Venezuela Pulling Out of IMF, World Bank

By JORGE RUEDA (Associated Press Writer)

From Associated Press

April 30, 2007 8:25 PM EST

CARACAS, Venezuela

President Hugo Chavez announced Monday he would formally pull Venezuela out of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, a largely symbolic move because the nation has already paid off its debts to the lending institutions.

"We will no longer have to go to Washington nor to the IMF nor to the World Bank, not to anyone," said the leftist leader, who has long railed against the Washington-based lending institutions.

Chavez said he wanted to formalize Venezuela's exit from the two bodies "tonight and ask them to return what they owe us."

Venezuela recently repaid its debts to the World Bank five years ahead of schedule, saving $8 million. It paid off all its debts to the IMF shortly after Chavez first took office in 1999. The IMF closed its offices in Venezuela late last year.

Chavez made the announcement a day after telling a meeting of allied leaders that Latin America overall would be better off without the U.S.-backed World Bank or IMF. He has often blamed their lending policies for perpetuating poverty.

The leftist president also has repeatedly criticized past Venezuelan governments for signing structural adjustment agreements with the IMF that were blamed for contributing to racing inflation.

Under former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez in 1989, violent protests broke out in Caracas in response to IMF austerity measures that brought a hike in subsidized gasoline prices and public transport fares.

Enraged people took over the streets in violence that killed at least 300 people - and possibly many more. The riots came to be known as the "Caracazo," and Chavez often refers to it as a rebellion against the status quo.

Colombian Seeks to Persuade Congress to Continue Aid

Peter Andrew Bosch/Miami Herald, via Associated Press

President Álvaro Uribe in Miami recently. Prominent Democrats are concerned about accusations of Colombian government ties to paramilitaries.

By SIMON ROMERO

Published: April 30, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela, April 29 — Faced with allegations of government ties to paramilitary death squads and criticism from prominent Democrats, President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia is heading to Washington this week to try to unlock frozen American aid and salvage a trade agreement with the United States.

It is not clear whether Mr. Uribe will succeed, despite having the best relations with President Bush of any South American leader. Mr. Uribe boasts high approval ratings in Colombia, but a scandal over links between outlawed paramilitary groups and his close political allies has eroded his credibility in Washington.

“We need vigilance by our own government and assurances that our aid is not going to anyone linked to illegal groups,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is the leader of the Senate panel that oversees aid to Colombia. After the Middle East and Afghanistan, Colombia is the largest recipient of American assistance, with more than $4 billion disbursed this decade.

Mr. Leahy put a hold on $55.2 million in military aid to Colombia this month while awaiting clarification on intelligence claims of collaboration between Colombia’s army and paramilitaries, which have been classified as terrorist groups by the State Department.

Both the paramilitaries and guerrilla insurgents have committed atrocities against Colombians and shipped large amounts of cocaine to the United States during an internal war that has lasted decades.

Mr. Uribe’s reaction to the scandal may have worsened his standing in the United States Congress since control passed to the Democrats. He has lashed out at domestic political opponents, saying he had placed opposition lawmakers who had met with Democratic leaders in Washington under surveillance.

Much of Mr. Uribe’s ire has been directed at Senator Gustavo Petro, a lawmaker and former member of the M-19 rebel movement who has pushed for investigations of paramilitary groups. In testimony before Colombia’s Congress this month, Mr. Petro asserted that paramilitaries held meetings on ranches owned by Mr. Uribe and his brother in the late 1980s before embarking on nighttime killing raids.

Senior Colombian officials and Mr. Uribe himself have vehemently denied the accusations. Still, investigators are looking into paramilitary ties of more than a dozen allies of Mr. Uribe, including his former domestic intelligence chief, who is accused of supplying the militias with details on academics and union officials who were chosen for assassination.

Mr. Uribe, who is scheduled to be in Washington from Tuesday through Thursday to meet with President Bush, Democratic lawmakers and human rights groups, declined requests for an interview.

Vice President Francisco Santos expressed concern that deteriorating relations with Democratic leaders could endanger advances Colombia has made in reducing urban violence, demobilizing thousands of paramilitary fighters and economic growth. “There is friendly fire from the Democrats of which Colombia is becoming the casualty,” Mr. Santos said in a telephone interview.

“We stabilized a country that was going to shambles,” Mr. Santos said, noting that Washington’s large assistance project for Colombia was conceived under President Clinton. Mr. Santos said paramilitary ties were coming to light because of the resilience of institutions carrying out independent investigations.

Mr. Uribe is popular in Colombia after limiting the reach of the war into large cities while riding an economic growth wave. “He received a country with 21 percent unemployment and today has it at 13 percent,” said Rafael Nieto, a political analyst in Bogotá.

Mr. Uribe’s critics say he is doing relatively little to move the investigations forward and ensure the safety of his opponents. Mr. Petro, the opposition lawmaker, said he had uncovered a plot to kill him led by Juan Villate, a security official for the Drummond Company, an American coal producer with operations in Colombia.

Drummond said in a statement that the accusations against Mr. Villate, who had previously worked as a security official at the United States Embassy in Bogotá, were “politically motivated.”

“I have had an avalanche of hostile actions against me,” Mr. Petro said in a telephone interview, adding that family members had also received death threats.

Human rights groups have criticized the killings of trade union officials and violations by Colombia’s armed forces, creating another obstacle to securing Congressional approval of new military aid and the trade agreement, which has already been signed by Mr. Bush and Mr. Uribe. Fifty-eight trade unionists were killed in 2006, up from 40 the previous year, though labor groups say government estimates of the homicides are too low.

“Colombia has no real answer to these killings,” said Maria McFarland, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Colombian business leaders argue that a trade agreement is needed to open new markets for Colombian goods. But critics say it could increase American agribusiness exports like soybeans, effectively restricting access to the important Colombian market for relatively poor neighboring countries like Bolivia.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, has requested $3.9 billion in additional aid for Colombia, which is still the world’s largest supplier of cocaine. John P. Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, acknowledged in a recent letter to Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, that street prices of cocaine in the United States had dropped more than 10 percent from 2005 to 2006 and that the drug’s purity levels had also increased.

Mr. Uribe’s unwavering support of Mr. Bush, meanwhile, seems to have won him little respect among leading Democrats. Former Vice President Al Gore, for instance, recently canceled an appearance at a Miami conference attended by Mr. Uribe because of concerns over the claims of his paramilitary ties.

Political analysts in Washington and Bogotá do not expect the United States to cut off aid to Colombia. Rather, they see Washington retooling aid to strengthen judicial institutions that carry out investigations while still supporting Colombia’s military. But to reach that point, they say, Mr. Uribe needs to aggressively advance investigations of the reach of paramilitary groups.

A Phantom in Northeast Mexico: Zapatismo

Year 22 of the Struggle and 13 of the War Against Obscurity and Lying

By Alejandro de la Torre
Dossier Político

April 29, 2007

At the moment, ten EZLN commanders find themselves in three states in northeast Mexico: Baja California, Baja California Sur, and Sonora.

