Archives,
2006

January 4, 2006 [LINK]

Venezuela pledges aid to Bolivia

Even before President-elect Evo Morales has been inaugurated, he has reached an agreement with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez by which Venezuela will transfer cash and petroleum fuel for the benefit of poor Bolivians. Morales' first stop on his world tour was Cuba, and Chavez called the three leftist leaders "an axis of good." See CNN.com. Morales is now in Spain, visiting Prime Minister Zapatero, a Socialist who sympathizes with Morales' radical reform agenda. See BBC.

Zapatistas adopt peaceful means

Zapatista rebel leader Marcos, who had been a fugitive from the law for years, is now particpating in open politics. He received a warm welcome during a "campaign stop" in Palenque, near one of Mexico's finest Mayan ruins. See Miami Herald (collaboration with El Universal, in English). Although this is a clear step toward more peaceful style of politics, it also represents the underlying tide of left-wing populist politics that is affecting several countries in South America. It remains to be seen whether the leftist leaders are fully committed to abiding by democratic, constitutional norms. Meanwhile, drug-related violence continues in Nuevo Laredo and other towns along the Rio Grande.

Peru seeks Fujimori's extradition

The request by the Peruvian government that Chile hand over former President Alberto Fujimori to stand trial in Peru, was widely anticipated, really just a formality. See CNN.com. It will be interesting to see if Chile's outgoing leftist government of Ricardo Lagos takes this opportunity to build relations with Peru, which have deteriorated in recent months. He and his likely successor, Michelle Bachelet, have no love lost for Fujimori, a right-wing authoritarian who is often compared to Pinochet.

Brazil prison riot

About 200 visitors to a prison in the Brazilian state of Rondonia, located on the edge of the Amazon jungle, were freed after spending five days as hostages of inmates last week. The riot was to back up the prisoners' demands that their leader, Ednildo Paula Souza, be returned to the Urso Branco (White Bear) penitentiary, which is reputedly among the most violent of Brazil's prisons. He had escaped from that prison two weeks earlier, was caught, and then transfered to a different prison. See CNN.com.

Haiti still turbulent

Two officials of the Organization of American States who had been kidnapped in Haiti were freed, along with the wife of one of them. For the third or fourth time, the elections there have been postponed because the security situation is still so poor that it is impossible to distribute ballots to all polling places on time. No word on when the new election day will be. See BBC.

January 11, 2006 [LINK]

Fujimori candidacy is rejected

The national elections board in Peru rejected the bid by Alberto Fujimori to run for president this year. Martha Chavez, one of Fujimori's closest political allies during the 1990s, is leading the effort on behalf of [the controversial former president, who was recently arrested in Chile, and who had lived in exile in Japan since he resigned in October 2000.] See Washington Post. In the unlikely event that Fujimori is allowed to run, it might take votes away from front-runner Lourdes [Flores Nano of the conservative Popular Christian Party], which would increase the likelihood that the populist Ollanta Humala might win. He is a populist former Army officer of Indian descent who led a mutiny last year, and whose brother led a coup attempt a few years ago.

U.S.-Mexico border tensions

Violence in Mexico is spilling across the border, as U.S. border patrol agents based in Brownsville, Texas came under fire twice in the past week. The lower Rio Grande valley happens to be premier bird-watching territory, where many tropical species abound. Could this rash of narcoterrorism escalate to the point where the U.S. government is forced to consider unilateral action, as when General Pershing led an expedition against Pancho Villa in 1916? No responsible policy maker in Washington would even dare acknowledge such a possibility, which is admittedly low, but the security situation is likely to deteriorate until the two countries engage in a frank dialogue aimed at addressing problems of mutual interest. See CNN.com.

No elections in Haiti

Still no word on when the elections will be held. Yesterday a general strike was held to protest violence perpetrated by warlords and their gangs who are jockeying for position. A Brazilian officer in command of peacekeeping forces recently committed suicide, which does not bode well for pacification. See cnn.com.

Situation map update

The Latin America Current overview page has been updated.

January 12, 2006 [LINK]

Venezuelan arms purchases

Hugo Chavez criticized the U.S. government for, he says, blocking a sale of EMBRAER military aircraft made in Brazil. He elaborated:

It's the same with the F-16s; they deny us maintenance to improve them, delay the spare parts. But we are not worried. We've sent a commission to Moscow, and if we have to replace the F-16 fleet with a fleet of new MiGs, then we will. SOURCE: CNN.com

That's the same song and dance Peru went through in the 1970s, when a leftist military government ruled there. The generals bought hundreds of Soviet T-55 tanks, armored troop carriers, and dozens of Su-22 supersonic attack jets, among other goodies. Result: Increased regional tensions with Chile and Ecuador, depleted regular armed forces that might have fought the then-nascent Shining Path terrorist group, and billions of dollars of increased foreign debt that Peru could not afford, and which were ultimately defaulted.

