Ibero-American News Digest
Bolivia Again Hit with Mass Protests; Soros Role Seen
On April 20, twenty thousand people took to the streets in La Paz, calling for Bolivia's President Carlos Mesa, who took office only six months ago, to resign. Driving the protests are the same issues of economic devastation which led to last October's mass strike which drove Mesa's predecessor, Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada from office. Bus, truck, and taxi drivers simultaneously went on national strike.
George Soros's Jacobin agent Congressman Evo Morales, a leader of the coca producers, helped organize this latest protest, using the pretext that the government failed to put through a new Hydrocarbons Law as promised, before signing a gas export agreement with his counterpart Nestor Kirchner. Morales demanded that Mesa not travel to Argentina to sign the deal, charging any gas deal with Argentina "would only benefit the multinationals, and not the Bolivian people." Morales warned Mesa that if he wanted to continue governing, he must first produce a new Hydrocarbons Law. Otherwise, he will have to suffer the consequences because "the people" reject any idea of exporting gas.
The country is rife with coup rumors, which have intensified over the past two to three weeks. On March 26, the head of the Armed Forces, Adm. Luis Aranda, warned that retired "generals, colonels and mid-level officers seek to destabilize the government," and were coordinating with "some political parties and labor movements." Mesa is described as "under siege," as various sectors of the population are protesting, or on strike, around budgetary and economic issues. At an April 20 ceremony at the Military Academy in La Paz, Mesa referenced the coup rumors, and warned that any disruption of Bolivia's democracy would lead to disaster.
Shining Path Terrorists Reactivated in Peru
Giving a press interview from "clandestinity"somewhere in the jungles of the coca-saturated Huallaga Valleyone of the at-large remnants of Sendero Luminoso known as "Artemio" announced that the Alejandro Toledo government's failure to release Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) "President Abimael" and other narco-terrorist leaders from prison has forced an end to the terrorists' 60-day "truce" with the government, and that selective terrorism, sabotage, and assassinations would begin anew. Artemio had given an interview to BBC back in January, where he announced that armed action would be suspended to facilitate a negotiated amnesty for Abimael and the others. In his latest interview, Artemio did not hesitate to admit that he has received "economic contributions from the drug trade." His interview was broadcast on national television in Peru Sunday, April 18.
While the international media says Artemio commands about 150 armed terrorists, Peru's anti-terrorism division says it's no more than 30-40 men, and that while they might pose the threat of violence, "they do not pose a threat to the government."
Although "President Abimael" has not yet been released from jail, an estimated 50% of the terrorists imprisoned under former President Alberto Fujimori's anti-terrorist Administration have been let out of jail, a result of pressures from the Inter-American Court of the Organization of American States and a multitude of George Soros-funded human rights lobbies. Those who remain in jail, like Abimael, have in effect taken over their own prisons under the Toledo's regime's "jail flexibilization" program, and set their own rules, visitor guidelines, and more. Abimael has reportedly taken advantage of this relative freedom to reorganize the leadership of Sendero Luminoso, preparatory to their anticipated "amnesty."
Peru's Cocaleros March for Legalization of Coca
Simultaneous with the threat of Shining Path terrorist-at-large "Artemio" to renew terrorism in Peru, coca-growers announced that the April 20 deadline that they had given the government to resolve their complaints against coca eradication, is now expired. The cocaleros, as the coca-farmers are called, began a protest march on Lima, under the slogan, "Legalize the coca leaf." An estimated 10,000 were expected to participate. At least one trade union, the regional state workers union CITE, had pledged to join the march.
"The peoples' marches and protests will lead to the fall of [President Alejandro] Toledo this month," declared Isaac Humala, head of the so-called Peruvian Nationalist Movement and father of ethnic racialist provocateurs Antauro and Ollanta Humala who lead a paramilitary group of brown-shirted former soldiers. In an April 19 interview with the newspaper La Razon, Humala, Sr. declared that Toledo's Presidency represents "the final end of 472 years of arbitrariness and treason in Peru.... The current neo-liberal system is destroying the country. It is most likely that Toledo's fall will occur this month, with the march of the coca-growers, the coffee growers, and of the regional fronts." Humala added, "These demonstrations could be bloody...."
Will Brazil's Lula da Silva Last Out His Term?
After only 15 months in office, this is the question beginning to be raised inside Brazil. Lula's government lacks any direction, and if doesn't exert some leadership, the Brazilian President could end up like Argentina's Fernando de la Rua, who was ousted by giant protests in the midst of a grave political-economic crisis, a professor from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Fernando Jose Cardim, told a conference of the Brazilian Association of NGOs on April 13. Likewise, on April 19, Folha de Sao Paulo's Clovis Rossi opened an article raising the question: "The MST's 'Red April,' the quasi-civil war in Rio de Janeiro: Does the Lula government run the risk of being destabilized in the streets, as has occurred in a handful of Latin American countries in the last 10 years?"
