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http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=1295
Vigil to Close the SOA/ WHINSEC
November 17-19, 2006
Together We'll Shut it Down!
This November 17-19, thousands will gather at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia for the Vigil to Close the School of the Americas! Following on the heels of our first vote in Congress in seven years, this year's Vigil is shaping up to be a powerful time for movement building and an effective tool in the campaign to close the SOA/ WHINSEC.
2006 Schedule of Events
Read about past Vigils to Close the School of the Americas.
NOVEMBER ORGANIZING PACKET: The November Organizing Packet is a great resource for you and your community as you spread the word about the SOA/ WHINSEC and as you make plans to attend the November 17-19 Vigil to Close the SOA at Fort Benning, Georgia. In it, you'll find information about what to expect at Ft. Benning, logistical information to assist your trip planning, media, legislative, fundraising and outreach tips and resources, and flyers you can reproduce and use in your community. Click here to view or download a hard copy of the packet.
HOTELS: See a list of hotel and other accomodations in and around Columbus, Georgia. Contact Alyson Hayes at the Columbus Visitors Bureau with any questions at 1-800-999-1613.
OUTREACH: You can make a big difference by using a few simple resources at your disposal and reaching out to your local media. Taking a little time to carry out a handful of media-related tasks can profoundly impact the number of people in your area who know about the SOA/WHINSEC issue and the number of people who get involved in the work to CLOSE IT DOWN. Read about how you can Work With Your Local Media! or contact us in the SOA Watch office at 202-234-3440 or email media(at)soaw.org.
TRAVEL: See information on traveling to Columbus, whether by plane, car, bus, train or something more creative.
Click here to check the Ride Board for carpools and busses from your area.
ACCESSIBILITY & INTERPRETATION: Find out more about ASL and English<>Spanish intrepretation services, large print and Braille programs and wheelchair accessibilty.
PEACEMAKERS NEEDED:SOA Watch is looking for Peacemaker Volunteers to work at the vigil this year. Clickhere to read more about how you can participate, and to contact our Peacemaker coordinators.
LOCAL GROUPS: Do you know others in your area that are working to close down the School of the Americas? Connect with others now before heading to Georgia. Click here for a listing of SOA Watch local groups. If your group is not listed, please add your contact information.
Don't see a group for your area? Consider starting one! For more information, contact us at info@soaw.org or at 202-234-3440 or contact your regional representative for more information about those in your region working to close the SOA/ WHINSEC.
Photos by Linda Panetta, www.soawne.org
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/northwest/chi-0611130116nov13,1,6600773.story?coll=chi-newslocalnorthwest-hed
Published November 13, 2006
Immigrant's son to lobby in Mexico to keep her in U.S.
CHICAGO -- The 7-year-old son of a Chicago woman who has taken refuge in a Humboldt Park church as she fights deportation is expected to lobby on his mother's behalf in Mexico this week.
Saul Arellano traveled to Mexico on Sunday and is scheduled to meet with members of the Mexican Senate and Mexican House of Representatives on Tuesday as part of his mother's bid to stay in the United States, said Roberto Lopez, a member of Centro Sin Fronteras, an immigration rights group.
In August, Elvira Arellano defied a deportation order by taking refuge at Adalberto United Methodist Church, where she has lived with Saul, a U.S. citizen.
"He's going to be giving testimony, and they have a resolution in support of Saul and his mother to ask Congress and the U.S. to let them stay here together," Lopez said, noting that Mexican officials invited Saul abroad.
Arellano has said she does not want her son to grow up in Mexico, and her deportation would force him to leave the United States.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs13.5nov13,1,2428510.story
November 13, 2006
McDonald's is bombed in Oaxaca
From Times Wire Reports
Four masked youths tossed gasoline bombs at a McDonald's restaurant in the conflict-torn city of Oaxaca, damaging windows, seats and a play area, police said.
Security personnel at the shopping center extinguished the blaze, police said. The restaurant was closed during the predawn attack.
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http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7B83EBEAB2-379C-4DFC-807B-66EF0F66486A%7D&language=EN
Monday, November 13, 2006
Evo Morales for Unity and Changes
La Paz, Nov 13 (Prensa Latina) Bolivia President Evo Morales asserted on Monday that the unity of the nation headed by the social movement is essential to change the neoliberal model and the colonial ideological thought prevailing in the country for years.
At the massively attended opening of an ophthalmology center in El Alto, co-chaired with Cuban Ambassador Rafael Dausa, the dignitary described the collaboration of the Caribbean island in education and health as essential for his nation.
The changes in Bolivia have begun, and the economic growth and impact of the hydrocarbon nationalization are clear examples of that, he remarked.
The head of state highlighted that Bolivia would get out of poverty and would then contribute solidarity gestures together with nations like Cuba and Venezuela; we will never forget, he stressed.
Morales said that the Bolivian people have no choice than the present process of changes, which he described as irrevocable and representative of an anti-neoliberal ideology.
Ambassador Dausa stated that Cuban cooperation with Bolivia in terms of health and education is consolidating thanks to the efforts carried out by the government of President Evo Morales to improve the people s quality of life.
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http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/11/13/chavez.brazil.reut/index.html
POSTED: 12:10 p.m. EST, November 13, 2006
Venezuela's Chavez warmly greets Brazilian leader
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Brazil's newly re-elected leader visited Venezuela on Monday in a show of support for his fellow leftist, President Hugo Chavez, who is himself campaigning for another term in a December 3 vote.
Chavez and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are probably the two most influential men in Latin American politics and have forged a solid relationship despite representing two sides of Latin America's generally leftist tilt of recent years.
The presidents shook hands enthusiastically and laughed when Lula stepped out of his plane late on Sunday on his first foreign trip since re-election last month.
Chavez, who ordered the arrival to be broadcast live on all national TV stations, put his arm across Lula's shoulders as they chatted at a red-carpet ceremony to greet each other's diplomats.
Lula, a former labor union leader, pushes centrist economic policies that have cheered Wall Street and made him a comfortable partner for Washington. Chavez sells most of Venezuela's oil to the United States but criticizes the superpower for meddling in the region and advocates hard-left socialism.
Lula will promote regional integration with Chavez by inaugurating on Monday a Brazilian-built bridge across the Orinoco River and overseeing work by the countries' state oil companies exploring Venezuela's vast reserves.
The visit helps blunt opposition criticism of Chavez -- Cuba's top ally -- that he is out of touch with modern leaders and also provides the impression that his regional diplomacy is producing concrete economic results.
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http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2796
Extra! November/December 2005
The Op-Ed Assassination of Hugo Chávez
Commentary on Venezuela parrots U.S. propaganda themes
By Justin Delacour
After televangelist Pat Robertson publicly called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frias (700 Club, 8/22/05), the editors of several major newspapers were quick to denounce his outrageous incitement to violence. However, in criticizing the conservative televangelist, the prestige press overlooked its own highly antagonistic treatment of Venezuela’s president, which surely contributed to the heated political climate in which Robertson made his threat.
Even so-called “moderate” columnists have contributed to the deterioration of U.S.-Venezuela relations by distorting the Venezuelan government’s domestic and foreign policy record. Robertson may indeed be “just a garden-variety crackpot with friends in high places,” as the New York Times opined (8/25/05), but the televangelist’s erroneous characterization of Venezuela’s president as a “strong-arm dictator” is hardly distinguishable from, say, Thomas Friedman’s contention that Chávez is an “autocrat” (New York Times, 3/27/05).
In studying the opinion pages of the top 25 circulation newspapers in the United States during the first six months of 2005, Extra! found that 95 percent of the nearly 100 press commentaries that examined Venezuelan politics expressed clear hostility to the country’s democratically elected president.
Consistent with the U.S. media’s habit of personalizing international political disputes, commentaries frequently disparaged Chávez as a political “strongman,” treating him as if he were the country’s sole and all-powerful political actor. U.S. op-ed pages scarcely mentioned the existence of Venezuela’s democratically elected National Assembly, much less its independent legislative role. Commentaries almost invariably omitted the Venezuelan government’s extensive popular support, as evidenced by Chávez’s resounding victory in the August 2004 referendum on his presidency.
