Drug Cartels Win Mexico's Super Sunday Elections

The cartoon in the morning left daily La Jornada summed up the July 4th Super Sunday election here: two citizens are picking their way through the debris of the balloting in which a dozen governorships were up for grabs. "Which cartel did you vote for?" one asks the other. The cartoon, drawn by "El Fisgon" ("The Busybody"), one of the nation's most acute political commentators, encapsulated the question many Mexican voters have been puzzling over in the heat of a campaign during which front-running candidates have been gunned down, the victims of apparent drug war hits, and others have wound up behind bars, charged with crimes related to Mexico's flourishing drug trade.

In readjusted figures released by Mexican drug war officials last week, more than 25,000 citizens have been slain since December 2006 when President Felipe Calderon declared an ill-advised war on the drug cartels. The number of dead and their survivors constitutes a substantial voting block.

Never before have the cartels so publicly intervened in a Mexican election. On June 28th, less than a week before Super Sunday, unidentified gunmen cut down the gubernatorial candidate for the once and future ruling PRI party in Tamaulipas, a border state wracked by protracted violence between the Gulf Cartel and the gang's former enforcers, the Zetas. The assassination of Rodolfo Torre Cantu, a shoo-in for the state house, was the highest profile assassination of a Mexican politico since Luis Donaldo Colosio, the PRI presidential candidate, was whacked in Tijuana in 1994, a crime sometimes ascribed to lingering conflicts within the party over his candidacy. State and federal investigators discount political rivalry as being the cause of Torre Cantu's death.

What is dead certain is that the murder of Torre Cantu, the TamaulipasSecretary of Public Health, was not a case of mistaken identity - when he was ambushed on an access road to the municipal airport in the state capitol of Ciudad Victoria, the vehicle in which he was riding was plastered with an enormous portrait of the now-deceased politician.

Because the killing came so close to Election Day, new ballots could not be printed in time and Dr. Torre Cantu's name appeared at the top of the PRI ticket. On June 29th, in an emergency session convened by PRI party president Beatriz Paredes, 16 PRI governors selected the dead candidate's brother, Eligio, a civil engineer with no political experience, to replace him should the party win the state house July 4th.

Although no arrests have been forthcoming, one witness purportedly testified that one of the killers' getaway cars was emblazoned with a "Z", an indication that the Zetas bear responsibility for taking out the candidate, a message of which the new governor will no doubt take note. PRI officials scoff at reports that the Zetas were tipped off by campaign workers infiltrated by the drug gang to keep tabs on Dr. Torre Cantu's whereabouts.

The PRIista was the second candidate to be cut down in Tamaulipas in the run-up to July 4th. On May 13th, Manuel Guajardo, the right-wing PAN hopeful for municipal president of Valle Hermosa was assassinated outside that northern Tamaulipas town said to be the home base of Heberto Lasca Lasca, "El Lascas", the capo of one wing of the Zetas.

All over the state, candidates for municipal and state offices in addition to an estimated 700 election workers dropped out of the July 4th vote taking despite promises that their safety would be guaranteed by military escorts.

"The United Cartels", a handle ascribed to various drug gangs in a "narco-manta" (banner) posted in Matamoros on the border prior to the July 4th election, "are now dictating which candidates the parties can run for office," wrote Proceso magazine correspondent Gerardo Albarron de Alba in an election curtain raiser from Tamaulipas.

Chihuahua, the nation's largest state, is another border entity where the campaign trail was drenched in blood. 1300 Chihuahuans, more than half of them in Ciudad Juarez, have lost their lives since the first of the year, including a pair of candidates for municipal president in the Valley of Juarez outside that conflictive border crossing. Many other candidates were warned not to campaign. Opponents tied Hector Murguia, PRI candidate for mayor of Ciudad Juarez, to "La Linea", enforcers for the Juarez Cartel, which is locked in an intractable battle with Chapo Guzman's Pacific Cartel for control of the Juarez "plaza."

Five nights before the balloting, an assistant Chihuahua attorney general was assassinated on a public street in Juarez. On election eve, a freshly severed head was installed on Murguia's front lawn. Early morning voters July 4th discovered four corpses hung from
the city's pedestrian bridges.

Similarly, next door in Durango where the PAN and the PRI battled down to the wire for the governor's seat, bullets replaced ballots as the Zetas-Chapos gang war rages throughout the state. In the week before the election, ten were cut down at a Durango drug treatment center - such facilities are often used by the drug gangs as safe houses for their pistoleros.

Next door in Sinaloa, the cradle of Mexican drug culture, which also selected a new governor July 4th, the headquarters of the three major political parties were firebombed by unknowns. At the closing campaign rally for PRI gubernatorial candidate Jesus Vizcarra, a small plane dumped thousands of leaflets on the diehards depicting the candidate in the company of "El Mayo" Zembada, number two in Chapo's cartel - the leaflets were slugged "its all in the family."