You read it right – ten commanders, five indigenous women and five indigenous men, of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee – General Command of the EZLN, the same who, after long consultations with thousands of insurgents and zapatista bases, gave the order January 1, 1994 to start the war against the national government until overthrown, then headed by Carlos Salinas de Gortari. It was the first Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle.

From that point the indigenous movement started to gain national and international respect, becoming the vanguard of the fight in defence of humanity and against the neoliberalism that threatens the very existence of the earth.

In Mexico, with the zapatista struggle and the Mexican people, the system has been forced to change laws and, although the neoliberal model hasn’t changed, the power structure that benefits a despotic oligarchy headed by multimillionaire monopolies (Carso, Cemex, Televisa, Gruma, etc.) is at risk of being destroyed and replaced.

Despite all this, the television, radio, and print media in Baja California and in Sonora, totally in the service of economic and political power, have created an information siege instead of carrying out their duty to report on the problems of indigenous communities, dispossession and destruction of natural resources. They have lent themselves to the degrading and diverting of information against these.

Comandante David, Comandante Tacho, Comandanta Susana, Comandanta Yolanda, Comandanta Sandra, Comandante Emiliano, Comandanta Eucaria, Comandanta Kelly, Comandante Eduardo, Comandanta Dalia, Comandante Guillermo and Subcomandante Marcos are coming as delegates of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle issued in June 2005, now in it’s second phase. In the first phase Delegate Zero (Marcos) was sent across the country to listen to the pains and struggles of the Mexican people, taking the word of the EZLN and of the anticapitalist movement formed by leftist political and civil organisations.

This excersize in struggle is called The Other Campaign. It’s objective is to build a national program of struggle from which the poor, indigenous, campesinos and workers demand social justice. They push for the struggle for human rights of men, women, children and those of the sectors marginalised by capitalism. And to build another Mexico, another Sonora, another future.

In this second phase of The Other Campaign the delegates of The Sixth Commission will work with indigenous communities and with rural and urban communities in north Mexico until May 2007, generating an organisation for struggle and unity along with the center and south of the country.

It is a pacifist and civil fight in Sonora and Baja California involving members of the Cucapás, Kilihuas, Pápagos, Od’ham, Yaquis, Mayos and Pimas indigenous people, along with campesinos, workers, university students, women, migrants, intellectuals, etc.

The work started in the Cucapá community El Mayor, where the government has prevented the indigenous from fishing corvina; in April 2005 the army confiscated their fishing materials and stripped them of fishing permits.

In Sonora dispossession against Seris, Yaquis, Mayos and Pimas is the order of the day. The state government plans to sell the Gulf of California seaboard, including Isla del Tiburón. to national and foreign millionaires. Meanwhile some Yaqui heads are receiving government help in the meantime, and the great majority of Yoeme suffer hunger and malnutrition. Dispossession from large land acquisitions against indigenous Mayans and repression of the Pima community together are demonstrations of the high level of marginalization of more than a million people in rural towns and popular neighbourhoods where they earn less than two days minimum wage a week, while businesses in the capitalist regions grow fat, as the area is fertile terrain for tourist, industrial and transnational investment.

These are sufficient elements to justify the presence of the Zapatista command in the region that will unite with the Sonoran defiance, identity and progress and not what the rich pride themselves on which are fallacies and lies.

The Sixth Commission arrived with us, The Other Campaign committee in Cajeme, last Saturday April 7, on it’s way to El Mayor in Mexicali. We welcomed them as brothers and took care of lodging and security for about fifteen comrades. The commanders, people with great dignity and humility, said goodbye with such gratitude that it will remain in our memories and hearts.

The Other Campaign will bear fruit in the conscience of the Sonora people and we will have them soon.

Originally published April 25 in Spanish

Chavez and Big Oil Gear Up for Struggle

By NATALIE OBIKO PEARSON (AP Business Writer)

From Associated Press

April 29, 2007 6:21 PM EDT

CARACAS, Venezuela - Forcing Big Oil to give up control of Venezuela's most promising oil fields this week will be relatively easy for President Hugo Chavez, but he will face a more delicate challenge in getting the world's top oil companies to stay and keep investing.

If Chavez can persuade companies to stick around despite tougher terms, Venezuela will be on track to develop the planet's largest known oil deposit, possibly to surpass Saudi Arabia as the nation with the most reserves.

If he scares them away, the Orinoco River region could end up starved of the investment and know-how needed to transform its vast tar deposits into marketable crude oil.

On Tuesday, BP PLC, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., France's Total SA and Norway's Statoil ASA will turn over their Orinoco operations to Venezuela's state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA. Chavez, who says he is reclaiming the oil industry after years of private exploitation, is expected to be accompanied by troops and workers clad in revolutionary red amid fly-bys by the military's new Russian-made fighter jets.

Culminating a nationalist drive by Chavez that has increasingly squeezed the industry of profits, the two sides are now locked in contentious negotiations: Chavez says PDVSA will take a minimum 60 percent stake in the Orinoco operations, although the companies have been invited to stay as minority partners. They have until June 26 to negotiate the terms, including compensation and reduced stakes.

The companies appear to be taking a decisive stand, demanding conditions - and presumably compensation - to convince them that Venezuela will continue to be a good business.

Chevron's future in Venezuela "will very much be dependent on how we're treated in the current negotiation," said David O'Reilly, chief executive of the San Ramon, Calif.-based company. "That process is going to have a direct impact on our appetite going forward."

Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil's Rex Tillerson told Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal that unless the negotiations produce a profitable proposal, "everything else is moot because we won't be staying."

"I'm realistic. I've said to them it may not work out," Tillerson said.

Houston-based ConocoPhillips is the only company that has yet to agree in principle to state control, prompting Venezuela to warn it may expropriate its assets. Both sides say talks are ongoing but have declined to give details.

The stakes are high for both sides.

Chavez needs the private oil companies' deep pockets and expertise to upgrade the Orinoco's tar-like crude into more marketable oils. While Chavez says state firms from China, India and elsewhere can step in, industry experts doubt they are qualified.

Amid the turmoil, new investment from the private companies has already dried up. If any leave, Chavez might be hard-pressed to persuade other big players to take over.

For the companies, pulling out of the Orinoco would be damaging.

They have invested more than $17 billion in the projects, now estimated to have grown in worth to some $30 billion. Venezuela has indicated it is inclined the pay the lesser amount - with partial payment in oil, and some suspect, tax forgiveness.

The companies have also claimed billions of future barrels of oil from the Orinoco in so-called booked reserves - a critical measure used by investors to value their worth. Smaller stakes will mean taking some of those reserves off the books.

"This is about the last step," says David Mares, a political science professor at the University of California San Diego. Chavez "has been pushing them around and they're pretty much at the brink of what they can accept."

If an agreement is reached, the companies may find it is just the beginning of their headaches.

PDVSA has been plagued by accidents and milked for cash by Chavez's government. Questions remain whether it will allow sufficient investment into the projects to maintain production, or also turn them into a cash cow. If accidents occur under PDVSA's management, the private partners also could be liable.

But with private investment barred by state monopolies that control three-quarters of the world's proven reserves, Venezuela may still prove enticing, even under Chavez's terms.

