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PARAMILITARY TIES TO ELITE IN COLOMBIA ARE DETAILED
The Washington Post
May 22, 2007
MEDELLIN, Colombia -- Top paramilitary commanders have in recent days confirmed what human rights groups and others have long alleged: Some of Colombia's most influential political, military and business figures helped build a powerful anti-guerrilla movement that operated with impunity, killed civilians and shipped cocaine to U.S. cities.
The commanders have named army generals, entrepreneurs, foreign companies and politicians who not only bankrolled paramilitary operations but also worked hand in hand with fighters to carry them out. In accounts that are at odds with those of the government, the commanders have said their organization, rather than simply sprouting up to fill a void in lawless regions of the country, had been systematically built with the help of bigger forces.
"Paramilitarism was state policy," Salvatore Mancuso, a top paramilitary commander, said last week at a hearing in this city's Palace of Justice. "I am proof positive of state paramilitarism in Colombia."
CLASH OF HOPE AND FEAR AS VENEZUELA SEIZES LAND
The New York Times
May 17, 2007
URACHICHE, Venezuela — The squatters arrive before dawn with machetes and rifles, surround the well-ordered rows of sugar cane and threaten to kill anyone who interferes. Then they light a match to the crops and declare the land their own.
For centuries, much of Venezuela’s rich farmland has been in the hands of a small elite. After coming to power in 1998, and especially after his re-election in December, President Hugo Chávez vowed to end that inequality, and has been keeping his promise in a process that is both brutal and legal.
Mr. Chávez is carrying out what may become the largest forced land redistribution in Venezuela’s history, building utopian farming villages for squatters, lavishing money on new cooperatives and sending army commando units to supervise seized estates in six states.
VENEZUELA LETS COUNCILS BLOOM
The Washington Post
May 17, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Nelly Baric calls herself a Chavista, a die-hard follower of President Hugo Chávez. Roberto Naguanagua doesn't, saying he's an opponent of the populist, nationalist government.
But both Baric and Naguanagua are eagerly participating in one of Chávez's most far-reaching experiments -- community councils that, with money, government consent and popular support, could redraw the way government works in this country. Thousands of councils have been founded nationwide, and they have made decisions on almost everything from trash collection to school construction.
Though no one -- not even Chávez -- has said with certainty just how far community councils will go, many inside and outside government say the idea is to steer Venezuela away from municipal councils and mayors and hand funding and decision-making directly to the people. "If this works, community councils could bury city hall, but something better will be born," said Naguanagua, a teacher who, like Baric, belongs to the council of La Hacienda Maria, in Caracas, Venezuela's capital.
CHURCHES IN CUBA DRAW NEW CONVERTS
The Miami Herald
May. 18, 2007
HAVANA --
Twenty years ago, when Catholic priest Ramon Suarez celebrated Mass at a small church in rural Cuba, only a handful of parishioners showed up for services.
Cuba's official policy of atheism had a lot to do with the spotty attendance, along with intense social pressure that left most people afraid that attending services might get them in trouble, or at least reported to authorities.
These days, churches in Cuba regularly draw packed sanctuaries on Sundays, with membership growing in the country's dominant Roman Catholic denomination, along with Protestant and Evangelical sects.
Even Santeria, Cuba's Afro-Caribbean religion that slaves created by mixing African beliefs with those of their Catholic Spanish masters, has seen a revival in Cuba.
Religious leaders here say dramatic changes in the past decade have firmly re-established the church as an important part of the lives of many Cubans. It seems that religion will play an increasing role in Cuban society in the future as longtime leader Fidel Castro, 80 and ailing, eventually gives way to a new generation.
''Our role in Cuba is growing daily, and relations with the government are improving daily, too,'' said the Rev. Juan Ramon, pastor of Havana's Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. ``But it's like a turtle, not a rabbit. We must be patient.''
'THIS IS A PROCESS THAT WILL TAKE TIME'
The Miami Herald
May. 18, 2007
He is, without a doubt, one of South Florida's most controversial Cuban Americans. In an exile community that is mostly Republican, Joe Garcia was recently elected Democratic Party chairman in Miami-Dade County, after serving as executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation.
