Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Paraguay winner means more leftist leaders in Latin America: Associated Press

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gXamzE-yMowW5WUwbEKDTdetEcFQD906F6GO2

Paraguay winner means more leftist leaders in Latin America

By BILL CORMIER – 19 hours ago

ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) — The victory of the "bishop of the poor" in Paraguay's presidential election expands a wave of leftist leadership across Latin America and further isolates the few remaining conservative governments.

Once Fernando Lugo is inaugurated on Aug. 15, the only right-leaning governments in Latin America will be Colombia, El Salvador and Mexico — and arguably Peru, where a left-leaning populist party has gradually edged to the right.

"The triumph of comrade Fernando Lugo is ... yet another stone in the foundation of this new Latin America that is just, sovereign, independent — and why not, socialist," Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa gushed during a visit from Argentina's new leftist President Cristina Fernandez.

In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, hours after toppling the world's longest-ruling party, Lugo repeated his distaste for labels: "I'm not of the left, nor of the right."

But the former Roman Catholic bishop has said that Marxist-influenced liberation theology inspired his advocacy for the poor, and his victory clearly pushes Paraguay toward the left from the Colorado Party, which has ruled through dictatorship and democracy since 1947, including 35 years under brutal anti-communist Gen. Alfredo Stroessner.

Latin America's leftward tilt began with the arrival of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez a decade ago, then continued with new presidents in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

"Paraguay's election is just further evidence that Latin America's political geography has changed in basic ways," said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank.

That said, there's a lot of political space between those leaders. Chavez has nationalized foreign companies and called President Bush the devil. Chile's Michelle Bachelet is a great booster of free-trade who Bush calls "charming."

Lugo, 56, may well find himself somewhere in between. His Patriotic Alliance for Change includes an eclectic array of socialists, centrists and even conservatives, all of whom will be fighting for a voice in his government.

He said Monday that his top priority will be to help Indians mired in poverty after spending much of his campaign traveling to poor Indian villages, where people told him they often go hungry.

He also promises agrarian reform and said he will take steps to ease the plight of 300,000 landless peasant families who work in cotton and soybean fields at paltry wages for rich landowners.

And he whipped up nationalistic fervor — and drew votes — by vowing to seek more revenue from Brazil from the world's biggest hydroelectric project, the Itaipu Dam on the two countries' river border. Paraguayans feel they don't get a big enough share of the revenue under a contract that expires in 2010.

Gloria Rolon, news editor of the Paraguayan newspaper Ultima Hora, said Lugo would clearly form a leftist government, "but how far left?"

The conservatives in Lugo's coalition will prevent him from doing anything radical, she said, and the Colorado Party still holds a congressional majority, control of the judiciary and a vast state apparatus.

"For this government," she said, "dialogue will be a necessity."

As for relations with Washington, Lugo told the AP he wants friendly ties with all countries, but vowed not to be "submissive" to powers large or small.

The U.S. signaled willingness to work with him. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the elections are a "step forward" after Paraguay's "rather difficult history in terms of the development of democracy."

Lugo told the AP he would not move to the presidential palace, remaining instead in his modest house in a middle-class suburb. He said the first lady would be his eldest sister, 66-year-old Mercedes, who he described as "a woman worn out by hard work ... but she has always been my counselor."

Lugo is the first bishop ever to become president of a country. Both Paraguay and the Vatican ban clergy from seeking political office, so Lugo resigned in December 2006. But the Vatican said bishophood is "for life," even as the head of the Paraguayan Bishops Conference suggested Lugo risks excommunication.

In his interview Monday with the AP, Lugo issued a personal apology to the pope for his incursion into politics and said he hoped to return to his post as bishop after his five-year term as president.

"I love my church, and I don't want to abandon it," he said, adding: "I decided to serve my country as president. If this bothers the Holy Father, I ask his forgiveness."

Associated Press writers Pedro Servin in Asuncion and Jeanneth Valdivieso in Quito, Ecuador, contributed to this report.

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Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

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C/S

Monday, April 21, 2008

Protectionist Congress Losing Latin America: Latin Business Chronicle

http://www.latinbusinesschronicle.com/app/article.aspx?id=2315

Monday, April 21, 2008

Protectionist Congress Losing Latin America

IGNORED REALITY: The congressional leadership, here represented by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ignored the remarkable record of Colombia. (Photo: US House of Representatives)

Congress should reverse its decision to suspend action on the U.S.–Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement and bring it to a favorable vote.

BY JAMES ROBERTS
AND RAY WALSER

In American election years, a theme sure to grab the nation's attention is who "lost" a certain country. In 1952, it was "Who lost China?" In 1980, it was "Who lost Iran?" In 2008, voters may rightfully begin to ask who lost an entire region. In this case, it will be "Who lost Latin America?"

Few pieces of legislation have commanded broader support in the press among U.S. foreign policy leaders of both parties and with Latin American diplomats and specialists than the U.S.–Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement.

