The top story from the Americas in the New York Times this morning is from Colombia where a report writes that an expanding drug war is threatening Indian peasants living in the Colombian jungle. The paper writes that while the government has proclaimed it is winning the fight against leftist guerrillas and demobilizing right-wing paramilitaries, new armed groups are entering more remote areas and terrorizing Indian groups living on ancient lands. “Our rulers in Bogotá prefer to ignore that an entire section of the country is surviving, just barely, as if we are in the 16th century, when plunder and killing were the norm,” says Víctor Copete, director of Chocó Pacífico, a foundation dealing with violence in one of Colombia’s poorest departments. In the Chocó region the number of Embrera Indians fleeing during the first three months of this year almost equals the 2,400 displaced in all of 2008, and indigenous groups find themselves increasingly caught between rebel groups and paramilitary armies seeking trafficking routes near the Pacific and Caribbean coasts. The NYT reports that while American-financed eradication projects have cut coca growing in many parts of the country, Chocó’s coca cultivation surged 32 percent in 2007 according to United Nations figures.
In the Washington Post a story from Venezuela on opposition leader Manuel Rosales who is seeking political asylum in Peru. Rosales alleges that he is the target of a politically motivated witch hunt directed by the government of President Hugo Chávez. Venezuela’s Justice Minister, Tareck El Aissami says the former of Maracaibo is being investigated for crimes outlined in the anti-corruption law and added that Venezuela will seek his extradition from Peru. According to the WaPo, all but 12 members of the National Assembly have sided with Chávez, and chavistas are found throughout the judicial system, including on the Supreme Court bench. Rosales says he decided to flee after Ismael García, an anti-Chávez lawmaker in the National Assembly, announced that he had obtained a sentencing document against Rosales indicating that the former mayor was to be sentenced to a 30-year prison term. Meanwhile officials continue to investigate Henrique Capriles Radonski, governor of Miranda state, and Teodoro Petkoff, the anti-Chávez newspaper editor of Tal Cual, among others.
From the Wall Street Journal, more on the alleged assassination plot against Bolivia’s Evo Morales, apparently broken up by Bolivian police last week. The paper writes about a newly discovered video made by one of those killed in the shootout with police in Santa Cruz on Thursday. In the video, Eduardo Rózsa Flores, one of the accused plotters who was born in Santa Cruz but was living in Hungary, says he is returning to Bolivia to protect Santa Cruz’s autonomy but not to directly target Bolivia’s President Evo Morales. “I am not going there to organize the attack of La Paz and chase away the president, that doesn't even cross the easterners' minds,” says Rózsa Flores in the interview which aired on Hungarian TV on Tuesday. Rózsa Flores added that “We are ready, within a few months in case co-existence doesn't work under autonomy, to proclaim independence and create a new country.” Mr. Morales has called the group, which also included an Irishman and a Romanian, “far-right mercenaries” who were “looking to take power via violent means, and if they couldn't, to divide the country.” As for Mr. Rósza Flores, he fought with Croats against Serbs in the Balkans war in the 1990s, an experience he turned into a movie and several books. In the taped interview he made before departing for Bolivia he claims that “this is not me going into the jungle and playing Che Guevera.”
The Miami Herald has an AP story this morning from Cuba where Fidel Castro responded to President Obama’s interpretation of Raúl Castro’s comments last week. The younger Castro said leaders would be willing to sit down with their U.S. counterparts and discuss “everything,” including human rights, freedom of the press and expression, and political prisoners on the island. But Fidel, in an essay posted Tuesday, said Raúl’s words had been misinterpreted. “Affirming that the president of Cuba is ready to discuss any topic with the president of the United States expresses that he’s not afraid to broach any subject,” said the former Cuban leader. He added, “Nobody should assume that he was talking about pardoning those sentenced in March 2003 and sending all of them to the United States, if the country were willing to liberate the five Cuban anti-terrorist heroes,” referring to 75 leading political opposition leaders who were imprisoned six years ago and the “Cuban 5” being held in a Florida prison for spying on anti-Castro groups in Miami.
And finally, the LA Times has an AP story on the case against Dole Fresh Fruit Co., being charged for exposing banana workers to the pesticide DBCP in Nicaragua during the 1970s. On Tuesday, Dole’s lawyer claimed that apparent injuries caused to workers, including sterilization, were part of a scheme to collect millions of dollars in damages from the fruit company. According to the defense, Nicaraguan men were given training seminars, told to study hard and learn details of the industry, and to hide their children because they would prove the men were not sterile. A Los Angeles jury in November 2007 awarded $2.5 million in punitive damages to five workers, but the court later dismissed those damages, arguing that they could not be used to punish a domestic corporation for injuries that occurred only in a foreign country. The LAT writes that the jury also awarded more than $3 million in actual damages, which were later reduced to $1.58 million.
In other news, more from Bolivia in an AP report in the NYT which says Evo Morales on Tuesday rejected requests from the governments of Ireland, Croatia and Hungary who want more information about the deaths of three of their citizens in last week’s Santa Cruz shootout. However, Morales said he had no objection to an international commission coming to Bolivia to investigate the matter. The report also has more on the other two men killed in the shootout. The Irishman, Michael Dwyer, trained as a bodyguard and worked in the security industry, according to the Irish Times, while Arpad Magyarosi, the Romanian studied in Hungary. Two others remain jailed in Bolivia—one of whom also fought in the Balkan wars.
And lastly, in the MH, an opinion piece on U.S.-Cuba relations says Cuba has been put on the defensive. “In Havana, they are reacting to Obama's modest but meaningful overtures, not calling the shots and setting the agenda as Fidel Castro has successfully done with pretty much every president since JFK,” writes columnist Michael Putney. However, Putney argues that commuting the sentences of the “Cuban 5” being held in Miami—one of Cuba’s likely demands—should be off the table. “So, too, should any offer from Cuba to free political prisoners on the condition that they leave the country,” says Putney.
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