Paraguay: Barring Electoral Fraud, the Opposition Will Triumph’

The countdown to Paraguay’s presidential elections in April has begun, and the candidate for the Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC), former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo, looks likely to pose a serious threat to the six-decades-old Colorado Party monopoly on power.

Lugo, 56, asked to be secularised (returned to layman status) by the Vatican in December 2006, after a decade of pastoral work in the northern province of San Pedro, one of the poorest regions in this country of 6.7 million people.

However, Pope Benedict XVI disapproved of his political aspirations, turned down his resignation and instead suspended him "a divinis", a penalty which means he cannot exercise certain priestly functions, but is not relieved of his clerical obligations.

Known as "the bishop of the poor," Lugo is strongly influenced by liberation theology, a school of thought which took shape in Latin America in the 1960s, partly as a result of the renewal of the Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council. Recognising the pressing need for social change and social justice, it challenged the Church to defend the oppressed and the poor.

Polls indicate that he is the most respected and popular political figure in Paraguay, ahead of the other candidates by a wide margin.

The APC rose from the ashes of the Concertación Nacional (National Coalition), which drew together the main political forces of the opposition with the goal of nominating a single candidate for the elections.

However, an internal crisis split the coalition apart, and the APC has taken its place. The new bloc consists of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA), the country’s second political party in terms of voter support, a few minor parties without parliamentary representation, and civil society organisations.

Lugo’s running mate is Dr. Federico Franco, who was elected in December by the PLRA. The pair will be standing against former Education Minister Blanca Ovelar of the ruling Colorado Party or ANR (National Republican Association), former General Lino Oviedo of the National Union of Ethical Citizens (UNACE), and businessman Pedro Fadul of the Beloved Fatherland Party (PPQ).

In an interview with IPS correspondent David Vargas, Lugo called on the opposition to unite, advocated following a Paraguayan path towards change, distanced himself from the government-led processes of change in Venezuela and Bolivia, and said he could possibly learn from the examples of the left in Uruguay and the centre-left in Chile.

IPS: How do you see the present electoral scenario, now that the initial enthusiasm of presenting a united opposition front at the elections next April has lapsed?

FERNANDO LUGO: We’re starting to build a united opposition, which is not an easy task in Paraguay, because we have not had the experience of democracy that other countries in the region have enjoyed, nor the real opportunity to unite around a plan for the country. Political parties today, and especially their leaders, are removed from their followers, and their supporters have lost faith in them.

There’s no model that we can copy or import. Uruguay’s Frente Amplio (Broad Front) could shed some light on our situation: it was formed in 1971 (and is now the governing party); or the Coalition for Democracy in Chile, which has a history of 25 years (and has governed Chile since 1990). But we have been in existence for less than one year.

IPS: Are you confident that you can put an end to the Colorado Party’s hegemony?

FL: We are confident that the APC is certain to win the elections, because of the receptiveness we have been shown in the hinterland of the country, the hope that our candidacy has inspired, and the differences between our programme and the others’. So far, barring electoral fraud, the APC will triumph.

IPS: Have your chances been undermined by the release of former General Lino Oviedo, and his official recognition as a candidate?

FL: Oviedo is not a guarantee of democracy in the country, but it is also true that he is not the same person he was 10 years ago, when he had military, economic and political power. He has come out of prison into a scenario in which his own party is divided, and many of its valuable leaders have left it.

Although it was also a loss, the departure of UNACE from the National Coalition was a gain for the APC, because when UNACE left, the social movements joined us.

IPS: What political and economic policies will you implement?

FL: We are convinced that it is not the sole responsibility of the state or the government to draw up a political plan. We believe in private initiative, we do not believe in monopolies, whether state-owned or private. We are in favour of a mixed economy, and so we have invited financially powerful corporations and institutions to take part in a social dialogue to arrive at a programme by consensus.

Planning for a mixed economy inevitably means making room for the business community, industrial groups, and other economic forces within the country to participate.

IPS: How will you tackle poverty? FL: I think there are two or three possible strategies. First of all, government administration must be honest. There are resources that are not being used efficiently, such as the Itaipú and Yacyretá hydrelectric dams, for example.

It’s possible to make plans for an industrial country, one that is not only an exporter of agricultural commodities. We have the necessary tools: sun, earth, water, people, technology, raw materials, energy. So far there has neither been a plan nor really effective management for this to become a reality.

IPS: Will you carry out land reform?

FL: We believe Paraguay must recover its credibility on the international stage, and one essential element is land redistribution.

In the early 1990s, Paraguay received a 40 million dollar loan from the Inter-American Development Bank to create a national land ownership registry, which to this day has not been carried out. Only 10 to 15 percent in the south of the country has been covered. As long as we lack a credible land registry, people will continue to be duped.

The point of departure for land reform is transparency about who owns what land. With the participation of government, small farmers’ organisations and industrial sectors, we could design a land reform process that would not be traumatic or violent, but would be the product of inclusive and consensual negotiation.

IPS: In terms of your plans for the country, to whom do you feel closest: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Néstor Kirchner of Argentina, Evo Morales of Bolivia or Hugo Chávez of Venezuela?

FL: Paraguay has to make its own way forward. I don’t think we can import a foreign model. I’m in favour of collective and shared leadership. I think that in some countries there are very strong individual leaders, such as in Chávez’s case, for example.

When leadership isn’t shared, individual leaders can cause polarisation, as I believe is happening in Bolivia. I don’t believe in creating a polarised society. We have enough problems already without creating additional conflict. I believe in dialogue as the social instrument to build a country.

IPS: How does Paraguay fit in to the regional scenario?

FL: Paraguay is at a special juncture. There is a strong probability that the Colorado Party’s hegemony can be broken, and that the country can be rebuilt democratically, with stronger institutions. To have a state that is not solidly identified with one party will, I think, be a great change.

IPS: What do you think of the current Paraguayan government of Nicanor Duarte?

FL: He stirred up great expectations and dreams through his speeches, holding out the hope for a renewal of the Colorado Party. But he failed, and plunged the people into disappointment and frustration. The entrenched structures, the old way of doing politics through patronage and handing out sinecures that had kept the Colorado Party in power prevailed, and became everyday practices in his government.

IPS: What is your view on the changes in the region, especially its turn to the left in recent years?

FL: The case of (Ecuadorean President) Rafael Correa is unprecedented, and so is the situation of Chávez in Venezuela, where one oligarchy has been displaced by another, but it has at least brought a certain amount of transparency and economic benefits. There are also elements conspiring to attack the strengthening of public freedoms. We are watching events there from a distance.

IPS: What is your position with regard to the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) (to which Paraguay belongs, together with Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, and which Venezuela is in the process of joining as a full member)?

FL: No country can think about development in isolation. Integration is a social, economic, political and trade imperative of the market. But I think that Mercosur as it is today is inadequate, especially for Uruguay and Paraguay, countries for which the asymmetries in terms of economic growth have grown.

The creation of Parlasur (the Mercosur Parliament) was an important step, because it introduced a political element, but other ingredients are lacking, such as social and cultural components, which should be included in order to strengthen the bloc.

IPS: What role do you expect the country to play on the regional stage?

FL: Paraguay faces two challenges. First, to recover our dignity as a country. At the moment we are a byword for illegality, corruption and contraband. This image must change, and that can only be done with transparent, honest governance and a transformed public administration.

Secondly, we must earn the moral authority to join the region, and open ourselves to international relations depending on convenience and mutual benefits.

Correa: Ecuador/Bolivia Opp in Tandem

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said on Wednesday that the Ecuadorean and Bolivian opposition are in permanent touch with each other and have the same separatist strategy.

There exists one plan of the separatist Ecuador Guayaquil oligarchy and that in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to forge the defeat here of the new Constitution in the referendum and also destroy the government of Evo Morales, the president declared.