Before a committee of the House of Representatives on April 10, Organization of American States Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza was asked whether the U.S. trade agreement with Colombia was good for the Hemisphere. He answered with a resounding "Yes." Insulza, the former Foreign Minister of Chile, a country with more free trade agreements than any other nation in the world, knows that economic growth and increasing prosperity are natural consequences of free trade.

The Chilean government's track record of strengthening its market-based democratic institutions through steadily increasing trade has launched Chile on the enviable path to emerge as Latin America's first developed nation.

MISGUIDED READINGS

How many times have legislators on the Hill said, "We ought to listen to what our neighbors to the South say"? We should follow their recommendations on important issues. It is disappointing that the majority on Capitol Hill, who voted on April 10, 2008, to put the Colombia trade agreement on ice indefinitely, are too busy listening to their own rhetoric and questionable arguments about past human rights violations in Colombia and misguided readings of our own economic woes to hear the great outcry from south of the border in favor of the agreement.

If Colombia's human rights record of violence against labor unions is as terrible as leftist opponents of the Colombia agreement allege, why did Congress recently vote overwhelmingly to grant one-way access to the U.S. market for products from Colombia through its recent renewal of the Andean Trade Preference legislation?

It is irrational to punish American workers and businesses for Colombia's tragic history of violence by refusing to approve the Colombia agreement, which is the only way that the U.S. will achieve two-way trade with that country. American workers will gain new job opportunities through the increased U.S. exports to Colombia (about $1 billon per year) that will result from the tariff-lifting provisions of the free trade agreement that open the door to U.S. exports. Have we forgotten that Colombia's economy has been growing at one of the fastest rates in Latin America?

DECLINING VIOLENCE

When President Álvaro Uribe entered office in 2002, violence was indeed ripping apart the very fabric of the Colombian nation. Combined, the narcoterrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) had over 50,000 combatants in the field. Since 2002, with additional U.S. help under Plan Colombia and in accordance with President Uribe's Democratic Security strategy, the number of combatants has declined by at least 75 percent. Today, only the discredited FARC, with less than 10,000 fighters, represents a significant menace to the government as it ruthlessly uses the hostages it holds to leverage international attention and concessions.

The overall murder rate in Colombia has dropped by 40 percent, kidnappings are down by 83 percent, and terrorist attacks have decreased by 76 percent. Murders of trade unionists have dropped even more, by 75 percent, with only 11 killings thus far in 2008. While these murders are deplorable, there is no indication that the government of Colombia had any involvement in them. In cases that were heard in court, the majority of the homicides were found to be for nonpolitical reasons.

Trade unionists, an estimated 70 percent, are heavily concentrated in noncompetitive public-sector unions and represent less than 5 percent of Colombia's work force. Labor spokesmen in the private sector tend to favor completing the agreement. Moreover, the government is actively investigating all acts of violence and threats against unionists. With dubious logic, the U.S. Congress wants to punish the Colombian government that has done so much to improve the situation.

Unfortunately, the congressional leadership ignored this remarkable record of progress under President Uribe and forced a vote along party lines on April 10, 2008, that will delay indefinitely any consideration of the pending U.S.–Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement. This choice reneged on the commitment in the Trade Promotion Authority statute that Congress passed in 2002, when it pledged that trade agreements negotiated by the executive branch before June 30, 2007, would receive a straight up-or-down vote within 90 legislative days of submission by the President to Congress for approval.

STAKES ARE HIGH

A race is on for influence and, ultimately, for power in the Western Hemisphere. Strangers from the Eastern Hemisphere, from China to Russia, from Europe to Iran, are interested in trade and secure supplies of resources, minerals, and energy. These less constrained outsiders with little oversight arrive daily in places like Bogota and Panama City with new offers for trade and investment. While we elect to sit on the sidelines, others move to cut deals and cut us out.

Substantial stakes are on the table in Colombia. The U.S. government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars since 1999 in, and has achieved significant progress through, Plan Colombia in addition to spending four years negotiating the free trade agreement with Colombia. All of this is now placed in jeopardy by Congress's decision this week to alter established rules and break faith with the Colombians. In the 500-plus days since the U.S. and Colombian governments signed the trade agreement in August 2006, U.S. businesses and workers have already lost the opportunity to export more than $1 billion worth of American-made products and services duty-free to Colombia while Congress has dithered and played politics with trade.

Congress has sent a loud and frightening signal to all of our friends in Latin America and beyond: Ignore what we say and watch what we do. The vote against the agreement has translated into a significant loss of face for President Uribe and the entire Colombian nation, as well as a potentially devastating blow to U.S. prestige and influence in the entire Andean region.

Meanwhile, Congress's action on April 10 is seen as a vote of "No Confidence" in the Colombian people and will be a public relations victory for Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and the FARC narcoterrorists he is trying to legitimize in order to undermine the Uribe government. Chávez vows to drive out the "U.S. imperialists" and have sway in the "Gran Colombia" that was (briefly) headed by Simon Bolivar 200 years ago. Colombia is the bull's eye in Hugo Chavez's quest to become the final political and economic arbiter in the Andes.