At the other end of the country in Quintana Roo on the Yucatan peninsula, the left-coalition candidate for governor, "Greg" Sanchez was removed from the ballot after he was formally indicted on charges of laundering vast amounts of money through private bank accounts. Sanchez, an evangelical preacher and former mayor of the luxury resort city of Cancun, explained the discrepancies as "an accounting error." The ex-left candidate reportedly owns a ranch on the Chiapas-Guatemalan border through which hundreds of undocumented Cubans (Sanchez's wife is a Cubana) and tons of Colombian cocaine are guaranteed safe passage.

Sanchez, currently locked up in a maximum-security federal prison, is the second big-time Quintana Roo politico to be collared by Mexican authorities for drug crimes. Mario Villanueva, governor between 1993 and 1999, was convicted of transforming that Caribbean state into a free duty port for Colombian cocaine cartels, and is currently fighting extradition to the U.S.

But perhaps the bitterest face-off this July 4th had more to do with presidential elections upcoming in 2012 than with the "United Cartel's" campaign to secure political space. In the conflictive southern state of Oaxaca, the shoot-out between outgoing governor Ulises Ruiz's successor and right-left coalition candidate Gabino Cue had already cost seven lives by Election Day. Ruiz, whose police state tactics triggered civic rebellion in 2006 during which dozens of his opponents were executed by roving death squads, is in line to take over the presidency of the PRI once the smoke has cleared back home.

Oaxaca is one of five states in which the left-center PRD and the right-wing PAN affiliated in a joint effort to push back the PRI July 4th, an arrangement of bizarre bedfellows brokered by Manuel Camacho Solis, ex-Mexico City mayor and former PRI bigwig who is now a PRD honcho. Just four years ago in the 2006 presidential face-off, PANista Felipe Calderon was awarded a fraud-saturated victory over the PRD's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the two parties have been at each other's throats ever since.

The PRD-PAN coalition claimed broad victory in Sunday's election in Oaxaca winning both the governorship and 24 out of 26 seats in the state congress.

Despite the painful loss of his successor Eviel Perez, Ulises Ruiz is banking on becoming the next national president of the PRI and heir to the current Boss of all Bosses Beatriz Paredes, a slot that would put him in an advantageous position to call the shots in the 2012 "presidenciales."

Paredes, the most prominent woman politician in the land who is always garbed in one of her trademark voluminous "huipiles" or colorful Indian muumuus (she brags that she has never worn the same one twice), has designs on the 2012 PRI presidential nomination and appears to have struck a deal with her party's senate leader, Manlio Fabio Beltrones ("Don Beltrones") to derail the ambitions of current frontrunner Enrique Pena Nieto, the short but photogenic governor of Mexico state who is backed by the TV giant Televisa.

Which of the candidates will win the support of which drug cartel is expected to be the deciding factor in who wins the nod.

The Super Sunday electoral fiesta was billed as the last stop on the electoral calendar before 2012. Even by Mexican standards, the July 4th balloting was the most devious stand-off in recent Mexican electoral history, marked by tapped telephone conversations suggesting the illicit distribution of state funds in Puebla, Oaxaca, and Veracruz, phony polling, the wholesale bribery of the already bought-and- sold-mainstream media, homophobia (a doctored photo of the PRD-PAN candidate in Puebla in drag), lie detector interrogations, demands that candidates submit to "anti-doping" tests, and robust narco-violence.

In a maneuver to soft peddle the role of the PRI, a party that mismanaged Mexico for seven decades of cradle-to-the-grave corruption, the Institutional Revolutionary Party has aligned itself with the Mexican Green Ecologist Party (PVEM) whose only attachment to the greening of Mexico is the color of the money, and in some states to the PANAL, a vanity party owned by teachers' union dominatrix Elba Esther Gordillo. The PRI-led coalitions masqued their true identities behind such titles as "Para Cambiar Veracruz" ("To Change Veracruz"), "Zacatecas First!", and "Todos Tamaulipas" ("All Tamaulipas.")

Not to be outdone, the PRD-PAN coalitions and PRD alliances with other left parties like the Party of Labor (PT) and Democratic Convergence hid behind similar benign sounding front groups and it may be weeks before the real winners can be separated from the losers.

Nonetheless, preliminary results signal a clean sweep for the PRI in four out of five northern narco states, including Baja California which only selected municipal presidents and a local congress July 4th. The one-time ruling party also appears to have sustained the victorious roll that won it a majority in both houses of congress in the 2009 mid-terms over Calderon's battered PAN with big wins in Quintana Roo, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Aguascalientes, and Zacatecas - the only state taken from the PRD camp (and the only one governed by a woman.)

Prolonged post-electoral struggle in Veracruz, where the PRI margin of victory is being tenaciously contested by the PAN, is predicted. Oaxaca, Puebla, and Sinaloa, three states in which the PAN and the PRD joined forces, will be governed by the coalition - although whether the left PRD will actually have a significant voice in administrating the affairs of the states is dubious.

