In this issue:

LYM Leaders Hold 'Tricontinental Dialogue' on Argentine Radio

Lula Government Goes All Out To Defend Central Banker

South American Infrastructure Authority Discussed

Bolivian Peasants Seize Oil Fields

'Indigenous' Synarchists Promise More Murders in Peru, Bolivia

From Volume 3, Issue Number 34 of EIR Online, Published Aug. 24, 2004

Ibero-American News Digest

LYM Leaders Hold 'Tricontinental Dialogue' on Argentine Radio

LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) leaders in Leipzig and Los Angeles gave Radio Nacional of Cordoba's wide audience in that Argentine state, a first-hand report on how the LaRouche movement is mobilizing to defeat the international financial oligarchy, in two crucial industrialized countries: the United States and Germany.

The leading news discussion show on Radio Nacional invited a 27-year-old Cordoba state legislator and another young official with the municipal government into their studio on Aug. 19 to interview LYM members Alexandre Pusch and Liz Rubio Sopkovich. At the end of the live interview, which lasted more than half an hour, the radio host promised this "tricontinental dialogue" would be continued, because "we understand each other."

The news of the Leipzig demos finally had broken into the local papers this week. Alexandre, in telling of the LYM campaign to ensure those demonstrations are more than protests, reported that last March, the LYM had held a European-wide Day of Action in support of Argentine President Nestor Kirchner's battle against the IMF, and that he, personally, at that time, had confronted German Economics Minister Clement, the official responsible for the Hartz IV austerity program against which Germany is now rebelling. Alexandre asked Clement directly: If he would not support Argentina, would he not also sell out our own people to the international financial oligarchy, too?

People in Germany who thought they would always be fine, are learning that they, too, are being hit. The fight against the international financial oligarchy is not a local one; people must understand it is the system which is collapsing, Alexandre stressed.

Liz provoked a discussion on how the LaRouche Youth Movement is fighting to change the United States, to ensure not only the defeat of Bush-Cheney, but that John Kerry's Presidency is not a "Bush-Lite" regime which continues an imperial policy. If that happens, it would be World War III. One of the Argentines, at first viewing this as a strategy of trying to control a "lesser evil," asked what alternative exists within the U.S. population, to fight the international financial oligarchy, should our Kerry strategy fail. The answer lies in our Constitutional laws, Liz explained. The LYM is deploying around the country to mobilize the lower 80% of income brackets, and gain control of Congress.

Both Alexandre and Liz repeatedly emphasized that our struggle in Ibero-America, in Europe, in the United States, is one struggle, to create a geometry in which governments can only do the Good; to launch a renaissance—what Lyndon LaRouche has done for his whole life.

We want to send a message to all the youth of Cordoba and Argentina, that as long as the youth do not lose hope that the IMF system can be changed, we will make it happen, together, Liz emphasized.

That provoked one of the Argentine youth to ask if the two thought it were possible to develop justice and peace, against these financial powers?

Peace must be based on a policy of developing the physical economy, through a New Bretton Woods, as LaRouche has proposed, Liz replied. And Alexandre, having the final word, explained what it is like to bring an international movement—with Africans, Ibero-Americans, people from other countries in Europe—into a part of Germany which had been cut off from the rest of the world for 40 years. Imagine the questions from these people, who see youth from the whole world, singing songs of Bach, who is from their city of Leipzig. In this century, humanity can form a community of principle, he concluded.

Lula Government Goes All Out To Defend Central Banker

Brazilian President Lula da Silva issued a decree in the wee hours of Aug. 16, elevating besieged Central Bank president Henrique Meirelles to the rank of a cabinet minister, at the urging of monetarist Finance Minister Antonio Palocci. Meirelles, head of global operations of Fleet-First Boston Bank prior to being named to his current post, is an architect and enforcer of the government's disastrous economic policy. He now finds himself under investigation for tax evasion and other financial "irregularities."

The decree provoked an outcry from legislators—including some in the government's camp—as an illegal and unconstitutional attempt to protect Meirelles from prosecution. A cabinet minister accused of a crime can only be tried by the Supreme Federal Tribunal (Brazil's Supreme Court), not in ordinary courts.