Morales plans oil & gas takeover

While in South Africa, having completed his tour of European capitals, President-elect Evo Morales declared that his government will buy out foreign shares of Bolivia's petroleum and natural gas reserves. Pipelines and refineries would remain in foreign hands, however. See Washington Post. We should expect more such mixed messages as the new leader tries to balance living up to his campaign pledges against the realities of world markets.

Nationalizing the oil industry is the same song and dance Peru went through in the [late 1960s], when a leftist military government [began ruling] there. The attempt to minimize economic (trade) dependency on the outside world backfired, as the financing required to make the purchase saddled Peru with billions of dollars of increased foreign debt that Peru could not afford, and which were ultimately defaulted. (Sound familiar?)

Is it any wonder I call Latin America "The Land of Eternal Eternity"? It often seems that nothing much really changes.

January 16, 2006 [LINK]

Michelle Bachelet wins in Chile

As expected, Socialist Michelle Bachelet won the second-round presidential election in Chile, and will become the second woman ever elected to that post in Latin America whose husband did not precede her [accession to office had nothing to do with marital ties. Violeta Chamorro was elected president of Nicaragua in 1990 largely as a gesture of support for her martyred husband Pedro. (See correction note on Jan. 18.)] (The first was Mireyra Moscoso, president of Panama from 1999 to 2004.) As soon it became clear that Bachelet had received about 53 percent of the vote, conservative Sebastian Piñera conceded defeat. He picked up most of the votes that had gone to conservative Joaquin Lavin, in the first round, but he would have needed almost all of them to gain an absolute majority. She has served as minister of health and minister of defense under the Lagos government, and seems well qualified. See BBC This historic event sparked euphoric street celebrations in Santiago.

The conservatives in Chile seem to have accepted yet another defeat, some more gracefully than others. Piñera congratulated Bachelet for her triumph, and pledged that his party coalition will adopt a stance of "firm and constructive opposition" toward the new government. One of the conservative parties, the Independent Democratic Union, blamed Piñera's defeat in part on the "abuse of power" and "disinformation campaign" waged by the incumbent government of Ricardo Lagos. See El Mercurio Online (Spanish). Why do the right-leaning parties keep losing in a country that has been such a showcase for capitalist success? To a large extent, it's the legacy of General Pinochet, who has never expressed remorse for the murders, torture, and disappearances that his government carried out. Most Chileans are probably deeply torn over the meaning of the Pinochet Era. They recognize that his policies set the stage for a remarkable era of prosperity, at least by Latin American standards, and yet the sensibilities of the large, well-educated middle class are deeply hostile to the authoritarian values he imposed. It's much like Spain, where the legacy of Franco taints anyone who openly espouses conservative values and principles. It is better to keep such thoughts to one's self. That is why in practice, Socialists in Spain and Chile tend to govern very pragmatically, knowing that they must not kill the market-economics "goose" that laid the "golden egg" of prosperity.

What about the future? Since Chile has had Socialist or left-leaning presidents for the last sixteen years, ever since the Pinochet dictatorship ended, I don't foresee any major policy changes after Bachelet takes office. There will almost certainly be sharp tensions surrounding cultural issues, however. Having an agnostic like her serve as president will no doubt deeply offend many Catholics in Chile, and her professed "belief in the state" will no doubt cause high anxiety for many free-market liberals -- the "Chicago boys" and [folks like] them; see Dec. 10 post.

Here's a linguistic conundrum: should Bachelet be called Señorita or Señora? She is an unmarried mother, a situation that the Spanish language does not accommodate.

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UPDATE: In her first detailed comments about her future policy plans since her election victory, Ms. Bachelet declared that her cabinet will consist of an equal number of men and women, as the first step toward creating a "more equitable society." Hopefully Chile will avoid the pitfall of affirmative action quotas that have paradoxically slowed progress toward social equity in this country, and which remain a source of social distrust. She also expressed a desire to improve relations with Peru and Bolivia, and voiced conditional support for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, which is rather remarkable for a socialist. See BBC.

January 18, 2006 [LINK]

The emigration issue in Mexico

CNN.com has a good background article on how the issue of emigration (as opposed to immigration on this side of the border) is playing out in Mexico's presidential campaign. The election will be [on July 2]. The three major candidates differ sharply about how to address the problem, but they all agree that any move by the United States to restrict immigration would be an intolerable outrage. Hardly anyone in Mexico dares to suggest that the scarcity of jobs in Mexico might be rooted in the the country's terribly wasteful state-dominated economy. Just as our political discourse is constrained by "political correctness," there are certain touchy subjects that simply cannot be debated openly in Mexico. Those who hoped that NAFTA would spur a wave of liberalization in the domestic market have been sorely disappointed, as the incestuous ties between big business and big government continue pretty much as they have always been. Fox, Fox, Fox... Anyway, the three main candidates are:

• Roberto Madrazo, Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)
• Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Democratic Revolution Party (PRD)
• Felipe Calderon, National Action Party (PAN)

This will be a busy year in Latin American politics. Besides Mexico, Haiti, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil are scheduled to hold presidential elections.

