Ibero-American News Digest
Colombian FARC Maintains Three Bases in Brazil
Colombia's narcoterrorist FARC maintains three bases in Brazil, according to a classified Colombian military-intelligence document provided to the Brazilian government, O Estado de Sao Paulo reported March 1. The Colombians attached as an appendix, a report prepared by the U.S. Southern Command, which corroborates the existence of the bases, but also asserts that these areas are a cover also for activities by Hamas and Hezbollah militantswhich the Colombians disagree with, according to O Estado. The FARC members deployed to Brazil are university-trained, and assigned to maintain foreign contacts, launder drug monies, buy arms, supplies, and meet general logistics requirements.
The intelligence reports are quite specific, identifying the largest base as located on a large farm in the south of the state of Parana, owned by a Lebanese businessman, Ahmad Mohamad, who has been jailed by the Federal Police for the last seven months. The other bases are smallerlocated in Miranda, in Mato Grosso do Sul, and in Boa Vista, Roraimaand serve primarily to safehouse FARC militants on their way to Europe.
The Brazilian government immediately announced it would fully investigate the reports. On March 5, an Army spokesman said no concrete confirmation has been found, but investigations continue, and he suggested that other Federal agencies may be brought in, to broaden the investigation. The spokesman noted, for example, the difficulty in investigating the situation in Miranda, because that city serves as the port of entry into the Pantanalthe great swamp so beloved of Prince Philip's World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)and therefore has a great flow of foreign tourists.
The Brazilian government is on the hot-seat as to whether it will declare the FARC to be the terrorists that they are, or not. As the leading Brazilian daily, O Estado De Sao Paulo, pointed out in its Feb. 26 editorial, were the Brazilian government to identify the FARC as "terrorist," it would have to block its assets in Brazil, and seize any members found on Brazilian territory, thus helping Brazil's own national security. The designation of the FARC is expected to be one of the primary subjects on the agenda, when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe arrives in Brazil on March 7, for talks with President Lula da Silva.
'Coca War' Explodes in Peru as Growers Fight Anti-Drug Programs
A "coca war" has exploded in Peru, timed perhaps to coincide with a cocalero uprising in neighboring Bolivia. Coca-growers in Peru went on strike in mid-February, demanding a halt to all coca eradication, and the elimination of the government's anti-drug and "alternative development" programs in the coca-growing region. Growers blocked national highways, and attacked government anti-drug agencies and hotels where anti-drug officials were staying. The rampage on Feb. 24 alone, for example, left 40 wounded. When the government agreed to negotiate, leaders ordered a "truce." On March 3, they gave the government 20 days to satisfy their demands, or "10,000 farmers will march on Lima to make our protests heard."
This fight could potentially blow up the country. Through the coca-grower apparatus built up under George Soros's largesse, the drug-trade today is able to deploy masses of people, in numbers it did not have even at the height of Sendero Luminoso's narcoterrorist war against the country in 1990-92. The cocalero fight is not limited to the jungles and valleys where coca is grown. As in Bolivia, the cocaleros are positioning themselves to take leadership of the whole gamut of social protests exploding in Peru, by ordinary farmers, trade unions, and the regional anti-austerity and/or separatist movements.
Making the situation extremely dangerous, is its intersection with the Peruvian Constitutional Court's recent ruling overturning the terrorist convictions imposed by military courts in the mid-1990sthe which were key to restoring peace. Gestion daily reported on March 3 that Sendero chief Abimael Guzman's life sentence would be annulled within 10 days, and a new trial against Victor Polay, the head of Sendero's narcoterrorist cousin, the MRTA, would begin in April or May.
Marco Miyashiro, head of the anti-terrorist police (DIRCOTE), told El Comercio March 3 that Sendero only has about 300 men under arms at this time in all of Peru, but what they lost on the battlefield, "They now want to win at the table.... Their war now is on the legal battlefield," where they have won significant victories, he warned.
Italian Terrorist Sees Argentina as Model for Jacobin Chaos
Italian "anti-globalization" terrorist and former Red Brigades leader Tony Negri, hails Argentina as model for creating "policy of the multitudes"that is, anarchy. Negri is quoted in the daily Pagina 12, a big fan of the Porto Alegre "anti-globalization" circus, arguing that the December 2001 overthrow of the de la Rua government, and the chaos that ensued then and continues todayhighway blockades by the Jacobin "piqueteros," depositors physically attacking banks, workers taking over bankrupt companies, self-help schemes such as "barter clubs," and constant, daily protest"constitute a new configuration of the 'movement of movements.'" Negri argues that the fact that Argentines hate their politicians, is evidence that existing institutions have no legitimacy, thus paving the way for the emergence of a "new power" which is "the multitude." Where the "multitude and its potential" begins, Negri rants, "the power of the State [terror] and the chaos of the markets ends."
Meanwhile, rampages in downtown Buenos Aires by members of the well-armed anarchist group, the Quebracho, typify the exploding anarchist riots overwhelming the country, which Negri so celebrates. Members of the Quebracho, wearing hoods and armed with clubs, numchakas, and rocks, have twice set vehicles on fire, smashed windows, burned tires, and fought with policemen protecting Buenos Aires' main courts complex where several of their members are being tried.