Palocci's Finance Ministry released a statement late on Aug. 16, admitting that it had requested that Lula issue the decree, given that the Central Bank "has in recent years ... taken on strategic importance, given the complexity of its responsibilities." Several media charged that Palocci had requested the action, to prevent Meirelles from resigning as a result of the charges against him. After the decree was issued, a special edition of the daily official government newspaper was rushed to print for circulation on Aug. 17.

In order to go into effect, the decree must be approved by both Brazil's Senate and House within 45 days. Legislators from various parties have already announced they will take legal action against the decree.

South American Infrastructure Authority Discussed

Three Presidents—Bolivia's Carlos Mesa, Peru's Alejandro Toledo, and Brazil's Lula da Silva—discussed establishing a "South American Infrastructure Authority," when they met Aug. 11 in the Brazilian state of Acre to inaugurate cross-border bridges (see last week's Iberoamerican EIW Digest). The final communique issued from their meeting underscored the importance of the upcoming October meeting of South American Finance Ministers in Lima, which will discuss progress toward setting up such a new structure, whose specific purpose would be to finance projects for the continent's physical integration.

The communique also emphasized the necessity of promoting infrastructure development in border regions, which is of particular importance, given Synarchist efforts to revive conflict along the lines of the 19th-Century, British-orchestrated War of the Pacific (1879-1881). It was suggested that "Border Committees" be set up to involve representatives and authorities of communities in those regions in discussion about needed infrastructure development. Physical integration and infrastructural development will also be key agenda items at the South American Presidents' conference scheduled to take in Lima on Dec. 8-9 of this year.

Bolivian Peasants Seize Oil Fields

On Aug. 16 and 17, more than 800 peasants seized three oil fields in the state of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, run by the Chaco oil firm in which British Petroleum (BP) has 50% participation. They had no use for the oil, but sought to use it to pressure for land titles and government credits. Chaco immediately ceased production of the 2,000 bpd it normally produces in the region, which threatened to create shortages of liquefied petroleum gas and natural gas both for the domestic market and for export to Brazil.

The government resolved that crisis within two days, by promising to deal with those problems, but the "tactic" is being adopted by others. In the same days, in Villamontes, in the state of Tarija, another group of protesters blocked off access to the region, demanding that the Mesa government provide financing for construction of a highway to Paraguay. The strikers prevented trucks from getting through for more than a week, and significant quantities of perishable foods have rotted in the vehicles that remain stopped on the road. Although the government announced Aug. 17 that it had obtained financing from the Banco do Brasil for the highway to Paraguay, peasants had already turned off valves to the pipelines which transport natural gas to Argentina and Brazil. The crisis continues.

These actions reflect the desperate state of Bolivia's population, often manipulated by radical Jacobins whose only goal is to sow chaos. Private sector and government officials are meanwhile hysterically charging that seizure of oil fields and other protest actions will damage Bolivia's ability to get foreign investment—there is no "juridical security" they say—and that they come at a sensitive time, when the government is in negotiations with foreign bankers to obtain new credits.

'Indigenous' Synarchists Promise More Murders in Peru, Bolivia

"Ethno-nationalist" fascist Antauro Humala showed up at the Aug. 9-11 "First Aymara Congress" (of the Aymara indians), held in the town of Ilave, in Peru's Puno province, site of the mob lynching last April of Mayor Cirilo Robles. Humala not only showed up with leaders of Ilave implicated in Robles' murder, but whipped up the 300 people in the audience with a demagogic speech, praising the town for its "courage" in lynching the Mayor, whose murder, he said, was fully justified. The implication was that many more "Ilaves" are on the agenda, and not just in Peru.

EIW published an exclusive expose of the Nazi-loving, white, oligarchic networks backing Humala's purported "indigenous" movement, in our July 9 issue (#27). (See "The Friends of Blas Pinar Send the Andes Up in Flames.")

In Bolivia, Humala's allies in the Landless Movement (MST) and among the peasant federation run by madman Felipe Quispe, mobilized across the country on Aug. 16 to protest the arrest of MST leader Gabriel Pinto, who is implicated in the June 14 lynching of Mayor Benjamin Altamirano, of the town of Ayo Ayo. MST president Angel Duran has declared "total war" against the government of Bolivian President Carlos Mesa, warning that the war will be waged "not only with ideas, but with clubs and rocks." With the backing of the Bolivian Labor Confederation (COB), peasant organizations were marching on the capital of La Paz from different points around the country with the goal of surrounding it and cutting it off from the rest of the country.

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