Ibero-American News Digest

British Empire Will Benefit from Honduras Crisis

Sept. 22 (EIRNS)—The Honduras crisis has been placed on the front burner again, dragging, as intended, Ibero-American governments once more into the British Empire's orchestrated trap of "right-left" conflict, between Hugo Chávez's "Bolivarians" and right-wing synarchists, even as the world enters the terminal phase of economic breakdown.

The situation changed for the worse on Sept. 21, after deposed President "Mel" Zelaya, a "Bolivarian" asset of Nazi George Soros's drug legalization apparatus, was spirited back into the country by unknown means, holed himself up in the Brazilian embassy, and announced that he had come on a mission of love, to negotiate an end to the crisis. His "Ambassador" to Panama, Juan Alfaro Posadas, was more honest, insisting that the Zelaya team is fighting for a Constituent Assembly: precisely the Constitutional violation for which Zelaya was removed from office in June.

The Micheletti government that replaced him is demanding that the Brazilian government either offer Zelaya amnesty, thus providing grounds to legally remove him from the country, or hand him over to authorities.

During a Sept. 21 press conference with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on both sides to maintain calm and resist provocation. "This is not just a one-sided request.... Both sides have supporters who need to be restrained and careful in their actions in the days ahead," she said. But with Zelaya using the Brazilian Embassy as a platform to incite protests, the Micheletti government responding with a state of siege, and Honduras's neighbors fomenting economic sanctions against the nation, already among the three poorest in the region, escalations and provocations can be expected.

Mexican Labor Leader: 'We Will Not Let Mexico Die'

Sept. 22 (EIRNS)—Antonio Valdéz Villanueva, the Secretary General of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) in Ciudad Obregon, offered a lesson in regional leadership, in his call to action against the global economic crisis and its effect on Mexico, in a speech Sept. 5 to his trade union's annual convention in Ciudad Obregon, in the presence of outgoing Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours. Valdéz is a member of the Pro-PLHINO Committee, which is organizing for massive expansion of Mexico's water infrastructure. He and other members of the committee met with Lyndon LaRouche in Monterrey, Mexico in April of last year.

In his speech, Valdéz argued: "At different times, and on different occasions, we shared with you [Governor Bours] the analysis that the federal government was gravely underestimating the character and the consequences that the international economic crisis would have on Mexico. Going back to February 2008, in a national statement published as an advertisement in the newspaper Reforma, and addressed to President Felipe Calderón, we warned him that the U.S. financial crisis was not a cyclical event, but rather a structural and systemic crisis, that obligated Mexico to take in-depth action to protect the national economy by establishing a vigorous policy of public investment in infrastructure, such as the Northwest Hydraulic Plan (PLHINO).

"Throughout that entire year, and a large part of 2009, the President disregarded our warnings, despite the fact that in August 2008 we reiterated them to him during one of his few visits to the state, and we reasserted that the world economic crisis was worse than the great depression of the late twenties. In spite of everything, even at the beginning of this year, the Treasury Secretary, tried to minimize the crisis and its consequences by going so far as to characterize it as a simple little cold.

"The disaster can now no longer be hidden. They can't put the elephant under the bed. The reality is that Mexico is economically disintegrating. We don't have a budget crisis, as such; we have national economic bankruptcy. There is a collapse of more than 30% in the federal government's revenues, as a consequence of economic paralysis; a vertical fall in exports; budget agony in the states and municipalities; and recognition that we will be closing out the year with a million new unemployed, who will join the army of more than 4 million unemployed that have been generated under the government of Felipe Calderón.

"This disaster has left Mexico defenseless in the face of the financial interests of the drug trade and organized crime. As if this calamity weren't enough, and in a kind of dramatic colophon, the President decided to ratify with his signature the legalization of drug consumption.

"We are realists and not prophets of doom: if we do not change the country's course, we will end up with social decomposition and chaos.

"The federal government is opting for a remedy which is worse than the disease: cutting the budget and raising taxes. Hot water for a patient with fever. They are going to kill the patient, but they don't want to abandon their failed economic prescriptions.

"Mr. Governor: This is the legitimate concern of the CTM. We do not want Mexico to die. We will not let Mexico die. The Mexico which the CTM wants is alive in the intention of the 1917 Constitution; it is alive in the principle that the general welfare is the sustenance, responsibility, and purpose of the nation state. Mexico need not continue to be a battering ram and loot for the speculative markets. Mexico must develop its productive potential, its physical and intellectual capabilities. Mexico is greater than the incompetence and the fears of the federal government."

Fascist Bankers Tell Mexico: We Want Genocide!

Sept. 24 (EIRNS)—New York's best-known financial predators—CEOs and other top executives of Wall Street's major banks—met with Mexican President Felipe Calderón yesterday to put him on notice that his proposed fiscal austerity "reform" for 2010 isn't acceptable. It doesn't squeeze enough out of the Mexican people. More corpses, please.

Especially vocal was Merrill Lynch-Bank of America, which has prepared a report on Calderón's economic reform package, the centerpiece of which is a new 2% sales tax on food and medicine. Not good enough, say the vultures. The proposed reform isn't a "serious attempt" to eliminate certain tax loopholes or broaden the tax base, and cuts in expenditures "aren't as significant as first thought."

Mexico's economy will decline by 6.8% in 2009, these fascists say, underscoring that this is the biggest drop in all Ibero-America. So, they ask, why hasn't the government considered the "convenience of readjusting the VAT tax" on consumption? The Merrill Lynch hyenas say there is too much "inertia" in the area of expenditures—proposed cuts aren't large enough—and the proposed tax hikes will increase revenue by only 1.4% of GDP. They demand the government instead accelerate the looting of already-bankrupt states and municipalities, and make them swallow even "stronger fiscal discipline."

Mexican President Demands Austerity To Combat Swine Flu!

Sept. 20 (EIRNS)—The A/H1N1 virus has reappeared in at least seven Mexican states, especially those of the Southeast. In response, a panicked President Felipe Calderón and Health Minister José Angel Cordova are saying that accepting the brutal economic austerity "reform" package the President has proposed to the Congress is the only way to generate the funds needed to combat the pandemic. This is like dousing a fire with gasoline.

Speaking in San Luis Potosí Sept. 17, the President warned that Mexico needs funds to deal with "catastrophic eventualities"; it must protect people's health and purchase respirators, vaccines, and other medicines, he said. But the financial resources don't exist, so "we must generate them among ourselves" by supporting the monetarist reforms, including taxes on food and medicine, that have been put before the Congress.

Speaking Sept. 19 from León, Guanajuato, Health Minister Cordova reported that the government has been forced to use funds from the Catastrophic Expenses Protection Fund, normally used for women and children suffering from cancer or HIV/AIDS. It is essential, he said, that the Congress back the President's "economic reform."

Although Mexico has already put in an order for, and paid for 30 million doses of the A/H1N1 vaccine that European labs will be producing, Cordova said that the government is now "begging" those labs to make some of the vaccine available in October, rather than in December as originally planned.