In remarks to Radio Cristal, Correa said these oligarchs are represented by the Social Christian Guayaquil Mayor Jaime Nebot, who defends the outdated partycracy model.

That system is falling to pieces, but the economic powers do not want to lose the privileges they have had for decades, he noted.

During his radio program on Saturday, Correa said "the oligarchy in Guayaquil and that in Santa Cruz have even signed agreements to turn these regions into autonomies, which in fact is separatism.

He stressed that his government wants to change the current situation, generate employment and fairly distribute the country's wealth; and so it is facing the oligarchy's opposition.

Castro attacks Bush's State of the Union

Cuba's Castro Criticizes 'Demagoguery, Lies' of Bush's State of the Union

WILL WEISSERT

Fidel Castro called President Bush's State of the Union address a new low point in "demagoguery, lies and total lack of ethics" in a commentary published Wednesday.

The ailing 81-year-old leader wrote that "Bush tells us more with his external expressions than with the words written by his advisers," but added that "for a population that knows how to read, write and think, nobody can offer a more elegant criticism of the empire than Bush himself."

Castro and top Cuban officials routinely refer to the United States as "the empire."

In Wednesday's essay, called "The Antithesis of Ethics" and published on the front pages of government newspapers, Castro said Bush's latest speech was worse than earlier State of the Union addresses: "the worst for its demagoguery, lies and total lack of ethics."

Quoting extensively from Monday's address, Castro accused the Bush administration of running up U.S. debt and said Washington's wars have increased military spending worldwide by 60 percent.

Castro wrote that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan "was the same thing that the U.S.S.R wanted to do, occupy the country with its powerful armed forces that were ultimately defeated when they ran into its customs, religion and cultural differences."

He said Bush used the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as an excuse to invade Iraq, and that "no one in the world doubts the objective was to occupy (Iraq's) oil installations and has cost that country's people hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions displaced from their homes."

Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing a series of emergency intestinal surgeries and stepping aside as president in favor of his younger brother Raul in July 2006. He is recovering from an undisclosed illness in a secret location, though life on the island has remained little-changed in his absence.

Source: AP News

Reflections of President Fidel Castro: Lula (3 parts)

LULA

(Part One)

He spontaneously decided to visit Cuba for the second time since he became President of Brazil, even though the state of my health did not guarantee that he would be able to meet with me.

In the past, as he himself said, he visited the Island almost every year. I met him on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution at the home of Sergio Ramírez who at that time was the Vice President of that country. By the way, I would say that Ramírez fooled me, in some way. When I read his book, Divine Punishment –an excellent narrative– I came to believe that it was a real case that had happened in Nicaragua, with that legal nuisance so common in the former Spanish colonies; he himself told me one day that it was pure fiction.

There I also met with Frei Betto who today is a critic, but not an enemy, of Lula, as well as with Father Ernesto Cardenal, a militant leftist Sandinista and, today, an adversary of Daniel. The two writers were part of the Theology of Liberation, a progressive trend which we always saw as a great step towards unity between revolutionaries and the poor, beyond their philosophy and their beliefs, in accordance with the specific conditions of struggle in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Nonetheless, I must confess that I perceived in Father Ernesto Cardenal, unlike others in the Nicaraguan leadership, an image of sacrifice and privations resembling that of a medieval monk. He was a true prototype of purity. I leave aside others less consistent, who were at one time revolutionaries, including militants of the far left in Central America and other areas, who later, anxious about their well-being and money, crossed over, part and parcel, to the ranks of the empire.

What does all this have to do with Lula? A lot. He was never a left-wing extremist, nor did he become a revolutionary through philosophical studies but rather he came from very humble working class roots and Christian beliefs, and he worked hard creating surplus value for others. Karl Marx saw the workers as the ones who would bury the capitalist system: “Workers of the world unite,” he proclaimed. He presents us with reasons and demonstrates this with irrefutable logic; he takes pleasure and makes fun of the cynical lies used to accuse Communists. If the ideas of Marx were just at that time, when everything seemed to depend on the class struggle and the growth of the productive forces, science and technology, that supported the creation of essential goods to satisfy human necessities, there are absolutely new factors which say that he was right and which at the same time clash with his noble aims.

New necessities have arisen which could destroy the aims of a society with neither exploiters nor exploited. Among these new necessities we have that of human survival. No one had even heard about climate change in Marx’s day and age. He and Engels surely knew that one day the sun would be extinguished as it consumed all of its energy. A few years after the Manifesto was written, other men were born who made inroads in science and knowledge about the laws of chemistry, physics and biology ruling the Universe and unknown then. Into whose hands would this knowledge fall? Although it continues in its development and even improves, and again partially denies and contradicts its own theories, new knowledge is not in the hands of the poor nations who today make up three-quarters of the world’s population. It is in the hands of a privileged group of wealthy and developed capitalist powers, associated with the most powerful empire ever to exist, built on the bases of a globalized economy, governed by the very laws of capitalism described by Marx and thoroughly studied by him.

Nowadays, as humankind still suffers from these realities due to the very dialectics of events, we must confront these dangers.

How did the revolutionary process in Cuba develop? Quite a bit has been written in our press in recent weeks about different episodes of that period. Great respect has been shown for various historical dates on the days corresponding to anniversaries that commemorate years ending in a five or a zero. That is fair, but we must be careful, in the sum-total of so many occurrences described in each newspaper or article, according to their criteria, lest we lose sight of them in the context of the historical development of our Revolution, despite the efforts of all those excellent analysts that we have.

For me, unity means sharing in the struggle, the risks, the sacrifices, the aims, ideas, concepts and strategies, assumed after discussion and analysis. Unity means a common struggle against annexationists, quislings and corrupt individuals who have nothing in common with a militant revolutionary. It is to this unity revolving around the idea of independence and against the empire as it advances over the peoples of the Americas that I always referred to. A few days ago, I once again read it when Granma published it on the eve of our election day, and Juventud Rebelde reproduced a facsimile of my thoughts on the idea, in my own handwriting.

The old pre-revolutionary slogan of unity has nothing to do with the concept, because in our country today we do not have political organizations seeking power. We have to avoid that, in the enormous sea of tactical criteria, strategic lines become diluted and we imagine nonexistent situations.

In a country invaded by the United States while involved in a solitary struggle for independence as the last Spanish colony, together with our sister Puerto Rico, – “birds of a feather” – nationalist feelings ran very deep.

The real producers of sugar who were the recently freed slaves and the peasants, many of whom fought in the Liberation Army, transformed into squatters or completely lacking any land of their own, who were pitched into the sugarcane harvests in the great estates created by United States companies or Cuban land-owners who inherited, bought or stole land, were adequate material for revolutionary ideas.

Julio Antonio Mella, founder of the Communist Party together with Baliño –who knew Martí and who, with him, created the party that would lead Cuba to independence-- took up the banner, brought to it all the enthusiasm derived from the October Revolution, and gave this cause his own blood, that of a young intellectual conquered by revolutionary ideas. The Communist blood of Jesús Menéndez would join that of Mella 18 years later.

We, teenagers and youths, studying in private schools had not even heard of Mella. Our class or social group, having incomes greater that those of the rest of the population, condemned us as human beings to be the selfish and the exploiters of society.

I had the privilege of coming to the revolution through ideas, escaping the boring fate that life was leading me to. I explained why at another moment; now, I remember this only in the context of what I am writing.

Hatred for Batista's repression and his crimes was so great that nobody paid heed to the ideas I expressed in my defense at the Court in Santiago de Cuba, where there was even a book by Lenin printed in the USSR –coming from the credit I had at the People’s Socialist Party bookstore at Carlos III in Havana– found among the combatants’ belongings. “Whoever hasn’t read Lenin, is an ignorant”, I blurted out during the interrogation at the first sessions of the oral hearing when they brought it up as a damning bit of evidence. They were still trying me together with all of the surviving prisoners.