Mainstream newspapers rarely publish commentaries by political analysts who sympathize with the Chávez government’s policies of extending education, healthcare, subsidized food and micro-credits to the country’s poor. It’s nearly impossible to find a U.S. op-ed page with commentary like that of Julia Buxton, the British scholar of Venezuelan politics, who argues (Venezuelanalysis.com, 4/23/05) that the Chávez government “has brought marginalized and excluded people into the political process and democratized power.”
U.S. op-ed pages’ collective derision of the Chávez government reveals profound contradictions within the commercial press. While editorial boards parrot official U.S. rhetoric about “democracy promotion” abroad, they have refused to provide space for commentary representing popular opinion in Venezuela. In spite of the fact that recent polls indicate that Chávez’s domestic approval rating has surpassed 70 percent, almost all commentaries about Venezuela represent the views of a small minority of the country, led by a traditional economic elite that has repeatedly attempted to overthrow the government in clearly anti-democratic ways.
In presenting opinions that are almost exclusively hostile to the Chávez government, U.S. commentaries about Venezuela serve as little more than a campaign of indoctrination against a democratic political project that challenges U.S. political and economic domination of South America. The near-absence of alternative perspectives about Venezuela has prevented U.S. readers from weighing opposing arguments so as to form their own opinions about the Chávez government.
The strongman who would be dictator
In assessing Latin American governments, U.S. columnists generally operate on the unspoken assumption that acquiescence to U.S. leadership of the hemisphere is a natural prerequisite to “democracy.” By this definition, Venezuela’s government—which frequently speaks out in opposition to U.S. meddling in the region—is considered “authoritarian.” Gone is the elementary principle that majority rule and popular sovereignty serve as the basic foundations of democracy.
Having no basis to question the Chávez government’s popular mandate, op-ed pages resort to casting the president as heavy-handed. Such negative portrayals of Venezuela’s government were particularly common in the Miami Herald, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, which accounted for more than 75 percent of commentaries about Venezuela.
The near uniformity of the op-ed pages’ distorted characterizations of Venezuelan politics reveals their propagandistic nature. The Miami Herald’s Andrés Oppenheimer called Chávez a “democratically elected populist strongman” (2/27/05), claiming that he has engaged in “piecemeal destruction of the democratic system” (1/30/05). Similarly, the Herald’s editorial board (5/8/05) warned that “democracy remains very much at risk under [Chávez’s] demagogic sway.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady labeled Chávez a “tyrant” (1/21/05) and “strongman” (4/29/05), claiming that he has presided over “the collapse of democracy” (2/11/05) in Venezuela. Three Journal editorials also referred to Chávez as a “strongman” (1/14/05, 3/14/05, 5/25/05), and the editorial board went so far as to suggest that Parade magazine should consider placing Chávez on its annual list of the world’s worst dictators (2/15/05).
Jackson Diehl, the Washington Post’s deputy editorial editor (3/28/05), claimed that Chávez is “well on his way to destroying what was once the most stable and prosperous democracy in Latin America.” The Los Angeles Times (5/29/05) called Chávez a “would-be dictator,” claiming that he engages in “undemocratic tactics.”
Other major U.S. newspapers have cast Venezuela’s president in nearly verbatim terms. The Houston Chronicle (2/18/05) called Chávez “authoritarian” and a “strongman,” while the Chicago Tribune (6/25/05) labeled him “autocratic.” USA Today (4/25/05) editorialized that Chávez “consolidates power in decidedly undemocratic ways,” while the Chicago Sun-Times’ Robert Novak (2/14/05) asserted that Chávez is “solidifying dictatorial power.”
“Democracy and free enterprise”
The U.S. media’s distorted characterizations of Venezuela’s government were typified by Diehl (Washington Post, 1/17/05), who claimed that Chávez is “aggressively moving to eliminate the independence of the media and judiciary, criminalize opposition and establish state control over the economy.”
The Post more explicitly conflated democracy with U.S.-sponsored “free market” policies in a January 14 editorial, in which it asserted that Chávez’s “assault on private property is merely the latest step in what has been a rapidly escalating ‘revolution’ . . . that is undermining the foundations of democracy and free enterprise.”
The notion that U.S.-sponsored neo-liberalism (“free enterprise”) is the only economic model compatible with democracy was further promoted by the Miami Herald (5/8/05), which declared that “the pugnacious Mr. Chávez is determined to push his populist model to the people of the region as a competitor to real democracies.”
Aside from the fact that there is no state-sponsored “assault on private property” in Venezuela, the Post and Herald made no effort to explain how state intervention in the economy negates the Chávez government’s democratic credentials. There is, in fact, a long tradition of pro-development state intervention in Latin American democracies. The Chávez government’s land-reform policies—which form the basis of the Post’s claim that Chávez attacks private property—come in the wake of several democratic experiments in agrarian reform in countries as diverse as Chile, Brazil, Bolivia and Guatemala.
Contrary to the Post and Herald’s warped depiction of Chávez’s economic policies as anti-democratic, those policies largely reflect the broad popular rejection of U.S.-sponsored “free-market” policies in Venezuela. In the Post’s only commentary during the period surveyed that was favorable to the Chávez government, columnist Harold Meyerson (4/13/05) astutely pointed out that Latin America’s recent political swing to the left has come about democratically. Discussing the possibility that Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador might be elected president of Mexico, Meyerson noted:
Coming after the elections of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina and Hugo Chávez (repeatedly) in Venezuela, it would be one more indication, a huge one, that Latin America has rejected an economics of corporate autonomy, public austerity and no worker rights.
Separation of powers
In addition to ignoring the Venezuelan government’s popular mandate to carry out its policies, columnists ignore the Venezuelan National Assembly’s role in formulating major political legislation, such as the recent expansion of the Supreme Court and the Law of Social Responsibility in Radio and Television. U.S. op-ed pages erroneously portray Chávez as the author of all such legislation. For example, Oppenheimer (Miami Herald, 6/5/05) contended that Chávez “single-handedly packed his country’s Supreme Court with loyalists.”
In reality, the expansion of Venezuela’s five-chamber Supreme Court was first debated and then approved by the National Assembly. Pro-government legislators argued that the existing number of judges could not adequately handle their caseloads (Venezuelanalysis.com, 5/27/04). Venezuelan legal expert Carlos Escarrá has pointed out that the court’s constitutional and political chambers were backlogged with thousands of cases (Venezuelanalysis .com, 5/17/04).
In contrast to the U.S. system, in which the president makes judicial appointments and Congress votes on whether to confirm them, Venezuela’s National Assembly selects Supreme Court magistrates. In the process of expanding the court, the Assembly selected 17 new justices from a list of 157 candidates pre-selected by a committee made up of representatives of the offices of the human rights ombudsman, the attorney general and the comptroller general (Radio Nacional de Venezuela, 12/13/04). Only in propaganda can this process be described as Chávez having “single-handedly packed” Venezuela’s court.
Columnists who attack the “stacking” of Venezuela’s Supreme Court also neglect to explain the political context within which the National Assembly voted to increase the number of magistrates. Among U.S. op-ed writers, only the progressive U.S. economist Mark Weisbrot (Miami Herald, 12/20/04) pointed out that Venezuela’s Supreme Court had refused to prosecute military officers who temporarily overthrew the elected government in April 2002.
In light of the court’s failure to defend the country’s democratic institutions against violent attempts to subvert them, Weisbrot argued that it was not unreasonable for the National Assembly to expand the court (Christian Science Monitor, 8/11/04). “If you had a Supreme Court in the U.S. that ruled that the people who participated in a military coup could not be prosecuted, Congress would impeach those justices,” Weisbrot contends.
U.S. commentaries are also inaccurate in asserting that Venezuela’s media law (see sidebar) was simply “pushed through” the National Assembly by Chávez. Venezuelan legislators not only deliberated about the law, but also held in-depth studies of other countries’ communication laws in drafting it. Among the communication laws from which legislators drew inspiration were those of England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Argentina, Mexico and the United States.
When the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress passes a piece of legislation and George W. Bush signs it into law, one scarcely finds U.S. commentaries asserting that the president “pushed” the legislation through a “compliant” congress. However, when Venezuela’s democratically elected National Assembly undertakes a similarly complex process of devising legislation that Chávez subsequently signs into law, U.S. commentaries portray the country’s legislative process as if it were stage-managed by Chávez.