"All companies gotta go with where the oil is. And where's the oil in Latin America?" says Ali Moshiri, head of Chevron's Latin American operations.

Colombian prosecutor probing U.S. firms in Washington visit

BOGOTA, Colombia

The country's chief prosecutor stood between the white plastic-sheathed remains of two dismembered teenage sisters. On the rust-colored dirt around him lay remains of nearly 60 newly unearthed victims of paramilitary death squads.
...

Interview with Vittorio Sergi (Italy) about mobilizations against the G8 Summit in Europe

by Ya Basta! / Radio Zapatista
Sunday Apr 29th, 2007 5:23 PM

Interview (April 24) by Ya Basta! to Vittorio Sergi, one of the coordinators network of European movements against the G8 Summit in Germany this coming June. Vittorio speaks about the current plans by European social centers to protest against the G8 Summit in Rostock, Germany.

audio: 240407_vittorio.mp3
MP3 at 1.5 MB

Peru leader gets emergency powers

Peru's parliament has granted emergency powers to President Alan Garcia in order to deal with drug trafficking and organised crime.

Congress overwhelmingly approved the move but around 20 Congressmen walked out of the session before the vote.

President Garcia has promised not to abuse the powers, which are valid for the next 60 days.

He will only have the power to rule by decree on nine specific types of crime, most of which relate to trafficking.

Drug violence rise

A prolonged strike in the centre of the country by coca farmers demanding the government cease its eradication of their crop may have prompted this vote.

Peru is the world's second biggest producer of cocaine and recent years have seen an increase in production and drug-related violence.

Peruvian congressmen strongly approved the measure which will allow President Garcia to rule on offences related to cocaine production, smuggling and organised crime without seeking their approval.

Peru has tried to crack down on cocaine producers

Twenty-two opposition politicians walked out of the session in protest at the vote.

Mr Garcia vowed to take a heavy hand against drug trafficking cartels, which have increased their presence in Peru in recent years.

Peruvians are becoming more concerned about violent crime and many are likely to welcome the move.

Analysts say Mr Garcia will use the 60-day period to toughen jail sentences for cocaine production and trafficking and close up what many in the government see as loopholes in the current legislation against the illegal drug trade.

Critics say this move is an attempt to boost Mr Garcia's powers in the face of flagging public approval.

Polls indicate his popularity has dropped below half - his worst approval rating since taking office last year.

Chavez and allies open alternative ALBA meeting

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is hosting this weekend in Barquisimeto his closest regional allies at the summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an integration bloc he and Cuban ruler Fidel Castro founded in 2004 to counter the “Washington-based free trade model” better known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua have joined for the third anniversary of ALBA, together with Cuban vice president Carlos Lage, Haitian President René Preval in addition to the prime ministers of some Caribbean islands.

Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Affairs María Fernanda Espinosa is also present, as her government is eager to learn about the experience.

Three years following execution of its articles of agreement, the group now comprises Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia (2006) and Nicaragua (Jan 2007), together with some Caribbean islands. Ecuador is likely to join the bloc soon.

The ALBA agenda includes initiatives on education, health, manufacturing, food production and energy with “social interest before all other interests”, said Chavez in the opening speech.

“ALBA has consolidated and will continue to grow. FTAA is dead” he sentenced in direct reference to the US sponsored free trade of the Americas extending from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.

Although Fidel Castro is not attending the event since he is convalescent after a bowel operation last year, Bolivia’s president Evo Morales announced the Cuban leader will be retaking his office’s duties next May first with a massive demonstration in the streets of Havana.

“I’m convinced that comrade Fidel will resume the duties of office on May first to continue leading the Cuban people, that wonderfully revolutionary people”, said Morales.

Chavez details arms build-up

Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, has announced details of an arms build-up which he says will make the South American nation "invulnerable" to any attack.

He said the centrepiece of the programme would be a sophisticated air-defence system that could shoot down enemy aircraft and rockets from a distance of over 200km.

"We're going to have a tremendous air-defense system, and with with missiles capable of reaching 200 kilometers," Chavez said during a televised speech on Friday at a military academy in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.

"[It] will convert Venezuela into a nation truly invulnerable to any external threat, invulnerable to any plan of aggression."

He said oil-rich Venezuela would also open factories to product rifles, centres to train jet fighter pilots and facilities to upgrade the Venezuelan airforce.

Chavez has often spoken of his aim to upgrade the country's defence systems but Friday's speech was the first time he has done so with any specific detail.

'Self-defence'

Chavez said Venezuela's arms build-up did not pose a threat to regional stability as Washington has suggested, but said that the country was simply modernising its military after years of neglect.

"They are necessary investments. We're not going to attack anybody," he said.

Chavez announced spending of more than $561 million for factories to build automatic AK-103 assault rifles, munitions, and detonators.

Hostages plea for Colombia talks

Rebels in Colombia have released a video showing 12 legislators who were kidnapped five years ago calling on the country's president to negotiate with the guerrillas.

The footage - released on Friday after being shown to the hostages' families - is the first public proof that the group are still alive in over year.

The 12 hostages sent personal messages to their wives and children and urged Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian president, to enter into talks with their captors, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), in order to end the forty year conflict.

"President, you are the only one who can make this happen, the whole country will support you," Juan Carlos Narvaez, one of the politicians captured in a 2002 raid on a legislative building in southern province of Valle del Cauca, said on the video.

Hostage issue

The 12 hostages are among hundreds of soldiers, politicians and civilians held for as long as nine years in rebel camps in jungle areas.

The captives also include three US contract workers captured four years ago.

Uribe, has gained popularity for his hard-line campaign that has driven rebels back into the jungles and dramatically reduced violence from the four-decade conflict.
...

Ecuador leader sides with Indians against oil giant

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa went deep into the Amazon jungle to show his disdain for Chevron Corp., which is on trial in Ecuador for allegedly failing to clean up billions of gallons of toxic wastewater.

"Soil with oil, friends," Correa said, lifting a fistful of greasy dirt from a small farm in the rain forest where Texaco Petroleum Co. spent three decades extracting oil before it merged with Chevron in 2001.

Correa, a U.S.-trained economist in power since January, is the first Ecuadorean president to support the estimated 30,000 Amazon Indians and settlers who are suing the U.S. oil giant.

The leftist leader accused the company of causing 30 times more damage than the 11-million gallon Exxon Valdez spill off the Alaskan coast in 1989. "But it would seem that what happens in the Third World doesn`t matter," Correa said.

Farmers say the oily muck keeps them from cultivating their land and has caused stomach and skin ailments among the area`s residents.

The plaintiffs are seeking $6 billion in damages, alleging that Texaco dumped more than 18 billion gallons of oily wastewater into the verdant rain forest and failed to clean it up properly. The Indians` attorneys have presented studies showing elevated cancer rates in the area.

San Ramon, California-based Chevron says there is no proof oil contamination caused the cancers. It also says that Texaco, which ended its operations in 1992, followed Ecuadorean environmental laws in a $40 million cleanup that began in 1995.

Just three years later, Ecuador`s government certified the cleanup as complete.
Correa called that a "fraud for the country."
"There was no cleanup here," he said -- the damage was simply covered up with dirt dumped over contaminated soil and wastewater ponds.