Driving the collapse of the government's credibility, is its commitment to achieving the primary budget surplus demanded by the IMF4.25% of GNPwhich it cannot do, without destroying its own political base.
As an O Globo article reports, "the books don't balance." That is, if the government gives the wage increase demanded by the state workers, raises the minimum wage by more than the rate of inflation, and spends what it takes to lessen agrarian conflicts, the government will have to spend R$3.6 billion more than is allocated in the 2004 budget, an amount equal to a third of what it budgeted for investment this year. And that doesn't include anything for the military. Nor for the state governors, who are threatening to sue the Federal government, for greater fiscal help. Without help from the Federal government, "the states are going to enter a state of bankruptcy.... The situation is becoming untenable," warned Gov. German Rigotto of Rio Grande do Sul, a member of the government-allied PMDB party, in an interview with Valor on April 19.
FDR Ally President Vargas Honored in Brazil
On April 19, Brazil's National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) held a seminar on "Vargas and the Mission of National Development," to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Gertulio Vargas, President of Brazil from 1930-1945, and again from 1950-1954.
Despite all the neo-liberals and globalizers have done to stamp out Vargas's legacy in Brazilthe explicit goal of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in his two terms in office in the 1990s was to "de-Vargas-ize" Brazilthe legacy of this great President lives on. Vargas and Franklin D. Roosevelt worked closely together on matters of war and development, after their first meeting in 1936, with U.S. Senator Edward Burke reporting some years after FDR died, that FDR had said, "The New Deal had two creators. I'm one of them, and the other is President Vargas of Brazil." Under Vargas's governments, Brazil's state oil and steel industries, and BNDES itself, were established, in collaboration with FDR's people, who saw the industrialization of Brazil as one of the world's great tasks.
BNDES's announcement of the seminar on Vargas was itself a pointed intervention into today's great crisis in Brazil:
"The cycle of seminars intends ... to provoke a broad reflection on the present and future of Brazil, taking as a reference the Vargas Era, the wellspring of the great social and economic transformations of the country in the 20th Century. It will be an opportunity to revive that which is contemporaneous and inspiring for new generations in his vision of Brazil, in light of the relevance of his basic themes, such as the necessity of a rigorous national mission, the defense of sovereignty, the defense of territorial integrity, and industrial development as the basis for the material progress of the Brazilian people."
Colombia's Social Security Looted; Privatization Mooted
The Colombian social security system (ISS), along with the remnants of the public-health system which ISS administers, is in the crosshairs of the vulture funds for wholesale takeover and looting. As in other Ibero-American nations, the purpose of this genocidal policy is to create one more source of capital to keep the bubble afloat a while longer.
On the initiative of the IMF and World Bank, economic thinktanks in Colombia, like Fedesarrollo and ANIF, have been pumping out reports designed to "prove" that ISS is bankrupt, and should be dismantled and/or privatized. The fact is that, like the energy crisis in Argentina, the insolvency of ISS has been artificially created, the result of an ongoing campaign to strip it of members, with many affiliates being denied drugs and medical care, thereby forcing people into the HMOs, created in 1993, under then Finance Minister Rudolf Hommes. In 1998, ISS had 4,655,000 affiliates in Colombia. Today, it has fewer than 2.1 million. Hommes is today a behind-the-scenes adviser to President Uribe, as well as a prominent member of the Violy Byorum firm which, it should be remembered, helped facilitate the Grasso Abrazo initiative in Colombia.
At a March 31 conference sponsored by the banker-controlled ANIF thinktank (which spawned 1990s narco-President Ernesto Samper Pizano), ANIF President Luis Carlos Sarmiento demanded elimination of publicly-administered pension funds as "inefficient and onerous." Although President Alvaro Uribe stupidly embraced the privatization call, Finance Minister Carrasquilla, an IMF creature, nonetheless urged a more "modest," slower pace, for fear that the backlash to an accelerated privatization scheme could bury an entire packet of IMF austerity dictates currently before Congress. The debate continues, while pensions go unpaid for months, even years, and more public hospitals shut down each day.
Mexican Unionists Charge IMF Behind Privatization Campaign
On April 17, Roberto Vega Galina, leader of Mexico's National Union of Social Security Workers (SNTSS), declared that the attacks against Mexico's social security system, known as IMSS, and against its workers for trying to defend their pension and other benefits, follow the implicit dictates of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. His comments are especially significant, given that it is the SNTSS which has been in the forefront of the fight to stop the privatization of Mexico's state companies, and which called the April 14 mobilization which brought out 70,000 workers nationally in a "mega-march" against the privatization drive against IMSS.
Trade unionist Francisco Hernandez Juarez, a leader of the National Workers Union, also issued a public statement April 14the same day of the SNTSS marchdenouncing the Fox government for answering to the international bankers over the needs of the Mexican population: "They were the ones who spent the pension money. Now, they say that IMSS is bankrupt. Let's make no mistake: This isn't a question of good or bad. The government answers to the policy of Washington and the International Monetary Fund, by means of which they hope to remove IMSS's liabilities, and privatize it."
|