Las Presidentas in Latin America

Robert Book brought to my attention the fact that the first woman to be elected president in Latin America without her husband having served in that office first was Violeta Chamorro, who was elected in Nicaragua in 1990. True, but Chamorro would never have won had she not been married to a man who had been a major opposition leader under the Somoza dictatorship; her husband Pedro was murdered in 1978. Mrs. Chamorro's case is perhaps a middle category between the truly "self-made women" presidents Moscoso of Panama and Bachelet of Chile, on one hand, and the "pretender" Isabel Perón, who suceeded her husband Juan as president upon his death in 1974. In addition, Lydia Gueiler briefly served as president of Bolivia on an interim basis in 1979, and Rosalia Arteaga briefly claimed to be president of Ecuador during the chaos of February 1997. See the Latin American Presidents page, which has new table rows for 2006. I've also corrected and clarified the Jan. 16 blog post. Thank you, Mr. Book.

More photos from Costa Rica

There are two new photo gallery pages from our vacation last year: Costa Rica, Part III (), which features various rural scenes and exotic wildlife, most of which are "freeze frame" images extracted from video clips, and Costa Rica & Nicaragua, 2005 (), which contains no new photos, but simply makes it easier to navigate from one page in that group to another.

UPDATE: I had meant to explain why I am adding new photos so many months after the fact; it's because I felt that the existing still image photos did not convey a good enough sense of what the countryside in Costa Rica looks like. I continue to work on my video project, which will end up as a DVD or two for public (classroom) viewing, and a separate version for "family" audiences. Also, I added this montage after I made the original post.

2nd UPDATE: This montage was subsequently modified on Jan. 24.

3rd UPDATE: I forgot to note that the rural scenes photos from which the adjacent montage was taken are now at: Costa Rica, Part IV. ()

January 24, 2006 [LINK]

Evo Morales is inaugurated

The inauguration of Evo Morales was a joyous occasion for the millions of indigenous people in Bolivia. He put a high emphasis on remaining independent from the United States. See Washington Post. Surprisingly, however, Evo Morales voiced positive words about free trade with the U.S. See CNN.com. Lacking experience in actually running a government, he is bound to say contradictory things for the foreseeable future.

For a country that is so far off the radar screen of most American people and businesses, it always seemed strange to me that many Bolivians are so sensitive to perceived North American dominance. Let us hope that Morales does not disappoint his followers by promising too much or by indulging in too much demagoguery. There remains the broader issue of exactly what role capitalist "neoliberal" economic policies have had in Bolivia's economic successes and failures. The angst-filled recent writings of Jeffrey Sachs, the economist who advised Bolivia and helped defeat the hyperinflationary catastrophe of the mid-1980s, make me wonder...

UPDATE: Bolivian-born blogger Miguel Centellas found the inaugural address to be "rambling," and noted that Morales had to read from a script the portion that was in the indigenous (Aymara) language. His awkward delivery might raise questions about the authenticity of his Indian cultural roots. Miguel, who hasn't been posting much lately because he is about to tackle his dissertation (obviously a higher priority; I can relate to that!) is willing to give Morales a chance, nonetheless, which is a good attitude.

Costa Rica photos

I found three more video freeze frames that are worthy of inclusion on the Costa Rica part III page: a shade-grown coffee field (good for birds!), a sugar cane field (not!), and this close-up of an Iguana.

UPDATE: Realizing that that page was getting overloaded, I separated the wildlife photos (Costa Rica part III) and the scenic photos Costa Rica part IV. I also redid the thumbnail montages for those pages, and the one for Costa Rica part II. Hopefully, that will be that.

January 25, 2006 [LINK]

Mexican invasion?

While our attention was directed toward the north over the past few days, there was a serious breach of our southern border. It sounds like the kind of farcical stunt from a Pink Panther movie, but the incident on the Rio Grande seems to be dead serious. Last Friday, deputies from the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department confronted a group of Mexicans whose dump truck had gotten stuck while trying to ford the river, and seized nearly a ton of marijuana. Before they could finish unloading the bales, however, the truck crew returned with a squad wearing uniforms of the Mexican Army. They forced the deputies to retreat and proceeded to retrieve the truck and the rest of its cargo. See El Paso Times, via freerepublic.com

Another incursion happened on Monday, and there is a photo of the bad guys unloading an SUV at washingtonpost.com. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff downplayed the reports, saying the incidents were just isolated mistakes. The Mexican government claimed that the intruders were drug smugglers, not real Army troops. Probably so, but I wish I were more confident. According to a report cited by Michelle Malkin, however, Mexican military patrols have been crossing the border hundreds of times years, escorting emigrants or drug shipments, but no one wants to raise a fuss over it. American border patrol officers say they are extremely reluctant to do anything that would create an international incident, hoping things will just die down on their own. The absence of reporting on these events by the mainstream media is disturbing, to say the least.