Guilt by association
Another method that op-ed pages use to cast Venezuela’s president as “authoritarian” is to highlight his relationship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In this case, the principle upon which columnists base their argument is not only irrational but also selectively applied. To point to Venezuela’s strategic international alliance with Cuba as “evidence” that Venezuela is copying the Cuban model is no more valid than to argue that the United States is becoming a monarchy on account of its strategic international relationship with the Saudi royal family.
Unfortunately, the faulty logic of classifying a country’s political system on the basis of its international alliances is all too common in op-ed coverage of Venezuela. For example, in charging that Chávez is “eroding the institutions on which democracies depend,” the only supposed evidence that the Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt (5/30/05) offered was Chávez’s “embrace” of Fidel Castro. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal’s O’Grady (4/1/05) labeled Chávez a “Castroite,” and ludicrously claimed (7/8/05) that Venezuela is now a “Cuban province.”
Such commentaries failed to distinguish between the political and economic systems of Cuba and Venezuela. The two governments have a mutual interest in countering U.S. political and economic domination of the hemisphere and reaping the benefits of an agreement whereby Cuban healthcare experts and teachers assist impoverished Venezuelan neighborhoods in exchange for Venezuelan oil at preferential prices.
However, as the U.S.-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs noted (6/21/05), Venezuela’s “new socialism” differs from Cuba’s “real socialism” in that it is “significantly more tolerant of private economic enterprise” and considerably more experimental in its “mixed economy” approach to achieving socialist goals. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution “promotes state intervention in the economy yet tolerates private business, and mobilizes society through [Chávez’s] revolutionary party, but allows political opposition the necessary vehicles to proselytize as well,” COHA noted.
A destabilizing force
Columnists pointed to Venezuela’s strategic alliance with Cuba in charging that Chávez is destabilizing the Western Hemisphere by meddling in other Latin American countries. For example, Diehl wrote (Washington Post, 6/06/05), “In his ever-closer bonding with Havana’s security and intelligence apparatus, his aggressive encouragement of the insurgencies in Bolivia and elsewhere, and his constant stoking of Latin anti-Americanism, the elected but increasingly authoritarian Venezuelan [president] is emerging as the natural successor to a fading Fidel Castro.”
Diehl carelessly ignores the fact that no evidence of Chávez’s supposed meddling in Bolivia has ever been presented. When Roger Noriega, formerly the U.S. State Department’s top official on Latin America, suggested that Chávez was somehow responsible for the demonstrations in Bolivia that culminated in the recent resignation of the country’s president, even the stridently anti-Chávez Miami Herald (6/8/05) could find no proof for the charge. Herald reporter Jane Bussey wrote, “Bolivian government officials and Western diplomats in the region have told the Herald that while the allegations of Chávez’s financial aid to [Bolivian opposition leader Evo] Morales are widespread, there’s been no hard evidence to support the charges.”
Not even Bolivia’s ousted president, Carlos Mesa, was willing to support the claim of Venezuelan interference. “I did not have, while in office, intelligence information” about Venezuela’s alleged intervention in the Bolivian conflict, Mesa told Mexico City’s El Universal newspaper (6/13/05). Despite the lack of evidence of Chávez’s alleged intervention, an April 22 editorial in the Post stated that Chávez has promoted “populist turmoil” in Bolivia.
Aside from neglecting to provide proof for the charge that Chávez destabilizes Latin America, columnists failed to recognize the hypocrisy of accusing Venezuela of meddling in a region where U.S. interference is second to none. In reality, it is the Bush administration—not the Chávez government—that is known to meddle in the internal affairs of Latin American countries. During recent presidential races in Nicaragua (2001), Bolivia (2002) and El Salvador (2004), Bush administration officials openly threatened to penalize the three countries if their citizens elected candidates who opposed U.S. policies.
In addition, the U.S. government has blatantly interfered in the internal politics of Latin American countries by funding allied political organizations through the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and by intervening militarily in the region via arms sales, the construction of U.S. military bases, and the sponsorship of massive counter-insurgency efforts in Colombia. Direct U.S. intervention in the region is hardly a distant memory, with the U.S. invading to overthrow the government of Panama as recently as 1989, and U.S. troops arriving to support an unelected government in Haiti in 2004.
Political uniformity
The U.S. press’s dismissal of the broad popular support enjoyed by the Chávez government, and that government’s success in bringing poor and working-class Venezuelans into the political process, makes it hard to argue that op-ed attacks on Chávez are motivated by a genuine concern for democracy. Instead, newspapers seem to be following the lead of the U.S. government, which has long divided countries into friends and foes less on the basis of political openness or popular legitimacy and more on the question of how subservient they are to U.S. economic interests.
In a rare commentary that took a sympathetic approach to the Chávez government, Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer summed up the hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy (1/25/05):
The fact is . . . that when totalitarian nations like China and Saudi Arabia play ball with U.S. business interests, we like them just fine. But when Venezuela’s freely elected president threatens powerful corporate interests, the Bush administration treats him as an enemy.
As this review of op-ed coverage of Venezuela suggests, this double standard with respect to “democracy promotion” is constantly echoed in major U.S. media, which are economically tied to those same corporate interests. In grossly slanting their op-ed coverage against the Chávez government and in line with Bush administration policy, the press demonstrates a degree of political uniformity that any “would-be dictator” would surely envy.
Please also see the sidebar to this article: Venezuela’s Press Laws Have Potential for Abuse
See FAIR's Archives for more on: Venezuela + Official Agendas
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http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=19584
November, 12 - 10:07 AM
Evo Morales plans to promote production of Bolivian energy
LA PAZ, Bolivia.- The president of Bolivia, Evo Moral, expressed his desire today of developing a program of energy production and water distribution to promote productivity among natives and serve as bases for the progress of the country.
The Bolivian chief executive advanced his intention during the VI Congress of his political party “MAS” in the central city of Cochabamba, before five thousand delegates from the whole country.
In a speech of almost three hours, Morales offered to the socialist congress a combined report of his management as president of the MAS and as Chief Executive of Bolivia.
Among his successes, Morales emphasized on the Constituent Assembly, nationalization of hydrocarbons, the alphabetization plan, the macroeconomic stability and the efforts to take care of the numerous demands from various sectors.
Morales said that since he assumed the presidency, he governs under the ancestral mandates of the "ama súa, ama lulla and ama kella", a Quechua principle equivalent to "be a hard worker, don’t be a liar, don’t be a thief".
The president asserted that "it is necessary to add three more messages: anti-imperialism, anti neo-liberalism and anti-colonialism ", these, “must be recorded in the mind "of Bolivian Socialists.
He added that, to obtain the integral development of the country, the Andean rules must be complemented "with energy, water and production", elements that will supply a possible solution for the yearnings of Bolivian progress.
Morales criticized the mass media work, accusing it to be influenced by his enemies, between which he now included the cattle industrialists for their decision to elevate the price of meat.
He did not forget to thank Cuba and Venezuela for their cooperation, as much in humanitarian projects as in the attempt to obtain a Treaty of Commerce with Andean countries to resist the pressures of commercial globalization.
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http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/nation/15993342.htm
Posted on Sun, Nov. 12, 2006
Latin America policy up in air after election
Democrats bring different outlook to immigration, trade
By Pablo Bachelet / Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON | Democratic control of the House of Representatives and Senate may affect U.S. relations with Latin American and the Caribbean, clearing the way for sweeping immigration reforms but casting a shadow over two crucial free-trade agreements and U.S. anti-drug aid to Colombia.
The overall dynamics of hemispheric relations aren't likely to change dramatically, analysts said. Many Democrats view Cuba and leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez with as much distaste as many Republicans do.
Changes are likely on issues such as immigration and trade, said Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere.
Free-trade agreements with Colombia and Peru that await congressional approval will be in "very serious trouble in a Democratic House," he said. But the House may take up a temporary guest worker program as part of the broad immigration reform that President Bush has advocated, Noriega added.
Both Republicans and Democrats voted to authorize the construction of a border fence, an initiative that infuriated Mexico and many Latin American countries.
Bush signed the bill, but, along with many senators, he prefers a comprehensive immigration plan that includes more guest workers and a path for undocumented immigrants to legalize their status.
Democrats generally have opposed free-trade agreements, arguing that they lack safeguards for workers abroad. Peru is pushing to have its pact with the U.S. passed in the lame-duck session, which begins next week. Colombia's is due for ratification next year.
However, many Democrats have said they want to extend two unilateral trade preference regimes that allow many imports to enter the United States duty-free: the Generalized System of Preferences, which affects countries such as Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina, and the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, which affects Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.