The Indians tried for a decade to have their case heard in U.S. federal court before shifting their battle to a makeshift courtroom in the ramshackle jungle town of Lago Agrio, which means "sour lake," where an Ecuadorean judge is hearing evidence.

Pablo Fajardo, a former farmer who became the plaintiffs` lead attorney, said they welcome Correa`s support for the suffering people but aren`t looking for him to intervene in the judicial process.

A Chevron attorney, Rodrigo Perez, told The Associated Press he is "sorry the president has taken sides."
"The trial must continue according to the evidence," Perez said, "based on the proceedings, not on statements by the executive branch or the press."

Chevron, which said it won`t settle the case out of court, also expressed concern that political pressure might threaten its chances for an impartial trial in Ecuador. The judge`s decision isn`t expected until at least next year, and an appeals process could take another three years.

The trouble in Ecuador hasn`t harmed Chevron`s bottom line. Chevron has earned $45 billion during the past three years, its profit growing progressively higher each year

Chavez Aims to Meet Left's Energy Needs

President Hugo Chavez said Saturday that Venezuela is ready to become the sole energy supplier to Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Haiti, presenting the countries with his most generous offer yet of oil-funded diplomacy in the region.

Chavez said he hoped to sign a deal with the four countries, his main leftist allies in the region, during the summit of The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas he is hosting this weekend in Caracas.

The bloc, known as ALBA, was formed in 2004 by Chavez and his Cuban mentor Fidel Castro to promote trade and cooperation along socialist lines and to oppose a U.S.-backed free trade area. It has since grown to include Bolivia and Nicaragua. Ecuador has also expressed interest and Haiti was attending the two-day summit that started Saturday as an observer.

``The time has come for this oil, this energy, these resources to in some way serve the development and happiness of our people and the union of our territories,'' said Chavez, whose nation is a major oil exporter with vast reserves.

Cuba and Venezuela sign agreements for $1.5 billion in projects

First Vice President Raúl Castro leads final session of 7th Meeting of Joint Intergovernmental Commission

THE approval of 355 cooperation projects worth $1.5 billion was the outcome of the 7th meeting of the Cuba-Venezuela Joint Intergovernmental Commission. The closing session, on the evening of February 28, was led by General of the Army Raúl Castro, first vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers.

Ministers Martha Lomas and Rafael Ramírez sign the Final Declaration of the 7th Meeting of the Cuba-Venezuela Joint Commission.

A framework agreement was signed during the meeting providing for the establishment in Venezuela of 11 ethanol plants and the development of sugarcane production for that purpose. Rafael Ramírez, Venezuelan minister of energy and oil, and Martha Lomas, Cuban minister of foreign investment and economic cooperation, signed the document as the presidents of the Joint Commission representing their respective governments.

That program is part of joint efforts to protect the environment, reduce consumption of fossil fuel and promote alternative energy sources.

The alcohol obtained from sugar cane is to be utilized in a mixture for gasoline production, with proven economic and environmental advantages. In this way, Cuba and Venezuela are implementing the concept of not using grains [such as corn] for producing fuel, given that it would be detrimental to the already precarious food situation of millions of human beings on the planet.

In addition, contracts were prepared for supplying the first four ethanol plants and were signed by Rafael Ramírez and Ulises Rosales del Toro, Cuban minister of sugar.

The meeting’s Final Declaration was also approved, and signed by Ramírez and Martha Lomas. That document sums up the work carried out by the two delegations since the meetings of working commissions in Caracas as a preparatory stage for this meeting. The Declaration also assesses the implementation of the 2006 cooperation program that came out of the Joint Commission’s sixth meeting, and includes appendixes with a detailed list of the 2007 projects, their respective budgets and the general conditions of methodology and proceedings for implementing the agreement.

According to the Joint Declaration of the 7th meeting, presented by Martha Lomas, the Cuba-Venezuela Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement, approved on October 30, 2000 by Fidel and Chávez, is expanding annually in magnitude, diversity and complexity.

That can be seen by significant quantitative and qualitative results in the principal economic and social sectors, including health, education, sports, energy, sugarcane production and that of other agricultural areas, informatics and communications, constituting a valuable contribution to the emergence of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), to whose fulfillment Presidents Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez have dedicated such tremendous effort.

In the health sector, the document cites examples including the Barrio Adentro I Program (Into the Neighborhood), which since its start in April 2003 has provided more than 223 million medical consultations and related activities in Venezuela with the participation of Cuban doctors.

Progress is also being made by the Barrio Adentro II program, which includes 307 Comprehensive Diagnostics Centers, 406 Comprehensive Rehabilitation Wards and 11 High Technology Centers. It is expected that the program will conclude in July with the opening of 600 of the first facilities, 600 of the second and 35 of the third.

Under both programs, a total of 84,962 lives have been saved.

Another program, Operation Miracle, which began in July 2004, met its goal of providing 300,000 operations for various eyesight conditions by the end of 2006, and has now exceeded 315,000. Eleven new ophthalmological centers with 27 surgical posts are now operating in Venezuela.

The Declaration also notes that in the area of education, some 20,000 students are being educated as doctors in Venezuela by Cuban professors under the Barrio Adentro program, and about 2,400 of them are studying in Cuba at various educational institutions.

The Mission Robinson program, for its part, using the Cuban “I Can Do It” literacy method complimented by teaching materials, contributed to Venezuela being able to proclaim itself, on October 28, 2005, an illiteracy-free country, after more than 1.5 million people learned how to read and write. Some 400 Cuban advisers continue to be part of everyday labors in the Venezuelan education system.

Likewise, it was noted that trade between the two countries has increased from $912 million in the year 2000 to a record figure of $2.64 billion in 2006.

During the meeting, a photography exhibition was opened featuring images of the close friendship between Fidel and Chávez. The exhibit’s opening was led by Venezuelan poet Tarek William, who is also governor of the state of Anzoátegui.

The closing session, held at the International Convention Center in Havana, was attended by Carlos Lage, secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, and Bruno Rodríguez, interim minister of foreign affairs; Alí Rodríguez and Germán Sánchez, the ambassadors of Venezuela in Havana and Cuba in Caracas, respectively; a large group of ministers, deputy ministers, state governors and business executives from the land of Bolívar, and leaders of the Communist Party and government of Cuba.

Oaxaca Civil Unrest Grows as Another Group Begins Voicing its Discontent

Zócalo Taken by Protesters for the First Time in Six Months as Government Workers Enter the Scene Over New Social Security Law

By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca

April 26, 2007

The bureaucrats did what the APPO didn’t: On Wednesday, April 25 they broke the police barricades and entered the Oaxaca zócalo.

More than 2,000 delegates from the Sindicato de Burócratas, which I interpret to mean the office workers and administrators’ union, in a rage over the new Social Security law for government employees, shoved aside the barricades and the police guarding the zócalo. They strung their anti-ISSTE reform banners on the kiosko, and denounced their union leader Joel Castillo. They repudiated him for trying to impose agreement to the pension law which will affect all government employees.