COLOMBIA DESERVES BETTER

Colombians and all of our other friends in Latin America deserve better: They deserve the support of all Americans. Congress should reverse its decision to suspend action on the U.S.–Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement and bring it to a favorable vote, sealing a permanent bond with our allies and friends in Colombia and signaling to the entire continent that the United States has not lost interest in Latin America. This will show that the United States is not retreating: that it stands ready to make a strong, stable, and democratic Colombia a pivotal point for continued and expanding relations with the Western Hemisphere.

James M. Roberts is a research fellow for economic freedom and growth in the Center for International Trade and Economics and Ray Walser is a senior policy analyst in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

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Monday, March 31, 2008

Cesar Chavez Day: United Farm Workers Co-Founder Dolores Huerta Reflects on the Life and Legacy of the Legendary Labor Activist

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/31/cesar_chavez_day_united_farm_workers

March 31, 2008

Cesar Chavez Day: United Farm Workers Co-Founder Dolores Huerta Reflects on the Life and Legacy of the Legendary Labor Activist

Cesar Estrada Chavez, legendary labor activist, civil rights leader and founder of the first successful farm workers union, would have been eighty-one years old today. Events are planned across the country to honor his life and legacy. Thousands marched in his memory over the weekend, and nine states recognize March 31st as an official holiday. We speak with Dolores Huerta. [includes rush transcript]

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Guest:

Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers and longtime comrade of Cesar Chavez.

Rush Transcript

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Cesar Chavez Remembered—Plight of Strawberry Workers (3/31/1998)

AMY GOODMAN: Today is the birthday of Cesar Chavez, the legendary labor activist, civil rights leader and founder of the first successful farm workers union. He would have been eighty-one years old today. Events are planned across the country to honor his life and legacy. Thousands marched in his memory over the weekend. Nine states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin, recognize March 31st as an official holiday.

The man who led the nationwide nonviolent struggle for the rights and dignity of farm workers was born in Yuma, Arizona in 1927. His family became migrant farm workers after the Great Depression. He began his life as a community organizer in 1952 with the Community Service Organization, a Latino civil rights group. Ten years later, he founded the National Farm Workers Association, which would later become the United Farm Workers of America, led the union for the next three decades, and the strikes and boycotts he organized helped realize several important victories, including the 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act to protect farm workers.

This year also marks the fortieth anniversary of Chavez's twenty-five-day water-only fast in California at the height of the five-year grape strike and boycott. It ended March 1968, just a few weeks before the assassination of one of Chavez's heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Cesar Chavez was fasting to recommit the farm workers' movement to nonviolence.

In a moment, I'll be joined by longtime labor activist Dolores Huerta. She co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Chavez in 1962. But first, a clip of Cesar Chavez. He was speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in November of 1984, a few months after he had launched the third and longest grape boycott.

CESAR CHAVEZ: Twenty-one years ago last September, on a lonely stretch of railroad track paralleling US Highway 101 near Salinas, thirty-two bracero farm workers lost their lives in a tragic accident. The braceros had been imported from Mexico to work on California farms. They died when their bus, which was converted from a flatbed truck, drove in front of a freight train. Conversion of the bus had not been approved by any government agency. The driver had tunnel vision. Most of the bodies laid unidentified for days. No one, including the grower who employed the workers, even knew their names.

Today, thousands of farm workers live under savage conditions, beneath trees and amid garbage and human excrement, near tomato fields in San Diego County, tomato fields which use the most modern farm technology. Vicious rats gnaw at them as they sleep. They walk miles to buy food at inflated prices, and they carry in water from irrigation ditches.

Child labor is still common in many farm areas. As much as 30 percent of Northern California's garlic harvesters are under-aged children. Kids as young as six years old have voted in state-conducted union elections since they qualified as workers. Some 800,000 under-aged children work with their families harvesting crops across America.

All my life, I have been driven by one dream, one goal, one vision: to overthrow a farm labor system in this nation that treats farm workers as if they were not important human beings. Farm workers are not agricultural implements. They are not beasts of burden to be used and discarded.

AMY GOODMAN: Cesar Chavez, speaking November 1984 at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. I'm joined now in Chicago by activist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, longtime comrade of Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Dolores.

DOLORES HUERTA: Hi. How are you doing, Amy?

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. As you listen to Cesar Chavez, your thoughts?

DOLORES HUERTA: Well, we know that we still have a long way to go, that even though in California we were able to bring toilets into the fields and cold drinking water, rest periods, the right to organize, unemployment insurance, we know that in most of the United States of America, farm workers still do not have some of those basic, basic social labor rights that other workers have. And so—but I really do believe at this point in time it will be almost impossible to get those benefits on a state-by-state basis. I think we're going to have to wait 'til we get a new president—hopefully Hillary Clinton—so that we can start, you know, making some of those—getting some of those laws on the national basis, like workers' compensation, where if workers get injured in the field, that they—somebody will pay the disability for them, somebody will pay their doctor bill for them, and then, of course, the right to organize, which farm workers, of course, were left out of the national law back in 1935.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the greatest obstacles to forming the union, to organizing back when—well, you founded it with Cesar Chavez.