Democrats also favor a textile trade agreement with Haiti, which Republicans from textile-producing states have blocked so far.
Members of the black caucus, including Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and John Conyers of Michigan, have long pushed for better ties with the Caribbean region.
"If the change means a renewed focus on the Caribbean, we welcome it greatly because for some time the Caribbean has been expressing disappointment in the state of the relationship," said Jamaican Foreign Affairs Minister Anthony Hylton.
The Bush administration also is expected to present Congress soon with a new multiyear proposal to continue financing Plan Colombia, a comprehensive anti-drug trafficking program that ended last year and is being funded on a provisional basis.
Plan Colombia includes massive spraying of illegal drug crops and $800 million a year in military and economic aid.
The proposal will draw scrutiny from Democrats on the House International Relations Committee, said Lynne Weil, a spokeswoman for Rep. Tom Lantos, the California Democrat who'll chair the panel.
"Democrats and probably some Republicans on the committee would be eager to shift course in strategy, since coca cultivation levels are about at the same place they were five years ago and $4 billion ago," she said.
Tuesday's congressional elections produced a mixed picture on Cuba. Several supporters of U.S. sanctions on Cuba, such as Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, lost. Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat and a defender of the embargo, won re-election. Rhode Island Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a critic of the embargo, lost.
Mauricio Claver-Carone, the Washington head of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, a group that lobbies to keep the embargo, said more than half a dozen of the losing House Republicans were critical of the Bush administration's policy toward Havana.
"At the end of the day, when all this is said and done, we might come out just as strong," he said.
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htp://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/travel/12machu.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&amp;en=0a50457482b8b149&ex=1163566800&pagewanted=print
November 12, 2006
Taking the Back Roads to Machu Picchu
By Patrick O’Gilfoil Healy
AS it runs through craggy mountain passes and ancient Incan ruins, the fabled Inca Trail in Peru reveals surprise after surprise to travelers hiking its length to the lost city of Machu Picchu. But here’s a new one: To set foot on that fabled Andean footpath, you’ve first got to fight through a three-month waiting list.
A few years ago, the Inca Trail was becoming the Long Island Expressway of central Peru, brimming with trash, tourists and growing concerns about overuse. So the Peruvian government began enforcing strict limits on the number of people allowed on the trail. Right now, only 500 people a day may enter — about 200 tourists and 300 guides and porters.
And so, “alternative” Inca Trails are gaining popularity with travelers unable or unwilling to book a slot three to six months in advance. These treks can be booked a day or two in advance and can cost less than half as much as a hike on the Inca Trail.
Which is how I ended up huddled in the shadow of a 20,500-foot mountain one afternoon last summer, shivering around a table with seven other trekkers as we tried to scarf down plates of cold fish before the snow and wind tore them from our hands.
Unable to beg, borrow or steal a spot on the traditional Inca Trail, we had each decided to take on one of the most popular Plan B routes — a four-day trek past Nevado Salkantay, a jagged, snowy fang of a mountain that lies about 10 miles south of mountaintop Machu Picchu. (Tour operators also offer two other main routes, through the Lares Valley or via the lost Incan city of Choquequirao.)
The Lares Valley sprawls out to the east of Machu Picchu. Hikers generally pass by the snow-capped mountain Helancoma and thread through Andean villages, past mountain lakes and on to Inca ruins in the town of Ollantaytambo. From there, hikers walk or catch a train to Machu Picchu.
Others trek past the remote Inca city of Choquequirao, set on a ridge high above the glacier-cold River Apurimac, southwest of Machu Picchu. From there, it’s about three to five days’ hiking to Machu Picchu. The route is among the longest and hardest paths in the Peruvian Sacred Valley, looping travelers over steep and slick mountain switchbacks, across rivers and waterfalls.
Of course, these paths are often second choices or last-minute alternatives for travelers, and they lack the cachet of actually hiking the Inca Trail. You don’t see the same banquet of Inca ruins, and you enter Machu Picchu from below, rather than crossing beneath an Inca Sun Gate to descend into the city.
Still, the alternative routes are cheap and relatively unspoiled. Some tours cost $500 to more than $1,000. Yet travelers can pay as little as $160 for five days of hiking, guides and meals if they are willing to bargain hard with the hundreds of tour agencies that line the streets of Cuzco, a bustling city nearby that serves as a jumping-off point for many Machu Picchu treks.
The treks wend through remote villages and traverse farmers’ fields. You sleep in backyards, meet shepherds and watch Quechua-speaking women weave blankets, or mantas, on hillsides. You walk the same paths as farmers lugging bananas and avocados to market and see few, if any, other groups of tourists.
“This seemed a little bit less touristy and farther off the beaten path, and that was exactly what I was looking for,” said Amanda Rosenblum, 25, of Los Angeles, who hiked five days west through the Sacred Valley with the tour operator Andean Treks. “I twisted my ankles, I wrecked my knees descending a rock-strewn hillside with no path for an hour, and I fell on a cactus while bouldering. I am so glad I went.”
Though Machu Picchu itself limits the number of people allowed in each morning, travelers can still just show up, buy tickets to the ruins and enter with little waiting. Many tourists simply bypass the treks altogether and catch a four-hour train from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes, the tiny tourist town set just below Machu Picchu. From there, it’s an hourlong hike or a 20-minute bus ride to the ruins at the summit. Tourists who time it right can squeeze the entire trip into one day.
We opted to do it in four.
THE trek began at 5:30 one morning when a friend and I opened our front door in Cuzco to meet a 20-year-old munching on a banana. “I am Coco,” he said, in heavily accented English. “I am the guide. We are late.”
My friend and I, both Americans, crammed our bags into a white station wagon, where a German woman and her Bosnian boyfriend were already waiting. We would climb with them, as well as a pair of Egyptian newlyweds and an Irish woman and her English boyfriend.
We drove two hours to the mountain town of Mollepata, about 20 miles southwest of Machu Picchu. From there, we hopped into a four-wheel-drive Nissan to scale the steep, narrow and bumpy mud path leading to the trailhead.
The driver blared his horn before careening around blind corners and scattered the chickens and horses meandering up the road. A hitchhiking farmer looking for a ride home climbed onto the roof and held on for dear life, as the truck charged uphill like an angry bull.
At the top, we met the rest of the group and set out on foot. In all, we were eight hikers, two guides, two cooks and a shy teenager named Daniel who tended (and slept with) the three mules that lugged our luggage.
Salkantay would loom over us for half of the four-day, three-night hike of about 40 miles. Inca lore personified the mountain as a god whose rivers and rain fertilized the female earth below to create life.
Farmers and ranchers still venerate the mountain every year, offering gifts of coca leaves before shearing their flocks or planting crops in the sparse and rocky soil. We passed stone-walled pens where forked branches stood upright in the center. There, the guides said, the farmers hang their gifts to the mountain.
Salkantay and its sister mountains take their due from climbers, too. Mountains in this chain are steep and prone to avalanches, making them some of the area’s most difficult peaks. In 1995, eight Argentine climbers died scaling Sullunco, a nearby peak. Two years earlier, two British climbers died on Salkantay. All of the Salkantay treks pass around, not over, the mountain.
We climbed north, from a dry valley lined with the varicose veins of old farmers’ paths, toward the first of a series of brutal switchbacks that would lift us from 12,000 feet to just under 15,000 feet in one day. The scrub brush and amber grasses vanished, replaced by moss, cactus and ever colder wind.
“Look,” Coco the guide called to me in Spanish, pointing at the ebony shards of mountaintop surrounding us. “Nine years ago, those were covered in snow. Now, there’s nothing.”
Perhaps. The guides’ accounts of Inca mythology and explanations of natural phenomena were always interesting, but occasionally dubious. After all, nine years ago, Coco was about 11 years old.
Still, up we went, over an exhausting progression of steep switchbacks. The air thinned with each step, and the members of our group began staggering, pausing to try to catch a breath. Our acclimatized guides raced ahead.
I was panting in the thin air and had run out of water when Percy, the other guide, showed me the chunks of snow and frost hidden in shadows that had survived the sun’s beating gaze. We pulled pieces from the cool crevices, dusted off the dirt and ate them.
“Muy rico,” Percy said, flicking a leaf off his piece. “Better than ice cream, no?”