It would be hard to understand what I am saying if one doesn’t keep in mind that at the time we attacked the Moncada, on July 26, 1953, --an action made possible by the organizational efforts of more than a year, with nobody on our side other than ourselves-- the policies of Stalin, who had died suddenly a few months earlier, prevailed in the USSR. He was an honest and devoted Communist, who would later make serious mistakes leading him to extremely conservative and cautious positions. If a Revolution like ours had succeeded at that time, the USSR would not have done for Cuba what the Soviet leadership did years later, liberated by then from those murky and tortuous methods, and enthused by the Socialist Revolution that burst on the scene in our country. I understood that very well in spite of the fair criticisms I made of Khrushchev as a result of events that were well known at the time.

The USSR had the most powerful army among all those contending in World War II, but unfortunately it was purged and demobilized. Its leader underestimated Hitler’s threats and bellicose theories. From the very capital of Japan, an important and prestigious Soviet intelligence agent had communicated the imminence of the attack on June 22, 1941. This surprised the country which was not in combat readiness. Many officers were on leaves. Even without their most experienced unit leaders --who were replaced-- if they had been alerted and deployed, the Nazis would have clashed with powerful forces from the very first second and they wouldn’t have destroyed most of the fighter planes as they sat on the ground. Even worse than the purge, was the surprise. The Soviet soldiers did not surrender when they were told about enemy tanks in the rearguard, the way the other armies from capitalist Europe did. In the most critical moments, with sub-zero temperatures, the Siberian patriots started the lathes in the weapons factories that Stalin had far-sightedly moved to the inner reaches of Soviet territory.

As the leaders of the USSR themselves told me when I visited that great country in April 1963, the revolutionary Russian combatants --well seasoned against foreign interventions aimed at destroying the Bolshevik Revolution, which was left blockaded and isolated-- had established relations and exchanged experiences with German officers, those with a Prussian militarist tradition, humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles which put an end to World War I.

The SS intelligence services devised schemes against many who were, in their vast majority, loyal to the Revolution. Motivated by suspicions that turned pathological, Stalin purged 3 of his 5 Marshals, 13 of the 15 Army Commanders, 8 of the 9 Admirals, 50 of the 57 Army Corps Commanders, 154 of 186 Division Commanders, one hundred percent of Army Commissars, and 25 of 28 Army Corps Commissars of the Soviet Red Army in the years preceding the Great Patriotic War.

The USSR paid for those serious mistakes with enormous destruction and more than 20 million lives lost; some claim it was 27 million.

In 1943, with some delay, the last Nazi spring offensive was launched at the famous and tempting Kursk Bulge, with 900 thousand soldiers, 2700 tanks and 2000 planes. The Soviets, experts in enemy psychology, laid in wait in that trap for the sure attack, with one million and 200 thousand men, 3300 tanks, 2400 planes and 20,000 artillery pieces. Led by Zhukov and Stalin himself, they destroyed Hitler's last offensive.

In 1945, Soviet soldiers advanced unstoppable to capture the German Reich Chancellery in Berlin where they hoisted the red flag stained with the blood of the many fallen.

I observe Lula’s red tie for a minute and I ask him, Did Chávez give you that? He smiles and answers: Now I am going to send him some shirts because he is complaining that the collars on his shirts are too hard, and I am going to look for them in Bahía so that I can make him a present of them.

He asked that I give him some of the photos I took.

When he said that he was very impressed with my health, I told him that I spent my time thinking and writing. Never in my life had I thought so much. I told him that, at the end of my visit to Córdoba, Argentina, where I had attended a meeting with many leaders, and he had been there as well, I came back, and then I took part in two ceremonies for the July 26th Anniversary. I was checking over Ramonet’s book. I had answered all his questions. I had not taken the thing too seriously. I had thought that it would be a quick thing, like the interviews with Frei Betto and Tomás Borge. And then I became a slave to the French writer's book, when it was at the point of being published without my going over it, with some of the answers being a bit off the cuff. I barely slept during those days.

When I fell gravely ill on the night of the 26th and in the early morning of the 27th of July, I thought that would be the end, and while the doctors were fighting for my life, the head of the Council of State Office was reading me the text, at my insistence, and I was dictating the pertinent changes.
(Part Two)

LULA warmly reminded me of the first time he visited our country in 1985 to take part in a meeting organized by Cuba to analyze the overwhelming problem of the foreign debt; participants representing a wide spectrum of political, religious, cultural and social tendencies presented and discussed their opinions, concerned about the asphyxiating drama.

The meetings took place throughout the year. Leaders of worker, campesino, student and other groups assembled to examine the various subjects. He was one of these leaders, already well known to us and abroad for his direct and vibrant message, that of a young worker leader.

At that time, Latin America owed $350 billion. I told him that in that year of intense struggle I had written long letters to the President of Argentina, Raúl Alfonsín, to persuade him discontinue the payments on that debt. I knew the position of Mexico, unmoved in the payment of its enormous debt, but not indifferent to the outcome of the battle, and the special political situation of Brazil. The Argentine debt was sufficiently large after the disasters of the military government to justify an attempt to open up a breach in that direction. I did not succeed. A few years later, the debt with the interests rose to $800 billion; it had doubled and it had already been paid.

Lula explained to me how that year was different. He says that Brazil has no debt today either with the International Monetary Fund or with the Paris Club, and that it has 190 billion US dollars in its reserves. I assumed that his country had paid enormous sums in order to comply with those institutions. I explained to him about Nixon's colossal fraud on the world economy, when in 1971 he unilaterally suspended the gold standard that had limited the issuing of paper money. Until then the dollar had maintained a balance in relation to its value in gold. Thirty years earlier, the United States had almost all the reserves in that metal. If there was a lot of gold, they bought it up; if there was a shortage, they sold. The dollar played its part as an international exchange currency, under the privileges granted to the United States at Bretton Woods in 1944.

The most developed powers had been destroyed by the war. Japan, Germany, the USSR and the rest of Europe had barely any of this metal in their reserves. One ounce of gold could be bought for as little as 35 dollars; today you need 900 dollars.

The United States, I told him, has bought up assets all over the world by minting dollars, and exercises sovereign privileges over such properties acquired in other countries. Nevertheless, nobody wants the dollar to devaluate any further, because almost all countries accumulate dollars; that is, paper money, that devaluates constantly as a result of that unilateral decision made by the President of the United States.

Presently, the currency reserves of China, Japan, Southeast Asia and Russia combined amount to three trillion dollars; an astronomical figure. If you add the dollar reserves of Europe and the rest of the world, you will see that all that is equivalent to a mountain of money whose value depends on what the government of one country decides to do.

Greenspan, who for more than 15 years was the chairman of the Federal Reserve, would have died in a panic had he been faced with such situation. How high can U.S. inflation climb? How many new jobs can this country create this year? How long will its machinery to mint paper money last before its economy collapses, besides using war to conquer other nations’ natural resources?

As a result of the harsh measures imposed on the defeated German state at Versailles in 1918, when a republican regime came to power, the German mark devaluated to such an extent that you needed tens of thousands of them to buy one dollar. Such a crisis fed German nationalism and contributed extraordinarily to Hitler’s absurd ideas. He was looking for a scapegoat. Many of the most important scientific and financial talents as well as writers were Jewish. They were persecuted. Among them was Einstein, the author of the theory stating that energy is equal to mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light; it made him famous. Also Marx, who was born in Germany, and many of the Russian Communists were of Jewish descent, whether or not they actively practiced the Hebrew religion.