In the auditorium “Ricardo Flores Magón,” located in Oaxaca, tempers got hot when the subject of the new law was introduced. A security guard tried to hold back the Secretary of Finances, Angeles Bautista Santana, when she was insulting the union leader, which provoked other delegates to intervene and all hell broke loose. According to Las Noticias chairs went flying through the air. Several people were wounded amid shouts of “Ya cayó,” referring not to our governor Ulises Ruiz but to the new ISSSTE law. Castillo fled out the back door where he was pursued by the enraged delegates.

There has not been a general assembly for the Administrative and Office Workers (Bureaucrats) Union since last October, hence no consultation at the base about accepting the news guidelines for pensions.

The union marchers headed to the zócalo where the police (only the handful normally present when URO is not expecting the APPO) without arms and riot gear, tried to put the iron mesh barricades into place. The police were shoved aside and the barricades were knocked flat.

This is the first time a march has broken the police barricade since last November 25 when the APPO and the government faced off in the now famous battle which led to massive arrests and imprisonments. The APPO could not retake the zócalo at that time, and it has been guarded against marches ever since, along with the plaza of the Santo Domingo church.

The recent passage of the law of ISSSTE is a step backward in the social security system and a blow to workers. Calderón and the federal congress reduced benefits to the pension system, leaving most workers to depend on their private life savings in the future when they will be drawing their pensions. The retirement age has also been raised.

Future workers (students) along with the present ones will participate in the strike on May 2, along with the march on May 1, whose trajectory is as yet unknown.

Thanks to Toni for this post...

Southern Poverty Law Center Petition to Stop Guestworker Abuse Sign our petition and help stop the virtual enslavement and abuse of guestworkers. If you believe in the American ideals of fairness and human dignity, you'll be appalled at the way tens of thousands of foreign "guestworkers" are being systematically exploited in a government-sanctioned program that many describe as modern-day slavery. "We had no electricity. The first week we were not paid. The second week we were paid $70." -- Mexican H-2B worker "El patron would put a lock on the gate where our trailers were. After a time, they would not let us communicate with other people." -- Mexican H-2A tomato worker "I felt like an animal without claws -- defenseless. It is the same as slavery." -- Dominican H-2B hotel worker These are the workers, mostly poor Latinos, who are lured here by U.S. businesses with promises of decent jobs only to be cheated out of their wages; forced to live in squalid conditions; and denied medical benefits for injuries. If the workers complain, they face deportation, blacklisting, and other forms of retaliation. We've documented the abuses in a new report -- Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States -- and are filing lawsuits against the most abusive employers. But there is an ominous cloud on the horizon. Right now, President Bush and many in Congress are pushing to create a vast new pool of temporary foreign workers. This will only cause more suffering and injustice -- and it will undermine the rights and wages of American workers as well. As a nation, we must fix our broken immigration system. But we must not condone a program that abuses and enslaves poor workers from other countries who are lured under false pretenses. Congress has the opportunity to right this terrible wrong. But lawmakers will act only if the American people speak out strongly against this moral outrage. You can make a difference. Please sign our petition to stop guestworker abuse.

Oil Companies Give Venezuela Control

Four major oil companies on Wednesday agreed to cede control of Venezuela's last remaining privately run oil projects to President Hugo Chavez's government, but ConocoPhillips resisted, prompting warnings that its fields could be taken over outright.

Markets have waited to see if the companies, which pump and process heavy oil in the Orinoco River basin, would remain as minority partners after Chavez decreed last month that their fields be nationalized on May 1. The four projects are considered Venezuela's most lucrative.

Officials from Chevron, BP PLC, France's Total SA and Norway's Statoil ASA signed memorandums of understanding Wednesday agreeing to give state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA a majority stake in three of the projects. Exxon Mobil Corp. signed earlier in private, officials said.

"ConocoPhillips has not signed," Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said at the ceremony.

Houston-based ConocoPhillips is the most exposed: it is involved in two of the four projects, Ameriven and Petrozuata, and has the single largest stake of any company -- a 50.1 percent interest in Petrozuata.

Ramirez said if ConocoPhillips does not sign by May 1, the state will take control of its two projects, but added that Venezuela remains open to dialogue.

"I think (ConocoPhillips) is willing" to sign eventually, Ramirez told reporters.

ConocoPhillips spokesman Charlie Rowton told The Associated Press that discussions were ongoing.

Wednesday's signing ceremony also included agreements giving the state control over some smaller projects outside of the Orinoco: Exxon Mobil's La Ceiba oil field and the Gulf of Paria East offshore oil field that Chinese company Sinopec plans to develop.

Ramirez said Italian oil company Eni SpA also did not sign, which raises questions about plans to develop the Corocoro offshore oil field, where it has partnered with ConocoPhillips. Eni had another oil field seized by Venezuela last year.

The companies in the Orinoco have until June 26 to negotiate terms of the takeover, including compensation, their new stakes and operational control for the projects, which they have run independently until now. The companies have more than $17 billion in investments and loans in the projects.

Chavez has said PDVSA will take a minimum 60 percent stake that he will send soldiers with government officials to take control of the projects on May 1.

"It's going to be a day of celebration," Ramirez said after the signing ceremony.

Ramirez said the agreements are key to moving toward a nationalized oil industry. Chavez's government has made clear that it still welcomes private investment in oil projects, and until now most oil companies have appeared willing to adjust to the new, tougher terms.

"Every company has to decide for itself," Ali Moshiri, head of Chevron's Latin American operations, said when asked if ConocoPhillips had informed Chevron of why it had yet to sign. ConocoPhillips and Chevron are partners in Ameriven, holding 40 percent and 30 percent stakes respectively. PDVSA has the remaining 30 percent.

The projects upgrade heavy, tar-like crude into more marketable oils and are considered Venezuela's most promising. As older fields elsewhere go into decline, development of the Orinoco is seen as key to Venezuela's future production.

In Oaxaca, the Show Goes On

Teachers Union Section 22, with APPO Support, Prepares for its Annual Strike

By Nancy Davies
April 25, 2007

A Mexican film company is shooting a movie here in Oaxaca. On Alcalá, the pedestrian street, cameras, booms, and lighting shift around to create each scene. The backdrop moves. Someone from the film crew painted on a granite wall an advertisement for “El Circo,” to create ambience.

Damn, this feels like an allegory. Each time the lights (Noticias newspaper) flash onto another fragment –here goes a young man running; he’s waving a girl’s pink sweater – I ask myself what does this mean, what part of the story-line are we seeing, is he a good guy or a bad guy? He’s got nice buns. I stand on the corner admiring the backside of this young fellow as he dashes across the street and I wonder what the hell is going on.

This week’s Noticias (how many times have I extrapolated a news report?) began with two human rights forums, official and popular. The popular tribunal convicted Ulises Ruiz (URO) of crimes against humanity and demanded the release of the forty or so prisoners still held. Both forums declared that the government violates human rights. Both referred to the most recent arrest cum torture episode, on April 14, of David Venegas a university student. Most significant for the future is the popular tribunal’s call to indict URO, something that could happen only if the PRI (the Institutional Revolutionary Party) wipes out in the August elections.

