The top story from the Americas in the Miami Herald this morning is an AP report from Bolivia on Evo Morales’s announcement that he would begin a hunger strike Thursday to pressure Bolivia's congress to finally set a firm date for general elections. Bolivia’s opposition-led Senate had stalled in approving a law on elections, mandated by a Morales-backed constitutional reform approved by voters in January. The vote would likely return Morales to power, according to the AP. However, Reuters has now reported that the “overall content” of an electoral law has been approved by the Senate, just hours after the Morales announcement. The details of the election reform law must still be approved and debate was supposed to last late into Thursday night with some opposition members calling Morales government “totalitarian.” For his part, Morales remarked Thursday that “faced with the negligence of a bunch of neoliberal lawmakers, we have no choice but to take this step (hunger strike) ... they don't want to pass a law that guarantees the implementation of the constitution.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. Justice Department has filed terrorism-related charges against prominent Cuban exile, Luis Posada Carriles, wanted by the Castro government for his alleged involvement in plotting attacks against the regime. Posada Carriles once worked as a Central Intelligence Agency operative, says the WSJ, and he is charged with perjury and obstruction of a government proceeding related to his involvement in several 1997 hotel bombings in Cuba that killed an Italian tourist. The charges were filed in a U.S. District Court in El Paso, Texas, and he is expected in court in August. He was released by a judge in 2007 when the court claimed there was a fear that the 81-year-old Posada Carriles might be tortured if he were returned to Cuba or Venezuela, where he holds dual citizenship.
From the New York Times, a story that ran in yesterday’s paper reports on a new 14-page proposal for U.S.-Cuba relations laid out by the anti-Castro Cuban American National Foundation in Miami. According to the NYT, foundation officials lay out “a break from the past” that would “chart a new direction for U.S.-Cuba policy” by directing attention away from the Castro brothers and toward the Cuban people. The paper goes on to say that, in a reversal from the group’s founding principles, the CANF argues that, “American policy should focus not on sanctions, but on proactive policies that direct resources to the island,” specifically calling for an end to the 1997 ban on cash aid from the American government. The proposal, however, stops short of calling for an end to the 47-year-old trade embargo the United States has imposed on Cuba. Download the full CANF report here.
In the Washington Post, nothing in print from Latin America today, but I post here a serious of video reports from the paper on drug violence in Mexico which may be of interest. The reports are part of the WaPo’s new “Mexico at War” series.
And, The Guardian also has a short briefing from Mexico, reporting that Mexico's Chamber of Deputies, has overwhelmingly voted to protect journalists by adding crimes against the press to the federal statute. According to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, about 45 journalists have been killed in the country since 2000. The paper writes: “A television, radio and print awareness campaign by press freedom campaigners in 2008 galvanised public support, and the Mexican lower house recently voted 263-0 to add crimes against “journalistic activity” to the federal penal code. This gives an additional penalty of up to five years in prison for anyone who ‘impedes, interferes, limits or attacks against journalistic activity.’”
Also in the MH, this morning, more on the debate in the U.S. Congress over U.S.-Cuba relations. The paper writes that “the rhetoric on both sides of the controversial topic has been revved up in preparation for a highly anticipated announcement from Obama that he will lift the remaining restrictions on Cuban family travel and remittances to the island.” Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Affairs, notes that: “For the past 50 years, the Cuban-American community has played a significant role in formulating Cuba policy. For the first time, this will not stop in Miami, but U.S. foreign policy could go directly to Havana.”
And, finally two reports from the AP. First, the AP says Venezuela gave the U.S. Coast Guard credit on Thursday for cooperation in a large drug seizure. The gesture was a rare one and came from Venezuelan Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami who said in a statement that the U.S. Coast Guard discovered 2,030 pounds (925 kilograms) of cocaine on a fishing boat off Venezuela's Caribbean coast. Five Venezuelans were arrested in the seizure. Chavez suspended cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2005, accusing its agents of espionage, but the Justice Minister said Thursday’s raid was carried out “jointly with Venezuelan authorities,” adding that it proves that the argument Venezuela “does not cooperate in this fight” is false.
Second, on drug violence in Mexico, that AP reports that a former Guatemalan soldier, who allegedly procured weapons for a drug cartel, was killed in a gunfight with Mexican federal police on Thursday. The ex-soldier was said to be a former member of the “kaibiles,” a group of Guatemalan soldiers trained in counterinsurgency and was accused of delivering weapons and explosives to the Gulf Cartel’s “Zetas” gang.
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