Hitler did not lay the blame for the human drama on the capitalist system; rather he blamed the Jews. Based on crude prejudices, what he really wanted was "vital Russian space" for his Teutonic master race, dreaming of building a millennial empire.

In 1917, through the Balfour Declaration, the British decided to create the state of Israel within its colonial empire, located on territory inhabited by the Palestinians, who had a different religion and culture; in that part of the world, other ethnic groups coexisted for many centuries before our era, among them the Jews. Zionism became popular among the Americans, who rightly detested the Nazis, and whose financial markets were controlled by representatives of that movement. That state today is practicing the principles of apartheid; it has sophisticated nuclear weapons and it controls the most important financial centers in the United States. It was used by this country and its European allies to supply nuclear weapons to that other apartheid, the one in South Africa, to use them against the Cuban internationalist combatants who were fighting the racists in the south of Angola if they crossed the Namibian border.

Immediately afterwards, I spoke to Lula about Bush’s adventurous policies in the Middle East.

I promised to send him the article that was to be published in Granma the next day, on January 16. I would personally sign the copy he would be getting. Before he left, I would also give him the article written by one of the most influential U.S. intellectuals, Paul Kennedy, about the connection between food and oil prices.

You are a food producer, I added, and you have just discovered important reserves of light crude. Brazil has an area of 5,333,750 square miles and 30 percent of the world’s water reserves. The planet’s population needs increasing amounts of food, and you are great food exporters. If you have grains rich in proteins, oils and carbohydrates – be they fruits like the cashew nuts, almonds, or pistachio; legumes such as peanut; soybean, with more than 35% protein, and sunflower seeds; or grains like wheat and corn – you can produce all the meat or milk you want. I didn’t mention others on a long list.

I continued with my explanation saying that in Cuba, we had a cow that broke the world record in milk production, a Holstein-Zebu hybrid. Right away Lula named her: "White Udder!" (Ubre Blanca), he exclaimed. He remembered her name. I went on to say that she would produce 110 liters of milk per day. She was like a factory, but she had to have more than 40 kilograms of fodder, the most she could chew and swallow in a 24-hour period, a mixture in which soy meal, a legume that is very difficult to grow in Cuban soil and climate, is a basic ingredient. You now have the two things: safe supplies of fuel, raw food materials and manufactured food products.

The end of cheap food has already been announced. I stated: "What do you think the dozens of countries with many hundreds of millions of inhabitants who have neither the one nor the other will do?" This means that the United States has a huge external dependency which is also a weapon. It could use all its reserves of land, but the people of that country are not ready for that. They are producing ethanol from corn; therefore, they are taking a great amount of this caloric grain off the market, I added, continuing my argument.

On the same subject, Lula tells me that Brazilian producers are already selling the 2009 corn crop. Brazil is not as dependent on corn as Mexico or Central America. I think that the United States cannot keep up fuel production from corn. This, I say, confirms a reality with regards to the sudden and incontrollable rise of food prices which will affect many peoples.

You, on the other hand, can rely on a favorable climate and loose soil; ours tends to be clayish and sometimes as hard as cement. When we received tractors from the Soviets and the other Socialist countries, they would break down and we had to buy special steel in Europe to manufacture them here. In our country we have lots of clay-based black or red soil. Working it with dedication, they can produce for the family what the campesinos in the Escambray call "high consumption". They were receiving food rations from the state and also consuming their own production. The climate has changed in Cuba, Lula, I said.

Our soil is not suitable for the large-scale commercial production of cereals, as required to meet the necessities of a population of almost 12 million people, and the cost in machinery and fuel imported by the nation, at today’s prices, would be very high.

Our media prints news about oil production in Matanzas, reductions in costs and other positive aspects. But nobody says that the prices in hard currency must be shared with foreign partners who invest in the necessary sophisticated machinery and technology. Besides, we do not have the required labor force to intensively take part in cereal production as the Vietnamese and Chinese do, growing rice plant by plant and often reaping two or even three harvests a year. It has to do with the location and the historical tradition of the land and its settlers. They did not first go through the large-scale mechanization of modern harvesters.

In Cuba, for quite a while now, the sugarcane cutters and the workers in the mountain coffee plantations have abandoned the fields, logically. Also, a large number of construction workers, some from the same origins, have abandoned the work brigades and have become self-employed workers. The people are aware of the high cost of fixing up a home. There is the cost of the material, plus the high cost of the manpower. The first can be solved, the second has no solution – as some would believe – throwing pesos into the street without their due backing in convertible currency, which would not be dollars anymore but euros and yuans, increasingly expensive, if all together we succeed in saving international economy and peace.

Meanwhile, we have been creating and we should keep on creating reserves of foods and fuel. In case of a direct military attack, the manual work force would be multiplied.

In the short time Lula and I spent together, two and a half hours, I would have liked to summarize in just a few minutes the almost 28 years that have gone by, not since the time he first visited Cuba, but since I met him in Nicaragua. This time he was the leader of an immense nation whose fate, however, depends on many aspects that are common to all the peoples on this planet.

I asked his permission to speak about our conversation freely and at the same time, discreetly.

As he stands in front of me, smiling and friendly, and I listen to him speaking with pride about his country, about the things that he is doing and those he plans on doing, I think about his political instincts. I had just finished quickly looking over a 100-page report on Brazil and the growth of relations between our two countries. He was the man I met in the Sandinista capital, Managua; he was someone who connected closely with our Revolution. I neither spoke to him, nor would I ever speak to him, about anything that could be construed as interfering in the political process of Brazil, but he himself, right at the beginning, said: "Do you remember, Fidel, when we spoke at the Sao Paulo Forum, and you told me that unity among the Latin American left wing was necessary if we were to secure our progress? Well, we are now moving forward in that direction."

Immediately he speaks to me with pride about what Brazil is today and its great possibilities, bearing in mind its advances in science, technology, mechanical industry, energy and other areas, bound up with its enormous agricultural potential. Of course, he includes the high level of Brazil’s international relations, which he describes enthusiastically, and the relations he is ready to develop with Cuba. He speaks vehemently about the social work of the Workers' Party which today is supported by all the Brazilian left-wing parties, which are far from having a parliamentary majority.

There is no doubt that it was a part of the things we discussed years ago when we spoke. Back then time flew by quickly, but now every year is multiplied by ten, at a rate which is difficult to follow.

I wanted also to talk to him about that and about many other things. It’s hard to tell which one of us had the greater need to communicate ideas. As for me, I supposed that he would be leaving the next day and not early that same evening, according to the flight plan that had been scheduled before we met. It was approximately five o’clock in the afternoon. What happened was a kind of contest as to how we would be using the time. Lula, astute and quick-witted, took his revenge at a meeting with the press, when, mischievously smiling as you can see in the photos, he told the reporters that he had only talked for half an hour and Fidel had talked for two. Of course, with the privilege of seniority, I used up more time than he did. You have to discount the time taking photographs of each other, since I borrowed a camera and became a reporter again: he followed suit.

I have here 103 pages of dispatches reporting what Lula said to the press, the photos taken of him and the confidence he communicated about Fidel’s health. Truly, he left no space for the reflection published on January 16 that I had just finished writing the day before his visit. He took up the entire space and this is equivalent to his enormous territory, compared to the miniscule land surface of Cuba.

I told him how happy I was that he had decided to visit Cuba, even without the assurance that he would be able to see me. As soon as I knew that, I decided to sacrifice anything, like my exercises, rehab and recovery, just so I could be with him and talk extensively.

At that moment, even though I knew that he would be leaving that same day, I was unaware of the urgency of his departure. Evidently, the health condition of the vice president of Brazil, according to his own statement, urged him to take off so that he could arrive in Brasilia at around dawn the next day, in the middle of spring. Yet another long and hectic day for our friend.