To some exiles, García is the man responsible for ideological divisions that prompted many older ones to leave CANF and start their own group.
He says his great passion is helping the island's dissidents, who he believes are key to a free Cuba -- a Cuba the 43-year-old Miami-born lawyer has never seen.
CHÁVEZ MAKES HIS FORCES SALUTE WITH SLOGAN
The Miami Herald
May. 18, 2007
CARACAS --
Venezuelan armed forces members have been ordered to use the Fidel Castro-inspired slogan ''Motherland, socialism or death!'' whenever they address superiors, despite a constitutional ban on political activity by the military.
Gen. Alberto Müller Rojas, head of the presidential general staff, has defended the new order, saying that the military has always been politicized. Under past governments, he said, soldiers did not make political declarations openly, ``but surreptitiously, through the persecution of those who did not share their ideas.''
Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chávez, advocating what he calls ''21st century socialism,'' told a military audience in mid-April that they were obliged to use the new slogan ``without ambiguity and without complexes.''
WHO CONTROLS PARADISE?
The New York Times
May 20, 2007
COSTA Alegre, Mexico
CRUISING along the swerving, mountainous roads of Mexico’s western coast, past trees and vines, blue lagoons and scattered wildflowers, Goffredo Marcaccini stops his Jeep and thrusts his head out the window. “Ahhh,” he croons, inhaling the morning air. “The smell of the earth! Nice, like the scent of a woman!”
His reverie is short-lived. Farther along, he encounters roadside debris, including a bright blue Pepsi can. “Modern man,” he says, wincing, “is the cancer of the earth. We are only here to destroy.”
Mr. Marcaccini is a self-described romantic, a naturalist who waxes poetic about mangroves, giant sea turtles and the beauty of parakeets. He is also an heir to the late British corporate raider James Goldsmith, who once lorded over this richly virginal expanse of nature as though it were his own empire.
'CHANGE WILL COME FOR PRAGMATIC, NOT POLITICAL, REASONS'
The Miami Herald
May. 20, 2007
When Nat Chediak first saw his fellow Cuban-Americans' euphoria over Fidel Castro's departure from power, he was wary. And he recalled a line from a Russian poet who had spent time in Cuba: ``The lion who is raised in a cage weeps for the cage.''
Chediak -- Grammy-winning record producer, author of a dictionary of Latin jazz and founding director of the Miami International Film Festival -- knows about how arts and politics intersect in Cuba.
''It's going to take a while to detect a significant change in the arts, even after Castro's death,'' he said. ``Change will come for pragmatic, not political, reasons -- because it will be good business.''
He cites the example of Spanish filmmakers under dictator Francisco Franco who were expert at ''loading their work with symbolism that were cries for freedom.'' Yet, when freedom came, Chediak said, some of those filmmakers fumbled.
ARGENTINA
CRISIS LOOMS IN ARGENTINA WHILE VOTE NEARS
The Miami Herald
May. 21, 2007
BUENOS AIRES --
President Néstor Kirchner is facing the worst political crisis of his administration less than six months before presidential elections as an investigation into an alleged bribery scheme implicates members of his center-left government.
The 57-year-old Peronist leader remains the favorite to win if he runs for reelection Oct. 28. But allegations that the Swedish construction firm Skanska paid about $4.5 million in bribes to win a contract expanding a gas pipeline to Bolivia could take a toll.
On Wednesday, Kirchner fired two top officials who are under investigation, Fulvio Madaro, president of the government's natural-gas regulator, ENARGAS, and Nestor Ulloa, a financial manager with the state-run Banco Nacion. They were the first in Kirchner's government to leave because of the alleged scheme.
Kirchner aides say the scandal won't reach him and that he favors a free and full investigation.
''If there have been officials involved, we want justice to freely investigate,'' Alberto Fernandez, the president's chief of staff, said Thursday. ``The president has clean hands.''
