Former Dictator Now Presidential Candidate

One July 31, former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt was finally registered as presidential candidate for the ruling Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) for the Nov 9 elections, after a 14-year legal battle. Ríos Montt’s 16-month stint as de facto ruler in the early 1980’s was one of the bloodiest periods in Guatemalan history since the Spanish conquest. A scorched earth campaign effectively ended a leftist insurgency but led to the death of thousands of people, the vast majority of whom were civilian Mayan Indians.

 In a week before his official registration, a protest in support of Ríos Montt’s campaign descended into violence. On July 24, hundreds of FRG supporters laid siege to part of the city’s business district and the Supreme Court and Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) buildings.

 One week later the Constitutional Court (CC) overruled a Supreme Court injunction against Ríos Montt’s candidacy, ordering that he be registered within 24 hours. Critics complained that changed that added Ríos Montt sympathizers to the panel hearing his case stacked the court in his favor.

--Latin American Press, August 13, 2003

 Bush, the Rainforest, and a Gas Pipeline to Enrich His Friends

President George Bush is seeking funds for a controversial project to drive gas pipelines from pristine rainforests in the Peruvian Amazon to the coast. The plan will enrich some of Mr Bush's closest corporate campaign contributors while risking the destruction of rainforest, threatening its indigenous peoples and endangering rare species on the coast. Among the beneficiaries would be two Texas energy companies with close ties to the White House, Hunt Oil and Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Vice-President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, which is rebuilding Iraq's oil infrastructure. The pipeline slices through some of the most biologically diverse places on earth.

 The Camisea natural gas project - with reserves of 13,000 billion cubic feet of gas - has already scared off two big investors, Citigroup and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. According to an internal report by the US Export Import Bank, obtained by the lobby group Amazon Watch, proposals to mitigate the environmental impact of the project are "woefully inadequate" and will lead to mudslides, destroy habitats and spread diseases among indigenous peoples.

 Described as one threatened area as "one of the world's most pristine tropical rainforests", the area is home to the Nahua, Kirineri, Nanti, Machiguenga and Yine indigenous groups. Past contact between indigenous peoples and loggers has proven disastrous - 42 per cent of the Nahua died from diseases contracted from outsiders in the 1980s. Already, the project, which is 60 per cent complete, has run into difficulties, including the kidnapping of 60 pipeline workers last week. They were freed later by the Peruvian military.

 Nevertheless, the Bush administration plans to approve financial support for the project via both the US Export Import Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The Bush administration is reticent about its plans but is keen to exploit new sources of energy to reduce dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Its ambition to open up the Alaskan reserve proved controversial, and has so far been blocked by the US Congress.

-July 30, 2003 by the lndependent/UK

 Conservation International Intervenes in Montes Azules

New York-based Conservation International, an NGO with millions of dollars in annual contributions from some of the largest and least environmentally conscious corporations in the US, called for the immediate "relocation" of five campesino communities in the Montes Azules bio-reserve.  Most of the five communities are Zapatista support bases.  Ruth Jimenez, a Conservation International spokesperson, referred to the communities as "detonadoras" (detonators) of social conflict.  Last week a Mexico Solidarity Network delegation visited two of the communities, Nuevo San Rafael and Nuevo San Isidro.  Community leaders are rejecting further negotiations with the federal government until the San Andres Accords are implemented.  Apparently Conservation International is not calling for the relocation of its own "eco-tourism" facility located with the boundaries of Montes Azules.

--Mexico Solidarity Network

Mexico: Government Agreement with Farmers on NAFTA

 In an important policy shift, President Vicente Fox's administration has agreed to seek major changes in the North American Free Trade Agreement to help Mexican agricultural producers. Under an accord reached with leaders of agriculture organizations, the administration pledged to seek to negotiate a side agreement that would exempt beans and some corn varieties from the tariff-elimination process.

 Pressure from agricultural organizations has been especially strong this year, as tariffs were eliminated from all US and Canadian agricultural imports excluding white corn, beans and powered milk.

 The federal executive "will being immediate consultations with the governments of the US and Canada with the objective of revising the tariff-lifting process on white corn and beans established under NAFTA and tot substitute it with a permanent administrative mechanism for imports," read the text of the agreement, known as the National Accord for the4 countryside. Among other things, the accord would boost financial assistance to the farm sector and develop other mechanisms to assist agricultural producers.

Still, the participating organizations threatened to reject any agreement that did not include some renegotiation of the agricultural sections of NAFTA. "We were not about to break off or close the dialogue," said Victor Suarez Carrera and Miguel Colungas, representatives of The countryside Can't Take Anymore. "But the government had to understand that we were not seeking just an increase in funds or more programs but a major change in policy."

 In the end, the president agreed to their demand to seek to exempt corn and beans from NAFTA tariffs but did not agree to make and changes to tariff provisions for other products.

 Interior Secretary Santiago Creel said the agreement, which offers almost $284 million in emergency aid to the agriculture sector this year, is likely to become official at a signing ceremony at the end o April.