A strong and persistent downpour fell on his residence while Lula waited for the photos and two other bits of material, together with my notes. He left that night for the airport in the rain. If he had seen the front page of Granma: "2007, the third rainiest year in more than 100 years," that would have helped him to understand what I had told him about climate change.

Well then, the sugar harvest in Cuba has begun, along with the so-called dry season. The sugar crop yield is only at nine percent. How much would it cost to grow sugar for export at 10 cents per pound, when the purchasing power of one cent is almost fifty times less than at the triumph of the Revolution in January of 1959? Reducing the costs of these and other products to fulfill our commitments, to satisfy our consumption, to create reserves and develop other production, is highly commendable; but not even in our wildest dreams can we find easy solutions to our problems; the solutions are not just around the corner.

Among many other topics, we discussed the inauguration of the new president of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom. I told him that I had seen the ceremony in its entirety and the social commitments made by the newly-elected president. Lula mentioned that what we can see today in Latin America was born in 1990 when we decided to create the Sao Paulo Forum: "We made a decision here, in a conversation we had. I had lost the election and you came to lunch at my home in San Bernardo."

My conversation with Lula was just beginning, and I still have many things to relate and ideas to offer, which might perhaps be useful.

(Part three)

The demise of the Soviet Union was to us like there were no more sunrises; a devastating blow for the Cuban Revolution. Not only did this translate into a total cessation of supplies of fuel, materials and foods; we lost markets and the prices that we had attained for our products in the difficult struggle for our sovereignty, integration and principles. The empire and the traitors, full of hatred, were sharpening their daggers with those who wanted to put the revolutionaries to the sword and recover the country’s riches.

The Gross Domestic Product progressively plummeted to 35 percent. What country could have withstood such a terrible blow? We were not defending our lives; we were defending our rights.

Many left-wing parties and organizations became discouraged in the wake of the collapse of the USSR after its titanic effort to build socialism during the course of more than 70 years.

The reactionaries’ criticisms coming from all platforms and mass media were ferocious. We did not add our voices to the chorus of capitalism’s apologists, beating a dead horse. Not one statue to the creators or followers of Marxism was demolished in Cuba. Not one school or factory had its name changed. And we decided to press ahead with unchangeable steadiness. That was what we had promised to do under such hypothetical and unbelievable circumstances.

Nor had we ever practiced personality cults in our country, something that we had taken the initiative to prohibit right from the first days after the triumph.

In peoples’ history, it has been subjective factors that have brought forward or delay outcomes, independently of the leaders’ worth.

I spoke to Lula about Che, briefly outlining his story for him. Che used to argue with Carlos Rafael Rodríguez about the self-financed or the budgetary method, things we didn’t consider that important then as we were involved in the struggle against the U.S. blockade, its aggression plans and the 1962 October Missile Crisis, a real survival issue.

Che studied the budgets of the big Yankee companies whose managers lived in Cuba, not their owners. He drew from this a clear idea about how imperialism worked and what was happening in our society and this enriched his Marxist ideas and led him to the conclusion that in Cuba we couldn’t use the same methods to build socialism. But this didn’t mean we were dealing with a war of insults; these were open exchanges of opinions that were published in a small magazine, with no intention of creating rifts or divisions among ourselves.

What happened in the USSR later would not have surprised Che. While he held important posts and carried out his duties, he was always careful and respectful. His language grew tougher when he collided with the horrible human reality imposed by imperialism; he became aware of this in the former Belgian colony of the Congo.

He was a self-sacrificing, studious and profound man; he died in Bolivia with a handful of combatants from Cuba and other Latin American countries, fighting for the liberation of Our America. He did not survive to experience the world of today, where problems unknown to us then have since come into play.

You didn’t know him, I told him. He was disciplined in voluntary work, in his studies and behavior. He was modest and selfless, and he set an example both in production centers and in combat.

I think that in building socialism, the more the privileged receive, the less will go to the neediest.

I repeat to Lula that time measured in years was now flying by very quickly; each one of them was multiplying. One can almost say the same about each day. Fresh news is published constantly, relating to the situations anticipated in my meeting with him on the 15th.

With plenty of economic arguments, I explained to him that when the Revolution triumphed in 1959, the United States was paying for an important part of our sugar production with the preferential price of 5 cents per pound; for almost half a century this would be sent to that country’s traditional marketplace which was always supplied, at critical moments, by a secure supplier just off their shores. When we proclaimed the Agrarian Reform Act, Eisenhower decided what had to be done, and we hadn’t yet nationalized their sugar mills – it would have been premature to do so – nor had we yet applied the agrarian law of May 1959 to the large estates. Because of that hasty decision, our sugar quota was suspended in December 1960, and later redistributed among other producers in this and other regions of the world as punishment. Our country became blockaded and isolated.

Worst of all was the lack of scruples and the methods used by the empire to impose its domination over the world. It brought viruses into the country and destroyed the best sugarcane; it attacked the coffee, potatoes and also the swine herds. The Barbados-4362 was one of our best varieties of sugar cane: early maturity, a sugar yield that sometimes reached 13 or 14 percent; its weight per hectare could exceed 200 tons of cane in 15 months. The Yankees resorted to pests to wipe out the best. Even worse: they brought in the hemorrhagic dengue virus that affected 344,000 people and took the lives of 101 children. We don’t know whether they used other viruses – perhaps they didn’t because they were afraid of the proximity of Cuba.

When due to these problems we couldn’t send to the USSR the sugar shipments under contract with that country, it continued sending us the goods we had agreed upon. I remember negotiating with the Soviets every cent of the sugar price; I discovered in practice what I had previously only known in theory: unequal exchange. It was securing a price that was above the world market price. The agreements were planned for five years; if at the beginning of the five-year period you were sending X amount of tons of sugar in payment for goods, at the end of that period the value of their products, in international prices, was 20 percent higher. It was always generous in negotiations: once the world market price temporarily shot up to 19 cents, we latched on to that price and the USSR accepted. Later this served as a basis for the application of the socialist principle which says that the more economically developed should support the less developed as they build socialism.

When Lula asked me what was the purchasing power of 5 cents, I explained that with one ton of sugar at that time we could by 7 tons of oil; today, the reference price of light oil, 100 dollars, will only buy one barrel. The sugar we export, at current prices, would only suffice to import oil that would be used up in 20 days. We would have to spend about 4 billion dollars per year to buy it.

The United States subsidizes its agriculture with tens of billions every year. Why does the U.S. not allow the ethanol you produce freely into the country? It subsidizes it brutally, thus denying Brazil income for billions of dollars every year. The wealthy countries do the same, with their production of sugar, oleaginous products and cereals for the production of ethanol.

Lula analyzes figures on Brazilian agricultural products that are of great interest. He tells me that he had a study made by the Brazilian press showing how world soy production will grow 2 percent annually until 2015, which means an additional production of 189 million tons of soy. Brazil's soy production would have to grow at a pace of 7 percent annually to be able to meet the world’s needs.

What is the problem? Many countries already don’t have any more land available for crops. India, for example, has no more available land; China has very little and neither does the United States to grow more soy.

I add to his explanation that what many Latin American countries have are millions of people earning starvation wages and growing coffee, cacao, vegetables, fruits, raw materials and goods at low prices to supply U.S. society, which no longer saves and consumes more than it can produce.

Lula explains that they have set up an EMBRAPA research office –Agriculture and Livestock Research Company of Brazil– in Ghana, and he goes on to say that in February they are going to also open an office in Caracas.

“Thirty years ago, Fidel, that area of Brasilia, Mato Grosso, Goiás, was considered a part of Brazil that had nothing, it was just like the African savannah; in the course of 30 years, it was transformed into the major grain producing region in all of Brazil, and I think that Africa has an area that is very much like this region in our country; that's why we set up the research office there in Ghana and we also would like to become associated with Angola.”

