Ibero-American News Digest

Sonora Candidate Campaigns All Out for PLHINO

Feb. 20—(EIRNS)—Mexico's Alfonso Elias Serrano kicked off his campaign to win the PRI party's nomination for governor of the state of Sonora on Feb. 14, with a speech in Ciudad Obregon, promising support for the proposed Northwest Hydraulic Project: "I'm going all out for the PLHINO. I'm going all out with what Sonora should do to bring water from Nayarit and Sinaloa. I'm going for more production in the countryside, to have more and better jobs in the agricultural sector."

Elias Serrano, Federal Senator for Sonora until taking a leave of absence to campaign for governor, has been campaigning vigorously for the PLHINO since November 2007, when he delivered the closing speech at a regional forum organized by the LaRouche movement-founded "Pro-PLHINO Committee of the 21st Century."

The Senator demonstrated there that he had the courage to publicly admit that the axioms of the recent period of history have failed, as he called for turning away from the errors of NAFTA, back to the commitment to the future, as the way to solve day-to-day problems, as "normal people" did four decades ago. What is at stake with the PLHINO, he stated, "is a question of recovering, as a nation, the vision of the future that we had in the days when great infrastructure projects were proposed in Mexico; in the days when advances were made in space exploration internationally; in the days when our universities carried out ambitious research toward eradicating diseases and epidemics in the world."

The candidate's repeated discussions of the PLHINO in appearances since launching his campaign officially is generating regular coverage of the plan in Sonora's newspapers.

The Pro-PLHINO Committee is organizing a mass movement behind this great tri-state hydraulic engineering project, which is the cornerstone of the LaRouche movement's organizing perspective for the Americas.

Food Riots Erupt in Mexico

Feb. 12 (EIRNS)—The national urgency of getting the Northwest Hydraulic Plan (PLHINO) underway in Mexico was underscored with the explosion of food riots in the city of Celaya, Guanajuato on Feb. 11. Dozens of citizens stormed Ferromex railroad cars which were loaded with food, largely corn. Despite the fact that the police arrested several people, there was a larger group waiting nearby, which proceeded to storm the cars and haul bags of grain away. The railroad police were unable to stop them, and in some cases, Ferromex pickup trucks were used to cart bags of grain away. Police clashed with crowds twice over a 24-hour period on Feb. 10-11.

Until Mexico regains the food self-sufficiency it largely enjoyed before being subjected to NAFTA and globalization, the food riots in Celaya will not be an isolated incident.

Brits Play Argentina, Brazil as Fools

Feb. 14 (EIRNS)—The British Foreign Office's Lord Mark Malloch-Brown—the British Empire's "handler" of dope peddler George Soros—showed up in Buenos Aires yesterday to make sure that Argentina has no plans to deviate from the Empire's agenda for the April summit of the Group of 20, to take place in London.

In a stay lasting barely four hours, Malloch-Brown oozed praise for Argentina—which Britain considers its colony—for proposing to "radically reform" the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. He told Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana and Finance Minister Carlos Fernández that England and Argentina are "allies" on this issue, a statement that any Argentine patriot would find revolting. The government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has left itself open to such manipulation by stubbornly continuing to embrace the British lie that the current disintegration of the global system was generated in the United States, and is to be solved by reforming the existing system. Argentina's pretension that it can survive by playing the "radical" in a British-rigged game will lead to its destruction, if continued.

Similarly, the Brits are eyeing Brazil as a useful tool in their war to stop Lyndon LaRouche's strategy for a four-power alliance of the U.S., Russia, China, and India to create a new financial credit system. So Secretary of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is loudly demanding that the nations of the BRIC group—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—be rapidly incorporated into the Financial Stability Forum (FSF), the structure that supposedly will now play a major role in regulating and overseeing global financial markets.

According to the Brazilian financial daily Valor Feb. 13, the Lula da Silva government considers Darling's invitation to join an expanded FSF a major victory, a way to increase Brazil's influence in international financial organizations and enhance its self-conception as a major player in global financial decision-making. Darling appears confident that Brazil will, as it has so many times before, allow itself to be used as a pawn of British imperial interest, this time ensuring that Britain—through Brazil—has an inside track to sabotage LaRouche's Four Powers alliance.