In this issue:

BNDES Preparing Great Regional Industrial Project

Argentines Die of Hunger Daily

Will Another Ecuadorean Government Fall Soon?

Renewed Separatist Drive Against Bolivia

Will Uruguay Try To Pay Its 'Unpayable Debt'?

Brazil's Workers' Party Loses Key Mayoral Elections

Chavez 'Sweeps' Latest Elections in Venezuela

From Volume 3, Issue Number 45 of EIR Online, Published Nov. 9, 2004

Ibero-American News Digest

BNDES Preparing Great Regional Industrial Project

Meeting with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez in Rio de Janeiro on Nov. 3, Carlos Lessa, the outspoken president of Brazil's National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), spoke of the possibility of Argentines, Brazilians, and Venezuelans creating "a great industrial project," a project which he called an "easily executed" dream, Folha de Sao Paulo reported on Nov. 3. Lessa thinks the project will be ready to be revealed to the press within two months.

The official subject on the agenda of the Chavez-Lessa lunch, was the establishment of a $300-400-million investment fund to guarantee trade financing between the two countries. Chavez was in Rio for the Nov. 4-5 summit of the Rio Group, the informal group founded for policy discussion in 1986, in which 19 Ibero-American nations participated.

Under Lessa's leadership, BNDES has become the leading advocate within Brazilian institutions for a return to dirigist economic policies, which drives the financier interests wild. On Oct. 25, Lessa charged that BNDES is subjected to a constant barrage of slanders in the media that it is "inefficient," "overly bureaucratic," etc., the purpose of which is ultimately "to dismantle" BNDES entirely. The attacks are coming from "the defenders of neoliberalism, ... the same people who recommended that the last one to leave the country from Galeao [Rio's international airport] please turn out the light.... They are the ones who say that, given globalization, Brazil has only one option." The newspapers love to publish these "true pearls" emitted by economists associated with former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, whose motivation, Lessa noted, could only be "arrogance, stupidity, envy, or mediocrity."

Argentines Die of Hunger Daily

Four hundred fifty thousand Argentines died of hunger between 1990 and 2003, according to Argentine agronomist Alberto Lapolla. Citing the IDEP thinktank, Lapolla reported in a June 2004 study that every day, 55 children, 35 adults, and 15 elderly die from illnesses related to hunger. Lapolla, who has written extensively on the transformation of Argentina from the "granary of the world" to a "soy republic," told this news service that he has used Lyndon LaRouche's analysis of the foreign debt in his studies on how globalization has destroyed the country's agriculture. LaRouche was "one of the first in the world to denounce the gigantic fraud of the foreign debt of the Third World, and of Argentina in particular," he stated.

In his June study, Lapollo identified that it was the financiers' policy to create hunger, citing a 1967 book written by the infamous synarchist who served as Finance Minister of the 1976-86 military junta, Jose ("Joe") Martinez de Hoz, hated as the man who oversaw the looting of Argentina for the foreign banks, and the quintupling of its foreign debt. In his book on Argentine agricultural development between 1930 and 1960, de Hoz complained that the Peronist government of 1945-55 had regrettably "discouraged" agricultural exports, which, he said, was the result of "Argentina's huge internal consumption of food."

Will Another Ecuadorean Government Fall Soon?

"Ecuadorean democracy is at serious risk," Foreign Minister Patricio Zuquilanda stated Nov. 3. Zuquilanda announced that he would be asking the Rio Group to send a commission of foreign ministers and Organization of American States representatives to Ecuador, to convince the political opposition "that it is necessary to calm the country down, and give it stability."

On Oct. 27, congressmen from three opposition parties—the right-wing, neo-liberal, banker-run Social Christian Party; the leftist indigenist radicals of the Pachakutik Party; and the Democratic Left—announced they had enough votes among them (50) to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Lucio Gutierrez, and would be now focussed on lining up the 67 votes necessary to actually impeach. Gutierrez's alleged crime is the use of public funds to promote his Patriotic Society party.

Ecuador's political class—including its so-called left radicals—are thus proving themselves as suicidally petty and irresponsible as those of Venezuela. No one, either from the government or the opposition, has the guts to state the truth: that Ecuador is disintegrating, and cannot survive, under free trade and globalization. Gutierrez—the then-Hugo Chavez-allied lieutenant colonel whose January 2000 uprising with the indigenous movement toppled then-President Jamil Mahuad—won the 2002 elections by promising to reverse dollarization and stop IMF looting, which promise he promptly reversed upon taking power. Now, the opposition is joined together in an unprincipled alliance to topple him, in hopes of getting the "franchise" themselves.

Zuquilanda will make his request to the heads of state of the Rio Group, when they meet in Rio de Janeiro Nov. 4 and 5. Ecuadorean President Lucio Gutierrez was to attend, but he cancelled his visit, due to the crisis.

Renewed Separatist Drive Against Bolivia

Leaders of Bolivia's richest department, Santa Cruz, threaten to lead a region-wide strike, unless the government agrees to hold a referendum to approve "regional autonomy" by the Dec. 5 municipal elections. The demand plays right into the efforts of financiers and the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to split the country into two. (See InDepth, EIW #27, 2004, "Bolivia Is Targetted To Redraw South America Map.) Santa Cruz is the largest of Bolivia's nine departments, with more than a million inhabitants, and it is the center of oil and gas and agro-industrial interests.