He told me that Brazil is in a privileged position. They have 850 million hectares of land; of these 360 million are part of the Amazon state; 400 million of good soil for agriculture, and sugarcane takes up only one percent.

I make the comment that Brazil is the largest coffee exporter in the world. For this product, Brazil is paid the same as the value of a ton in 1959: around 2,500 of today’s dollars. If in that country then they charged 10 cents a cup, today they charge 5 dollars or more for an aromatic cup of espresso, an Italian way of preparing coffee. That is GDP in the United States.

In Africa they cannot do what Brazil is doing. A large part of Africa is covered by deserts and tropical and subtropical areas where it is difficult to grow soy or wheat. Only in the Mediterranean region, to the north – where rainfall totals some eight inches a year or the land is irrigated with the waters of the Nile – in the high plateaus or in the south, in the lands wrested away by apartheid, cereals production is abundant.

Fish in the cool waters that mainly flow around its western coast feed the developed countries that sweep into their nets all the large and small species that feed on plankton in the ocean currents coming in from the South Pole.

Africa, having almost 4 times the surface area of Brazil (18.91 million square miles) and 4.3 times more population than Brazil (911 million inhabitants) is very far from being able to produce Brazil’s surplus foods, and its infrastructure is yet to be built.

The viruses and bacteria affecting potatoes, citrus, bananas, tomatoes, and livestock in general, swine fever, avian flu, foot-and-mouth disease, mad cow disease, and others that in general affect the livestock of the world, proliferate in Africa.

I spoke to Lula about the Battle of Ideas that we are waging. Fresh news arrives constantly that demonstrates the need for that constant battle. The worst media of our ideological enemies are bent on spreading throughout the world the opinions of some nasty gusanillos (worms) who cannot even stand to hear the term “socialism” in our heroic and generous country. On January 20, five days after the visit, one of these papers published the story of a young ne’er-do-well who, thanks to the Revolution, had attained a good level education, health and employment situation:

“Don’t even mention socialism to me”, he said, and went on to explain the cause of his anger: “many people were pawning their souls just to get a few dollars. Anything new that happens in this country, whatever it is, they should give it another name," he declares. Quite the little wolf dressed up as a granny.

The very same reporter, who prints this, gleefully goes on: “Official propaganda telling the Cubans to go to the polls talks more about the Revolution than about socialism. For a start, Cuba is no longer a country in a bubble, like it was until the end of the 1980’s. The insular viewpoint is changing towards a global vision and the country, especially in the capital, is living through an accelerated mutation towards modernity. And one of its effects is that socialism, imported decades ago, is tearing at the seams.”

We are dealing with imperial capitalism’s vulgar appeal to individual egoism, as it was preached almost 240 years ago by Adam Smith as the cause of the nation’s wealth, meaning everything should be handled by the market. That would create limitless wealth in an idyllic world.

I think of Africa and its almost one billion population, victim of the principles of that economy. Diseases, flying at the speed of airplanes, proliferate at the speed of AIDS, and other old and new diseases are affecting its population and its crops, with not one of the former colonial powers being really capable of sending them doctors and scientists.

It is about these issues that I spoke with Lula.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 26, 2008

Chavez chews coca leaves at summit, saying 'coca isn't cocaine'

CARACAS, Venezuela

President Hugo Chavez accepted a handful of coca leaves from his Bolivian ally Evo Morales and chewed them during a summit meeting Saturday, saying "coca isn't cocaine."

"You know the strength that coca gives," Chavez said. "I've really grown used to it every day in the morning."

The socialist leader joined the Bolivian president in defending the leaf, chewed by Andean Indians for centuries, while condemning its use in making cocaine.

U.S. officials have long tried to stamp out or restrict coca cultivation.

Chavez accused Washington of trying to use the issue of drug trafficking to discredit his government for political reasons, noting that White House drug czar John Walters has accused him of facilitating the flow of Colombian cocaine through Venezuela.

Chavez called that "a serious thing," but smiled as he thanked Morales for recently sending coca to him and Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Chavez asked for more.

"You didn't bring me the coca leaf? I asked. Where are the coca leaves?" Chavez asked Morales, a former coca farmer who in 2006 dramatically brandished a coca leaf while speaking to the United Nations General Assembly. "I want the leaf that Evo produces there, the pure, pure coca leaf."

Standing up from a table, Morales walked to Chavez and opened a drawstring bag.

"Oh, friend, I knew you wouldn't fail me! They were running out," Chavez exclaimed, accepting a handful of leaves and putting some in his mouth.

"The sacred leaf of the Inca, the Aymara" Indians, Chavez said. "Thank you, brother. ... As Evo has said - and I repeat it, coca isn't cocaine."

Morales, who rose to power as head of a coca growers' union, told leaders at the regional summit that the small, green leaf is healthy and beneficial, noting its use as an ingredient in toothpaste, as well as for coca tea. He said Coca-Cola has long used a cocaine-free coca extract as part of its secret recipe - something the U.S.-based drink maker does not discuss.

Morales, backing a policy of "zero cocaine, not zero coca," has stepped up anti-drug enforcement while attempting to control coca crops through co-operative eradication programs.

The Horizons of History: A Review of Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics

by Ron Jacobs / January 28th, 2008

The recent uprisings and eventual electoral success of the Movimiento a Socialismo (MAS) in Bolivia is one of the most hopeful historical events to have occurred so far this century. From its beginnings in the struggles against the privatization of water in 2000 up to the current attempts by the popular government to nationalize natural gas and redistribute land, the Bolivian revolution has captured the imagination of indigenous and leftist activists everywhere in the world.

Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thomson’s newest book, Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics, covers this revolutionary upsurge from a leftist perspective that goes beyond Marxism as it is academically understood, and places the demands for indigenous autonomy as the foundation for this revolution. The book opens with a description of the events in La Paz in October 2003 as witnessed by the authors and concludes with a critical look at what the victory of Morales and the MAS means for the future of Bolivia and the indigenous movements that put the party in power. In between these bookends, the reader is presented with a popular history of Bolivia. It is a history rich in resistance and almost as rich in reaction.

Like many other Latin American countries, the history of Bolivia is filled with colonialism, slaughter, and resistance. The forms of that resistance are many. Sometimes it involved only the creole or settler class against the colonialist overseers and their successor governments. Other times it involved only the indigenous peoples against those overseers. Sometimes it involved a coalition of members from both of the resisting classes in a movement against those oppressors. Indeed, sometimes the resistance itself was successful and took control of the reins of power. Unfortunately, when this occurred, the coalition between the creole forces and the indigenous peoples disintegrated, usually because of a creole belief in their ultimate superiority based on skin tone and culture.

It is at this crux that Hylton and Thomson tend to do their best analysis. It is also at this crux that leftists of the northern hemisphere should pay the most attention. The success and failure of movements past and present depend on understanding indigenous analyses and perceptions of history and leftism and somehow incorporating these into a revolutionary ideology that encourages the realization of both traditions. The alternative is to face a situation where for every progressive step forward we make in the struggle for social and economic justice, we end up taking at least one backwards, if only because of non-indigenous activists’ failure to grant the power to indigenous elements that is necessary to sustain those forward steps.

As noted above, the history of Bolivia is filled with instances of collaboration between radical movements of indigenous peoples and settlers and their descendants. Some of these historical moments were more than instances and actually moved the country towards a fairer and more equitable existence for all of its people. Yet, most of them resulted in a division amongst the very forces that created the positive circumstances. Often, the divisions revolved around land rights and the question of private property. This division then allowed the forces of reaction to creep back into power, harshening their repression of the popular forces each and every time, usually in the name of the nation. These lessons are not only important as regards our understanding of Latin America, they are also quite relevant to the worldwide struggle against neoliberalism and its neoconservative twin we are currently either part of or witness to.