DOLORES HUERTA: Well, it's always been the racism of the employers and the fact that they do not see the workers, as Cesar said in his talk to the Commonwealth Club—they do not see them as people. And as long as they don't see them as people, then they don't really feel that they have to have those rights.

But we can also say that in this administration, that all of the labor unions have suffered tremendously, and it's been extremely hard for labor unions to be able to organize under the current Bush administration. And, of course, when we think about other workers, when we think of farm workers, it's even harder.

And now, of course, with all of this anti-immigration hysteria, when so many people have been deported, so we have a situation now, for instance, in both California and Arizona, where for the first time since 1986, when we passed the amnesty bill, we now have these Bracero programs, these foreign worker programs, where workers are being brought in to work without having the right to residency or the right to citizenship.

This has happened just recently, because so many deportations have taken place, where so many farm workers and other workers have been deported.

AMY GOODMAN: Dolores, I wanted to play another clip of Cesar Chavez speaking in 1984. This is about the importance of the farm workers' struggle to all people of Latino descent in the United States.

CESAR CHAVEZ: All Hispanics, urban and rural, young and old, are connected to the farm workers' experience. We had all lived through the fields, or our parents had. We shared that common humiliation. How could we progress as a people, even if we lived in the cities, while the farm workers, men and women of our color, were condemned to a life without pride? How could we progress as a people, while the farm workers, who symbolized our history in this land, were denied self-respect? How could our people believe that their children could become lawyers and doctors and judges and businesspeople, while this shame, this injustice was permitted to continue?

Those who attack our union often say, "It's not really a union. It's something else: a social movement, a civil rights movement. It's something dangerous." They're half right. The United Farm Workers is, first and foremost, a union, a union like any other, a union that either produces for its members on the bread and butter issues or doesn't survive. But the UFW has always been something more than a union, although it's never been dangerous if you believe in the Bill of Rights.

The UFW was the beginning. We attacked that historical source of shame and infamy that our people in this country lived with. We attacked that injustice, not by complaining, not by seeking hand-outs, not by becoming soldiers in the war on poverty; we organized.

AMY GOODMAN: Cesar Chavez in 1984. Dolores Huerta, if you could talk about the United Farm Workers' strike, grape boycott, the one that lasted five years, how you organized this to this national level to—ultimately led to its success? People like Robert Kennedy, who would later be assassinated, of course, joining with the United Farm Workers and talking about the importance of the dignity of the farm workers and, most importantly, their pay.

DOLORES HUERTA: Well, it was actually millions of Americans that didn't eat any grapes or didn't shop as stores that carried grapes that actually brought the growers to the table, and we were able to get those first contracts to get those benefits that I mentioned for the farm workers.

And referring to Robert Kennedy, you know, Cesar did that first fast that you mentioned earlier; for twenty-five days, he went with—had a water-only fast, only took water and holy communion, and Senator Robert Kennedy joined Cesar when he ended that fast in 1968. And that fast was, of course, for nonviolence, and the grape boycott was also a nonviolent economic sanction that we were able to use against the grape growers. But it really showed that the power of nonviolence still continues to work. And, of course, it was the people of the United States that all came—fourteen million Americans that stopped eating grapes that made this possible for—to bring the growers to the negotiating table.

So this is, I think, Cesar Chavez's message, is that, number one, nothing is going to change unless we change it; number two, that we have to work together to be able to make those changes and that we have to work together in a nonviolent way and reach out to everybody, to be inclusive, so that we can bring justice to our world.

And, of course, farm workers today continue to feed us. So many of those farm workers out there are undocumented, and we know there's anti-immigrant hysteria that's happened. So many of those farm workers today are suffering. And so, I think part of Cesar's message, of course, would be also to call upon everyone to consider this, that the undocumented workers that are in our country are the ones that are not only feeding us, but taking care of our children, you know, doing our gardens and cleaning our buildings, preparing our food. And these are the same people that Cesar was working for, that he dedicated his life for.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to a break, but I want to ask you to stay with us, Dolores Huerta. She is in Chicago, Illinois, one of the nine states that celebrate today, March 31st, Cesar Chavez's birthday, as an official holiday. This is Democracy Now! We'll be back with her in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest, Dolores Huerta in Chicago. I want to play a final clip of Cesar Chavez, talking about the future of the farm workers' struggle and the immigrant rights movement, as he saw it in 1984.

CESAR CHAVEZ: We have looked into the future, and the future is ours. History and inevitability are on our side. The farm workers and their children, and the Hispanics and their children, are the future in California. And corporate growers are the past.