The tribunal, constituted during the second Forum for Human Rights in Oaxaca a couple of months ago, referred to the “atrocities ordered by Ruiz Ortiz,” which characterize a government of “ignominy and unheard of barbarism” carried out “in complicity with collaborators, deputies, judges, and police forces.”

Thus for the moment Oaxaca events roll as predictably as a car chase scene. First the government snatches an APPO (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca) person. The victim eventually shows up in prison, having been tortured. Noticias covers the story. The APPO marches. The governor puts out the riot police to prevent access to the Zócalo or Santo Domingo. The march goes elsewhere. Noticias covers the story: photos of marchers.

Segue to Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador. The “legitimate” president is touring Oaxaca advising the PRD (the Democratic Revolution Party to which he belongs) to clean up its act, fraud being the worst plague in Mexico’s political history. It’s a good message, if it works. A new political party has formed, geared toward women and youth. It’s called Partido Alternativa Social Democrática y Campesina (PASC). It is included in a coalition of the PRD, Convergencia and other smaller parties who will try for the “punishment vote” in August.

A new APPO convened on behalf of twenty towns in the Sierra Sur, with all the demands of the central APPO plus their own local ones.

Now, let’s cut to the forthcoming chase: Section 22 of the teachers union has decided that on May 1 (Labor Day in the world outside the USA) the teachers will march to the Zócalo. How that confrontation will play out I have no idea. Tueday’s Noticias ran the previews of coming attractions – an article saying that the municipal and state police will be firmly entrenched behind barricades at the entrances. A May Day march to the Zócalo would be the first direct challenge to the governor since the November crackdown. Oaxaca Center on Labor Day has traditionally hosted all the labor unions marching with bands, displays of gymnastics on flatbed trucks, flags, politicians, and students.

The students and graduates, in a bulletin published by the Socialist party, call for a mobilization with the APPO. They declare, in part, that fewer than 20 percent of the graduates of higher education find work related to their professional studies. Instead they end up in telemarketing, private classes, administrative work, as vendors, taxi drivers, waiters, and with other similar jobs. Others choose to emigrate. About 250 thousand young people with high school or higher educations are unemployed.

The bulletin goes on to assert that the problem is the government, which instead of investing resources in education, health, social security, infrastructure, culture, science and technology, spends those monies in paying interest on the debt, in bank rescues and for other corrupt businesses, as well as the highest salaries and pensions for bureaucrats, on arms, police and military. The big student march will take place in Mexico City.

At the same time a teacher work stoppage will take place in Huatulco on the Oaxaca southern coast. They are preparing a strike for two days, largely in protest against the decimation of social security. With the new law, President Felipe Calderón and the Congress eliminated across the board benefits in the pension system of government workers (that includes teachers, who are federal employees), known as the ISSSTE. Those in this system no longer can count on a life pension based on their work history. Now, pensions will be individual and determined exclusively by the savings that the employee put aside during his employment. Furthermore, the government rose the age at which pensions can be withdrawn, effective in ten years: 58 for women and 60 for men. Privatization will go forward by the government, for health care.

The teachers will stop work for the first and second of May as part of the national civil strike called for by the Coordinating Committee of the National Education Workers (CNTE). The secretary of Section 22 of SNTE, Ezequiel Rosales Carreño, informed the press that the work suspension was approved in an assembly carried out Saturday night, April 21, in Santa María Huatulco. Besides leaving 1,300,000 Oaxaca students without classes, the teachers will parade in the streets and block the highways. They will also close the offices of the ISSSTE, with the backing of the APPO. Rosales Carreño doesn’t discount the possibility of an indefinite strike if the government doesn’t attend to the teachers’ demands.

We are in fact coming up on the annual May teachers-strike time, and this year will be, in the words of the archbishop of Antequera-Oaxaca, José Luis Chávez Botello, “very lamentable” if the teachers succeed in doing what they did last year. The most lamentable, in my opinion, is that there is now a contra-union, Section 59, supported by the governor and officially recognized. Furthermore, the secretary of Section 22 of SNTE, Enrique Rueda Pacheco, is legally still in office, since Section 22 refused to accept his resignation without an accounting. That makes for legal complications which URO will undoubtedly take advantage of.

Meanwhile, Section 22 continues to demand the resignation or ouster of URO, so there will be a march in Oaxaca on May 15: Teachers’ Day. On June 14, the first anniversary of the attack on the teachers’ encampment, a mobilization will mark the anniversary. The (acting) Section 22 secretary stated that any negotiation will be done with the federal Secretary of Government, because the governor is no longer recognized. The possibility of a general strike remains, since there is no solution for the demands for re-zonification of salaries.

For the students, as future workers, the struggle is important, so they will add themselves to the strike on May 2, holding conferences, meetings, and discussions in schools. They plan to carry out marches and block highways with the assistance of the APPO.

And as a final note, the eighteen-year-old son of the American Consul was robbed and stabbed in his side. Surgery was required; he will probably be okay. Mark Leyes, the consul for the United States for several years, said that it could have happened to anyone. (The boy holds dual citizenship.) Leyes stated, “There were no threats, no message for the media, just three young guys dressed in black who attacked him, beat him up and fled.”

Last week the United States State Department renewed its warning about visiting Oaxaca because of the climate of violence caused by the political–social conflict. Leyes denied that the assault on his son had anything to do with the political-social conflict. Just a common crime, like many others. The disco is called El Circo. To my recollection it recently was cited in Noticias for its lack of police supervision and the ongoing presence of drug dealers and prostitutes.

I was told that the movie is about musicians, and is entitled “The Magnificent Seven.”

Evo Morales backs call to try Posada for his crimes

BY Pedro de la Hoz—Granma daily staff writer—

BOLIVIAN President Evo Morales added his signature yesterday to the call demanding that the United States try Luis Posada Carriles in a criminal court, already signed by more than 3,800 public figures from 80 countries.

The signature of Morales, who four years ago took part in the launch of the In Defense of Humanity network of networks, was accompanied by that of Deputy Gustavo Torrico, parliamentary leader of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS).

In the last few hours, eminent Mexican artists and intellectuals – actress Carmen Madrid, who starred in Nicotina; filmmaker Jorge Fons, winner of the Ariel Prize for Rojo amanecer and El callejón de los Milagros; philosopher Gabriel Vargas Lozano; priest Miguel Concha; and Enrique González Ruiz, a judge in the Benito Juárez International Court – have also recorded their condemnation of the hypocrisy of U.S. authorities in their much-proclaimed crusade against terrorism, made evident by protecting the criminal recruited by the CIA.

Russian astronauts Vitali Sevasrianov and Svetlana Savitskaia and a dozen members of that country’s Parliament have likewise demanded that Posada should be tried for his crimes or extradited to Venezuela.

Postcard from another Mexico: a glimpse into the Zapatistas’ alternative world of politics and development

[This is a good way to catch up on the basics]

by Sandip Hazareesingh

On Sunday 1 April 2007, the Zapatistas launched the second phase of the movement known as La Otra Campana (The Other Campaign).