But the big winner, as is so often the case, was the Party of No with just under half the eligible voters failing to turn out at the polls, many because of fears of threatened narco-violence such as in Chihuahua where only 30% of the electorate showed up. In Ciudad Juarez, thousands of citizens wrote in ballots protesting Calderon's on-going drug war.

Corporate media on both sides of the border framed the Super Sunday shebang as a referendum on Felipe Calderon's failing war on the drug cartels. Assuming this to be the case, guess who lost?

John Ross is the author of El Monstruo. You can consult him on particulars atjohnross@igc.org

http://www.counterpunch.org/ross07092010.html?

Mexico's "dinosaur" party tries comeback makeover

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Seven straight decades of one-party and often corrupt rule earned politicians in Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, an unflattering nickname: dinosaurs.

Now a new generation of fresh-faced candidates, who have come of age during the PRI's 10 years in opposition, are trying to change the party's image and retake the presidency in what promises to be a heated election battle in 2012.

The PRI was ousted in a historic election in 2000 and to win back power it needs to convince voters it would not rebuild the semi-authoritarian and corrupt system of its past.

President Felipe Calderon's conservative National Action Party, or PAN, toppled the PRI in 2000 but it has since failed during two presidential terms to enliven a sputtering economy and curb out-of-control drug war violence.

The PRI criticizes Calderon's army-backed campaign against drug gangs, which has exacerbated turf wars that have killed more than 26,000 people since late 2006. If the party returns to power, it may choose to pull soldiers -- some who have been accused of human rights abuses -- from the streets.

The party's stance on tax, oil and labor reforms that many investors say are needed to spark faster economic growth is unclear. Some PRI leaders are pro-business but the party has consistently blocked or watered down the PAN's fiscal and oil reform proposals in recent years.

Capitalizing on Mexicans' discontent with Calderon, the PRI says it is Mexico's only party with the experience needed to effectively run the country, but it is also offering up a younger generation of leaders.

Leading the charge is the PRI's likely presidential candidate, State of Mexico Governor Enrique Pena Nieto.

The polished 43-year-old lawyer and MBA-holder has the right mix of celebrity and powerful political allies to make him a formidable contender, with one May poll showing he already has a double digit lead over other potential rivals.

An obvious PAN candidate has yet to emerge since the death in a 2008 plane crash of former Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino, who was seen as being groomed to succeed Calderon. Mexico's main left-wing party appears to be too fraught with internal divisions to raise a serious challenge.

Mexico's television networks and newspaper society pages had blanket coverage last year of Pena Nieto's engagement to soap opera star Angelica Rivera at the Vatican with a personal blessing from Pope Benedict. He has strong family and social ties with an influential group of PRI politicians and traditional businessmen in his home state, the country's most populous.

The PRI has steadily gained momentum in state and local elections and it controls large blocs of voters from unions and farmer groups. The party captured a majority in Congress in 2009, and won nine out of 12 governor seats in July 4 state elections. Several strong traditional leaders of the PRI still carry more weight than Pena Nieto, and different currents within the party could throw doubt on a PRI consensus candidate for 2012.

But Pena Nieto is the front-runner and has traveled across Mexico to help PRI candidates in state elections -- several of whom are under 40 years old -- with a message of change.

"We do not want an improvised government, we want people who represent a new enthusiastic generation and are committed to Mexico," Pena Nieto said during a campaign rally ahead of last Sunday's election in the central state of Hidalgo. "This is a new generation of the PRI that we are consolidating."

The new PRI governor of Quintana Roo is 30 years old. The candidate expected to win in Veracruz state, after a tight race where votes are still being counted, is 36 and sports a flashy campaign website, a Twitter feed and 48,000 Facebook fans.

"Retiring governors have chosen local 'golden boys' who are photogenic, skilled campaigners, magnets for money, and -- above all -- prepared to shield their predecessors from corruption charges," Mexico expert George Grayson said in an article for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

BABY DINOSAURS?

Many voters remain skeptical of the makeover and the PRI was hit by surprise losses in key strongholds on July 4. "It's still a Jurassic park," Grayson told Reuters. "There are lots of dinosaurs around and Pena Nieto is just a younger version."

In some places, the party resorted to old tricks to win.

Voters in drug gang-plagued Ciudad Juarez on the U.S. border, now one of the most murderous cities in the world, said the newly elected PRI mayor used handouts, including building materials, cash and kitchen blenders to gain support. Rights groups and rival politicians accuse him of working for a drug cartel.

Where the party lost ground in Puebla, Sinaloa and Oaxaca, the PRI's picks had been enmeshed in scandals. In Oaxaca, 2006 street protests calling for the sitting PRI governor's ouster turned violent and dragged on for months.

In Puebla, the PRI governor was recorded on tape colluding with a businessmen to try and arrange the jailing of a journalist who had uncovered a child sex ring run by powerful figures in the state. And in Sinaloa, the PRI's gubernatorial candidate appeared in a photo at a party with one of Mexico's most-wanted drug traffickers.