Those politicians who ally themselves with the corporate growers and against farm workers and the Hispanics are in for a big surprise. They want to make their careers in politics. They want to hold power twenty and thirty years from now. But twenty and thirty years from now, in Modesto, in Salinas, in Fresno, in Bakersfield, in the Imperial Valley and in many of the great cities of California, those communities will be dominated by farm workers and not by growers, by the children and grandchildren of farm workers and not by the children and grandchildren of growers.

Like the other immigrant groups, the day will come when we win the economic and political rewards which are in keeping with our numbers in society. The day will come when the politicians will do the right thing for our people out of political necessity and not out of charity or idealism. That day may not come this year. That day may not come during this decade. But it will come someday. And when that day comes, we shall see the fulfillment of that passage from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament: the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. And on that day, our nation shall fulfill its creed, and that fulfillment shall enrich us all.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Cesar Chavez. Dolores Huerta, Chavez's view on immigration, the issue of illegal immigrants being used by the growers to take the jobs of migrant workers?

DOLORES HUERTA: Well, it wasn't so much the issue of them taking the jobs of migrant workers. In fact, the United Farm Workers was always the largest organization of undocumented. And when we started the union, Cesar and I actually legalized hundreds and hundreds of immigrants, because when the first Bracero program ended back in 1963, then we actually legalized over a half a million of the ex-braceros without any legislation. It just sort of happened.

And then, of course, in 1986, I actually worked in Washington for four months to get the amnesty bill, and we had 1,400,000 undocumented farm workers then that became legalized. And now, of course, it's time for another legalization. So, it was always trying to get justice.

The one issue that we always had with the farm workers union and building the union was to keep out strikebreakers. And sometimes people would confuse this, will say you're against undocumented. We have never been against undocumented. We've actually been on the forefront of legalization for people who were undocumented and continue to be so to this day. The farm workers union has offices where they actually help people become legalized, and we also have offices in Washington, D.C. They're working continuously to try to get legalization for the farm workers and for other workers, for that matter.

AMY GOODMAN: Dolores Huerta, there is a state holiday, nine states, including the one you're in, in Illinois, honoring Cesar Chavez today, his birthday. Is there an effort to make it a federal holiday?

DOLORES HUERTA: Yes. Actually, there is a national effort right now that is going on, and Joe Baca, who is the head of the Latino Caucus in the Congress, has actually introduced a bill to make Cesar's day a national holiday. And actually, there's another bill that you might be interested in that's by Congresswoman Hilda Solis to make all of the places where Cesar lived and worked—to make them historical sites. But that is currently being blocked by the Republicans in the Senate right now. But we have hopes that that will be able to pass.

And I think Cesar's statement was very prophetic in what he mentioned about the role of the Latinos. We've seen that the Latinos have been extremely effective in this last election in terms of supporting Senator Clinton, and they have actually made a really big mark because of their voting. And in California, they actually voted thirty times more than the other populations. So I would say that I never thought of Cesar as a prophet, but obviously with his last statement that he did, he did show that.

The other thing I want to mention is this, is that in some of Cesar's greatest moments, like during his fast—you know, he did three fasts: the first one for nonviolence, the second one for people to get the political courage that they needed to fight for themselves, and the third one was against pesticides. And that was the fast that he did for thirty-six days in Delano to bring attention to the economic poisons that are being put on our food. The point I wanted to make, Amy, was that sometimes his voice was louder when he didn't say anything, because during all of those three fasts, Cesar never was able to speak.

When Senator Kennedy came to Delano to break that first fast, you know, he didn't speak at all. But yet, his voice was so loud. And that was kind of like that silent voice of justice, and it still is, of course—we can hear the ramifications of his voice on this day, March the 31st, where so many states and so many places are having events and parades, marches, luncheons, breakfasts, whatever, masses, honoring Cesar Chavez. That voice of justice of his is very loud, and it still is resounding throughout our country today.

AMY GOODMAN: Dolores Huerta, I want to thank you very much for being with us, joining us in the studio in Chicago, Illinois, co-founder of the United Farm Workers with her longtime comrade Cesar Chavez. Today, he would have been eighty-one, his birthday celebrated as an official holiday in nine states. We'll see if it will be celebrated by the entire country, if the federal effort to succeed in making his holiday—his birthday a federal holiday succeeds. Thank you.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

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Friday, March 28, 2008

Deconstructing the IAPA War on Venezuela

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3308

We cannot win without also winning the media war for the minds and hearts of people! Imagination is more important than only intelligence. ~Peta

Deconstructing the IAPA War on Venezuela

March 28th 2008, by Michael Fox - Venezuelanalysis.com

The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) holds it's biyearly meeting in Caracas this week - the first to be held in Venezuela in many years. But that doesn't mean that the organization hasn't been deeply involved in Venezuela. Since President Chavez took office in 1998, the organization has sent 10 delegations to the South American country and distributed dozens of press releases criticizing the Chavez administration for continually "violating press freedoms" and launching "attacks, repression, and assaults against the media." Last fall, the IAPA denounced Venezuela for the "largest number of press violations" during the six months prior.[1]

