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COLOMBIA
CEASE-FIRE TALKS LAGGING
The Miami Herald
May. 07, 2007
BOGOTA --
Peace talks between the Colombian government and the country's second-largest leftist guerrilla group have entered a critical stage as the two sides discuss the terms of a cease-fire and the broad outline of the rebels' political future.
At same time, however, both the government and the National Liberation Army or ELN, have threatened to break off talks if no agreement is reached in the current talks, now in their sixth round in Havana.
Adding to the complications, the ELN recently has been fighting the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, while the government is struggling with a scandal connecting it with illegal right-wing paramilitaries.
The government has not made a public statement since the current round of talks began in late April, but the ELN issued an ominous communiqué May 1 that hinted at the difficulties.
''It's clear that we are speaking two different languages,'' the declaration reads. ``And peace is conceived from different sides and [with] very different proposals.''
CHAVEZ THREATENS TO NATIONALIZE BANKS
The Miami Herald
May. 03, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela --
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Thursday threatened to nationalize the country's banks and largest steel producer, accusing them of unscrupulous practices.
"Private banks have to give priority to financing the industrial sectors of Venezuela at low cost," Chavez said. "If banks don't agree with this, it's better that they go, that they turn over the banks to me, that we nationalize them and get all the banks to work for the development of the country and not to speculate and produce huge profits."
It was not clear if Chavez was only referring to Venezuelan banks like Mercantil Servicios Financieros CA and others, or if he was aiming the threat at major international banks that do business in the country, such as Banco Santander Central Hispano SA and Citigroup Inc.
Chavez also warned the government could take over steel producer Sidor, which is majority controlled by Luxembourg-based Ternium SA.
Sidor "has created a monopoly" and sold the bulk of its production overseas, forcing local producers to import tubes and other products from China and elsewhere, Chavez said.
ATTEMPTED HIJACKINGS IN CUBA SINCE 1987
The Miami Herald
May. 03, 2007
May 3, 2007: Fugitive army soldiers try to hijack a plane bound for the U.S., killing a military officer they had taken hostage.
April 11, 2003: Cuban authorities foil the attempted hijacking of a passenger plane to the U.S. from Cuba's Isle of Youth.
March 31, 2003: A Cuban airliner is successfully hijacked to Key West with 32 people on board.
March 19, 2003: Six hijackers force a Cuban passenger plane carrying 29 passengers to fly to the U.S. at knifepoint. U.S. fighter jets force the plane down in Key West.
Sept. 20, 2000: A small Cuban plane, possibly hijacked, crashes in the Gulf of Mexico southwest of Key West. Nine of the ten passengers survive.
COLOMBIAN PARAMILITARY BOSS CHARGED
The Miami Herald
May. 03, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia --
A feared paramilitary boss has been charged with ordering the murders of two union leaders at a coal mine owned by Drummond Co. Inc., an Alabama company which is being sued in a U.S. court for alleged complicity in the killings.
Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, better known as "Jorge 40," is accused of ordering hit men to kill the two men, the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement Thursday.
Former Colombian federal intelligence official Rafael Garcia has said he witnessed the president of Drummond's Colombian subsidiary deliver a briefcase full of money to paramilitaries led by Tovar to pay for the murders.
Drummond officials deny any involvement in the killings or ties to the far-right militias, and the Birmingham, Ala.-based company is not facing criminal charges in Colombia, though the investigation is continuing.
A trial of Drummond for alleged involvement in the murders of Victor Orcosia and Valmore Locarno and a third worker is set to begin July 9 in a U.S. federal court in Birmingham.
VOTERS OUST PRIME MINISTER IN BAHAMAS
The Miami Herald
May. 03, 2007
Nassau, bahamas --
A former prime minister led his opposition party to victory in the bahamas on wednesday, returning to power in elections dominated by questions about the direction of the tourism-driven economy.
Hubert ingraham's free national movement won 23 seats in the 41-seat legislature, while prime minister perry christie's progressive liberal party claimed the other 18, according to the government-owned broadcasting corporation of the bahamas.
