Ibero-American News Digest
Mexican Senator Warns of Social Explosions
When a group of Mexican Senators met with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan during his early-September visit to Mexico City, Sen. Manuel Bartlett, from the PRI party, used the occasion to warn that IMF policies are leading to social explosions throughout Ibero-America. Democracy is failing "because of the ferocious dictatorship of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank," Bartlett said, and if this dictatorship continues, "we are going to reach social explosions in our countries."
That includes Mexico. The Social Security (IMSS) workers' union filed official notice with the relevant authorities, that they will go out on a national strike on Oct. 15, should their demands for a wage increase not be met. They are demanding a 10% increase, and the firing of IMSS Director General Santiago Levy.
Mexican Court To Hear Suit vs. Pemex Contracts with Foreign Oil Firms
A Mexican court agreed in August to hear a suit filed by 42 Senators and 130 Congressmen which contests the constitutionality of the Fox government's deals with foreign oil companies. Specifically, the suit requests the court to nullify the "Multiple Service Contract" (CSM) signed between the state oil company PEMEX and the Spanish oil multinational Repsol, which grants Repsol de facto exploration and exploitation rights for natural gas in the northern Burgos Basin. The suit argues that the CSM is merely a legal subterfuge to violate the Constitution's prohibition of foreign participation in Mexico's oil and gas industry.
The majority of the Senators and Deputies on the suit are from the PRI party, joined by some PRD members. The court recognized the Congressmen's right to sue, as representatives of the nation, and ordered the state oil company PEMEX and Repsol to turn over certified copies of the contract to the court.
PRI Sen. Manuel Bartlett, who initiated the suit, hailed the decision to hear the case as "historic," and said the Congressmen and Senators will file four more suits against other such contracts. The foreign oil and electricity companies knew full well when they entered into these contracts that they are unconstitutional, Bartlett stated.
Foreign energy companies have been watching these legal initiatives nervously. A year ago, when he and another Senator filed a similar suit against foreign electricity companies in June 2003, Bartlett warned the foreign companies, that if they violate Mexican laws, they will, sooner or later, face criminal charges.
Bush Administration Threatens Dominican Republic
Bush Administration trade "negotiators" threatened to take economic reprisals against the Dominican Republic, if a 25% tariff on corn syrup imported from the U.S.tacked onto the government's fiscal reform bill by members of the Chamber of Deputiesis not removed from the bill. The tariff is designed to protect the island's desperate sugar industry from U.S. dumping, while the fiscal "reform," which includes a number of tax hikes and other obscene austerity measures, is demanded by the IMF as the condition for releasing promised loans and a foreign debt renegotiation for this ravaged country.
The Leonel Fernandez government promises that if the Senate does not remove the tariff from the fiscal reform package, it will propose an executive amendment that does so, abjectly assuring the Bush team that the Chamber of Deputies' inclusion of the tariff in its version of the bill was not a deliberate flouting of the U.S., but just "human error."
U.S. Deputy Trade Representative Peter Allgeier sent the Dominican ambassador a letter last month, warning that passage of the tariff would lead to a U.S. suspension of a recently signed free trade agreement between their two countries, with loss of all the alleged privileges that implies.
The issue is raising tensions in this country, with the general consensus of both the population and the powerful sugar lobby on the island in favor of the tariff, and the new Fernandez Administration apparently prepared to go head to head with the legislature on behalf of the IMF. The sugar industry is one of the largest employers in the country.
Spanish Fascist Asset Named Head of Venezuelan Opposition Group
Alejandro Pena Esclusa was promoted to Secretary General of Venezuela's coup-mongering "Bloque Democratico" [Democratic Block] opposition group, in the wake of Hugo Chavez's victory in the Aug. 15 recall referendum. The election of Pena Esclusa was reportedly unanimous. In January 2003, Pena made public his ties to old Spanish fascist Blas Pinar in January 2003, when he sent a message of support to the international meeting sponsored by Pinar and his allies in the FE-La Falange, to develop the new Fascist International. (See "The Fascist Fall-Guys for a New, 'Hispanic 9/11' Attack on the U.S.," EIW InDepth, Vol. 2, No. 33 (Aug. 19, 2003).
Brazil's Population Nears Zero-Growth Rate
A dramatic decline in Brazil's population growth rate is reflected in the "2004 Review of Projected Population" study, recently issued by the Brazilian Geographical and Statistical Institute (IBGE). Recall that Brazil was one of 13 countries that Henry Kissinger targetted for population reduction in the NSSM-200 report of the 1980s, which was a blueprint for genocide.
Brazil's population just passed the 180 million mark, double what it was 34 years ago. But IBGE points out that, had the population continued to grow at the 3% annual rate of the 1950s, Brazil would today have a population of 262 million. The growth rate now stands at 1.44%; by 2050 it is expected to fall to 0.24%, and to zero by 2062.
As these figures would suggest, the population is aging. In 1960, a woman of child-bearing age would, on average, have six children. Today that figure is 2.3 children. In 1980, the size of the population above and below the age of 20 was approximately the same. But by 2050, that average age will be 40. In the year 2000, 30% of the population consisted of children below the age of 14; those above age 65 represented 5% of the population. But by 2050, those two groups will each represent 18% of the total. IBGE reports that in 2000, there were 1.8 million people above the age of 80. By 2050, that number is expected to rise to 13.7 million.
Although Brazil's infant mortality rate has declined since 1970, its current rate of 30 deaths for every 1,000 births stands well above that of neighbors Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. IBGE also notes that since 1980, violence began to negatively affect life expectancy and mortality rates, particularly among male adolescents and young adults.
Austerity Policies Trigger Mass Protest in Colombia
Colombia's trade union federations held a nationwide protest Sept. 16 against President Alvaro Uribe's stubborn embrace of IMF-dictated austerity policies which, combined with the ravages of decades of ongoing narcoterrorism, are driving the population into the hands of the narcoterrorist-allied opposition. The labor protest overlapped an unprecedented three-day march by 50-60,000 Indians along the PanAmerican highway, protesting both Uribe's economic neoliberalism, and his war on narcoterrorism. Adding to the social tensions was a nationwide strike by truckers demanding higher cargo rates. All three protests oppose the imminent signing of a Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and Washington.
Poverty rates in the country have risen from 59% to 64% of the total population over the past few years, and rubbing salt in the wounds is a new tax reform, proposed by Uribe's despised Finance Minister Alberto Carrasquilla, which, if approved by Congress, would raise the general value-added tax from 16 to 17%, slap a new 3% value-added tax on such basic foodstuffs as meat, chicken, and milk, and tax higher pensions as well. The argument behind the reform is that it is necessary to enable the government to pay pensions.
Unfortunately, while the protesters are all in agreement against the government's economic austerity programs, privatization, and free-trade talks with the U.S., they also endorse a "negotiated solution" withthat is, capitulation tothe brutal FARC and ELN narcoterrorists, and they oppose Uribe's commitment to deploy the national military to crush the narcoterrorist occupation of the country. The indigenist protesters, in particular, are protesting that Uribe's war on terror violates their autonomy and threatens "ethnogenocide" against them.
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