracted the mosquito-borne ailment, with at least a dozen fatalities, according to government statistics in this landlocked nation of 6.5 million.

The official number of dengue cases in Paraguay is widely viewed here as underestimating the extent of the outbreak. Most victims in the country are poor and never diagnosed, doctors say. Some medical experts have said the number of cases could be as much as 10 times the official figure, or close to 200,000.

''The government wanted to cover up the problem without admitting the error it committed,'' said Desiree Masi, who heads a physicians group critical of the official response.

RELACIONES BILATERALES
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The United States has contributed "zilch" to Mexico's efforts to combat the nations' joint problem with criminal narcotics gangs, Mexico's new ambassador to Washington said yesterday.

"We are going to need significantly more in cooperation from the United States," Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan said, including increased aid and intelligence and stepped-up U.S. efforts to stop the southward flow of weapons, laundered money and chemicals for the production of methamphetamines.

Sarukhan's comments, in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors, echoed recent criticism by Mexican President Felipe Calder?n. Since his inauguration in December, Calder?n has asserted that the United States is not doing enough to lower U.S. drug consumption or to help Mexico combat traffickers. He has also criticized U.S. border and trade policies as hindering the legal entry of Mexican citizens and goods.

Although Calder?n played the gracious host during President Bush's visit to Mexico this month, Sarukhan said that Mexico is seeking a more businesslike relationship with the United States than the previous Mexican president, Vicente Fox, had with Bush. Although Bush and Fox pledged to have a close friendship and progress on immigration and trade issues, "at the end of his tenure, [Fox] had nothing to show for it," the ambassador said.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- In a March 16 story about Chiquita's payments to Colombia's far-right paramilitaries, The Associated Press erroneously reported that the legal representative of the company's Colombian subsidiary, Giovanny Hurtado Torres, was convicted of smuggling arms on behalf of paramilitaries. Hurtado was jailed for a year in the arms smuggling investigation but released when prosecutors dropped the charges, citing insufficient evidence.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Outraged Colombians called Friday for the United States to extradite American banana executives after the Cincinnati-based fruit giant Chiquita acknowledged making monthly protection payments for six years to illegal groups that killed thousands of people.

The chief federal prosecutor's office said it would ask the U.S. Justice Department for information on Chiquita's role in smuggling 3,000 assault rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition to far-right paramilitaries in the region where the company got its bananas.

With all the hoopla surrounding President Bush's recent visit to Colombia, few seemed to notice the arrival the next day of German President Horst Kohler, on the first visit since 1971 by a German head of state.

But Kohler's visit symbolized a tenuous but nevertheless significant European nod of approval for a shift in Colombia's anti-drug policy, criticized here and abroad over the years as being too much military stick and not enough economic carrots.

In an ambitious six-year plan designed to break the still-firm control by illegally armed groups over large swaths of drug-producing areas, Colombian authorities have outlined a $43 billion strategy that for the first time focuses more money on economic development than military force and the aerial spraying of coca and poppy crops.

Colombian authorities said the so-called Plan Colombia II is the result of the government's own critical analysis of its predecessor, which received $4.5 billion in U.S. aid but had mixed success.

GOVERNMENT SPENDING STRAINS PDVSA
The Miami Herald
Mar. 28, 2007

Venezuela's state oil company on Tuesday reported a 26 percent drop in profit last year amid surging costs, including a sharp increase in spending on social programs backed by President Hugo Chávez's government.

Net profit fell 26 percent to $4.77 billion in 2006, down from $6.48 billion the previous year, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, said in a statement on its website.

PDVSA's falling earnings came during a windfall year when crude prices hit record highs, which had pushed the company's overall revenue to $101.84 billion, up from $85.73 billion in 2005.

But the state-run company said it costs rose sharply from purchases of crude oil, higher royalty and tax payments and a near-doubling in social spending. PDVSA said that ''spending on social development'' skyrocketed to $13.26 billion in 2006 from $6.9 billion in 2005.

BOLIVIA'S VICE PRESIDENT ON INDIGENOUS RIGHTS, COCA CROPS, AND RELATIONS WITH THE US
The Christian Csience Monitor
March 27, 2007

What has been your personal motivation for supporting indigenous causes?

When I was in high school in the 1970s, Latin Americans were taking back democracy from military dictatorships. Practically everyone in my high school was on the left. I was a participant in the political awakening of those times. Back then, you couldn't excite people if you didn't talk about Lenin, Trotsky, Hegel, or Gramsci.

In 1979 I witnessed the first siege of the city of La Paz by Aymaras. It was eye-opening how the siege aroused, among the upper and middle classes, the fear of rebellious Indians. But I was most interested in how this peasant – indigenous – blockade didn't answer to the trade unions. It was a very different thing. Its social impact here in the city, and the power of its language, of its symbols, left a very deep mark on my intellect and on my commitments. That's when I took it upon myself to find out who [the Indians] were, where they came from, what was going on here.

Three things have fascinated me about the indigenous world ever since: first, the history of their struggle for equality, for Indians and non-Indians to be equals before the state and society; second, the question of how to create mechanisms for correcting mistakes in the management of our state and society that have done injustice to the indigenous world; and third, the communal component of indigenous social structures, which I consider to be a vein of a future postcapitalist society, a tiny, almost invisible vein that is nonetheless present.

REGIONAL
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?LA GUERRA OLVIDADA DE WASHINGTON?
The Washington Post
March 23, 2007

Quienes cubrieron la política estadounidense hacia América Latina en los 90 sin duda recuerdan que, por algunos meses cada año, la "guerra contra las drogas" envenenaba las relaciones norte-sur. Al acercarse la decisión de "desertificación" de cada 1 de marzo, Washington expresaba su creciente frustración con la inactividad de sus vecinos del sur en controlar la producción o el tránsito de drogas. La "certificación" era el garrote con el que Washington sancionaba o amenazaba con sancionar a naciones, con la esperanza de forzarlas a cooperar con las prioridades anti-drogas de los Estados Unidos.

La exasperación de los funcionarios estadounidenses era evidente y a menudo se tornaba personal -- con desafortunadas consecuencias. Recuerdo el incidente en el que un funcionario del Departamento de Estado cuestión? la integridad de Carlos Medellín, el entonces ministro de justicia colombiano, solo por llevar ese apellido. Los informados quedaron horrorizados: Medellín era hijo de uno de los 11 magistrados que murieron en la toma del Palacio de Justicia en 1985.

CARACAS, Venezuela -- President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that his administration plans to create "collective property" as part of sweeping reforms toward socialism, and that officials would move to seize control of large ranches and redistribute lands deemed "idle."

The Venezuelan leader, speaking on his television and radio program "Hello President," said the government was "advancing quickly" with a concept of "social, or collective, property" to be included in forthcoming constitutional reforms.

"It's property that belongs to everyone and it's going to benefit everyone," said Chavez, who vowed to undermine capitalism's continued influence in Venezuela.

Chavez did not elaborate, but stressed that collective property must benefit workers equally.