"the people of the bahamas have spoken," ingraham said in a victory speech interrupted several times by cheers from thousands of supporters dressed in the party's signature red shirts. He told them christie had called him to concede defeat.
Ingraham, who led the atlantic archipelago nation from 1992 until 2002, seized on scandals involving christie's cabinet, including the resignation of the immigration minister over claims he fast-tracked the residency application of the late playboy playmate anna nicole smith.
OFFICIAL SAYS AMAZON DAMS ON FAST TRACK
The Miami Herald
May. 03, 2007
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil --
The newly appointed chief of Brazil's environmental protection agency vowed Thursday to speed the approval of two hydroelectric dam projects in the Amazon rain forest.
The government argues the dams in the western Amazon are needed for Brazil to meet its growing energy needs, and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has long complained about delays in granting licenses for the dams.
Environmentalists, however, say the dams will destroy a large swath of the rain forest and endanger rare fish.
"We're making an effort to do it (the dam licensing) as fast as possible," said Bazileu Alves Margarido Neto, who on Thursday was appointed acting-chief of the Ibama national environmental protection agency.
CUBA HONORS OFFICER SLAIN BY HIJACKERS
The Miami Herald
May. 04, 2007
PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba --
A Cuban army officer killed during a failed airplane hijacking was buried with military honors Friday, decorated posthumously with one of the communist regime's top medals as officials blamed Washington for his death.
A government statement said the American policy of letting most Cubans stay if they reach U.S. soil encourages violent attempts to leave this island, such as Thursday's incident that led to the fatal shooting of Lt. Col. Victor Ibo Acuna Velazquez by two army deserters.
The headline in the Communist Party newspaper called the hijacking attempt an "act of terror promoted by the United States."
Acuna, a 41-year-old communications engineer, was among eight people being held aboard a plane sitting at Havana's international airport when he quarreled with one of the captors and was shot by the other, officials said. The deserters reportedly were captured later by soldiers, but the government gave few details.
ECUADOR TO INVESTIGATE RIGHTS ABUSES
The Miami Herald
May. 04, 2007
QUITO, Ecuador --
Ecuador's new leftist government has set up a truth commission to investigate alleged human rights abuses committed over the last 27 years, particularly during the right-wing administration of former President Leon Febres Cordero.
President Rafael Correa said Thursday that the four-member commission - composed of a lawyer, two human rights activists and the father of two brothers who disappeared at the end of Febres Cordero's 1984-1988 government - is intended to "halt impunity."
Pedro Restrepo's two sons disappeared in January 1988 and are believed to have been killed by police, who mistook them for Colombian guerrillas. Their bodies were never found.
Interior Minister Gustavo Larrea said the human rights of "hundreds of citizens were systematically violated."
Larrea said there have been 327 cases of political assassinations, torture and disappearances that have gone unpunished.
VENEZUELA STOCKS FALL ON TAKEOVER TALK
The Miami Herald
May. 04, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela --
President Hugo Chavez's threat to nationalize banks caused Venezuelan stocks to fall Friday, while one bank president warned depositors would be worst hit by such a move.
On Friday, Caracas' main stock index fell 2.74 percent, while its index of financial stocks fell 3.12 percent.
The decline was led by Venezuelan banks like Mercantil Servicios Financieros CA, Banesco Banco Universal and Venezolano de Credito whose shares are mostly held by local investors. But BBVA Banco Provincial, owned by Spain's Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA also fell.
Oscar Garcia Mendoza, president of Banco Venezolano de Credito, said Chavez's threat was causing a pre-emptive "flight" from shares and warned depositors would suffer the most from the state's inefficiency if the leader carried out his warning.
"What is going to happen is that everyone's deposits will get penned up ... (and) pass into the state's hands and there will be no more money for anyone," Mendoza told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Garcia Mendoza accused Chavez of trying to deflect attention away from his administration's problems, including the region's highest inflation rate, which over the last 12-month period surpassed 20 percent.