La Otra was originally initiated in January 2006 in the wake of the Zapatista National Liberation Army’s (EZLN) new strategy spelt out in a document famously known as La Sexta (Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle). This proclaimed the need to open a space for the millions of ‘otros y otras’, i.e. the most marginalised sections of the Mexican population – indigenous Indians, maquiladora (sweatshop) workers, the low-paid, women workers in both the country and the city, the unemployed – who were ‘invisible’ to the main political parties and excluded from the official discourses of ‘development’.

La Otra was conceived as a listening tour of all 31 states of Mexico, during which EZLN representatives would gather the testimonies of ordinary people with a view to articulating from the bottom up ‘a political strategy that weaves together the strongholds of hope that already exist but remain dispersed’. It was proposed as a different way of doing politics, an alternative to the corrupt practices of the Mexican electoral process, but also a radical departure from the emphasis on armed struggle that had accompanied the Zapatistas’ initial insurrection of January 1994 in the state of Chiapas.

The rebellion was caused by the local effects of the Salinas government's NAFTA-imposed privatisation programme, which had seen the abolition of ejidos (communal peasant) land entitlements, one of the fundamental gains of the 1910 Revolution, amidst increasing environmental scarcities affecting indigenous communities (read more on this).

La Otra seeks to draw the lessons from the Zapatistas’ past campaigns – the unacceptable human costs of the spiralling violence implicit in any ‘armed struggle’ strategy, but especially, the Mexican Congress’s refusal to enshrine indigenous land rights in the new Constitution of 2001, as agreed under the terms of the San Andre Accords negotiated between the EZLN and the Federal Government in 1996.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of La Otra has been the success of its wide ranging popular consultations in initiating a common language of opposition and resistance to the global forces of neo-liberalism, identified as responsible for the twin ills of mal gobierno (bad government) and maldesarrollo (maldevelopment). The development of concepts applicable to various situations of exploitation and dispossession – e.g. ‘ya basta’ (enough is enough), ‘dignity’, the definition of neo-liberalism itself as ‘a crime against humanity’, has enabled Zapatista discourse to expand in both national and global space from its local origins, and to reach and be influenced by diverse contexts of struggle and resistance.

As La Otra travelled through the central and southern states listening to tales of land dispossessions to make way for a new airport or yet another Wal-Mart, development came to be identified, in Zapatista discourse, as the right to dignity and access to the means of ensuring decent livelihoods. At the same time, these travels have enabled the Zapatistas to build networks of communication and solidarity with other social movements (including many outside Mexico), and to reach a heterogeneous plurality of social groups including sweatshop workers, farmers, fishermen, teachers, and students.

As Mexico faces yet another crisis of legitimate governability following the presidential election swindle of July 2006, the relaunch of La Otra promises to consolidate this gathering of rebel civil society, though the new central and state governments may well be tempted to play the repression card. The threat to elite interests implicit in the Zapatistas’ project of moving towards a ‘richer’ form of democracy whereby representative democracy is cleaned up and enriched by direct democracy, has seldom been greater in Mexico’s history.

The progress of La Otra Campana can be followed through regular reports in the Narco News Bulletin and in the Mexican daily La Jornada.

Dr Sandip Hazareesingh is Lecturer at the Open University's Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies. He has just returned from a visit to Mexico and Guatemala.

NEWS OF THE INDIGENOUS INTERCONTINENTAL CONFERENCE FOR 2007

The Zapatista movement has put an Indigenous Intercontinental Conference on the table for later this year. The news comes out of a gathering in Mexico just concluded. The gathering included amongst others indigenous representatives from tribes in Sonora, Mexico and tribal members from Arizona Indian tribes. On hand were O’odham from Sonora, Yaqui from Rio Yaqui, Sonora, Mayo from Sinoloa and Raramuri from Chihuahua in Mexico. Coming from the United States were O’odham, O’otham, Navajo, Apache and Hopi.

Subcomandante Marcos said he hopes the Intercontinental gathering will “touch the hearts and recuperate the souls” of Indigenous people struggling throughout the continents. “When Indigenous Peoples come together from all regions, they will realize that money means nothing when compared to the values of Indigenous Peoples.”

The declaration for the Indigenous Intercontinental Conference, signed April 22, states that it has been 515 years since the invasion of ancient Indigenous territories and the onslaught of the war of conquest, spoils and capitalist exploitation.

The press conference where the announcment was made was held at the Rancho Penasco, biodiversity ranch, 11 kilometers south of Magdalena, on the main highway to Hermosillo. Magdalena is less than a two-hour drive south of Nogales, Ariz..

Mexico City officials legalize abortion

Mexico City lawmakers voted to legalize abortion Tuesday, a decision likely to influence policies and health practices across Mexico and other parts of heavily Roman Catholic Latin America.

The proposal, approved 46-19, with one abstention, will take effect with the expected signing by the city’s leftist mayor. Abortion opponents have already vowed to appeal the law to the Supreme Court, a move likely to extend the bitter and emotional debate in this predominantly Catholic nation.
*

There are an estimated 200,000 illegal abortions in Mexico each year.

Of women who opt for illegal procedures, at least 1,500 women die during botched operations performed in unhygienic backstreet clinics.

Many victims of rape are denied access to legal abortion, a Human Rights Watch report said last year.

The Mexico City assembly has courted controversy in Mexico before: it recently voted to allow same-sex civil unions and is currently considering legalising euthanasia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6586959.stm

HEALTH-LATIN AMERICA: Limiting the Junk Food Banquet

Diego Cevallos

Credit:Photo Stock Junk food reigns at snack time.

MEXICO CITY, Apr 24 (IPS/IFEJ) - Amidst a little pushing and shoving, dozens of girls and boys order fried potatoes, soft drinks, hotdogs and candy at the shop in a private school in Mexico. Similar scenes can be found across Latin America, where junk food sales are strong.

But gradually, in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Panama and Mexico, legislative bills or initiatives of governments, cities and parents' associations are making inroads in making junk food a little harder for children to get their hands on.

In the same school where the children can buy foods rich in fats and sugar, and poor in nutrients, also for sale are fruits and vegetables. But almost nobody orders those.

This reporter followed the programming on two Mexican television channels between 2:00pm and 6:00pm and found that in more than 100 advertisements shown by each station at least half were for junk food.

In the United States, ads for candy, hamburgers, sugary breakfast cereals and the like, represent 34 percent of all commercials that children and adolescents see on TV, according to a study sponsored by the U.S.-based Kaiser Family Foundation.

The World Health Organisation says this type of food contributes to the problem of obesity, which affects more than 20 percent of people over age five in the region.

And, according to WHO, the leading risk factors for non-contagious diseases -- responsible for 60 percent of the 56 million deaths worldwide each year -- are lack of consumption of fruits and vegetables, excess weight and obesity, lack of physical activity and tobacco use.

The U.S. American Heart Association says that Latin America stands out from other regions for having the highest proportion of heart attack risks as a result of high blood pressure, excess abdominal fat and permanent stress.

Brazil's National Health Monitoring Agency in November launched a public debate on regulations that would ban radio and TV advertising for soft drinks and foods with high content of sugar, saturated fat or salt. The government is expected to issue a decree on such measures in late June.