To win in those states, Calderon's PAN made uncomfortable alliances with left-wing parties -- a strategy the PAN told Reuters it would use again next year to defeat Pena Nieto's handpicked candidate in the State of Mexico. But the PAN said it does not expect to use the coalitions on a national level.

"The PRI has the advantage right now just doing nothing ... that's different from the past," said analyst Federico Estevez at Mexico City's private ITAM University. "It's demographics: half the electorate never lived under the old regime."

http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-50019920100709?rpc=401&feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=401

Whoever Becomes Brazil's Next President It Won't Be an Anti-Lula

As a cooling Rio summer sees the refreshing "March waters" clean the streets of Ipanema and the souls of the Cariocas after the Carnaval, the political season is warming up. Beyond the next big occasion for many Brazilians - the South Africa-hosted football World Cup in June 2010 - lies a series of nationwide elections on October 3: for the Brazilian congress, state governors and legislatures, and for the presidency itself where if necessary a second-round run-off will be held on 31 October.

What makes the presidential contest all the more riveting is that for the first time for a generation, one of the great figures of modern Brazilian politics, president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will not be a candidate. After waging three unsuccessful contests (in 1989, 1994, and 1998), Lula won the presidency in 2002 and has served two terms which in many ways have transformed Brazil.

Now he is leaving the stage, since Brazil's constitutional term-limits forbid a third consecutive period in office; though so successful has Lula been, that his return in 2014 must be at least a possibility. In any event, Brazilians are now faced with a great democratic test in which new figures - albeit in most cases familiar ones in the Brazilian political scene - will emerge to command the stage.

What does this moment reveal about the nature of Brazilian democracy in 2010, and about Lula's own impact and legacy?

The campaign starts officially at the beginning of April 2010. Brazil's leading parties are preparing intensely for the fight, none more so than the two giants: president Lula's Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party / PT) and the former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso's Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (Party of the Brazilian Social Democracy / PSDB). Their competition promises to be one of the most intriguing aspects of the election.

The other parties' candidates are already flourishing their own wares and doing their best to attract media attention. A few days after the glamorous performances at Rio's Sambódromo, Marina Silva - Lula's former environment minister, now a senator running for president on the ticket of the Partido Verde (Green Party / PV) - lands in the city's Santos Dumont airport. The choking traffic delays her arrival at the powerful national radio station, CBN, so she tweets to say she is on her way.

In the interview, she declares that her campaign represents a "political realignment" in Brazil, one that could break the polarization between the PT and the PSDB: "My mission is to show people that we have to build a symphony, to create an orchestra - something that changes our way to produce, consume, and our relationship with nature."

It is an attractive image which also points to a deeper truth about the coming contest. For Brazil's presidential election of 2010 will in my view rather consolidate the current polarization in the country's political scene between these two major forces, making them and their leading politicians - and not candidates per se - decisive in the outcome. That is the logic behind the green senator's desire for a different alignment; and the reason why she has no chance of winning.

Moreover, I would argue that this current PT/PSDB standoff is a very positive trend for the Brazilian polity, and one that underpins the country's current economic advance that has received so much worldwide attention and praise. Whoever is victorious after (most likely) a second round on 31 October, there will be overall continuity. The political substance of this continuity is also worth noting: in Brazil today, nobody wants to be "on the right."

Across-Boundaries Agreement

A clue to the shape of post-Lula Brazil is that the two certain candidates for the respective major parties have each been close presidential servants. José Serra, the governor of São Paulo who represents the PSDB, is a very experienced politician with a huge profile in the country's richest state; but he also gained national visibility and power as health minister in Fernando Henrique Cardoso's administration (1994-2002).

In 2002, Serra actually won the political fight for succession against other of Cardoso's ministers, but lost to Lula in what was the former lathe-operator's first victory.

For her part Dilma Rousseff, Lula's chief-of-staff, has never been a candidate in any major election before. Her rise to power was facilitated by the mensalão (big monthly allowance) corruption scandals of 2006-07, which engulfed influential PT figures such as José Dirceu (Rousseff's predecessor as chief-of-staff) and Antonio Palocci (Brazil's former finance minister), who otherwise would have been certain candidates for the presidency.

Dilma Rousseff, a distant product, as her name suggests, of the great Bulgarian Diaspora that also produced Venezuela's Teodoro Petkoff, has for months been doing her best to accrue the benefits of closeness to an enormous popular incumbent.

Indeed, the influential Brazilian polling institute DataFolha measures Lula's approval-rating as the highest recorded for any president in Brazil since 1990, with 73% of Brazilians saying that Lula's government is "good" or "very good." No wonder that Dilma travels around the country with Lula and is often pictured alongside him.

It is already evident, however, that an effort is being made to transform the 2010 election into a comparison of Brazil's two longest administration's since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985: Cardoso's (1994-2002) and Lula's (2002-10).

The rhetorical heat hasn't waited for the official campaign to start: the PT's new head, José Eduardo Dutra, said in November 2009 that Brazilians "will compare two projects known to them", while Cardoso retorted that "Lula is passing through an euphoric moment" that leads him "to distort what has happened in my government."