It wasn’t the last time we saw snow. The mountain threw fog and snow flurries on us as we approached the highest point of the trek, a pass at 15,000 feet, which we reached at midafternoon on Day 1. When we woke the next morning, the tents we’d pitched in a shepherd family’s yard were glazed with frost.
The next day, we descended from sierra to selva, from mountains to jungle, leaving an eerie moonscape of giant moss-speckled boulders. We passed isolated mud-brick huts where sick or injured travelers sometimes spend the night.
As we dropped, the air grew sweet and warm and trees sprang up around us. We paused in the tiny village of Andenes and asked the sole shopkeeper for a few snacks.
She shook her head: “Water, coca leaves, nothing more.”
Bamboo-like trees hung off the sides of the mountain as if their trunks were made of rubber. Pollen-yellow flowers bloomed everywhere. A young boy on horseback and his father guided a chain of mules past us. We drank from the mountain waterfalls feeding the rivers below us.
We were sweating and stripping off clothes, but as we looked back across the sunny valley, we could see miles of snow-capped mountains behind us, framed by hills and mesas as green as pool tables.
In the dusty village of Playa, where we camped the second night, we passed the Salkantay Disco Bar, a dark and empty cinder-block cube. We waited in line with locals on their way to work to cross a torrent of river in a metal basket on a zip line.
We hopped into the back of a cargo truck on the third day to shorten the travel time to Hidroeléctrica, a departure point for the train to Machu Picchu. We walked along the rail lines that head toward the ruins and chatted with two railroad workers who rolled by in a tiny beetle-shaped train car.
And then, as we crossed a rouge-red train bridge, Coco pointed up and said, “There it is.” Machu Picchu, as seen from hundreds of feet below, a faint crown of stones set atop a sheer mountain.
In less than an hour, we would walk into the tourist village of Aguas Calientes and rest for the next morning’s climb to Machu Picchu.
When we arrived at the ruins just before dawn, stepping into a landscape of smooth Inca stone, drowsy llamas and grasses as flat as a putting green. After four days of traversing the rugged countryside and 20-family villages, the tourist-filled tableau of Machu Picchu shocked the system. Beautiful, of course, but so tame by comparison with the rest of our journey — like culture under glass.
Our guide caught our attention and pointed toward a line of distant mountains as the rising sun polished away their shadows. And there it was — the peak of Salkantay.
It had followed us all the way.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Prices, which the tour operators state in U.S. dollars, are for 2006 and are per person. Several operators say 2007 prices are likely to go up.
Peru Treks and Adventure, (51-84) 505863, www.perutreks.com, offers several private treks to Machu Picchu a person in groups from 4 to 16 people. Seven days via Salkantay is $770 for a group of 4; $470 for a group of 16. Four days via Lares Valley is $550 for a group of 4; $290 for a group of 16.
Here are options offered by other outfitters in the region:
Q’ente Adventure Trips, (51-84) 222535; www.qente.com. Four days via Lares, $315; five days via Salkantay, $350.
Culturas Peru, (51-84) 243629; www.culturasperu.com Twelve days via Choquequirao, from $1,900. Price includes round-trip flight from Lima to Cuzco.
Sun Gate Tours, (51-84) 232046; www.sungatetours.com Five days via Salkantay, $250. Four days via Lares, $295. Eight days via Choquequirao, $495.
PATRICK O’GILFOIL HEALY, a former reporter for The New York Times, is now traveling through Latin America.
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003405742_mexphones12.html
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Mexico adds fee for international calls to cellphones
By James S. Granelli and Alana Semuels
Los Angeles Times
Say adios to cheap calls to cellphones in Mexico.
The Mexican government began imposing a surcharge a week ago of at least 14 cents a minute to complete international calls to cellphones, doubling or tripling the rates callers pay.
"It's going to hurt the average consumer significantly," said Jeff Compton, an executive at Telscape Communications, a Monrovia, Calif., phone company catering to Hispanics.
Southern California boasts the nation's largest Hispanic population, about 80 percent of whom trace their roots to Mexico. Many still have family there, making Mexico one of the most popular destinations for international calls and a rich source of business for phone companies.
Some 20,000 San Diego customers of Telscape have been paying a penny a minute to call friends and relatives in Tijuana. That cost will climb to 17 cents a minute. Sprint Nextel customers who pay $5 a month for free calls to Mexican border towns and 5 cents a minute to elsewhere now will pay an extra 18 cents a minute.
Daniel Onorato, 17, uses his employer's cellphone to call his parents and two sisters in Mexico City every few days, and each of them uses a cellphone.
"He'd better not call anymore," chided his employer, downtown fruit stand operator Lorena Lopez. Her bill already tops $300 a month.
Gabriel Lasco, 27, a waiter at Maria's Pescado Frito at the Grand Central Market in Los Angeles, already knows how to get around the surcharges to call his father in Mexico City. "I guess I'll have to call the house phone now," he said, "but it's so much less convenient."
But carpenter Emilio Ochoa, 26, will absorb the cost of calling his family in Jalisco.
"I have to call my family, so I'm not going to stop," he said. "I'm not happy about the price, but what can I do?"
Said Lisa Pierce, an industry analyst with Forrester Research: "Look at who the fees hurt: The people who can least afford them."
The surcharge was imposed by Mexico's version of the Federal Communications Commission as part of an overhaul of how mobile phone companies bill their customers. For six years, Mexico has been moving toward a system where the calling party pays all the costs of a call to a cellphone, including long-distance charges. That makes the incoming call free to mobile users.
Mexico's surcharge does not apply to calls made to landline phones in Mexico nor to walkie-talkie systems used by some cellphone carriers. At least four smaller Mexican cellphone carriers have obtained a court order to block the surcharge.
But the country's largest phone company, Telefonos de Mexico, or Telmex, said it would abide by the Mexican authority's new fees. The fees are negotiated individually between Mexican phone companies and their counterparts in other countries.
Most of the money collected will go to companies controlled by entrepreneur Carlos Slim, the world's third-richest man with a net worth of $30 billion, according to Forbes magazine. Slim controls Telmex, which has 94 percent of the Mexican landline market, and America Movil, whose Telcel subsidiary has 80 percent of the Mexican mobile market.
AT&T and Sprint have been alerting their customers about the new fee, but customers still unaware of the higher cost "may suffer sticker shock," said Sprint spokeswoman Kathleen Dunleavy. Verizon Communications will absorb the fee for three months as it notifies customers, spokesman Jonathan Davies said.
Having the caller pay cellphone costs is prevalent in Europe. The trend never caught on here, despite efforts to implement it.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/world/americas/11nicaragua.html?_r=1&amp;hp&ex=1163307600&en=e64c8a2de783d167&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin
November 11, 2006
Ortega Redux: A History Smolders on Cold War Embers
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov. 10 — For most of the world, the cold war ended when the Berlin Wall came down. Not so in the Caribbean basin.
Here the stubbornness of old cold warriors in Washington and the equal tenacity of leftist governments in Cuba and Venezuela have kept a miniature cold war going. Just as it was 20 years ago, Nicaragua now finds itself smack in the middle of the conflict with the election this week of Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist rebel leader, as president.
Mr. Ortega faces a balancing act no politician would envy, both inside the country and on the world stage. On the one hand, to satisfy his supporters, he must fulfill promises to “eradicate poverty,” curb “savage capitalism,” and remain friendly with his leftist allies, Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Venezuela, in particular, could be a source of cheap oil and money for social programs.
On the other hand, he can ill afford to lose more than $50 million a year in United States aid or credit from the International Monetary Fund. Neither can Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, jettison the newly approved free trade agreement between Central American countries and the United States. Just to survive economically, this nation of some 5.6 million people needs to continue exporting textiles and fruit to the United States and receiving remittances from Nicaraguans in the north.
“Nicaragua is basically a welfare state that depends on foreign inputs to survive, remittances and foreign aid,” said an American diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
What is more, Mr. Ortega won with only 38 percent of the vote, and the National Assembly is divided among four parties. Every move he makes will involve negotiation and compromise with conservative lawmakers, who are desperate not to anger the Bush administration.
“The problems facing him make it almost impossible to have a successful presidency,” said Larry Birns, the director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. “He has no arrows in his quiver.”
Mr. Ortega’s precarious position may explain the careful nuance in his recent speeches. He ran on a rosy and vague promise of “jobs, peace and reconciliation,” seldom attacked the United States, avoided Marxist rhetoric and wore his newfound religious convictions on his sleeve. These days he talks more on the stump about God than the proletariat.
