IBERO-AMERICAN NEWS DIGEST
'Lula' Inaugurated President of Brazil; Which Way Will He Go?
Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva was sworn in on Jan. 1 as Brazil's President, before a raucous crowd of 200,000 people, including foreign dignitaries from 100 countries. In an unsubtle message that it intends to let the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) define its relationship with Brazil, the Bush Administration sent Trade Representative Robert Zoellick as its representative to the inauguration.
Lula's inaugural speech reflects the mistaken idea that it's possible to carry out his electoral promises of social change, job creation, fighting hunger and poverty, and ensuring national development, while at the same time complying with the IMF's demands for greater austerity in order to ensure prompt debt payment. What Lula and his team will shortly discover is that these two policies cannot exist in the same universe. Recall Lyndon LaRouche's remarks to the Mexican daily Excelsior on Nov. 19 and 21: Compliance with IMF demands will collapse Brazil and set off a chain reaction that will bring down the IMF system. But rejection of these demands would also blow out the U.S. banking and IMF systems. "This puts Lula in an interesting situation, whether he wished it, or not," LaRouche said. (See EIW #38, LATEST FROM LAROUCHE for full text of interview.)
What direction Lula will go, remains unclear. In his speech, he reiterated his determination to bring needed economic changes to Brazil, emphasizing that "combatting hunger" and bringing about social change are his top priorities. The neo-liberal model has produced only "stagnation, unemployment, and hunger." Brazil has done many extraordinary things in its history, he said, but "it has not conquered hunger." Now, "we are going to do away with hunger in our country," he said, and "creating jobs will be my obsession," noting that he has a tremendous popular mandate to make these changes.
At the same time, however, he continues to argue that he can accomplish these goals within the framework of the current, dying world monetary system. He emphasized that "the stability and responsible management of public finances" will also be a priority for his government, understanding that change is "a gradual process ... not a simple act of will or voluntarist delight." Thus, he said, he will proceed with caution, while carrying out specific "reforms" that the IMF has harped on for years: reforming the social security system [getting workers to contribute more to the system], "tax reform, political reform, and [reform of] labor legislation," which he said were necessary to ensure national development. On the FTAA negotiations, he stuck to his standard formulation that Brazil will fight for "better regulations" and advantages within the globalized economic system, in which the main culprit was described as agricultural subsidies to farmers in the industrialized nations. Brazil will fight this "protectionist" trend, and demand an end to tariff barriers.
New Finance Minister Antonio Palocci was more specific in his inaugural speech, on the policies the IMF demands, particularly emphasizing that Lula's government will do nothing to jeopardize "the sustainability of Brazilian public debt."
'Lula' Cabinet a Mixed Bag; Conflicts Loom
Brazilian President Lula's cabinet is a mixed bag, reflecting the disparate policy directions competing for control of the new Administration. The Jan. 1 Financial Times and Bloomberg wire service are especially pleased with Finance Minister Antonio Palocci, whom the Times notes is an advocate of "economic orthodoxy." In addition to a promise to "guarantee unequivocally the sustainability of Brazilian public debt," he told the London daily there would be no "exotic measures, breach of contract, or fiscal irresponsibility," and that "tight fiscal and monetary policy" would be the rule of the day. Palocci came out of a private meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, stating that the meeting had created an important channel for direct dialogue with the Bush Administration, while Zoellick mooted the possibility of collaboration between the U.S. Treasury and Brazil's Finance Ministry.
Another Cabinet member favored by the FT is Environment Minister Marina Silva, a key asset of the Malthusian "Green Mafia," with which the LaRouche organization has been in head-to-head combat for years. Silva reflects "the new class of politician coming to power" with Lula, the FT gushed. The new Culture Minister is Gilberto Gil, a pop music star who reflects the most wretched aspects of Workers' Party policy.
One interesting counterpoint is the fact that new Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, a career diplomat, has rehired Samuel Pinheiro Guimaraes to serve in the No. 2 spot as Secretary-General of Itamaraty (Foreign Ministry). Pinheiro Guimaraes is an outspoken critic of the FTAA, and under the Cardoso Presidency, made such violent attacks on this schemeBrazil should not be part of it, he saidthat he was fired by now-former Minister Celso Lafer. Observers claimed to be "perplexed" by Amorim's choice of Pinheiro Guimaraes, as it supposedly "contradicted" the new Minister's expressed foreign policy stance. But when a reporter asked Amorim if hiring Pinheiro meant that the FTAA negotiations were in jeopardy, Amorim replied "that depends on Zoellick," adding that Pinheiro would follow the foreign policy elaborated by the President. In his swearing-in speech, Amorim made an undisguised attack on U.S. unilateralism, and called for a peaceful solution to the Mideast conflict.
Venezuela Faces Civil War as Crisis Deepens
As the New Year opened, Venezuela's existential crisis continued to deepen. The nation remained paralyzed by a general civil strike that began on Dec. 2, as marches of hundreds of thousands were held in the capital Caracas, two and three times a week right through Christmas and New Year's. Over the course of the strike, which has shut down the all-important oil industry, the opposition's demands have stiffened, as they insist the strike will continue until the terrorist-linked "Jacobin" President Hugo Chavez leaves office, and new elections are held.