 The president's decision to support changes in the NAFTA agriculture sections may also be related to the upcoming July 6 congressional and gubernatorial elections, which are expected to be very competitive. Opposition parties sought to make the agriculture question a centerpiece of the election.

 -SourceMex

Venezuela's Chavez to U.S: Mind Your Own Business

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday [July 30, 2003] warned the United States not to meddle in his country's affairs following comments by a U.S. official about a possible referendum on his rule. "I have to remind the U.S. one more time that they have no right to express their opinion ... we are an independent country not a colony of North America," the president told thousands of cheering supporters during a street rally. The outspoken ex-army paratrooper elected in 1998 has often riled Washington with his fierce populist, anti-capitalist rhetoric and close ties with states such as Communist Cuba. His comments followed remarks made by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher urging the government and opposition to respect an accord they signed in May on the possible referendum on Chavez's rule. The Venezuelan constitution allows for a referendum on the president's rule after August 19 -- halfway through his current mandate. But the opposition says Chavez is trying to block and stall the vote. Government officials have said they will accept a referendum but only after the opposition has completed the legal requirements. They say the National Assembly or the Supreme Court must first appoint a new National Electoral Council to oversee the vote. Boucher said Tuesday a decision on the referendum lies "with the courts, the National Electoral Council and the people of Venezuela, rather than with the executive branch of the government." He also said the United States expected the government to investigate the kidnapping of former Tachira State governor and opposition leader Sergio Calderon. The opposition charges the government is involved in his disappearance from his farm at the weekend. Officials say they are still investigating

 -Reuters, 7/30/03

 Central American Presidents Meet with Bush:

 The five Central American presidents whose countries are negotiating a Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) met with George W. Bush in Washington on April 10. The deadline set for the completion of the pact is December 2003.

 The meeting was not meant to be negotiation session, though the Central Americans-including the presidents of Costa Rica, El; Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua---were instructed in advance not to bring up any subject with Bush not related to CAFTA.

 The Central Americans remain in the position of having to appear to defend their agricultural sectors against highly subsidized and productive US producers. Costa Rica's foreign trade minister Alberto Trejos said that US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick told the presidents to take care of any problems within each of their countries that would delay or impede the signing of a treaty. Lastly, Zoellick wanted the presidents to be "more active" with the World Trade Organization in relation to the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the larger an more extensive agreement of which CAFTA is said to  be a precursor. Resistance to CAFTA and other trade agreements is widespread in Latin America. The most intense opposition has come from agricultural and labor groups who denounce the pace and secrecy of negotiations that lock out civil society from the free-trade discourse.

~NotiCen

Chile: U.N. Ambassador Removed:

 President Ricardo Lagos announced on May 7 that we would reassign Chile's U.N. ambassador, Juan Gabriel Valdes, to Buenos Aires. When Chile assumed its seat on the U.N. Security Council at the beginning of 2003, Valdes showed a willingness to challenge US policy on Iraq-surprising the Bush Administration, which had hoped for Chile's acquiescence on critical ware votes. Valdes spoke out against the war on Iraq and cogently argued for a multilateral resolution to the conflict, much to the annoyance of the US-UK-Spanish pro-war trio.

 Valdes's timing couldn't have been worse. The US-Chile free trade agreement was winding its way through the US Congress, with a good change of being signed in April. Instead, the Bush Administration wage a subtle campaign of intimidation by helping to stall passage of the legislation, while the US-Singapore trade pact was ratified without a hitch. Singapore had back the US-led war against Iraq in the UN Security Council. The Chilean government has sought a trade agreement with the US for 12 years, and President Lagos's administration had used the promise of economic prosperity through free trade to mollify a Chilean public growing angry at a growing list of corruption scandals involving legislators and other elected officials.

 The good news for Chile is that following the announcement of Valdes's reassignment, the Chilean secretary of state, Soledad Alvear, traveled to the US in June 2003 and secured a verbal promise from the US government that the free trade agreement would be signed as soon as possible. The bad news is that Chile has lost an assertive voice eon the world stage and a change to stake out a position independent from Washington, D.C., something it has been unwilling to do since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in the early 1990's.

~Washington Post, 5/14/03; Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 5/26/03; Elmostrador, 6/05/03.

 Ecuadorean Leader's Vital Indian Alliance Unravels

President Lucio Gutierrez's alliance with Ecuador's powerful Indian movement collapsed Wednesday, ending vital support that catapulted him into office last year in one of Latin America's most politically unstable countries.

 Presidential spokesman Marcelo Cevallos said the governing alliance broke up after lawmakers from Pachakutik, the leftist political branch of the Indian movement, voted to defeat a labor reform bill required by the International Monetary Fund. 

Gutierrez, who first gained national renown by helping an Indian uprising topple then-President Jamil Mahuad in 2000, now has little support other than the party he founded to launch last year's electoral bid with relatives and military supporters. 

Reuters, 8/7/03