Roberto Durrieu, president of the Buenos Aires' Lawyers' Association, issued an urgent call to the government to take action against the Jacobin "piqueteros," who are attacking all the institutions of the state. "The state is absent; it makes no decisions," he said. If it fails to act, he warned, "we'll have guerrillas taking over the streets."
Venezuela Again Hit by Terrorist Bombing
Terrorism struck in the main oil region of Venezuela on March 2, when a car bomb exploded in the city of Maracaibo, near an opposition leader's home, and near the headquarters of Chevron Oil. No one was hurt, although there was some physical damage done. The attack followed bombings of the Colombian and Venezuelan embassies in Caracas on Feb. 25.
EIR is investigating who is carrying out the bombings, whether terrorists around President Hugo Chavez, paramilitary networks within the opposition to his regime, or, possibly, a "third force" seeking to trigger full-scale civil war.
Both the opposition and the government charge each other with responsibility for the bombings. Citing alleged proof in his possession that the opposition carried out the embassy bombings, Chavez again dismissed the millions opposing him as terrorists on his March 2 "Hello, President" radio and television show, and promised that "if terrorists have to be repelled by arms, fine, they will be repelled by arms."
Former Argentine Cabinet Minister Calls for FDR-Style 'New Deal'
Argentina needs a "New Deal" like the one that America's President Roosevelt promoted in the 1930s, with great emphasis on massive public works, Gustavo Beliz, an Opus Dei member and former Cabinet minister in the first Carlos Menem government (1989-95), told Clarin March 5. Beliz emphasized the need for massive infrastructure projectswater projects, highway and housing constructionto be financed by "channelling resources through the public banks, through rediscounting policies that prioritize job creation and eradicate forever favoritism in the allocation of credit." Rather than just subsidizing the poor, he said, programs that give people real jobs should be adopted.
But in this call for a "New Deal," Beliz makes no mention of the real world outside Argentina, and says nothing about the bankruptcy of the global financial system. This is not accidental; he is no political neophyte. While in the Menem Cabinet, he promoted the idea of "humanizing capitalism," often referencing the Social Doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, while at the same time pushing schemes to make IMF austerity palatable, including through the fascist ideas peddled by "theologian" Michael Novak. His promotion now of an Argentine "New Deal," more than anything reflects an environment shaped by Lyndon LaRouche's programmatic proposals in the countdown to the April 27 Presidential elections, in which no candidate enjoys more than 16% of the votebecause none of them offers the leadership or program required to pull the country out of its crisis.
Now heading up the "New Leadership" party, Beliz speaks of the need to integrate Argentina territorially, by reviving the railroads, and "revising" privatization contracts, but gives himself away when he calls for eliminating "structural mega-corruption," and forging the "efficient integration of the state, the market and civil society on behalf of transparency."
Mexico Debt Cancer Metastasizes with Pension Privatization
Overall domestic bond issuance in Mexico has grown at an annual rate of 78.8% since 1999, according to JP Morgan, a growth which the London Financial Times Feb. 27 attributes to the creation of a private pension system in 1997. By now, the private pension plans, known as "afores," have the largest number of members of any pension system in Ibero-America (29.4 million members), and are the second greatest (after Chile) in total assets, at $31.4 billion. The regulations were changed at the end of 2002, to permit the afores to invest in lower-quality companies (single-A rated), and, most insane of all, to hedge with derivatives. Even before that, the Mexican derivatives exchange, MexDer, set up in 1998, "enjoyed" a 360% increase in the total volume of contracts traded in 2002.
The afores helped feed the indebtedness of a whole new sector: Mexico's municipalities and states, which before 2000, had no bonded debt. In 2001, a piddling 90 million pesos (about $9 billion) were issued; in 2002, that jumped to 5.2 billion pesos worth ($520 million). The Financial Times hails this as a sign of a maturing capital market, but the only thing it reflects is that cities and states, desperate to cover the holes left by cuts in Federal government payments, issued bonds, and thus created yet another debt bubble, which is about to burst, as they go bankrupt, too.
Argentine Court Ruling vs. 'Pesification' Shakes System
The ruling by Argentina's Supreme Court March 5 declaring forced "pesification" of dollar deposits to be unconstitutional, has shaken up the government and the banking system, because of its precedent-setting nature. The Court ruling dealt with the specific case of the San Luis provincial government, whose $247 million in dollar deposits, held in the state-run Banco de la Nacion, were forcibly converted to pesos in January of 2002, by a government decree applying to dollar deposits in all the country's banks. Now, the government and Banco de la Nacion have 60 days to determine in what form the dollar deposits will be returned to San Luis, the home state of Presidential candidate (and former President) Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, who had loudly backed his province's demand for redollarization of the $247 million.
The real concern now is that the Court ruling will open the floodgates for similar legal suits by some 350,000 other bank depositors, all demanding their dollars back, for a total of $10 billion. In anticipation of such a move, the Duhalde government is scrambling to find a way to save the skins of the largely foreign-owned banks operating in the country, which have spent the last several years looting Argentina, but now say that returning dollar deposits will bankrupt them. Duhalde is reportedly considering offering a long-term bond for the dollar deposits, a measure guaranteed to provoke rage among citizens who want their dollars back in cash.
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