CHAVEZ THREATENS LARGEST STEEL MAKER
The Miami Herald
May. 05, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela --
President Hugo Chavez said Saturday that Venezuela's largest steel maker, Sidor, will not be allowed to make any more exports until it meets domestic needs, and threatened to expropriate the Argentine-controlled company if it resists.
Chavez has criticized Sidor for selling the bulk of its production overseas and forcing local producers to import from elsewhere, saying Venezuelan industry should be given priority.
Sidor's parent company, Luxembourg-based Ternium SA, is controlled by conglomerate Techint Group of Argentina. Chavez said he has summoned Ternium chairman Paolo Rocca from Buenos Aires for talks.
"We're going to pass a law, Rocca. We're going to force you to supply, first and foremost, the Venezuelan domestic market before you take (the steel) to other countries," the Venezuelan leader said at a news conference.
"If you don't agree, give it to me. I'll grab your company. Give it to me, and I'll pay you what it's worth. I won't rob you," Chavez said.
COLOMBIA FINDS 211 BODIES IN MASS GRAVES
The Miami Herald
May. 05, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia --
Forensic teams have unearthed 211 bodies buried in dozens of mass graves near a single town in southern Colombia in the past 10 months, a legacy of fierce fighting in this coca-rich land.
Chief prosecutor Mario Iguaran told a news conference Saturday that investigators exhumed 105 bodies alone on Friday near La Hormiga, 340 miles (540 kilometers) south of Bogota in the province of Putumayo. Most of the victims, who investigators believe were killed between 1999 and 2001, had been dismembered before burial.
Historically a key region for growing the coca plant that is used to make cocaine, the Putumayo jungles near the border with Ecuador are the scene of almost daily fighting between leftist rebels, far-right paramilitaries and state security forces.
CHÁVEZ MAKES ANOTHER POWER GRAB
OUR OPINION: LATEST NATIONALIZATION FORMS PART OF OMINOUS PATTERN
The Miami Herald
May. 06, 2007
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela is not one to make idle threats. He had promised to nationalize the petroleum sector in the oil-rich Orinoco region, and last week he proved as good as his word, taking over Venezuela's last privately run oil fields and thereby arrogating more power to himself and the state at the expense of the private sector. This is not, as Mr. Chávez would have it, a victory for ''the people'' or any such neo-Marxist nonsense, but rather part of a giant power grab that takes Venezuela further down the road to totalitarianism.
The pattern is ominous and unmistakeable. Earlier this year, President Chávez nationalized the CANTV telecommunications company and the nation's largest private electrical company. Then he decided unilaterally not to renew the broadcast license of Radio Caracas Television, one of the few major media outlets that could still muster the courage to criticize the all-powerful president.
While this latter decision is not, strictly speaking, a seizure of assets, it is part of the same power grab. The move silences a critic, intimidates others who might dare to speak up and increases the reach of the state -- Mr. Chávez will create a new ''public-service channel'' on the frequency. The decision has been condemned by a host of international media watchdog groups as a violation of freedom of speech.
COLOMBIA UNEARTHS VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE
The New York Times
May 6, 2007
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, May 5 (AP) — Investigators on Friday exhumed 105 bodies of people they believe were killed between 1999 and 2001 in Putumayo Province in southern Colombian, the chief prosecutor there said Saturday at a news conference.
Most of the victims had been dismembered before burial. Historically a major region for growing the coca plant that is used to make cocaine, the Putumayo jungles near the border with Ecuador are the scene of almost daily fighting between leftist rebels, far-right paramilitaries and state security forces.
Forensic teams have found hundreds of shallow graves in recent months, as demobilized paramilitaries confess their crimes as part of a peace deal with the government.
SHOOTOUT IN MEXICO KILLS 4 SMUGGLERS
The Miami Herald
May. 07, 2007
MEXICO CITY --
Four purported drug smugglers were killed in a shootout with soldiers in western Mexico on Monday, the second deadly clash in a week between traffickers and troops in the same remote, mountainous region.
The clash took place in Apatzingan, 125 miles west of Mexico's capital in Michoacan state, and left three men and one woman dead, said Magdalena Guzman, spokeswoman for the state prosecutor's office.