Revolutionary Horizons is a brilliant and succinct survey of the struggle of the Bolivian poor and working peoples, who also happen to be primarily descendants of its original human inhabitants. One should read it not only for its importance to understanding the recently successful struggles against US imperialism in Bolivia and its neighboring lands but also for its relevance to the greater struggle against that very same opponent. While many in the United States have focused their energies on the US wars in Asia and the Middle East recently, the people of Latin America have been gaining power over their own lives and in doing so, have torn at the web of the Washington consensus and loosened the imperial grip that Washington has grown so used to. It’s only a matter of time before the stumbling military giant of US imperialism turns its attentions southward once again. Reading this book will help those opposed to this scenario understand what’s at stake.

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew:A History of the Weather Underground. His most recent novel Short Order Frame Up is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net. Read other articles by Ron.

Chavez calls for anti-US alliance

By James Ingham BBC News, Caracas

Chavez has been keen to mobilise anti-US opinion in the region

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has called on other Latin American and Caribbean countries to form a military alliance against the United States.

The vehemently anti-US leader says Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and Dominica should create one united force.

Mr Chavez, a long time critic of what he sees as US imperialism, made the comments after a summit of its leaders.

Despite constant US denials, Mr Chavez is convinced it poses a serious threat to South and Central America.

Venezuela's socialist leader has long been a critic of what he sees as US imperialism.

He has recently accused the country of trying to destabilise the region by forging stronger links with Colombia.

Mr Chavez has some key allies in his fight against capitalism, globalisation and the US.

Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and now the Caribbean island of Dominica are all members of a trade alliance known as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a group that takes its name from South America's independence leader, Simon Bolivar.

Mr Chavez has urged them to draw up a joint defence policy and create a united military force against US imperialism.

"If the US threatens one of us, it threatens all of us," he said, "we will respond as one."

Mexico arrests 2 alleged drug enforcers

TIJUANA, Mexico

Mexico arrested two alleged drug cartel enforcers over the weekend, including a purported hit man accused of threatening officials and bribing police and a suspect in the 1993 slaying of a Mexican cardinal.

Former local police chief Hector Izar Castro was detained Sunday in the north-central state of San Luis Potosi on weapons, armed robbery and drug charges, federal police spokesman Edgar Millan said.

"This man is suspected of making a series of threats against local and state officials and has also been identified as the person in charge of paying off local police," said federal police spokesman Edgar Millan.

Police said Izar Castro had a rifle, pistols and cocaine in his possession at the time of his arrest, as well as three wooden clubs marked with the letter "Z" — apparently signifying the Zetas, the gang of Gulf cartel hit men for whom he allegedly worked.

Late Saturday, the commander of an army base in Tijuana announced that another suspect had been collared: Alfredo Araujo Avila, also known as "Popeye," who allegedly worked for the Arellano Felix cartel as a hit man for more than two decades.

Araujo Avila is suspected of participating in the slaying of Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, who was riddled with bullets on May 24, 1993, while he sat in his car at the airport in the city of Guadalajara, Gen. German Redondo told reporters.

Investigators have concluded that gunmen working for the Arellano Felix cartel mistook the cardinal's luxury vehicle for that of a rival drug trafficker whom they were targeting for assassination — and whose own security forces were at the scene and returned fire.

But Church authorities have long disputed that official version of events, arguing that Posadas Ocampo was killed because he knew about alleged relationships between drug dealers and government officials.

Six people besides the cardinal were also killed. Twelve people have since been convicted and imprisoned in the attack, most recently ex-police commander Humberto Rodriguez Banuelos in 2005.

Redondo said Saturday that Araujo Avila is also suspected in the 1997 shooting of Tijuana journalist Jesus Blancornelas, who survived and died of natural causes at age 70 in 2006.

Araujo Avila was detained at a house in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California, on outstanding warrants. Redondo said he is also wanted on charges in the United States, but did not elaborate.

The general said the suspect holds American citizenship, but U.S. consular authorities were not immediately available to confirm that. A pistol and a police identification card were found in the house.

Chavez Urges Withdrawals From U.S. Banks

By IAN JAMES
CARACAS, Venezuela

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez speaks during the ALBA Summit in Caracas, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2008. Chavez is hosting the summit with leaders from Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba, members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his Latin American allies on Saturday to begin withdrawing billions of dollars in international reserves from U.S. banks, warning of a looming U.S. economic crisis.

Chavez made the suggestion as he hosted a summit aimed at boosting Latin American integration and rolling back U.S. influence.

"We should start to bring our reserves here," Chavez said. "Why does that money have to be in the north? ... You can't put all your eggs in one basket."

Chavez noted that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia in recent days, saying "that has to do with this summit."

"The empire doesn't accept alternatives," Chavez told the gathering, attended by the presidents of Bolivia and Nicaragua and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage.

Chavez warned that U.S. "imperialism is entering into a crisis that can affect all of us" and said Latin America "will save itself alone."

To help pool resources within the region, Chavez and other leaders were setting up a new development bank at the summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Nations of Our America, or ALBA.

The left-leaning regional trade alliance first proposed by Chavez is intended to offer an alternative, socialist path to integration while snubbing U.S.-backed free-trade deals.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega joined Chavez in his criticism of U.S.-style capitalism, saying "the dictatorship of global capitalism ... has lost control." Three days earlier, Ortega had shouted "Long live the U.S. government" as he inaugurated an American-financed section of highway in his country.

On Saturday, Chavez welcomed the Caribbean island of Dominica into ALBA, joining Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba. Attending as observers were the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, along with officials from Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti and St. Kitts and Nevis.

The ALBA Bank is to be started with $1 billion to US$1.5 billion of capital, Venezuelan Finance Minister Rafael Isea said Friday, according to the state-run Bolivarian News Agency.

Venezuela, Allies to Start New Bank

CARACAS, Venezuela

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and three of his closest allies are teaming up to create a regional development bank meant to rival U.S.-backed institutions such as the World Bank.

The bank will be a central theme as Chavez hosts a summit Saturday with leaders from Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba - members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA.

The left-leaning regional trade alliance is intended to offer an alternative, socialist path to integration while snubbing U.S.-backed free-trade deals.

The ALBA Bank will be started with $1 billion to $1.5 billion of capital, Venezuelan Finance Minister Rafael Isea said Friday, according to the state-run Bolivarian News Agency.

The agency reported that documents to found the bank might be signed during the summit.

Venezuela, with its plentiful oil earnings, is expected to be the leading financier. The funds will go toward social programs and other joint efforts, from farming projects to oil ventures.

Chavez and the leaders of six other South American countries last month launched a similar venture, the Bank of the South, which is projected to have as much as $7 billion in startup capital and offer loans with fewer strings attached than those given by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said he believes the ALBA Bank will bring "mutual benefits." For instance, he said, Nicaragua's farm projects could "start supplying Venezuela with milk, with beef" - which could help Chavez's government stem recent shortages of such products.

Guilty plea in Venezula cash scandal

MIAMI - A Venezuelan man pleaded guilty Friday in a scheme to cover up the source of $800,000 in a suitcase seized in Argentina, where it was allegedly sent by Venezuelans as a donation to Cristina Fernandez's presidential campaign.

Moises Maionica, 36, admitted to acting as an unregistered foreign government agent in the U.S. He could be sentenced to up to 15 years for this and a related conspiracy count, but is cooperating with prosecutors and thus could get a reduced sentence.

U.S. officials said Maionica and four others tried to hide the Venezuelan source of the cash, which was carried into Argentina in August by dual U.S.-Venezuelan citizen Guido Antonini Wilson, now wanted by Argentina on money laundering charges.