For the moment, Mr. Ortega is walking very softly and speaking in dulcet tones. “Today more than ever, the Sandinistas have to be patient,” he said to ecstatic Sandinista Party supporters after his victory this week. “We are not going to fall into provocations or insult anyone.”
Still, once in a while, the old revolutionary flares in him. He has called President Bush “the Reagan of these times,” and asserted that the “Yankee Reagan” wanted “to bring death and destruction to the region.” Sometimes, he rails against the havoc the free trade agreement has wrought on small farms.
Since the election, he has taken pains to calm businessmen, assuring foreign investors on Wednesday that he will protect property rights in exchange for help combating poverty. “No one is going to allow the seizure of property big or small,” he said. He has also reached out to his political opponents, saying he will keep in place reforms limiting the president’s power.
Yet at his victory speech later the same day, Mr. Ortega made it clear that he would not be Washington’s lackey. He thanked his leftist “brothers,” Mr. Castro and Mr. Chávez, then took a dig at Washington, saying it was not the Sandinistas who broke off relations after the 1979 revolution. “It was the reverse,” he said.
He also said he would push the country, which currently sells more than 60 percent of its exports to the United States, to join the anti-United States trade association Mr. Chávez wants to organize. And he said he would seek trade agreements with Europe and South America. “We have to know how to make our economy grow not depending on only one market,” he said.
So far, the Bush administration has taken a wait-and-see attitude in the face of what seems like two different Ortegas. A State Department spokesman, Gonzalo Gallegos, said the United States’ cooperation with Mr. Ortega would be “based on their action in support of Nicaragua’s democratic future.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Castro and Mr. Chávez have used Mr. Ortega’s victory to feed their own propaganda machines.
In Havana, Mr. Castro put out a statement saying the victory “fills our people with joy, at the same time filling the terrorist and genocidal government of the United States with opprobrium.” In Caracas, Mr. Chávez claimed he and Mr. Ortega would be “uniting as never before” to construct a socialist future.
The outcome of this tug of war hinges on what steps Washington takes, several experts on the region said. The Bush administration has many high-ranking officials who were involved to one degree or another in the covert war against the Sandinistas and Mr. Ortega in the 1980s, among them Robert M. Gates, the man Mr. Bush put forward to be the new secretary of defense.
So even though Nicaragua is hardly a threat to national security, the memories of the 1980s may influence the Bush administration’s policies, some experts say. “One of the big questions is, independent of what Ortega does, what approach will the U.S. take?” said Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America, an independent research group.
People who know Mr. Ortega worry his temper will get the best of him if Washington tries to put pressure on him.
“The worst thing that could happen is if Daniel Ortega extends his hand to Bush and Bush rejects it,” said Sergio Ramírez, who was the vice president in the late 1980s under Mr. Ortega. “What will happen is that he’s going to say, ‘Fine, I will go with Chávez.’ ”
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-09-waiver_x.htm
Updated 11/10/2006
U.S. seeks better ties by aiding militaries
By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Concern about leftist victories in Latin America has prompted President Bush to quietly grant a waiver that allows the United States to resume training militaries from 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries.
The administration hopes the training will forge links with countries in the region and blunt a leftward trend. Daniel Ortega, a nemesis of the United States in the region during the 1980s, was elected president in Nicaragua this week. Bolivians chose another leftist, Evo Morales, last year.
ON DEADLINE: Will the move help U.S. influence or cause more trouble?
A military training ban was originally designed to pressure countries into exempting U.S. soldiers from war crimes trials.
The 2002 U.S. law bars countries from receiving military aid and training if they refuse to promise immunity from prosecution to U.S. servicemembers who might get hauled before the International Criminal Court. The law allows presidential waivers.
The White House lifted the ban on 21 countries, about half in Latin America or the Caribbean, through a presidential memorandum Oct. 2 to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The training is conducted in the USA.
A ban on giving countries weapons remains. Commercial arms sales are not affected, said Jose Ruiz, a U.S. Southern Command spokesman.
The training ban had resulted in a loss of U.S. influence in the region. The issue gained urgency after a string of leftist candidates came to power in Latin America. Rice said this year on a trip to the region that the impact of the ban had been "the same as shooting ourselves in the foot."
China stepped into the gap. Ruiz said China "has approached every country in our area of responsibility" and has exchanged senior military officials with Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile and Cuba and provided military aid and training to Jamaica and Venezuela.
The ban remains in effect for some countries. Venezuela, whose fiery President Hugo Chávez is a critic of the Bush administration, remains ineligible because it is on a State Department list of countries alleged to have permitted the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation and forced labor.
Chávez is up for re-election in December and leads in the polls. Cuba is also off-limits because of a long-standing U.S. embargo against Fidel Castro's regime.
Ruiz said efforts are being made to transfer money this year to begin training foreign officers from eligible countries.
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http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2133
Thursday, Nov 09, 2006
Venezuela’s Chavez Welcomes Democrats’ Victory in U.S. Election
By: Gregory Wilpert – Venezuelanalysis.com
Caracas, November 9, 2006 (Venezuelanalysis.com)— In an extensive press conference of over four hours with representatives from the international media, Venezuelan President Chavez welcomed the U.S. Democratic Party’s success in Tuesdays elections and touched on many other issues. He also discussed his government’s achievements, Daniel Ortega’s victory in Nicaragua, Latin American integration, relations with the Bush administration, and plans for a second full term.
Optimism about Democratic Win
Chavez called the vote against Bush’s Republican party a “battering” and a “punishment vote” for the Bush administration’s policies, referring to the war in Iraq, laws that limit civil liberties in the U.S., such as the Patriot Act, and the high level of military spending in the U.S.
Later on, Chavez also said, “I believe that what is happening in the United States today was destined.” “We see [the democrats’ win] with optimism, not for Venezuela, but for the world,” he added. “While they [the U.S. government] clashes with us, this is nothing compared with what is happening in Iraq.”
Chavez then recalled how he was able to have a dialogue with President Clinton. “I received various emissaries from President Clinton,” said Chavez, emphasizing that such discussions were conducted quietly, “without convoking a press conference.” Also, the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela at the time, John Maisto, never said anything against Venezuela. “Now [after election], hopefully, the Democratic Party will come out with the best it has, the best of its principles,” he exclaimed.
Recalling the 2004 presidential campaign, Chavez told of how the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, made overtures to contact him, via Citgo, and that Kerry sent warm greetings at the time. This gave him some hope that if Kerry were to win, a relationship of mutual respect with the U.S. could be started. However, a few days after the Citgo meeting, Kerry’s campaign came out with a strong anti-Chavez statement, which Chavez attributed to an error within the Kerry campaign, to “infiltrators” and thus decided not to respond publicly to the statement. Instead, he sent a private message to Kerry, saying that he doesn’t ask Kerry to put on Chavez’s trademark red beret. Instead, “If Kerry has to say that Chavez is a tyrant, fine, but then, once elected, we talk.”
“We are confident and optimistic that this new correlation of forces [in the U.S.], which reflects the prevalent public opinion, will be well interpreted by the leaders of the Democratic Party,” said Chavez. “Hopefully the conscience of the people of the United States, who voted against the war, who voted against Bush, hopefully the Democratic Party and its leaders interpret this correctly… Hopefully they will stop being policemen of the world.”
Chavez then went on to recount how numerous efforts to establish a dialogue with the U.S. failed. Mexico’s President Vincente Fox, Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, Brazil’s ex-president Henrique Cardoso, France’s Jacques Chirac, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, all tried to mediate between Bush and Chavez. According to Chavez, he agreed to all of these efforts, but none of them went anywhere because Bush declined to accept their efforts. Some, such as Fox, even tried to mediate several times, every time to no avail. Chavez concluded, “There is no mediation with insanity.”
Promises to Go Into Opposition Peacefully, Should he Lose Vote
Turning to domestic issues, Chavez said that he would turn over power peacefully to his opponent, should he lose the election. “If they win the election, without any problems whatsoever, I would turn over the presidential sash to them and the next day I would be in the opposition,” said Chavez. “But, if we win again, I ask that they have the honorability, for the first time in all these years, to recognize the reality – I believe they will be better off for it in the future.”