The IAPA stance on Venezuela could be understandable if it were balanced, researched and based on reality. But it is not. It is as polarized as the Venezuelan media, offering unconditional support for Venezuela's private media, while unable even to recognize the advances in support of Venezuela's community media. As Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) pointed out in a letter to the editor of the Editor & Publisher in January:

"By taking sides in Venezuelan politics, without investigating the facts of the situation, the IAPA discredits itself as an avowed advocate of press freedom."[2]

Nothing new. The IAPA stance against the Chavez government has remained consistent throughout the last decade. The Association even reached an ironic highpoint in the midst of the 2002 coup d'etat, which wrenched democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez from office for 48 hours. On April 12, 2002-the day after the assassination of twenty innocent Venezuelans, which precipitated Chavez's brief removal from office-the IAPA sent out a press release stating the following:

"Inter American Press Association President Robert J. Cox said today that political developments in Venezuela demonstrate to nations throughout the world that there can be no true democracy without free speech and press freedom... "This is a classic example for the new government headed by Pedro Carmona, which hopefully will turn things around, respect freedom of the press and encourage the independence of the judiciary, and thus, ensure restoration of true democracy," Cox added." (3)

As these words where being released to the press, community media in Venezuela was being sacked, the state-owned Venezolana de Televisión was occupied, and the private media (Venevision, Globovision, Telemundo, & RCTV) which had led the coup, were complacently refusing to report the news on the ground.

The IAPA's consistent criticism against the Chavez administration could first be shrugged off as innocent or naive, but only for so long.

Powerful Connections

While the organization may at first appear to be an association of journalists, it would be more accurate to call it an association of media directors. The 6-decade old IAPA has deep roots in almost all of the most powerful media outlets of the Western Hemisphere and claims to represent 1,300 newspapers and magazines throughout the region. IAPA authorities, members of the board of directors, the executive committee and the advisory board are all at least important editors in each of their respective publications. Many are Presidents, directors, publishers, founders and (in various cases) children of those in the highest position of the publication. IAPA members are often representatives of the most powerful media family or group in the country.[4]

For instance, IAPA Executive Committee member Jorge Canahuati Larach, has been President and CEO of Honduras' la Prensa since 1986; IAPA Executive Committee member Fabricio Altamirano, is Executive Director of El Salvador's Diario de Hoy (son of Enrique Altamirano, General Director of the Grupo Altamirano); IAPA member of the Executive Committee and the Board of Directors, Juan Francisco Ealy Ortiz, has been President and General Director of the Compañía Periodística Nacional de México since 1969. The company owns one of Mexico's largest dailys, El Universal; President of the IAPA Commission on Press Freedom, Fernando Gonzalo Marroquín Godoy, is Editorial Director of one of Guatemala's largest daily's, Prensa Libre, and a member of the most important media family in Guatemala; Chile's powerful Edwards family- which owns El Mercurio, La Segunda and Las Ultimas Noticias -also counts numerous representatives among IAPA's members.[5]

The connections are not only with the powerful. Some integral IAPA members also have disturbing historic link with Latin America's right wing dictatorships. For example, Alejandro J. Aguirre is President of the IAPA Executive Committee. Aguirre is assistant editor and assistant publisher of Miami's largest Spanish daily, Diario Las Americas. Alejandro is the son of Horacio Aguirre Baca, founder of the newspaper, who in 1999 was profoundly thanked at the Miami International Press Club, by the Miami Cuban community, for his long years in "defense of the freedom of Cuba." According to an investigation from various sources, it appears that Horacio Aguirre Baca was born in New Orleans and grew up in Nicaragua, where he and his family had relatively tight connections with then-General (and soon to be Dictator) Anastasio Somoza García. As history knows, Somoza Garcia was responsible for the assassination of the infamous left-wing Nicaraguan guerrilla leader, Augusto César Sandino. Over the next fourty years, the Somoza family would control the country on and off until Somoza Garcia's second son, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was ousted by the Sandinistas in 1979. In the 1940s, during one of these power shifts, Horacio fled to Panama with his brother Francisco, and afterwards to the United States in the 1950s. Horacio Aguirre is an historic member of the IAPA, and now belongs to the Advisory board.[6]

Not everyone is so tightly knit to the region's dictators, but almost all top-ranking IAPA members are in-line with Washington's interests in the region. Vice-President of the IAPA Executive Committee, Rafael Molina Morillo, is the founder of the Dominican Republic Ahora! Publications, which among other things, publishes the important daily, El Nacional. Molina Morillo admitted in an interview last December that "the magazine (where he worked) played an important role in the North American invasion of the country in 1965."[7]