This comparison will play out in coming months, with the (very similar) economic record of the two governments being a key issue. The Cardoso side are bound to argue that context is everything: for it was Cardoso's real plan that rebalanced the Brazilian economy after decades of chronic instability, and thus left Lula an enviable freedom of governance.

A Shared Road

The trend towards a stable political duopoly at the heart of Brazilian democracy is also favored by the pragmatic character of the country's politics since the restoration of democracy after military dictatorship. These two decades have strengthened the political parties and - even with a popular leader as Lula - diminished the once-dominant "personalizing" trend that elevated charisma into a political principle.

Indeed, the Brazilian political scientist César Romero Jacob has written that any candidate for the presidency in Brazil must now work in at least four "power-structures": the educated urban middle class, the evangelicals, the populism of the periphery, and the regional oligarchies.

Lula, for example, made an alliance with the evangelicals in choosing José Alencar to be his vice-president. Alencar, from the Partido Republicano Brasileiro (Brazilian Republican Party / PRB), is a conservative politician who has been a vocal critic of same-sex marriage and of homosexuality.

The current president, always loved by the Brazilian urban middle class, has won many votes in the periphery and among regional oligarchies (often mediated through the support of politicians with a strong regional base, such as ex-president José Sarney in north and northeast Brazil).

In addition, the success of Lula's social programs like Bolsa Família (Family Allowance) - which distributes a small amount of income to 15 million Brazilian families, and has had a huge progressive impact on their human security - both helps in poverty-reduction and also reinforces local political authorities in very poor regions against traditional oligarchies, thus guaranteeing political support (and votes) for the government on the periphery.

True, this process was started in Cardoso's administration but was consolidated and expanded in Lula's and this may work in Dilma Rousseff's favor. In fact, some polls suggest that 40% of those who receive the Bolsa Família will vote for Dilma Rousseff against 25% who prefer José Serra. In a broad sense, the alliances and strategies that made Lula's election possible in 2002 and 2006 - after three successive defeats - will be behind Dilma Rousseff in 2010.

The PSDB side, without the benefit of incumbency, also seeks to build a coalition for victory. The key figure for the party's political strategy is Aécio Neves, governor of the state of Minas Gerais. Neves is the grandson of Tancredo Neves, a politician of historic stature strongly linked to the democratization process in Brazil; he was elected president by the Brazilian congress in 1985, in the first free election after two decades of the military regime, but died before assuming the presidency.

Aécio Neves has served two terms as governor of Minas Gerais, whose voting power is second only to that of São Paulo in Brazil, and retained 70%-plus levels of popularity among the Mineiros. He has never hidden his desire to be the PSDB candidate in the 2010 election, but as a younger man he has not yet been able to overtake position of Serra, an older and more senior figure, within the party.

This makes the prospect of a joint José Serra-Aécio Neves ticket very attractive to the PSDB, though Neves has yet to be persuaded of the virtues of being a vice-presidential candidate. This partnership could secure a majority of votes in Minas Gerais and heavy support from politicians linked to the powerful governor, and in addition deflect the criticism of those who see Serra as too Paulista and rather an arrogant politician.

Some in the PSDB even see opening a glorious path to a sixteen-year political hegemony, with a re-elected Serra in 2014 passing the baton to Neves for two further terms. Brazilians in the Lula era have, after all, learned to dream.

A Left-Hand Drive

At this early stage, the outcome in 2010 is in the balance. José Serra leads in the polls, though he has lost some ground to Dilma Rousseff: the DataFolha agency gives him 32% support and Dilma 28% (as against 37% for Serra and 23% for Dilma in December 2009). These emerging great rivals are also not very different from each other in political character: both are centralizers and politicians who value administration skills.

But whatever the election outcome, Brazil's current political map guarantees the existence of a strong opposition and an alternative source of power; it thus strengthens the country's political institutions and political continuity.

In general terms, the administrations of Cardoso and Lula were very similar. Both sustained economic stability and applied policy in social areas that had been completely neglected for decades. Cardoso put more emphasis on healthcare and basic education; Lula on the universities, the Bolsa Família and infrastructure.

It may be too that the Partido dos Trabalhadores believes more than the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira in the capacity of the state to solve social and economic problems. The two parties also have somewhat different approaches towards foreign policy, though this too has its limits; both Serra and Cardoso would be considered "liberals" in the United States sense.

Thus the PSDB is most definitely not a party on the "right wing" of Brazilian politics, even if this is what the PT would like it to be. Psdebistas are much more social democrats than liberals or conservatives. But it is also true that the need for political alliances has moved the PT from the left to the center - and kept it there.

Within this context, Brazil's party-polarization both guarantees continuity and makes the center-left the dominant position in the country. It may seem paradoxical, but this makes the 2010 election more interesting than ever. It can be said again: welcome to politics, Brazil.