This is the sort of delicate situation that requires alert, effective response without panicking. Congressmen Jim Sensenbrenner and J. D. Hayworth will no doubt get a lot of political mileage from this latest example of failed immigration policy. Will they refrain from inciting xenophobia, or helping recruit for the "Minutemen"? The failure by the Bush administration to face up to the crumbling of our southern frontier risks widespread defections by conservative activists, and it may even provide an opening in national security policy for the Democrats to exploit. Wouldn't that be ironic? Perhaps all this should not be too surprising. As I learned from Abelardo Rodriguez at the 2005 APSA annual meeting (scroll to end) last September, there is a wall map in Mexico's Colegio Nacional de Defensa (like West Point) that shows the pre-1848 U.S.-Mexico border. Yikes. Can you say "irredentism"? Can you say it in Spanish??

In a case of very bad timing, the Mexican government announced on Tuesday that it will distribute maps to prospective illegal emigrants showing highways, rescue beacons and water tanks in Arizona. See CNN.com. From Mexico's perspective, this is a human rights issue, and nothing more. Protecting one's own sovereignty is a "one-way street," it would seem. I hope American diplomats are up to the task of making it clear that the attitude of impunity among many Mexicans cannot be tolerated any longer.

January 27, 2006 [LINK]

"World Social Forum" opens

The 2006 "World Social Forum" has just commenced in Caracas, Venezuela. Hugo Chavez has allocated many millions of dollars (thanks in part to you, if you buy gasoline from CITGO) to support the protests against U.S. capitalist "imperialism." Cindy Sheehan, whose 15 minutes of fame already expired back home, declared that President Bush "is really waging a war of terrorism against the world." See CNN.com. That's not very nice; Cindy has just qualified for my List of Unmentionable Wackos! I learned from the folks at indymedia, however, that there are actually three separate "World Social Forums" this year, the other two being in Bamako, Mali and Karachi, Pakistan. This/these event/events is/are an alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Ironically, I share the lefty folks' belief that "Another World is Possible," but my imagined utopia is one of freedom from the soul-crushing bonds of statism.

"New" photos from Peru

Following up on my recent work in assembling photographic images from video clips taken during our trip to Costa Rica last year (see Jan. 24), I have done likewise with video clips from our trip to Peru, which was two years ago! As a result of my labors, there are two brand new pages:
Cuzco and countryside Part II and
Lima & Ventanilla Part II,
with a total of 19 images. As with the video freeze frames from Costa Rica, there are many dramatic scenes of the varied countryside -- ranging from lush and green to completely barren -- as well as some interesting photos of everyday life in Peru. To keep all that under some semblance of order, I created a new central page (Peru, 2004) to access any of the five photo gallery pages from our 2004 Peru vacation. It includes those two new thumbnail montages, plus a new one for the reorganized Peru wild birds page.

Photos from Mexico

But that's not all! While I was at it, I also reorganized the photo gallery pages from our trip to Mexico three years ago. That was before we had a digital camera, and I was inconsistent in the way I scanned all the photo prints. There are no new photos, but I have edited quite a number of them to enhance clarity. I have likewise put them in a more logical order among the three photo gallery pages, all of which can be accessed from the new Mexico, 2003 page.

January 28, 2006 [LINK]

Inauguration Day in Honduras

Manuel Zelaya was inaugurated as president of Honduras yesterday. It was a hotly contested, very close election, but it was hard to find major differences over policy between the two candidates. Zelaya pledged to help small business, and reaffirmed his support for the Central American Free trade Agreement. Many question whether he will maintain former president Ricardo Maduro's tough stance against criminal gangs. See CNN.com.

Cabinet in Bolivia

Early signs are that Evo Morales is pushing his country toward the far left, based on who he has named to his cabinet. He has abruptly dismissed all 28 of Bolivia's generals, and the ones getting promotions know where their loyalties lie. Cuban security agents are reportedly working in the presidential detail, as well, much like Venezuela. Not a good sign.

Two more photos!

I came across two more photos from Peru today, one of which -- shown in this new montage -- provides a much better view of Machu Picchu than the previous ones. (Click on it to see the full-size image.) I put it and the one of fog-shrouded Urubamba Valley on the Peru, 2004 - Cuzco Part I page, because it was scanned from prints (rather than taken from a video clip) and therefore belongs with the rest of the higher resolution photos on that page.