The Defense Department said in a news release that three soldiers were injured in the shootout. The soldiers were raiding a house of suspected drug traffickers, who resisted with automatic rifle fire and grenades, it said.
Plagued by drug violence, Michoacan is the target of a military-led anti-drug offensive. Last week, five soldiers, including a colonel, and a suspected drug cartel enforcer were killed in a shootout not far from Monday's killings.
PERU'S RAINFOREST: OIL AND GAS RUN THROUGH IT
The Christian Science Monitor
May 7, 2007
POROTOBANGO, PERU - Raised in palm huts deep in the Peruvian Amazon, Gregorio Torres never imagined that below his home was something called natural gas.
Now his Machiguengua Indian settlement in this rain-forest river clearing has solar-powered radio gifted by an international oil company, corrugated tin roofs, T-shirts with company logos, and a shelf of Western medicine.
But this incipient natural-gas boom is bringing new worries, too.
"We want oil companies to leave the rivers and the forests like they found them," says Mr. Torres.
The Peruvian government is increasingly pushing an oil and gas boom through some of the world's most biodiverse rain forests. In 2006, 70 percent of the country's pristine Amazonian rainforest was zoned for oil and gas, up from just 13 percent in 2004, according to a study by groups including Environmental Defense and Oxfam. This year the country is tendering an additional 22.2 million acres – an area larger than the state of Maine – the report states.
And as ethnic Amazonian natives are increasingly lured by hydrocarbon development but threatened by contamination, disease, and culture shock, international supporters are working to press governments, companies, and banks to develop the rain-forest regions in low-impact, sustainable ways.
CUBAN GROUP WANTS DESERTERS SPARED DEATH
The Miami Herald
May. 07, 2007
HAVANA --
A leading Cuban human rights group on Monday urged governments around the world to petition Havana to spare the lives of army deserters who could face a firing squad for allegedly killing soldiers as they fled military bases.
The statement by the non-governmental Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation referred to a deadly attempted hijacking at Havana's main airport last week, as well as a previously unreported December shootout and escape in eastern Cuba.
Signed by veteran human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, the statement noted that Cuban military law calls for capital punishment for deserters older than 20. The two cases of escaped soldiers involved six men, only two of whom were old enough to face a death penalty.
The statement called on organizations and governments around the world to protest capital punishment in Cuba, where several dozen prisoners are on death row.
AS POPE HEADS TO BRAZIL, A RIVAL THEOLOGY PERSISTS
The New York Times
May 7, 2007
SÃO PAULO, Brazil, May 2 — In the early 1980s, when Pope John Paul II wanted to clamp down on what he considered a dangerous, Marxist-inspired movement in the Roman Catholic Church, liberation theology, he turned to a trusted aide: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Now Cardinal Ratzinger is Pope Benedict XVI, and when he arrives here on Wednesday for his first pastoral visit to Latin America he may be surprised at what he finds. Liberation theology, which he once called “a fundamental threat to the faith of the church,” persists as an active, even defiant force in Latin America, home to nearly half the world’s one billion Roman Catholics.
Over the past 25 years, even as the Vatican moved to silence the clerical theorists of liberation theology and the church fortified its conservative hierarchy, the social and economic ills the movement highlighted have worsened. In recent years, the politics of the region have also drifted leftward, giving the movement’s demand that the church embrace “a preferential option for the poor” new impetus and credibility.
CHÁVEZ RATTLES TAKEOVER SABER AT STEEL COMPANY AND BANKS
The New York Times
May 7, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela, May 6 — President Hugo Chávez is deepening efforts to assert greater control over the economy by dictating changes to the operations of a large Argentine-controlled steel maker and threatening to nationalize banks controlled by financial institutions from the United States and Spain.
Markets here are reacting with distress to his latest moves. The main index of the Caracas stock exchange fell 2.7 percent on Friday, while Venezuela’s currency, the bolívar, also weakened about 3 percent, to 3,950 to the dollar in unregulated trading as rich Venezuelans rushed to take money out of the country.