Arthur Ituassu is professor of international relations at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

http://www.brazzil.com/component/content/article/217-march-2010/10375-whoever-becomes-brazils-next-president-it-wont-be-an-anti-lula.html

Latin America in A View of Last Week of March

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was in the Middle East last week, seeking to bring a fresh outlook to the peace process on a trip to Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan.

Meanwhile Israel's foreign minister confirmed last week that he boycotted meetings with the visiting Brazilian president; Lieberman said he was upset at Silva's decision not to visit late Zionist leader Theodor Herzl's grave, especially while agreeing to lay a wreath at the tomb of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

According to a Human Rights Commission’s report since deployment of Mexico’s troops combating drug trafficking since December 2006, there has been a dramatic increase in complaints of military abuse. From 2007 to the end of 2009, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission received 3,388 complaints of human rights violations by the military. Of these, it

has already concluded that in at least 38 cases the military was in fact responsible for abuses.

Meanwhile three people with ties to the American consulate were killed in a drug-plagued Mexican city.

President Barack Obama expressed outrage over the killings, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon promised a swift investigation. The number of U.S. citizens killed in Mexico has more than doubled to 78 in 2009 from 37 in 2007, according to the U.S. State Department's annual count.

Spanish Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega said last week that Spain has the support of Venezuela in the fight against the armed Basque separatist group ETA, as it occurs with other countries like France or Portugal.

José Mujica, the president of Uruguay, has said that he wants to help improve relations between Venezuela and Colombia and is willing to "talk to everybody."

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko offered to help Venezuela strengthen its military, while saying last week that President Hugo Chavez's government should not have to worry about foreign threats.

The Venezuelan government plans to increase its fuel consumption by a third in 2010 to fuel thermoelectric plants with which President Hugo Chávez hopes to overcome the energy crisis.

Hillary Clinton fails to convince Brazil to support Iran sanctions

Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Brazil doesn't support Iran sanctions. He wants more negotiations. The US worries about the growing closeness of Iran and Brazil.

Mexico City - The visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Brazil Wednesday was billed as an effort to forge ties with a country that is increasingly emerging as a recognized global power.

But the rhetoric of partnership came easier than the reality. Brazil rebuffed Ms. Clinton's efforts to win support for more sanctions on Iran's nuclear program.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told reporters Wednesday that Brazil wanted two or three months' more negotiation with Iran.
"We still have some possibility of coming to an agreement ... but that may require a lot of flexibility on both sides," he said, with Clinton present. "We will not simply bow down to the evolving consensus if we do not agree."

The US has watched the budding relationship between Brazil and Iran with concern, developing as the US seeks further United Nations sanctions against Iran's nuclear program. Brazil continues to support Iran’s policies, arguing that a diplomatic approach is more effective than sanctions. Since Brazil currently holds one of the rotating seats on the UN Security Council, the US is worried the Latin American nation could get in the way of new sanctions.

Brazil is just one of several countries, such as China, that the US is lobbying. But getting Brazil on board would be particularly helpful to the US effort, as Iran has long held the position that only the US and some European nations support a tougher stance against Tehran.

“Brazil is a country Iran would care about,” says Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University in New York. “The most effective use of sanctions in this particular case is to send a message to Iran that it is isolated. … Getting countries potentially sympathetic to Iran to join in and join a resolution does get Iran’s attention.”

Brazil won't 'bow down'

After meeting in Brasilia with Foreign Minister Celso Amorim on Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton probably knows this better than anyone. Mr. Amorim said Wednesday that Brazil will not "bow down" to international pressure.

Clinton also met with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who had earlier warned against "pushing" Iran into a corner.

Still, Clinton argued that Iran will not negotiate "in good faith" without sanctions.

“Once the international community speaks in unison around a resolution, then the Iranians will talk and begin to negotiate,” she told reporters. “We want to get to negotiations; we just think that the best path is through the Security Council.”

The meeting came as the US is circulating a draft of a new sanctions proposal aimed at Iran's banking, shipping, and insurance businesses.

Clinton's tour

Clinton’s trip is part of week-long tour of South and Central America. Before arriving in Brazil, Clinton attended the inauguration of Uruguay's new President José Mujica, visited Buenos Aires to discuss the standoff between Argentina and Britain over the latter’s drilling for oil in near the disputed Falkland Islands, and toured earthquake-ravaged Chile.

The trip, scheduled before the earthquake in Chile, is touted as one of solidarity. “It is a clear message from the US government to say to Latin America, ‘As a region, we are interested in your problems,’ ” says Roberto Izurieta, a Latin America expert at George Washington University,

But the centerpiece of the trip is the stop in Brazil. The trip comes ahead of a scheduled visit by President da Silva to Iran this spring, which follows Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's trip to Brazil last year.

Why Brazil supports Iran

Brazil’s has been outspoken about its belief that Iran should be able pursue a peaceful nuclear program. President da Silva, at a regional summit in Mexico last week, said that "peace in the world does not mean isolating someone." He repeated that sentiment today to reporters at an event in the capital Brasilia, ahead of his talks with Clinton.