Instead of sending Antonini Wilson back to Argentina, U.S. investigators wired him with a recording device in Florida and gathered evidence against the alleged Venezuelan agents who pressured him to conceal the money's source, according to court documents.

Antonini was apparently a last-minute passenger on a plane chartered by Venezuelan oil officials and was asked by one of them to carry the cash-laden suitcase through customs in Buenos Aires, prosecutors said in court Friday.

Maionica admitted arranging calls between Antonini and a senior official in Venezuela's intelligence agency, which the FBI said it recorded. He also acknowledged that he met with Antonini and the other suspected agents: Venezuelans Carlos Kauffmann, 35, Franklin Duran, 40, and Uruguayan Rodolfo Wanseele, 40.

All have pleaded not guilty and face up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines if convicted at trial, now set for March. Another Venezuelan charged in the case, Antonio Jose Canchica Gomez, has not been found. Maionica's sentencing is scheduled for April 4.

According to the FBI, it was Duran who was recorded telling Antonini the money was for the campaign of Fernandez, who was later elected despite the scandal.

The governments of Argentina and Venezuela have bitterly denounced the U.S. investigation as politically motivated, which the Bush administration has denied.

Ruben Oliva, Maionica's attorney, said his client had been in the U.S. getting ready to take a cruise, and got involved in the scheme after he received a call from a high-ranking Venezuelan official asking him to help Antonini Wilson.

Maionica, an attorney in Venezuela, did not know he needed to register with the U.S., Oliva said, but ignorance of the law is not a defense. He entered his plea and politely answered questions from U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard in Spanish, his hands clasped behind his back.

More information about Maionica's involvement will be introduced before his sentencing, Oliva said.

Duran and Kauffmann are business and social acquaintances of Antonini. They are also shareholders in the Venezuelan petrochemical company Venoco and have economic ties to the Venezuelan state oil company that finances the government of President Hugo Chavez.

Duran owns a waterfront mansion on the Miami suburb island of Key Biscayne.

Zapatista Update

It’s not unusual for rumors about a second zapatista uprising to circulate through the streets of san cristobal, but lately i’m starting to question what’s rumor and what’s real. an acquaintance who has lived here for 3 years and is somewhat connected recently said the news around town is that the zapatistas are preparing a “second phase” of the war. marcos himself has explicitly stated the zapatistas will not stand by as paramilitary groups continue to harass villagers and attempt to steal their lands.

of course, you can always find predictions of another uprising on lefty pubs like the world war 4 report and narconews. but when mainstream news agencies like reuters and high-profile writers like naomi klein suggest war is near, well… you start to wonder.

take all this into account and you start to notice other little things. that subcommandante marcos recently said he would not be seen in public for some time, for example. or, as my friend meredith pointed out, the fact that the mexico solidarity network recently decided to postpone its spring speaking tours “due to unforeseen events.” quite simply, many of the volunteers and activists who work closely with the zapatistas are quietly slipping out of sight. where are they going? what are they doing? i guess we’ll find out.

Naomi Campbell Interviews Hugo Chavez for GQ

Naomi Campbell interviewed Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, for GQ Magazine. The article was published last Thursday. Naomi called him the "rebel angel" and said he had a beautiful singing voice, which sounds weird.

When Naomi asked him if he would ever pose shirtless he said, "Why not? Touch my muscles!"

Chavez on Bush:

"We're seeing the fall of the empire. ... Like the fairy tale, the emperor is naked."

Chavez on the most stylish leader:

"Fidel, of course! His uniform is impeccable. His boots are polished, his beard is elegant."

Chavez on Prince Charles:

"I like the Prince. Now he has Camilla, his new girl. She's not as attractive, is she?"

Naomi hopes "Venezuela's relations with America will improve in the immediate future." She also hopes to interview Fidel Castro next.

There were also rumors that the two were dating, but that is doubtful.

What do you guys think- Hot or Not?

Evidence of Biological War in Venezuela

Caracas
Jan 24

The shadow of biological war looms over Venezuela Thursday in an investigation of a strain of dengue in western Zulia State, which a local scientist believes to be a possible lab mutation.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez ordered the investigation yesterday, following accusations by immunologist Nancy Gonzalez, chief of the Medical School at the University of Zulia.

The expert gave the alarm early this week when 25 percent of the nation's cases of the liver-attacking virus were found in that western Venezuelan state.

According to Zulia newspaper Panorama, Janine Perozo, director of the Regional Health System, mentioned a definite suspected clinic.

The situation recalls the US biological war against Cuba when in 1972 it introduced the hog cholera virus, and between 1979 and 1981, plagues that affect both people and crops.

In the CIA's Mangosta Operation, proved in declassified documents, dengue, hemorrhage conjunctivitis, roya of sugarcane and the blue mold in tobacco were introduced into the island.

Anti-drug official: US remarks about Venezuela lack any ground

The head of the Venezuelan Anti-drug Bureau (ONA) Colonel Néstor Luis Reverol Thursday once again branded as irresponsible and groundless the recent remarks the US Drug Czar John Walters made against Venezuelan anti-drug efforts.

Walters claimed that President Hugo Chávez allowed the Venezuelan territory to be used "as a highway for drug traffic to Europe," the official news agency ABN reported.

On Wednesday, Venezuelan Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) Jorge Valero determinedly rejected Walters' declarations.

Reverol Thursday hailed Valero's presentation at OAS as remarkable, saying the diplomat based on a document both the ONA and the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry prepared to reply to the US.

Reverol stressed that Venezuela has always struggled to eradicate drug smuggling.

American 'vampire' jailed for Bolivia blasts

Claire Truscott and agencies
Thursday January 24, 2008
Guardian Unlimited

The Bolivian president, Evo Morales, claimed the bombings were part of a US plot. Photograph: EPA

A Californian eccentric who named himself after a literary vampire has been jailed for bombing two hotels in Bolivia.

Triston Jay Amero, 26, goes by the name Lestat Claudius de Orleans y Montevideo, a variation on an Anne Rice vampire character.

Amero was sentenced on Tuesday to 30 years in prison without parole for bombing two La Paz hotels in 2006, which left two people dead and strained delicate Bolivia-US relations.

The court based its verdict on testimony from Amero's estranged common law Uruguayan wife, 47-year-old Alda Ribeiro Costa. She was also sentenced to 30 years for her role in the crime.

Amero, who has called for the murder of those who support the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, maintains his innocence. He says he was eating pizza across the capital with his wife when the bombs went off.

Amero is not shy about his talent for blowing things up, a skill he says he learned letting off fireworks with his grandmother.

"There's no school where you can go to learn how to be an explosives expert," Amero said. "You either have a talent for it or you don't."

The crime has fuelled Morales's suspicions of the US and accused Amero of being part of a larger US plot to destabilise his leftist government.

"The US government fights terrorism, and they send us terrorists," Morales said shortly after Amero's arrest.

The president later retreated from making any specific accusations, but continues to cite the hotel bombings in his frequent criticisms of US involvement in Bolivia. US officials deny any ties to Amero and claim such comments have hurt Bolivian ties.

A lawyer monitoring the case for Amero's family argues Morales tainted the trial. "You have the president of the country saying this guy is guilty. That's not fair," said Paul Wolf, a Washington-based lawyer.

According to US court documents, Amero has received psychiatric treatment since he was seven. He spent time at a juvenile detention centre and often made threats of suicide and violence against authorities.

Amero has been a fantasist since a young age. In earlier travels through south America he described himself as a Saudi Arabian lawyer, a pagan high priest, and a public notary.

Amero has now returned to Chonchocoro maximum-security jail, which has no clean running water. Amero may not find his fellow inmates too friendly, either: he was caught hiding petrol in his cell last year and admitted plotting to set fire to other prisoners.