Explaining that the true populists are in the opposition, not him, as is usually claimed. “I am a revolutionary,” said Chavez, “not a populist.” Instead, referring to opposition candidate Manuel Rosales’s proposal to provide all poor Venezuelans with a stipend from the country’s oil revenues, Chavez said, “What these people [the opposition] have invented is the non-plus-ultra of populism and irresponsibility.”
Speculating that the opposition might be tempted to call fraud and to cause disturbances after the vote, Chavez said, “I hope … that the opposition takes responsibility for what they say and that they do not start running around shouting ‘Chavez is a tyrant!’ If someone were to go onto TV to call for a coup, fine, go ahead, but take responsibility for it.”
Socialism is the Goal
Asked what his government’s plans are for instituting socialism in his next term, should he win the presidency again on December 3rd, Chavez responded that the most important emphasis would be on “socialist ethics.” In earlier speeches Chavez explained that this implies an emphasis in favor of solidarity and against individualism and consumerism.
Another important element for the implementation of socialism of the 21st century, as Chavez has been calling his project ever since January 2005, would be the creation of socialist democracy. This, explained Chavez, involves the consolidation of “participatory, popular, and protagonist democracy.”
Next, it would involve the creation of a socialist productive economic model, with the emphasis on self-management, in cooperatives or in co-managed workplaces.
According to Chavez, Venezuela’s effort to create socialism is its own, original, and “Bolivarian” model, in reference to Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar. Chavez also called it “indo-American socialism,” explaining that indigenous peoples of the Americas already practiced a form of socialism, which would have to be recovered. Finally, it is not a model that would be imposed on Venezuela from above, but is to be constructed by Venezuelans themselves.
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http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2132
Thursday, Nov 09, 2006
Chavez Congratulates Nicaraguan Presidential-elect Daniel Ortega
By: Michael Fox – Venezuelanalysis.com
Caracas , November 8, 2006 (Venezuelanalysis.com)— Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez congratulated Nicaraguan Presidential-elect, Daniel Ortega this Tuesday, on his official win in Nicaragua’s Presidential elections.
With 91% of the votes counted, Ortega--the head of Nicaragua’s Sandinista party and Nicaraguan president from 1985-1990--was pronounced the winner of the elections on Tuesday, winning 38% of the vote, 9% more than his closest rival, Harvard-educated, Eduardo Montealegre, of the newly formed, Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance. Under new Nicaraguan electoral rules, the winner of the presidential elections must have at least 35% of the vote, and lead his/her opponent by at least 5%, in order to avoid a runoff.
“We're happy here. We're very proud of you,” said Chavez in a phone call to Ortega, which was televised on Venezuela state television, and reported on by Reuters. “Now like never before, the Sandinista revolution and the Bolivarian revolution unite, to construct the future, socialism of the 21st century.”
“I am convinced that in the same way we achieved this victory today, the Venezuelan brother [Chavez], on December 3rd will also achieve a new victory giving continuity to this struggle for justice, peace and solidarity among the people,” said Ortega according to Reuters.
But the cards are not clear about the political direction of Ortega’s presidency, 16 years after the former guerrilla was defeated in the 1990 Nicaraguan elections, and after 2 subsequent failed re-election attempts.
According to the AP, Ortega has admittedly toned down his more radically socialist stance of the 1980s. He has promised to support a regional free trade agreement with the United States and maintain good relations with Washington. His running mate, Jaime Morales, a former Contra commander and once a staunch Ortega enemy, commented that the first thing they will do is talk with all the businessmen “to maintain their confidence.”
Nevertheless, Chavez has welcomed Ortega’s win with open arms.
“The Nicaraguan President-elect has already been officially recognized, Lula also won and moreover by a large margin, all of this fills us with optimism,” said the Venezuelan President according to Union Radio.
In an interview with NPR on Sunday, Nicaragua’s election day, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, (and head of the Carter Center, who sent a delegation to observe the elections) verified that although there were some “minor problems” with delays at some of the voting sites, he believes that this year’s elections were set to be “much better than in the past.”
Nicaraguan elections, he continued, are now “a much more careful and meticulous process and much more uniform throughout the country than anything we've ever seen in the United States.”
The run up to the Nicaraguan elections was highly conflictive, with the United States lobbying hard against Ortega. U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua Paul Trivelli, openly opposed him during the campaign and even Oliver North--the former White House aid under Reagan who was at the heart of the Iran-Contra debacle--made an appearance to ask Nicaraguan voters not to support the Sandinista leader.
Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, stated on Monday that the United States would respect the will of the Nicaraguan people. The U.S. has now accepted the results of the election and Ortega’s victory.
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http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20061108151446352
Thursday, November 09 2006 @ 10:47 AM PST
Worldwide Direct Action to Take Place in Support of Those Struggling in Oaxaca on November 20
Contributed by: Anonymous
On November 20, blockades will be set up to show the Mexican government we mean business. We are calling upon YOU to join in these blockades. That could mean blockading the consulates’ websites, jamming their phone lines with calls about the conflict in Oaxaca, occupying the offices of the consuls, or shutting down the roads around the consulates in whatever way you see fit.
Worldwide Direct Action to Take Place in Support of Those Struggling in Oaxaca on November 20
On October 27, paramilitaries in Oaxaca, Mexico murdered Indymedia journalist Brad Will. He is one of dozens who have lost their lives at the hands of pro-government forces while participating in the largely nonviolent resistance to government oppression in that region. Mexican president Vicente Fox used Brad’s death as a pretext to send 4,000 federal police into the city of Oaxaca; these forces are systematically brutalizing the population.
The people of Oaxaca have not backed down – through days of courageous fighting, they have managed to protect their radio station at the university, repelling machine gun wielding armored police with only sticks, stones, and hope. On November 5, tens of thousands marched through the streets of Oaxaca, calling for the federal police to leave.
The only reason that hundreds more have not yet been killed in Oaxaca is that the Mexican government fears the response that would engender in Mexico and across the world. Those who have organized solidarity demonstrations at Mexican consulates can congratulate themselves on helping, however slightly, to deter the Mexican government from ordering a bloodbath.
That bloodbath will still take place, however, unless we continue to escalate the pressure upon President Fox’s government to withdraw federal forces from Oaxaca. The EZLN has announced that it will help coordinate a nationwide shut-down on November 20. This must be matched with international actions to show that the world has not taken its eyes off Oaxaca, that on the contrary, the mobilization in support of those who struggle there is only gathering momentum.
On November 20, blockades will be set up to show the Mexican government we mean business. We are calling upon YOU to join in these blockades. That could mean blockading the consulates’ websites, jamming their phone lines with calls about the conflict in Oaxaca, occupying the offices of the consuls, or shutting down the roads around the consulates in whatever way you see fit.
If we do not show Vicente Fox that paramilitaries and federal forces cannot brutalize Oaxaca with impunity, the blood of an entire murdered resistance movement will be on our hands. Now is the time to act in solidarity with those who struggle in Oaxaca, in solidarity with the Zapatistas who have called on us to support them, and in solidarity with all who struggle against government and capitalism across the world.
Actions are already being planned in cities around the US. Please plan actions in yours.
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http://granmai.cubaweb.com/ingles/2006/noviembre/juev9/46felipe.html
Havana. November 9, 2006=
”The economic war unleashed by the United States against Cuba qualifies as an act of genocide!”
Speech by Felipe Pérez Roque, foreign minister of the Republic of Cuba, under issue 18 of the General Assembly agenda, titled “The necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061109/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/nicaragua_elections
Wed Nov 8, 2006
Ortega reaches out to Latin leftists
By TRACI CARL, Associated Press Writer
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - A beaming Daniel Ortega, who spent the 1980s fighting a U.S.-backed insurgency, said in his presidential victory speech Wednesday night that he would work closely with other leftist leaders in Latin American, while rejecting U.S. Republicans and the Iraq war.
After spending the day in meetings aimed at calming critics shaken by his return to power, Ortega gave a rousing speech before a sea of supporters calling for increased trade with all countries, including the United States. He blasted naysayers who warned his victory would scare away investors, saying "days have passed, and the country is calm."
In a veiled reference to the U.S. warnings against his return to power, he said: "The sovereignty of Nicaragua has triumphed!"
And he informed the crowd that the American people had thrown Republicans out of Congress in elections on Tuesday "because they are bent on maintaining a war that has been rejected by the entire world."