The US wants a much tougher stance even though Brazil, without a permanent seat on the Security Council, wields less clout than China, for example. “I think it’s more a credibility of issue, to be able to show a broad base of support,” says Mr. Izurieta.

Ahead of her trip to Brasilia, Clinton voiced concerns that Iran’s program is not entirely peaceful: "It has been found to be in violation by the International Atomic Energy Agency and by the United Nations Security Council," she said to reporters. "These are not findings by the United States. These are findings by the international community."

"And the discussion about Iran's nuclear program is in the United Nations," she said. "It is going to be the topic of the United Nations Security Council. So I want to be sure [Lula da Silva] has the same understanding that we do as to how this matter is going to unfold."

Clinton's visit was preceded by William Burns, who serves as undersecretary of state for political affairs and is promoting the sanctions. In a blog he spoke of the status of Brazil as a clear “emerging power” and of the importance of the relationship between the US and Brazil.

Recent strain on relationship

But the relationship has been strained by several issues, including US bases in Colombia and the ouster of former president Manuel Zelaya in Honduras who ended up sneaking back into the country and camping out in the Brazilian embassy. The US sought an end to the conflict, regardless of Mr. Zelaya’s return to power, while Brazil stood firmly to its position that the conflict ended only if Zelaya was returned to the presidency before presidential elections took place.

But the most tensions have emerged over Iran, especially after Mr. Ahmadinejad was warmly welcomed in Brazil in November. Critics of da Silva, who is often referred to as Lula, in Brazil and the US, have called Brazil’s position an attempt to flex its muscle and show that it does not have to bow to US or European desires.

“This is a way for countries, wherever they may be, to say: ‘We do not want to be taken for granted, we have our own views on some of these issues,’” says Mr. Sick.

Brazil also has its own domestic nuclear program, which Sick says might explain its support for Iran’s.

"I want for Iran the same thing I want for Brazil: to use the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes," Lula said ahead of his talks with Clinton. "If Iran agrees with that, Iran will have the support of Brazil."

How much of a strain this puts on the US-Brazilian relationship remains to be seen. “It will definitely color Washington’s perceptions about whether Brazil and the United States are true partners or in fact emerging rivals. I think it’s a bit of both, and the challenge going forward will be to manage relations in a way to build on points of agreement while still dealing with disagreements in a manner that doesn't infect the overall relationship,” says Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, a consultancy based in New York.

Given the growing consensus against Iran’s program, Mr. Farnsworth adds: “Now is a curious time for Brazil to be taking such a high profile position in support of the Iranian regime.”

On Thursday, Clinton arrived Costa Rica, where she will meet with officials from 16 Central and South American nations. On Friday, her six-nation Latin America trip will end in Guatemala.

The Source of this article is The Christian Science Monitor, written by Sara Miller Llana.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2010/0304/Hillary-Clinton-fails-to-convince-Brazil-to-support-Iran-sanctions?

BPM Workshop on Latin America March 02, 2010

Students with Professor Ijaz S. Gilani at the end of workshop.

Latin America creates bloc sans US, Canada

PLAYA DE CARMEN: Latin America and Caribbean leaders united Tuesday to create a regional bloc excluding Canada and the United States, but its birth was undermined by a spat in which the Colombian president told Venezuela's Hugo Chavez to "be a man." Many of the 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries participating in the summit have long called for a new organization that will not be dominated by the interests of their two wealthy northern neighbors.

The Washington-based Organization of American States, the largest diplomatic bloc in the Western Hemisphere, has been heavily influenced by the United States. Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who hosted the summit in a Caribbean resort, said the bloc "will consolidate and globally project a Latin American and Caribbean identity." Latin American countries, however, have competing interests of their own - a point driven home by bickering at the summit.

At a dinner Monday night, conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe started complaining about Venezuela's trade sanctions against Colombia, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because delegations at the meeting had agreed not to discuss the spat publicly. He described the following incident to reporters: Chavez shot back that Venezuela was constantly threatened by paramilitaries in the neighboring country and suggested the Colombian government was involved. Chavez then stood u
p from the table, ready to storm off, when Uribe told him to stay and "be a man." Chavez told Uribe to "go to hell," according to Venezuelan state television.

After they calmed down, the leaders agreed to create a "group of friends" to mediate between the feuding presidents. Chavez and Uribe played down the incident Tuesday, promising to work out their differences. Then, Bolivian President Evo Morales, one of Chavez's strongest allies, reignited tensions by suggesting Uribe was a US agent sent to sabotage the bloc. "What's my conclusion?" Morales said. "Since we are debating a new organization without the United States, the agents of the United States have com
e to bog this down to make this event fail.

Meanwhile, Washington welcomed the new group. "Virtually all of the countries attending the unity summit are strong partners of the United States and we are working together with them on a broad range of initiatives," said US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley. "So we consider the meeting in Mexico as consistent with our goals for the hemisphere." The leaders agreed to meet again in Venezuela in 2011. The bloc's formation is expected to take years and faces many challenges.