Regulating advertising "is interesting", because it affects "innocent consumers" like children, and is an essential measure for containing the problem of childhood obesity, says Mariana del Bosco Rodrigues, a nutritionist with the Brazilian Association for the Study of Obesity.

Some city governments have banned sales of candy near or inside schools. Others have improved what is offered at school snack time, such as fruit, vegetables and natural juices, she said in an interview.

Murilo Diversi, a food expert at IDEC, the Brazilian consumer defence institute, said that, luckily for his country, junk food advertising can be regulated by decree.

Between the periods 1974-75 and 2002-03, the proportion of Brazilian males between ages 10 and 19 who were overweight increased from 3.9 percent to 17.9 percent, while for females in the same age group it rose from 7.5 percent to 15.4 percent.

In Mexico, obesity among children aged five to 11 jumped 40 percent between 1999 and 2006. In that same period, the waistlines of women of childbearing age increased an average of 10 cm. Furthermore, 10 percent of Mexican adults are diabetic, and 30 percent of children have hypertension, according to official figures.

"The obesity epidemic is out of control. One of the most important causes is the change in eating habits and the lack of regulation of junk food advertising," says Alejandro Calvillo, director of the Mexican non-governmental organisation El Poder del Consumidor (Power of the Consumer), interviewed for this article.

According to the government's National Institute of Public Health, in the last 14 years the consumption of soft drinks increased 60 percent in Mexico, the world's second leading market for such beverages, after the United States.

Mexico's indigenous families, which tend to be the poorest, spend an average of two dollars per week on soft drinks and less than one dollar on milk, says the state-run Integral Family Development agency.

Despite pressure from ConMéxico, an association of the leading manufacturers of junk food, national lawmakers have been studying since 2006 a bill for restricting junk food ads. There is also a bill for labelling such products with warnings about their lack of nutritional value.

But the bills have run into some legislative roadblocks, and some lawmakers have reported meddling and even threats from manufacturers.

Upholding the discourse of snack food and beverage manufacturers in other countries, Ignacio Lastra, spokesman of the Mexican National Chamber of Industry, declared that a law will not resolve the obesity problem.

Lastra believes that families should instruct their children about adequate nutrition.

In the WHO's "Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health", governments are urged to create new taxes to discourage manufacturing food with little nutritional value and to limit advertising for such food that is aimed at children.

Doctor Mercedes Schnell, of the Venezuelan non-governmental Bengoa Foundation for Food and Nutrition, believes that banning junk food and related advertising is no guarantee of success.

It is best to educate the consumers, she said in an interview.

But, like most experts, she recognises that "poor nutrition and excess weight and obesity among children is increased by the greater availability of fast food, outside the home, full of saturated fats and sugars and low in dietary fibre."

Though for now there aren't any laws being considered for junk food sales or advertising, school officials have banned consumption in many schools in Venezuela.

Local governments and family associations in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico decided not to wait for national regulations and have designed their own programmes for limiting the availability of junk food in and around schools.

In Chile, senators of the co-governing Party for Democracy are considering a bill to regulate the manufacture of low-nutrition foods and restrict its sale in and near schools.

Since 1997, a ban has been in effect in Panama on the distribution of fried foods and soft drinks in schools. But officials there admit it is difficult to enforce it.

Proper food choice, along with public policies in education, health, sports and advertising, could reverse the trend towards obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, says Bosco Rodrigues.

(*Reporting contributed by Mario Osava in Brazil and Humberto Márquez in Venezuela. This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS -- Inter Press Service -- and IFEJ, the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.)

Raul Castro Receives Iran Envoys

Havana, Apr 24 (Prensa Latina) Cuba s Vice President Raul Castro met with Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Manouchehr Mottaki, who is officially visiting the island with members of his government, it was informed in this capital on Tuesday.

Raul Castro and Mottaki exchanged in Havana Monday on international issues of mutual interest and expressed their intention of strengthening the role of the Non-Aligned Movement in the current international situation, Granma newspaper reported.

Both parties also reviewed the development of bilateral relations and agreed deepening economic and collaboration ties. The Iranian minister also talked with Raul Castro about his country s situation.

The encounter was attended by Cuban Executive Secretary of the Council of Ministers Carlos Lage Davila and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, while the Iranian group included Hamidreza Ají Babaei, member of that country s Parliament, and Ahmad Edrisian, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Venezuela Securing Colombia Border

Venezuela announced reinforcement of its military presence in Zulia state on the border with Colombia, as part of an agenda implemented on Tuesday to improve security.

Military sources indicated that the First Infantry and Military Garrison Division in Maracaibo are due to activate as of Wednesday the 12th Infantry Brigade, which has three battalions and its operation center will be in Machiques de Perija municipality.

General Juan Vicente Paredes told press that some 2,000 soldiers will secure all the Zulia territory and particularly support agricultural producers and farmers, victims of outrages by Colombian paramilitary groups.

The deployment is part of a plan revealed this month by Defense Minister General-in-Chief Raul Baduel, to reinforce military control along the border with Colombia, with the deployment of some 15,000 soldiers.

Baduel stated that the operation will ensure security in a zone mainly affected by illegal armed groups, drug traffickers and criminals.

Cuba frees dissident imprisoned 17 years

A veteran dissident leader who wrote a book about Cuban prison conditions while behind bars was freed over the weekend after serving his entire 17-year sentence, rights groups said Monday.

Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, widely known by the nickname "Antunez," was released Sunday morning from prison in the central province of Villa Clara, the opposition group Bitacora Cubana said in a statement.

Originally arrested on charges of engaging in enemy propaganda and attempted sabotage in 1990, Garcia Perez was among the prisoners

Pope John Paul II had asked the government to release. But he was not among the 14 people the Cuban government said it had freed in conjunction with the January 1998 papal visit.

From Miami, the Cuban American National Foundation, a powerful political lobby, sent a message Monday congratulating Garcia Perez upon his release and praising him for his "consistency of principles."

In Havana, another rights group confirmed Garcia Perez's release even as it reported a new case of a dissident attorney sentenced after a secret trial to 12 years in prison for painting graffiti and distributing pamphlets with an anti-government message.

Rolando Jimenez Posada was charged with disrespect for authority and revealing state secrets. He was tried in Havana over the weekend without a defense attorney or family members present, said Elizardo Sanchez, spokesman for the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation.

Sanchez said Jimenez Posada was transported to Havana for the proceeding from Isla de la Juventud, where he has been jailed since his arrest in early 2003.

It was unclear whether the time already spent in jail would count toward the 12-year sentence.

According to Sanchez, Jimenez Posada's relatives say authorities denied the defendant's request to represent himself in court and he was not allowed to attend his own trial when he protested.

"The biggest worry for the commission is that in two weeks, we have seen two similar secret trials behind closed doors, without relatives or defense attorneys present," Sanchez said.

Earlier this month, the rights commission criticized what it said was the secret trial of independent journalist Oscar Sanchez Madan.

Sanchez Madan, who wrote about dissident groups and the hardships of Cuban life, was arrested April 13 and tried in a secret hearing later that day, the rights commission said. He was convicted of the vaguely worded charge of "social dangerousness," and sentenced to four years in prison.

The Cuban government has not commented on either case.