In this issue:

Mexico Files Suit in The Hague To Stop U.S. Executions of Nationals

Castenada Resignation Welcomed by Many; U.S. Establishment Unhappy

LaRouche's Economic Solutions Aired on Top Mexican Radio Program

Bolivian Cocaleros Move To Shut Down Economy

Venezuelan Upheaval Triggers South America-Wide Narco-Jacobin Mobilization

Big Shakeup in Prince Philip's WWF Brazil Chapter

From Volume 2, Issue Number 3 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Jan. 20, 2003

Ibero-American News Digest

Mexico Files Suit in The Hague To Stop U.S. Executions of Nationals

The Mexican government filed suit in The Hague last week, to block the execution of 54 Mexicans held on Death Row in the United States. This is the first time that Mexico has brought a suit before the International Court at The Hague against the United States. Some Mexicans have already been executed, and three more are scheduled to die over the next six months, Juan Manuel Gomez Robeldo, legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, explained. "We cannot permit this."

The Mexican brief requests the Court to order a one- to two-year stay of executions, until it rules on the suit. Mexico is asking that the death sentences be commuted to life in prison, and that new trials be granted, in which the accused would be represented by lawyers provided by the Mexican government. The case is based on repeated violations by U.S. authorities and courts of Article 34 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations which guarantees the right of all people to consular protection (that is, the right to contact their consulates if arrested in foreign lands) and a fair trial. Many Mexicans have been arrested in the U.S., never told they have the right to contact their consulate for legal assistance, and tried, condemned to death, and executed, without knowing that they could have had a lawyer who could speak to them in their own language, the Mexican brief contends.

Although the brief was filed just before Jorge Castaneda left the Foreign Ministry, sources in the Foreign Ministry insisted to Milenio that the decision to sue was taken by President Vicente Fox personally. Sentiment over this issue is so high in Mexico, that Fox cancelled a scheduled visit to President Bush's ranch last August, when the state of Texas failed to stay the execution of a Mexican national, even after Fox personally phoned Bush and Texas Governor Rick Perry to request clemency.

Castenada Resignation Welcomed by Many; U.S. Establishment Unhappy

On Jan. 10, Mexican President Vicente Fox announced he had accepted Jorge Castaneda's resignation as Foreign Secretary, and nominated his Economics Minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, to replace him. Fernando Canales, the PANista Governor of Nuevo Leon, was named Economics Minister (giving the Monterrey Group a leg up in the Fox Cabinet). Fox chose to emphasize Derbez's "recognized trajectory in promoting investment and trade," in announcing his nomination.

Fox, Castaneda, and Derbez taped the press conference announcing the switch, and took no questions from reporters—perhaps because Castaneda's ouster is being celebrated by many in Mexico, including the LaRouche-associated Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA), which had campaigned for Fox to fire him long ago, as a necessary precondition to preserving Mexico's existence as a sovereign nation-state. He was a hard-core globalist operative whose axiom was that Mexico has no option but to submit to whatever dictates come out of the United States, and he was committed to the Anglo-American project to dissolve the sovereignty of all three NAFTA nations (Mexico, Canada and the United States itself) into a "North American Community."

The Washington Post published a long lament Jan. 11, calling Castenada a "rare visionary." Former U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow mourned that "we have lost someone who recognized the realities of the modern world." Also interviewed by the Post, former Clinton special envoy to Latin America Mack McLarty insisted that "we certainly have not heard the last of Jorge Castaneda." McLarty was so laudatory of Castaneda, that it sounded as if McLarty might be jockeying to become a lobbyist in the U.S. for Castaneda's mooted Presidential bid in Mexico.