Latin America remains divided on whether to recognize the government of Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, who won November elections organized under interim leaders who took power after the June 28 ouster of then-President Manuel Zelaya. Lobo was not invited to the summit and had not spoken to any of its participants, although the presidents who did attend spoke of including all 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations - including Honduras - in the new bloc. Lobo's spokesman said Honduras wants to join. The leaders did not discuss Honduras to avoid polarizing the group, Calderon said.

Participants also disagreed on whether the bloc should replace the OAS, but they did find common ground on some issues, rallying around Argentina in its condemnation of Britain's oil exploration in waters surrounding the Falkland Islands, which Argentina claims as its own and calls Las Malvinas. Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva criticized the United Nations for not pushing more forcefully to reopen the debate on the Falkland Islands. "What is the geographic, the political or economic explanation fo
r England to be in Las Malvinas?" Silva asked.

Could it be because England is a permanent member of the UN's Security Council (where) they can do everything and the others nothing?" Commenting on the formation of the new regional bloc, Peter Hakim, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, questioned whether Latin American countries sensitive to outside meddling in their affairs will be able to confront touchy issues within their own region. "It requires making some sacrifices of sovereignty and this is an issue that Latin America see
ms unyielding on," Hakim said. _ AP

http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MTQ0NDYwMjg1

Calderon visits Ciudad Juarez
In the traumatized border city, he talks of social programs aimed at boosting the fight against drug cartels.

Reporting from Mexico City - Facing intense political pressure and demands that he resign, President Felipe Calderon traveled Thursday to Mexico's deadliest city to defend his troubled fight against drug cartels, which critics charge has only intensified the violence.

Angry crowds greeted Calderon as he arrived in a heavily guarded Ciudad Juarez. The president said it was time to launch a much-discussed expansion of the drug war to include efforts aimed at tackling social issues, such as unemployment and addiction.

"I am convinced we have to review what we are doing," Calderon said. "We need a much more integrated approach . . . wider actions . . . of a social nature. Police and military action alone is not enough."

To underscore the point, Calderon took with him an unusually large contingent of Cabinet members, including the ministers of health, education and public security. However, he was short on details and, in initial remarks, did not earmark money for new programs.

Calderon's visit to Ciudad Juarez was prompted by the Jan. 31 massacre of at least 15 people, many of them youths, at a high school party, the latest in a spiral of increasingly gruesome bloodshed that has made the city across the border from El Paso a living hell.

Calderon met with relatives of the victims, but many family members refused to see him. They joined large groups of protesters who lined streets and waved signs saying "Apologize, then resign!" Police broke up some of the demonstrations, witnesses said.

In his remarks, Calderon did apologize to families for statements he made in Japan, shortly after the killings, that suggested some of the victims could have been involved in drug gangs.

Later in the president's speech, a woman rose and shouted that she had lost two children in the killings and that he was not welcome in Ciudad Juarez. "Enough with your war!" she cried.

The expanded program promising jobs and education represented an admission that a guns-only approach has not stopped drug gangs nor reduced killings, especially in Ciudad Juarez. But Calderon has also said he does not plan to withdraw the nearly 10,000 army troops and federal police officers that have been dispatched to the city.

The Calderon administration has long grappled with what to do about Juarez and proposed a new strategy last summer, when government officials acknowledged they were being forced to review procedures that weren't working.

But they've groped for a solution. Even as more troops were poured into the city, the death rate soared, as did accusations of human rights abuses by soldiers. An experimental deployment putting troops into less-visible positions did not improve security markedly. The new plan was devised in July of last year, Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said, and takes many cues from the strategy used to pacify the once-deadly Colombian city of Medellin.

Juarez is a long-neglected city plagued by poverty, corruption and an influx of unskilled workers desperate for jobs. Always saddled with a high homicide rate, especially so for women, the city has seen an exponential increase in killings as drug gangs have battled for turf and innocents have been drawn into the conflict.

Citizens trapped by daily gun battles in the streets and rampant extortion and kidnappings have become so desperate that they recently demanded United Nations peacekeepers, an unheard of thing in nationalistic Mexico, and there have been reports of vigilantism.

Leftist federal senators said this week that they would ask Calderon to consider instituting a curfew in Ciudad Juarez and suspending civil liberties as a way to restore order "in the face of such an extraordinary situation."

In an editorial titled "Real solutions, Mr. President," Juarez newspaper El Diario questioned whether the visit was motivated by the looming election season and said blame for the city's plight rested not only with the presidency but also with state and local officials.

WELCOME ON BOARD

THIS BLOG IS PART OF A SERIES OF BLOGS OF THE PROJECT GLOBALOZED BUSINESS AND POLITICS: A VIEW FROM THE MUSLIM WORLD.
THIS BLOG IN PARTICULAR IS DEDICATED TO THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND POLOTICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN LATIN AMERICA.
YOUR COMMENTS, SUGGESTIONS AND CRITICISM WILL BE HIGHLY APPRECIATED.

USMAN CHOUDRY