"I hope that the U.S. government listens to its people and pulls its troops out of that country," he said.
Mixing revolutionary songs with calls for peace and love, the speech echoed many of Ortega's campaign promises and showed the tug-of-war he faces in the next five years as Nicaragua's leader.
He has promised to fight for the rights of the poor, eradicate poverty and stay close to leftist leaders like Cuba's idel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. This while maintaining relations with Washington and building on the newly approved Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States.
U.S. State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said Wednesday that cooperation with Ortega and his Sandinista colleagues will be "based on their action in support of Nicaragua's democratic future."
Ortega thanked his leftist "brothers" in Latin America, including U.S. foes Chavez and Castro.
Castro, a key backer of Ortega's leftist government in the 1980s, said Ortega's win "fills our people with joy, at the same time filling the terrorist and genocidal government of the United States with opprobrium." Chavez has said he and Ortega would be "uniting as never before" to construct a socialist future.
But Ortega also says he has changed since his 1985-90 presidency, which saw Soviet-backed Nicaragua descend into economic chaos under radical economic policies, including property seizures, and destruction from the U.S.-financed Contra insurrection.
On Wednesday, the new leader reassured business leaders that their investments were safe and promised to improve labor and environmental laws while respecting property and business contracts.
"No one is going to allow the seizure of property big or small," he said, adding: "We need to eradicate poverty, but you don't do that by getting rid of investment and those who have resources."
Chris Berry, one of the business leaders who met with Ortega, said he was more worried about possible U.S. sanctions against Ortega than the man himself.
"My fears aren't really about Ortega," said Berry, general manager and part owner of the Pelican Eyes resort in San Juan del Sur who holds both American and Nicaraguan citizenship. "He's among a group of wealthy men who want to protect their investments."
Second-place presidential candidate Eduardo Montealegre told a local television show on Wednesday that he would "use every connection I have to make the relationship with the U.S. work."
"We can't afford to give Ortega an excuse to let his only support be Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez," the Harvard-educated banker said, adding: "I will become an important channel so he doesn't fall into Chavez's hands."
The victory capped Ortega's 16-year quest to get his old job back. After losing the presidency to Violeta Chamorro in 1990, he ran two consecutive, unsuccessful presidential campaigns.
Ortega's party appears to have maintained most of its 38 seats in Congress, but the right was split. Montealegre's new Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, which broke away from the Constitutionalist Liberal Party of former President Arnoldo Aleman, robbed the ruling party of its 41-seat plurality. Each party appears to have about two dozen seats and it was unclear if the rival Liberal parties would unite against Ortega.
As an opposition leader, Ortega forged several alliances of convenience with his old foe Aleman, whose backers revolted against outgoing President Enrique Bolanos when the he oversaw the prosecution of Aleman on corruption charges.
Those agreements stripped the presidency of key powers, so Ortega will need to rely heavily on Congress' support when he takes office Jan. 10.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061109/wl_nm/nicaragua_election_dc_34
Wed Nov 8, 2006
Nicaragua's Ortega slams U.S. over Iraq By Kieran Murray
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Reuters) - Nicaraguan leftist President-elect Daniel Ortega tried on Wednesday to allay U.S. and business leaders' fears over his Marxist revolutionary past but he also took a swipe at Washington and its war in Iraq.
Ortega, who led Nicaragua through a civil war with U.S.-backed Contra rebels in the 1980s, bounced back to power in Sunday's presidential election and is now trying to win support for an assault on deep poverty in the country.
He met with conservative rivals and investors on Wednesday, promising to keep the economy stable and work with the United States, his old Cold War enemy.
But he criticized the Iraq war, saying American voters made clear in congressional elections on Tuesday in which Democrats made big gains that it was time to end the military occupation.
"I hope the U.S. government listens to its own people and soon pulls its troops out of Iraq and puts an end to the war," Ortega said at a victory rally where thousands of supporters set off fireworks and waved the black-and-red flags of his Sandinista Party.
He said Republicans paid the price at the polls for "sticking to a war that is rejected by the whole world."
Washington worries Ortega will join a bloc of radical leaders in Latin America headed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Ortega first seized power in a popular 1979 revolution and has for years been close to Castro. He referred to both Chavez and Castro as "beloved brothers" at the rally on Wednesday.
Some in Nicaragua fear an alliance with Cuba and Venezuela could spark a new confrontation with the United States.
Ortega, 60, tried to ease concerns over his domestic plans by offering to work with former foes in rebuilding a country devastated by the Contra war, which only ended after he was voted out of power in 1990.
"I am not contemplating dramatic, radical changes in the economy, which has stabilized in recent years," he said, while calling on the rich to help finance his war on poverty.
CHAOS
Sandinistas confiscated many businesses and farms in the 1980s. The policies combined with a U.S. economic blockade and the war plunged the coffee-producing nation into chaos.
Ortega says he learned his lesson and has dropped Marxism for a center-left program. He vowed on Wednesday to prevent land seizures and work with the International Monetary Fund to protect hard-won economic stability.
Business leaders say they are giving him the benefit of the doubt but will keep a close eye on his policy decisions.
"There are worries, some apprehension. A lot of people were affected in the 1980s and the person who led that process is now president-elect," Erwin Kruger, president of the country's leading business group, Cosep, told Reuters.
Ortega was helped back to power by divisions among right-wing politicians and voter anger after three straight pro-U.S. governments did little to help the poor.
When he takes office in January, he will try to walk a political tightrope, pulling in help from Chavez and Castro for anti-poverty programs without upsetting the United States.
Many here think it is an impossible balancing act.
The White House says he will have to earn U.S. support by showing his commitment to democracy, while Chavez claimed a new ally in his so-called Bolivarian revolution, named after 19th-century South American liberation hero Simon Bolivar.
"Now like never before, the Sandinista revolution and the Bolivarian revolution are together. On to build the future, the socialism of the 21st century!" Chavez told Ortega in a telephone chat broadcast on Venezuelan state television.
Chavez has extended his influence in Latin America by giving cheap oil to allies and paying for free medical care and literacy for thousands in the region.
Ortega will need that kind of help as he tries to shore up support in the second-poorest nation in the Americas.
"This is a poor country. We need schools, oil, jobs. Daniel can't do it himself and the Americans won't help him. Chavez will help us," said Antonio Rios, a part-time laborer.
(Additional reporting by Ivan Castro)
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Viernes, Noviembre 10, 2006= Oaxaca News Report
http://aztlannet-news-blog.blogspot.com/2006/11/viernes-noviembre-10-2006-oaxaca-news.html
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http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/609/609_04_Mendoza.shtml
November 10, 2006= A striking teacher from Oaxaca describes...
“Our fight for social and economic justice”
Interview with Fernando Mendoza
++++++++++++++++
What you can do! To add your name to this letter--as well as for information on the struggle in Oaxaca and on events to honor Brad Will--visit the Friends of Brad Will Web site. @
http://www.friendsofbradwill.org/
Oaxaca Video Collective Needs Your Support.
http://elenemigocomun.net/368
Email= justin@riseup.net
BRADLEY: In Memoriam
http://video.indymedia.org/en/2006/11/551.shtml
Video= Mexican government killed american journalist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o22L-xEVRqY
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http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3688
November 8, 2006
Oaxaca Fights Back! Laura Carlsen, IRC / Editor: John Feffer, IRC
Laura Carlsen is director of the IRC Americas Program in Mexico City, where she has worked as a writer and political analyst for the past two decades. The Americas Program is online @ http://americas.irc-online.org/
In regional lore, Oaxacans have a reputation for being like the tlacuache. A recurring figure in Mexican mythology, the tlacuache plays dead when cornered. But woe to the enemy who thinks the battle is over. The small but fierce creature merely awaits a more propitious moment to fight back…
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Liberation Now!!!
Peta-de-Aztlan
Email= sacranative@yahoo.com
Sacramento, California, Amerika
http://picasaweb.google.com/peta.aztlan/Aztlannet_News_ALBUM
Full HTML version of stories may include photos, graphics, and related links
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Key Links=
* http://www.centralamericanews.com/
* http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/chiapas95.html
* http://granmai.cubaweb.com/ingles/
* http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/
* http://www.mexicodaily.com/
* http://www.mylatinonews.com/
* http://www.southamericadaily.com/
* http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/
* http://www.vidaenelvalle.com/front/v-english/
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