On Oct. 28, civic leaders of Santa Cruz and the neighboring departments of Tarija (also gas-rich) and Beni issued a joint manifesto threatening to call a "simultaneous strike," should two demands not be met: the referendum on autonomy, and a postponement of all discussion of a new law governing the oil and gas industry, until after the municipal elections.

Congressman Evo Morales—the George Soros-tied head of the cocaleros (coca growers) who, for his part, is threatening to shut down the government unless it immediately nationalizes the oil companies, something Bolivia does not have the power to do at this moment—charged that Santa Cruz interests are organizing for a military coup. Cardinal Julio Terrazas issued a worried call for leaders to give up their "entrenched" positions, and act with "maturity."

A high-level military source in La Paz commented on Oct. 30 that what Santa Cruz leaders are really angry about, is the influence which Evo Morales has gained within the Mesa government, through the constant threat to send the people out to the streets to shut down the country. This is something they cannot stomach. He said also, that if it were not for the fact that the U.S. embassy opposes it, there would be a military government now in power in Bolivia. When he walks down the streets of the capital in his uniform, people stop him, asking why the military has not moved to stop the anarchy into which the country is sinking. He also agreed, that without the ability to create jobs, the military would not be able to address the source of the anarchy, either.

Will Uruguay Try To Pay Its 'Unpayable Debt'?

Tabare Vasquez, candidate of the EP-Frente Amplio coalition, won Uruguay's Presidential Elections with 51% of the vote, on Oct. 31, and his coalition won a majority in both houses of Congress. His victory—this was his third bid for the Presidency—was a smashing defeat for the ruling Colorado Party, which garnered only 10% of the vote. Outgoing President Jorge Batlle had imposed IMF-dictated austerity, in an insane attempt to pull the country out of a crisis caused by the global financial crash. Those policies created a 30% poverty rate, double what it was in 1998, and drove 100,000 young people to emigrate in search of employment since the end of 2001.

The general anger against the IMF policies was also demonstrated in the 65% approval given the constitutional amendment prohibiting privatization of potable water and sanitation services. In previous referenda, Uruguay has prohibited the privatization of telecommunications and marketing of oil.

Vasquez won because he promised that his first priority will be to implement an emergency program to address pressing social needs. Thus far, however, he continues to reiterate that he will follow Brazilian President Lula da Silva's model—who talks of handing out aid to hungry people, but who refuses to challenge the legitimacy of the IMF system which creates ever more hungry people. Vasquez's appointed Finance Minister, Danilo Astori, promised Wall Street in advance that a Vasquez government would not break the rules of the game.

Holding to that promise will not be easy. The new government's only option will be to "negotiate, renegotiate, and renegotiate," said Jose Mujica, after he was elected Senator in the Oct. 31 elections with more votes than any other senatorial candidate. Mujica has been named Production Minister in the government that will take power on March 1, 2005.

Mujica, whose Popular Participation Movement is part of Vasquez's coalition, spoke bluntly about the $12 billion Uruguay owes the IMF and foreign bankers: "We know we're not going to pay them, and they know it too, but we'll make it look as though we are.... We can't tell them we won't pay, because we're a small country."

Astori says there will be no requests for a debt writedown, but rather an extension of payment deadlines.

Brazil's Workers' Party Loses Key Mayoral Elections

Candidates of President Lula da Silva's Workers' Party (PT) lost in the cities of Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre, in the Oct. 31 second round of elections. The defeat of Sao Paulo's crazy "sexologist" Mayor Marta Suplicy by the Social Democratic Party (PSDB) candidate, former Health Minister Jose Serra, with 55.6% of the vote, was not unexpected, but it is significant because Sao Paulo is Brazil's largest city and center of the country's industry. In Porto Alegre, held up worldwide as the PT's "model" city, Jose Fogaza of the Popular Socialist Party defeated the PT candidate, with 53.3% of the vote. Porto Alegre became synonymous with the PT, which governed the city for the past 16 years, after the left-synarchist World Social Forum was founded there several years ago.

The losses will feed the building opposition within the PT itself, to the Lula government's policy of sticking to IMF austerity policies.

Chavez 'Sweeps' Latest Elections in Venezuela

As expected, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez consolidated his tyrannical hold over that country on Oct. 31, by sweeping out the opposition in all but two of the country's 22 states. The elections, for gubernatorial, mayoral, and municipal positions, were largely won by the "Chavista" candidates, due to the opposition's decision to withdraw from the tainted electoral process, leading to an "historic abstention rate" of about 55%. In two states where the opposition candidates refused to yield to the Chavistas' preemptive claims of victory before the votes were in, Carabobo and Yaracuy, Army soldiers have been deployed to surround the government office buildings in the capital cities, to "avoid outbreaks of violence."

To drive home the policy that no opposition will be tolerated, a Chavista prosecutor issued arrest warrants on Nov. 3 against former Caracas mayor and leading opposition figure Alfredo Pena, and two of his metropolitan police chiefs, for "intellectual authorship of homicide," a reference to the 20 people shot dead in the streets on April 11, 2002, when a peaceful opposition march on the Presidential palace led by Pena, among others, was fired on, triggering the coup that ousted Chavez for 47 hours. The opposition claims that Chavista provocateurs did the shooting; the Chavez government insists it was members of the Caracas metropolitan police—which the newly elected Chavez candidate intends to purge—who did the shooting.

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