PROTESTERS DECRY LOSS OF VENEZUELA TV
The Miami Herald
May. 21, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela --
Thousands of protesters carried a blocks-long "SOS" banner through Venezuela's capital on Monday, condemning threats to freedom of expression days before the country is set to lose one of its few remaining opposition-aligned TV stations.
Shouting "We Want Freedom!" and waving Venezuelan flags, demonstrators warned that President Hugo Chavez's plan to replace Radio Caracas Television with a public-service station is part of a broad effort to silence criticism. The banner that snaked through the streets read "Freedom of Expression, SOS" in 10 different langu1ages.
"Threats to freedom of expression affect all citizens equally; it doesn't matter if you are pro-government or against the government," said Rafael Fuenmayor, a reporter from the Globovision 24-hour news channel, who helped organize the protest along with other local journalists.
Globovision is the only other major opposition-aligned channel, though it does not reach all parts of the country. Two other channels that used to be staunchly anti-Chavez recently toned down their coverage.
RCTV is due to go off the air Monday, after Sunday's final day of programming, when the government says its license expires.
CHILE'S BACHELET VOWS TRANSPORTATION FIX
The Miami Herald
May. 21, 2007
SANTIAGO, Chile --
President Michelle Bachelet apologized Monday for failing to fix her capital's public bus system and promised to raise education spending by hundreds of millions of dollars.
"People have the right to be angry and anguished. I understand their indignation," said Bachelet, who devoted her second state-of-the-nation address to transportation problems and underfunded schools, issues that have sparked violent protests and sent her once-soaring approval ratings below 50 percent for the first time.
"It has been a bad, frustrating experience for a majority of Santiago residents, especially the poorer sectors," Bachelet said of the 100-day-old Transantiago system, which has left many neighborhoods without service.
She proposed creating a transit authority, urged Congress to approve US$290 million for 2,000 more buses and other upgrades, and said she guarantees the problems will be solved without raising fares.
Bachelet also said her administration has made real gains in the last year: steady 5 percent economic growth, lower poverty and unemployment, the passage of various women's rights measures, improved health services and the signing of trade accords with several countries.
MEXICAN DRUG VIOLENCE ESCALATES
The Miami Herald
May. 22, 2007
VERACRUZ, Mexico --
The two thoroughbreds sprinted down a country track, a few million dollars in the bettors' kitty and an old-fashioned camera waiting at the finish line.
When the race was over, as veterinarians guided the expensive equines back to their air-conditioned trailers, gamblers at the private track began to argue over the nose-to-nose conclusion. Among them were members of a band of hit men known as the Zetas, employees of the Gulf cartel of drug traffickers.
Let's just wait for the film to be developed, someone said. Then, above the din, another voice rang out. ``I've come to kill you!''
BLOODY ATTACK
A new chapter was being added to the violent saga of Mexico's most notorious drug ring. More than a dozen people might have been killed in the gunfire, an ambush in which the hit men appear to have attacked one another.
COCAINE WARS MAKE PORT COLOMBIA’S DEADLIEST CITY
The New York Times
May 22, 2007
BUENAVENTURA, Colombia, May 15 — Visitors to this city can be forgiven for thinking no place is safe here. Gunfire often echoes through the slums surrounding its port, the country’s most important on the Pacific coast. As larger cities have calmed, Buenaventura has emerged as the deadliest urban center in Colombia’s long internal war.
Soldiers search almost every car at checkpoints on the winding road from Cali. Guerrillas recently fired mortar shells at the police headquarters. The stately Hotel Estación, a neo-Classical gem built in 1928, where executives come to hammer out deals to import cars or export coffee, is guarded by dozens of soldiers in combat fatigues.
“It’s as if we have a little Haiti within Colombia,” said Lt. Nikolai Viviescas, 25, a police officer who was transferred from Bogotá six months ago. “It feels like another country.”
IN MEXICO CITY, BELLS AND BAPTISM, THEN TAMALES AT HOME
The Washington Post
May 22, 2007
MEXICO CITY High up in the bell tower, men pull hard on dangling ropes, filling the square with eardrum-battering clangs. Down below, a man in a sweat-stained cowboy hat strums a guitar, and a woman's high-pitched voice pierces the air.