IAPA Executive Committee member, Luis Alberto Ferré Rangel is current editor of El Nuevo Dia. He is a relative of the late Luis A. Ferré, former Puerto Rican governor, who acquired El Nuevo Dia in the 1940s. Governor Ferré studied in the United States and supported the idea of converting Puerto Rico in to a US state. Upon his death in 2003, President George W. Bush personally sent his condolences to the Ferre family. "He was a good friend of my family and I valued his advice and counsel," Bush wrote.[8]

Further connections between some IAPA members and the US government are even more uncomforting for Latin Americans used to intervention. Current IAPA Secretary, Elizabeth Ballantine, Director of the McClatchy Company since 1998, is a former lawyer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). IAPA Director, Julio Munoz, was recently appointed by the State Department to represent the IAPA in the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO.[9]

But not all members of the organization appear to be so tightly integrated into Washington's agenda. Bruce Brugman, for example, is a member of the IAPA Executive Board, and is publisher, founder, and the largest share-holder of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, one of the most progressive weeklies in the region. Nevertheless, Brugman is no copy editor. He's been at the helm of the Bay Guardian since 1966, and has been criticized for being anti-union.[10]

"Anti-Communist" Agenda

By analyzing IAPA's members-like those mentioned above-the story behind the IAPA campaign against Venezuela begins to unfold. But Venezuela isn't the first country in the region to be put on the IAPA watch list. Over the last sixty years, countries with progressive governments have always received a high level of criticism for their "violations of press freedoms," regardless of the reality.

According to various sources, the IAPA carried out a relatively extensive campaign in Chile against the Allende government before the democratically-elected Salvador Allende was violently removed by the bloody coup led by Augusto Pinochet.[11]

Enrique Altamirano, from the Diario de Hoy, wrote the following excerpt from an article in 1984, where he recommended treading lightly regarding the Communist threat in the region, especially from the media.

The West should not ignore, as it was expressed by Dr. Horacio Aguirre, of the "Diario Las Americas" (Sept. 2, 81) that there exists, "strong Marxist influence in the media throughout the free world", a danger that is also highlighted by Venezuela's ex-president, Caldera, when he referred to the existence of "a world publicity strategy, admirable for it's impressive organization."[12]

Venezuela is also not the only country in the region that is currently being criticized by the organization. The IAPA has programs across the whole of the Western Hemisphere, and they are critical even in those countries allied with Washington, such as Colombia or Mexico.[13] Nevertheless, the IAPA media campaign against countries with progressive governments is often blatantly one-sided.

Take, for example, last year's IAPA resolution against Bolivia, which begins:

"Press freedom in the country has not improved, President Evo Morales Ayma has created a hostile climate for media outlets and particularly media owners."[14]

Or last years' IAPA Conclusions, which appear to paint Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Cuba (currently, Latin America's four most progressive governments) as the worst violators of press freedom in the region:

"Venezuela continued to lead with the largest number of transgressions over the last six months. On May 27 President Hugo Chávez shut down RCTV's on-air broadcasts and confiscated its 48 repeater stations and transmission equipment, which was then used by the government to create a new state-run television channel. The government is also committed to setting up official radio stations and providing financial aid to the governments of both Bolivia and Ecuador for the same purpose.

The situation in Cuba remains alarming after 48 years of dictatorship with no signs of a transition towards democracy. A total of 27 independent journalists continue imprisoned, a number of them seriously ill. Others are prevented from leaving the country despite having been issued humanitarian visas by neighboring countries.

Constitutional reforms announced in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela threaten to curtail individual freedoms and rights, especially press freedom and freedom of expression."[15]

The Campaign & the IAPA Agenda

With this fairly blatant campaign against the Left, some have suggested that the CIA could be at the heart of IAPA activities. Just days before last December's Constitutional Reform Referendum, the Venezuelan government announced that it had obtained a CIA memorandum from the US Embassy in Caracas which supposedly revealed a plan to destabilize Venezuela in the lead-up to the Referendum, with the involvement of the IAPA.[16]

Investigator Fred Landis pointed out the following in the mid 1980's, after an investigation in to IAPA collaboration with the CIA:

"Obviously the owner of a conservative newspaper in Latin America does not need CIA money to be against a socialist government. The assistance provided by the CIA is primarily technical, not financial. Without CIA help, the local newspaper's opposition would be openly stated on the editorial page in language reflecting the ideology of the local conservative elite. That would be ideological warfare, not psychological warfare. But the CIA is not concerned, in these operations, with local ideology; it is concentrating on the use of its bag of technological dirty tricks. One of these tricks is disinformation."[17]

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter whether or not the CIA is supporting the IAPA. The result is the same. The owners of Latin America's conservative papers are going "to be against a socialist" or progressive government in the region. Not necessarily because these governments threaten press freedoms any more than any other, but because these governments aren't usually willing to tolerate the abusive control which the owners hold over the public airwaves and media outlets. As CEPR's Weisbrot pointed out in his letter to the editor earlier this year:

"A private media as exists today in Venezuela would not be tolerated in the United States, where we have a Federal Communications Commission and rules that would prevent it... In Venezuela, the government decided in May 2007 not to renew the broadcast license of RCTV, the largest TV station. The international media tried to make this look like an act of censorship, but in fact such a station would not get a broadcast license in the U.S. or probably any democratic country. In addition to its activist role in the oil strike described above, the station also used faked film footage during the April 2002 coup to convince people that the government was murdering people in the streets. This deception played a major role in the coup, which was reversed when hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans - not shown on Venezuelan TV -- took to the streets to defend their democracy."[18]

The same is true all across the region, where IAPA members represent powerful conservative media families and conglomerates, groups with a vested interest in strengthening their control and pushing their own agenda. If this "agenda" is their definition of "press freedom", than perhaps it makes sense why the IAPA has completely ignored the hundreds of new independent community radio stations, newspapers, and media outlets in Venezuela and written them off as "government controlled."[19]

As Al Giordano, publisher of the Narco News Bulletin, wrote to then-IAPA President Robert J. Cox, after he visited Venezuelan on the heels of the 2002 Venezuelan coup:

"We found that an entire class of journalists in Venezuela is under attack and has been left undefended by your organization and the other large-budget "press freedom" organizations: the journalists of the Community Media."[20]

A book should not be judged by its cover. The same could be said of the IAPA- An organization, painted to defend "press freedoms" across the hemisphere, but used as a pretext to push its own agenda, as it did in its complacent support of the 2002 media coup against Chavez. As Giordano concluded in his letter to IAPA President Cox:

"Your organization is nothing more than a lobbying group for the owners of a commercial industry - newspapers - and the IAPA's cynical use of the "press freedom" issue is only wielded to expand the economic and political powers of the owners of commercial media, abusive powers that are increasingly in conflict with the free expression rights of working journalists and of a majority of members of the public."

Footnotes & Links
1. http://www.sipiapa.org/pressreleases/srchcountrylisting.cfm, http://mercury.websitewelcome.com/~sipiapa/resolucion.php?id=109&tipo=2&...
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-weisbrot/interamerican-press-asso_b_8...
3. http://www.sipiapa.org/pressreleases/srchcountrydetail.cfm?PressReleaseI...
4. www.sipiapa.org (see authorities & IAPA members)
5. Jorge Canahuati Larach: http://portal.rds.org.hn/listas/libertadexpresion/msg01312.html, http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35869
Juan Francisco Ealy Ortiz: http://www.el-universal.com.mx/disenio/directorios/directorio.htm, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0DE3DE1731F934A1575BC0A...
Fernando Gonzalo Marroquín Godoy: http://www.guatemalaaldia.com/2007/04/el_poder_mediatico_de_los_marr.htm..., http://guatequerida.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/renuncia-fajardo/, http://www.trincherasdeideas.eu/Espa/MonroyC/021108MonroyC.html;
Edwards family: http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0307376788?filterBy=addOneStar, http://www.sergioramos.com.br/Noticia.asp?noticia_no=224
6. (http://archivo.elnuevodiario.com.ni/2004/julio/15-julio-2004/opinion/opi..., http://www-ni.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2007/abril/30/especiales/reportaje..., http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagnc018.php, http://www.juntapatriotica.org/Archivo/Articulos/pressclub.htm)
7.http://www.elcaribecdn.com/articulo_caribe.aspx?id=147524&guid=441BD1AD12834A4E9676F2567F758F77&Seccion=3
8. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Nuevo_D%C3%ADa), http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/10/20031022.html
9. Elizabeth Ballantine: http://www.nndb.com/gov/235/000043106/, http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/president/trustee/memberintro/ballantine...
Julio Munoz, http://www.state.gov/p/io/unesco/members/49480.htm
10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_B._Brugmann
11. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/42a/123.html, http://www.namebase.org/news17.html, "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Inter_American_Press_Association"
12. http://fcom.altavoz.net/prontus_fcom/site/artic/20041217/pags/2004121716...
13. Although Mexico was praised last year for bringing about "the decriminalization of libel." Mexico is also a country which the IAPA itself pointed out in January, has four reporters disappeared and still missing. (http://mercury.websitewelcome.com/%7Esipiapa/resolucion.php?id=109&tipo=...)
14. http://mercury.websitewelcome.com/~sipiapa/informe.php?id=3&idioma=us
15. http://mercury.websitewelcome.com/~sipiapa/resolucion.php?id=109&tipo=2&...
16. http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2914
17. Fred Landis, "CIA Media Operations in Chile, Jamaica, and Nicaragua", Covert Action Information Bulletin, Number 16, March 1982, pp. 34 -- 35. (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Inter_American_Press_Associat...)
18. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-weisbrot/interamerican-press-asso_b_8...
19. http://mercury.websitewelcome.com/%7Esipiapa/informe.php?id=24&idioma=us
20. http://www.narconews.com/iapaletter1.html

Aztlan-Network-News Blog

Tuesday, April 22, 2008