LaRouche's Economic Solutions Aired on Top Mexican Radio Program

Radio Red, one of Mexico's most prominent national radio stations, ran a one-hour interview with Marivilia Carrasco of the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA) in which she detailed Lyndon LaRouche's economic forecasts and solutions. The interview, on Radio Red's much-listened-to program hosted by Ramon Pieza Rugarcia, allowed Carrasco, chairman of the Mexican branch of the MSIA, to discuss LaRouche's views on the systemic and global nature of the crisis, the urgency of a New Bretton Woods conference, and infrastructure programs for reconstruction. This represented the first time the MSIA was interviewed on a national broadcast, and reflects LaRouche's growing influence around the world, as the crisis deepens.

Bolivian Cocaleros Move To Shut Down Economy

Bolivan cocaleros—coca producers—have launched a campaign to shut down the country, unless the government stops the coca (used to produce cocaine) eradication program, and "deals with" the poverty in the country. Leading the coca producers' campaign, which began Jan. 13, is Congressman Evo Morales and his Movement to Socialism (MAS) Party, backed by numerous organizations representing "social movements" of the poor: students, rural teachers, Bolivia's Landless Movement (MST), etc. The miners' union is said to be about to join also.

The tactic adopted is to close the few inter-city highways which hold the country together—roads constitute the only major infrastructure unifying the country—with tree trunks and boulders, which can easily be thrown down again, each time the military or police clear them. Three people were reportedly killed in the first day of the "strike," to which narco-provocateur Evo Morales responded that the government will feel the full wrath of "the people."

Now, Bolivia is heading straight down the road taken by Venezuela into political and economic chaos. The government and the military had told the Bush Administration that they could not hold control of the country if the government attempted to enforce coca eradication, without offering economic relief. The fools in Washington hardlined it, however, and said all aid would be cut off to the government were it to slow up on either the eradication program, or free trade.

Thus, the Bush Administration is handing Bolivia over to the narcoterrorists, in the name of democracy and "fighting drugs."

Venezuelan Upheaval Triggers South America-Wide Narco-Jacobin Mobilization

Three hundred Colombians, led by three Congressmen, including former M-19 terrorist Gustabo Petro, have set out for Caracas in a caravan of buses, they announced, to offer backing to a Venezuelan government which has supported "peace" with the narcoterrorists, according to AP Jan. 13. Petro threatened that if the crisis persists, "We are prepared to mobilize a million workers throughout Latin America to march in defense of President Chavez" of Venezuela.

There are reports from the opposition in Venezuela that Bolivia's coca-leader, Congressman Evo Morales, announced that he plans to fly into Caracas later this month, to organize support for Chavez.

Lyndon LaRouche's warning that an intelligent flank must be used to cool out the Venezuelan conflict, before it sets off a conflagration throughout the continent, must be heeded quickly.

Big Shakeup in Prince Philip's WWF Brazil Chapter

At the end of 2002, a big shakeup took place in the leadership and structure of the Brazilian chapter of Prince Philip's genocidal World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Jose Roberto Marinho (head of the Globo Organizations empire) stepped down as president of WWF's Board of Directors, replaced by Mario Frering (former president of the Caemi Group). Marinho continues as a member of the board, but with a lower profile, no doubt related to the defeat, in the first appeals court, of the WWF-Brasil's suit against the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA), which included a frustrated attempt to "seize" the EIR book Green Mafia: Environmentalism at the Service of World Government, now in its fourth edition.

EIR correspondent Lorenzo Carrasco denounced the WWF attempt to silence the LaRouche forces, in a public hearing of the Parliamentary Investigative Committee (CPI) probing the activities of the NGOs. Carrasco's presentation was later published, in its entirety, as a pamphlet entitled, "What Jose Roberto Marinho Doesn't Like To Hear," and distributed to thousands of people around the country.

The entry of Gilberto Dimenstein—journalist, member of the editorial board of Folha de Sao Paulo, and commentator for Rede Globo's Central Brasileira de Noticias—onto the board of WWF-Brasil reinforces even further the grip of this environmental hit squad on the three most powerful media groups of Brazil, which are all represented on the WWF-Brasil board: O Globo, Folha de Sao Paulo, and the Rede Brasil-Sul de Comunicacoes (RBS).

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