Chavez's opposition, however, has offered no positive plan of government, and no vision for the future upon which to win over the primarily poor people who support Chavez out of anger and desperation. Rather, they have adopted an approach that would strengthen the terrorist element which has surrounded President Chavez. Worse, international forces associated with the war-mongering "Chickenhawk" faction in the U.S. government, are heavily deployed with elements of the anti-Chavez opposition in Venezuela to use the crisis to launch "anti-terrorist," supranational military action in Venezuela and elsewhere in Ibero-America. Such an approach would only succeed in igniting general right-vs.-left warfare across the continent.
Chavez, for his part, reiterated on Dec. 29, during his regular Sunday multi-hour television spectacular "Hello, President!" that "I'm never going to leave," because he's so "happy, very happy," in office. He then used his Jan. 1 message to the nation to rally the hard-core Jacobin apparatus which surrounds him, to prepare for battle in 2003, to defend their "revolution."
One of Chavez's closest military allies, Gen. Raúl Baduel, commander of the Army's 4th Armored Division and its special forces brigade, gave an interview on Dec. 29, defending the Chavez project, to one of the top people active in the terrorist support apparatus in the Americas, Heinz Dietrich Steffan. Baduel's interview was published by Rebelión, an Internet website which serves as a clearinghouse for the propaganda of every terrorist group in the Western Hemisphere. Next to the interview with Baduel, for example, Rebelión posted a communiqué from the Central Command of the Colombian-based FARC narcoterrorists.
The Baduel interview served to highlight the strategic alliance that Chavez has maintained with the FARC in recent years.
To help break the impasse, U.S. Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche issued a statement Dec. 21 on Venezuela, identifying Chavez's evident clinical insanity as a flank from which world and Venezuelan leaders could address the dramatic and rapidly escalating crisis in the country. The Venezuelan crisis represents a significant security threat to the Americas as a whole, he warned, which, added to the overall explosive situation throughout the hemisphere, threatens to become the detonator which sets off the entire bomb. Most of the other options on the tableincluding coups, assassinations, or supranational interventionwill only trigger a chain reaction and spread the problem across the region. LaRouche stated emphatically, "We don't want an 'Allende solution' to the Chavez problem." LaRouche's statement was published in EIW #42, in the LATEST FROM LAROUCHE section.
Mexican Farmers Postpone Actions on NAFTA Agriculture TariffsFor Now
Mexican farm organizations postponed a planned Jan. 1 closure of U.S.-Mexico border crossings to protest the lifting of agricultural tariffs. The government negotiated the 20-day reprieve, by promising to draw up a "National Accord for the Countryside" during that time, in negotiations and discussions with the farm sector. President Vicente Fox has repeatedly stated that his government would not put off implementation of the NAFTA accords on agriculture, but under pressure from farmers, the regime apparently opted to "promise them anything" to gain a little time. Economics Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez claimed, in announcing that an agreement had been reached to postpone the protest, that the government would carry out a "joint evaluation" with the farm sector on the possibility of requesting a revision of the agriculture section of NAFTA.
One factor which helped cool the situation somewhat, was an agreement reached between the Fox and Bush Administrations, removing chicken parts from the list of farm products upon which all tariffs were lifted Jan. 1. The agreement negotiated reportedly would have chicken parts, which had enjoyed a 99% tariff in 2001, and 49% tariff in 2002, go back to a 99% tariff in 2003 (instead of zero), in return for Mexico's lifting quotas on imports of whole turkeys and chickens. Tariffs on the parts would then be reduced by 20% a year, over the next five years. The Fox government was eager to protect the chickens, given that the poultry industry in Mexicothe world's sixth largestemploys nearly 1 million Mexicans, but it was widely reported that the reason the Bush Administration was willing to make "concessions," is that two of Mexico's three biggest poultry producers are the cartelsTyson Foods, Inc. and Pilgrim's Pride Corp.and they got the U.S. poultry councils to lobby in favor of the deal.
Mexican Officials Expect 20% Increase in Emigration to U.S. Due to NAFTA
Mexican government officials project an increase of up to 20% in emigration to the United States, because of the NAFTA accords on agriculture. The projection was made by Mario Riestra, national coordinator of the Federal government's migrants assistance program, who acknowledged that the problem is that Mexico is not generating the 15-20% increase in jobs which the country requires. A state official involved in migrant affairs, Fabian Martinez of the House of the Mixteco Migrant, warned that the abandonment of farm land by peasants leaving to seek jobs in the U.S., creates long-term problems in the fertility of Mexican agricultural lands. When they return 15 or 20 years later, the land has become unproductive.
Infant Mortality Reaches African Levels in Parts of Argentina
Infant mortality in one Argentine town "is only comparable to African countries," warned Dr. Luis Marcelo Albaca, in Clarin Dec. 29. Eighteen children have now died in the northern province of Tucuman over the past two months. In the town of Simoca, where the latest victim died, Dr. Albaca says conditions "are dramatic. There is a level of malnutrition and infant mortality only comparable to countries in Africa and regions of India, and the nation does nothing!" He harshly criticized the "Operation Rescue" program set up with great fanfare by First Lady Hilda "Chiche" Duhalde, calling it "inefficient and demagogic." It set up a small dispensary a few blocks from the Simoca hospital, "when what it should have done is go into remote and inhospitable zones, where people can't get [medical] assistance," Dr. Albaca said. In Simoca alone, there are 2,000 children diagnosed with malnutrition, while province-wide, 11,790 children have been confirmed to be suffering from various stages of malnutrition, out of an estimated 18,000. And this is only in one province.
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