"Delicious. Hot," she calls out as sweet corncakes turn brown on her grill. "How many will you take? How many?"
A few steps away, deep in that vortex of sound, Barbara Beesne, a 1-year-old with impossibly long, curling eyelashes, lies motionless in her godmother's lap. It's five minutes before noon and, for Barbara, that means nap time. No megaton bells or wandering guitarists or street-side chefs can distract her.
Barbara, dressed in white, is surrounded by babies. Shielded from the sun by a well-worn tent, they are sucking urgently on bottles, squirming, snoozing, crying, cooing, laughing. And more arrive almost every minute.
Today they will all be baptized in one of the Western Hemisphere's largest cathedrals, a stone church with sagging floors that sits atop ruins of Aztec temples. This is a beloved tradition of Mexico City's millions of Catholics -- a baptism at the Metropolitan Cathedral, followed by tamales back home.
COLOMBIAN REBELS WANT PEACE TALKS
The Miami Herald
May. 22, 2007
HAVANA --
Colombia's second-largest rebel group is calling for peace talks with the government to include a cease-fire and a freeze in efforts to reach a free trade deal with the United States.
The leftist National Liberation Army made the declaration on Tuesday during talks with the Colombian government being held in Cuba. Action on the trade pact is stalled in the U.S. Congress amid concerns about Colombia's human rights record and allegations linking the government to murderous right-wing militias.
Under the cease-fire, the rebels "will suspend offensive military actions, sabotage and actions of force to obtain finances," the National Liberation Army, or ELN, said in a statement sent to news media.
But the rebels said the government must end its own "hostilities," by "freezing the process for approval" of a free trade pact with Washington.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Washington's staunchest ally in Latin America, last week lashed out at U.S. lawmakers for treating Colombia like a "pariah" by refusing to pass the agreement while moving forward on similar pacts with Panama and Peru.
GUATEMALA RATIFIES ADOPTION TREATY
The Miami Herald
May. 22, 2007
GUATEMALA CITY --
Guatemala has ratified an international adoption treaty, committing to bring adoptions under government regulation and make sure babies are not bought or stolen.
Guatemalan law currently allows notaries to act as baby brokers who recruit birth mothers, handle paperwork and complete foreign adoptions in less than half the time it takes in other countries.
But U.S. officials have urged Guatemala to tighten up the procedure amid concern brokers were paying or threatening mothers to give up their babies. More than 4,000 babies from Guatemala were adopted by U.S. parents last year, making it the second highest source of U.S. adoptions after China.
On Tuesday, Guatemala lawmakers ratified the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions, which requires that government agencies regulate adoptions to ensure babies have not been bought or stolen.
By ratifying the convention, "we will avoid that adoptions become a market for buying and selling children," said Rolando Morales, chairman of the congressional commission on children and families.
To comply with the Hague Convention, legislators have proposed a separate law that would create a federal adoption oversight agency known as the National Adoption Council.
BRAZIL MINES AND ENERGY MINISTER RESIGNS
The Miami Herald
May. 23, 2007
BRASILIA, Brazil --
Brazil's mines and energy minister resigned Tuesday amid accusations he was bribed by a construction company that obtained contracts to provide electricity to poor rural areas in a program championed by the nation's first working class president.
Silas Rondeau, who headed President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's "Lights for Everyone" program, denied wrongdoing but said in a statement he was stepping down to prevent the controversy from hurting the government's push to bring energy to the poor.
In a statement issued late Tuesday, Rondeau insisted on his "absolute innocence in relation to the accusations levied against me."
Brazilian media have reported that Rondeau accepted $50,000 to steer a contract to the Gautama construction company as part of a much larger scheme involving government money being siphoned off though fraudulent bidding on public projects that were overcharged or never built.
His resignation marked the fourth time in recent years that members of Silva's Cabinet have been forced to out because of corruption allegations, but Silva has remained untouched by the scandals.