The announcements by Mr. Chávez are part of a broader project to reconfigure Venezuela’s economy to strengthen worker-led cooperatives and state enterprises. Mr. Chávez is also trying to build regional financing alternatives to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to be financed largely by his government.
IN THE DIN OF A PUBLIC HOUSING PROJECT, STRESSES OF LIFE UNFOLD
The Washington Post
May 8, 2007
SAO PAULO For one hour, about 35 women in one of this city's poorest neighborhoods participated in an experiment: a group therapy session designed to help relieve their collective emotional burden.
It was 2:30 on a recent weekday afternoon in Brasilandia, a massive conglomeration of slums and low-income housing units on Sao Paulo's north side. It's not the kind of place that instills a lot of pride among its 250,000 residents. According to some of the women who showed up for the session, it's the kind of place that keeps them from filling out address blanks on job applications, afraid that prospective employers might discriminate against them based on where they live.
"We'll begin now," said Claudia Macedo, the psychologist conducting the session, who sat in one of the plastic chairs arranged in a rough circle. "This is an open space, where anyone can come and go as they wish, and where you can share anything -- concerns, fears, and all the things that are making you feel crazy or preventing you from sleeping well."
MOGUL LINKED TO MEXICO BRIBERY SET FREE
The Miami Herald
May. 08, 2007
MEXICO CITY --
A construction mogul at the center of a bribery scandal that tainted the image of Mexico City's leftist government was released from prison early Tuesday, recaptured and then set free again.
The latest chapter in the three-year saga of Argentine businessman Carlos Ahumada began before dawn Tuesday when he was released from a Mexico City prison after being acquitted of embezzlement - only to have a squad of city police detain him again a few steps from the prison door.
The police wrestled him to the ground and shoved him into a car, though prosecutors later acknowledged that he was merely being served a summons to testify in another case and currently faces no further charges.
He was questioned at a downtown police building for several hours, and finally was released again near midday. Visibly tired and dirty after the scuffle with police, Ahumada - who has accused authorities of trying to silence him - did not want to talk much.
"I'd like to, but I'm very tired, exhausted," he said to throngs of journalists outside police offices. "Please, I want to go home."
Ahumada has described the city's prosecution as a political vendetta in retaliation for a series of videos he made showing him giving large wads of cash to members of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, which governs the city.
ROADSIDE BOMB KILLS 8 POLICE IN COLOMBIA
The Miami Herald
May. 09, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia --
Nine police officers were killed in the deadliest rebel attack this year when a roadside bomb planted by leftist rebels destroyed their passing truck on Wednesday, a police spokesman said.
The heavily armed police unit was supporting a team eradicating coca bushes, the base ingredient of cocaine, near Landazuri, 100 miles north of Bogota, Sgt. Alberto Cantillo, a police spokesman in Bogota, told The Associated Press.
Police said the bomb was planted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Latin America's oldest and most potent rebel insurgency, which helps finance itself through cocaine smuggling.
"Where there's coca, you'll find guerrillas," said Cantillo.
Six other officers were injured, Cantillo said. All were members of a mobile unit operating out of the northeastern city of Bucaramanga.
MEXICO
MURDER CASE AGAINST MEXICAN SOLDIERS DROPPED
The Miami Herald
May. 09, 2007
MEXICO CITY --
Veracruz state prosecutors now say that a 73-year-old grandmother wasn't raped or beaten by soldiers but died of natural causes -- capping a bizarre two-month saga that has roiled the nation's political circles and called into question President Felipe Calderón's commitment to human rights.
The prosecutor's office, which initially claimed that soldiers had murdered the woman, released its revised findings in a news conference late Monday in the state capital, Xalapa.
Juan Alatriste Gómez, a special prosecutor who'd been assigned to review the case, said there were no witnesses to the alleged crime and that an anal tear originally cited as evidence of an assault could have come from any number of ``diverse reasons.''
State prosecutor Emetrio López, who lodged the original charges against the soldiers, said he agreed with Alatriste's findings.
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