BOLIVIAN PRESIDENT BLASTS CAPITALISM
The Miami Herald
May. 23, 2007
LA PAZ, Bolivia --
President Evo Morales called capitalism the "worst enemy of humanity" at a conference of Latin American leftist intellectuals on Tuesday.
A coca-growers' union leader who became Bolivia's first Indian president, the leftist Morales has nationalized oil and natural gas resources as part of his effort to redistribute wealth in South America's poorest country.
"The transnational corporations always provoke conflicts to accumulate capital, and the accumulation of capital in a few hands is no solution for humanity," Morales said at forum in Cochabamba. "And so I have arrived at the conclusion that capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity."
Morales also said Bolivia's new constitution, now being written, would declare Bolivia a pacifist nation and explicitly renounce war. "Instead of making more weapons and bullets to kill humankind, we must concentrate on producing more food," he said.
The president spoke at a two-day conference on the role of media in political efforts to create a new Latin American socialism, sponsored by Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Ecuador. Morales counts Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro as close allies.
BRAZIL: TOO MANY BUMPS IN THE ROADS?
The Christian Science Monitor
May 23, 2007
RIO DE JANEIRO - It's tough getting around Brazil these days.
Go by plane, and the voyage might take days. Equipment failures and strikes or work slowdowns by air-traffic controllers have led to frequent delays over the past six months and caused havoc at airports.
Go by road, and you take your chances on the country's unpredictable highways. Many of Brazil's highways are unpaved, and the ones that are tarred are liable to open up in huge craters at any moment. On several occasions over the past few months, main roads have washed away, taking cars, buses, and trucks with them.
Go by train – well, that's hardly a serious option because there aren't really any trains.
The precarious state of Brazil's infrastructure is drawing renewed attention thanks to a multibillion-dollar government plan to help fix it. No one argues that work needs to be done. But the discussion in Brazil is whether the government's Growth Acceleration Project, or PAC in its Portuguese acronym, is enough. Many are skeptical.
CUBA TO MODERNIZE ITS ETHANOL PRODUCTION
The Miami Herald
May. 23, 2007
HAVANA --
Cuba is quietly modernizing its ethanol-producing facilities, despite Fidel Castro's repeated assertions that making more of the biofuel could starve the world's poor.
The island plans to upgrade 11 of its 17 refineries, which produce up to 180 million liters annually of ethanol from sugar cane, said Conrado Moreno, a member of Cuba's Academy of Sciences.
The refineries currently produce alcohol for use in rum and other spirits, as well as medications and cooking on the island. But the improvements will give Havana the capacity to one day produce fuel for cars, Moreno told reporters at a conference on renewable energy.
Ethanol produced in Cuba is not for cars now, but ''in four or five years, we'll see,'' he said.
In a series of editorials in state-run newspapers, Castro has railed against a U.S.-backed plan to produce ethanol from corn for cars, claiming it will cause prices of farm products of all kinds to spike and make food too expensive for poor families around the globe.
The 80-year-old Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery and stepping aside in favor of a government run by his 75-year-old brother Raúl, the defense minister. Officials insist his health is improving.
ESCALATING DRUG WAR GRIPS MEXICO
The Christian Science Monitor
May 23, 2007
MEXICO CITY - Faced with assassinations of top police officials, death tolls at historic highs, and beheadings in the most innocuous public spaces, Mexico's President Felipe Calderón sent an unprecedented 30,000 troops and police across the country to tackle drug-related violence after taking office in December.
But nearly six months later the terror has only gotten worse, as drug cartels battle for smuggling routes into the US. Officials are now even comparing the violence to the drug wars that plagued Colombia for more than a decade.
More than 1,000 people have been killed this year alone in drug-related violence, according to the Mexican newspaper El Universal. Reporters have "disappeared," innocent bystanders have died, the US has issued travel warnings, and locals whisper about the worst violence they've ever seen.
Yet Mr. Calderón's popularity has also doubled, with two-thirds of Mexicans now approving of his presidency. It is not necessarily because they believe he is solving the problem of insecurity, however. For most Mexicans, analysts say, taking bold action – even if initially unsuccessful – is better than none at all.
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