In a series of articles over the long weekend, the Miami Herald and Washington Post report on new fears about stifled dissent and restrictions on freedom of speech in Venezuela. In the WaPo, the AP writes that Venezuelan ambassador to the OAS, Roy Chaderton, accused the Globovision TV network of “media terrorism” on Saturday, while also saying foreign observers who passed judgment on Venezuela are beholden “to the interests of the private media.” Media observers from the UN and OAS criticized Venezuelan government officials’ statements against Globovision, arguing that they “generate an atmosphere of intimidation in which the right to freedom of expression is seriously limited.” The property of Globovision's president, Guillermo Zuloaga, was raided on Thursday. Police say they were investigating Zuloaga for “hoarding and speculation” in relation to the presence of 24 vehicles present at the residence. The WaPo also condemns the latest Chávez threats against the media in a Sunday editorial, writing “This is hardly the first time that a Latin American caudillo has tried to eliminate peaceful opponents…But this may be the first time that the United States has watched the systematic destruction of a Latin American democracy in silence.” In the MH, the AP continues, saying Chávez indicated Monday that “Venezuela would love to join Cuba” as a nonmember of the OAS. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez added that “Latin American and Caribbean nations should create an organization that ‘serves our people rather than the Empire.’” Also Monday, writer Alvaro Vargas Llosa, a vocal critic of Mr. Chávez, was detained for two hours in the Caracas airport. According to Vargas Llosa, authorities said he would be prohibited from making political statements while in Venezuela to attend a forum organized by Cedice, an anti-Chávez think tank.
From the LA Times over the weekend, the paper reports from Panama, saying the Central American country could become the next major battleground for narcotrafficking. The story writes that FARC rebels are crossing into Panama with increasing regularity “seeking rest and respite from pursuing Colombian armed forces.” According to U.S. counternarcotics officials, the FARC and other Colombian drug traffickers are shipping more drugs from Colombia overland across Panama as coastal interdiction efforts in Pacific and Caribbean have increased. “In the last year or two, you really notice them more,” remarks a resident of the Panamanian border town, El Real. “They come around to buy necessities -- rice, beans, salt and milk -- and they always pay. They don't involve themselves in local disputes and other issues. But they have their informants who tell them if the police are coming.” Homicides in the capital of Panama, Panama City, are up nearly 40% in recent years and in 2007 and 2008, cocaine seizures in Panama jumped to 120 tons. Violence was also the number one issue on voters’ minds in the recent presidential elections, writes the paper.
The New York Times reports on new movement in the area of Cuba-U.S. relations, writing that the U.S. has indicated a willingness to “reopen a channel with Cuba that was closed under President George W. Bush by proposing high-level meetings on migration between the countries.” According to a State Department spokesman, “We intend to use the renewal of talks to reaffirm both sides’ commitment to safe, legal and orderly migration; to review recent trends in illegal Cuban migration to the United States; and to improve operational relations with Cuba on migration issues.” The high-level meetings between officials of the two countries were held biannually in the mid-1990s after Cuba and the United States signed accords in an attempt to halt massive waves of Cuban boat people from leaving the island for the U.S. But such talks were suspended by former President Bush in 2004.
And in the Wall Street Journal, the paper writes on the on-going investigation into an alleged assassination plot against President Evo Morales in Bolivia, arguing that it has turned the property of political opponents into a new target of the president and his allies. On Wednesday Bolivian ministers approved an anti-sedition law that allows the government to seize the property of suspects in terrorism cases. According to the WSJ, President Morales has threatened to take over key Santa Cruz institutions, which helped to finance political campaigns against the President in the past. “It's three, four, five or six people at whom the decree is aimed,” said Bolivia's Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera on Thursday, adding the new law has “also been promulgated to set a historical precedent, so that nobody else dares to divide Bolivia.” New information on Eduardo Rózsa Flores, the apparent leader of the plotters who were killed by Bolivian security forces, has also come out. Interestingly, the Bolivian-born Hungarian national, called a “right-wing Che Guevara” by some, searched for accomplices on anti-Morales web sites where he ranted against the Bolivian government and against George Soros, whom Mr. Rozsa called a “Jewish speculator” in support of Mr. Morales. George Vickers, director of international operations for OSI called the claims that Soros was backing Mr. Morales untrue, adding “the chain of reasoning is so bizarre that it's hard to follow.”
In other news, three more pieces on Venezuela. In the NYT, Simon Romero writes a very interesting piece about omnipresent “motorizados” in Caracas, “the thousands of daring motorbike couriers who make life here treacherous and viable at the same time.” The piece calls motorizados a pillar of support for President Hugo Chávez as they take voters to the polls, at times intimidate Mr. Chávez’s critics in street protests and have reportedly been linked to groups that have cariied out attacks of vandalism on targets like the Globovisión television network and the Vatican’s diplomatic mission here. But, Romero writes, Chávez’s political movement has given the motorizados something they had lacked: a sense of belonging. In the MH, a critical report on Venezuelan agrarian reform says the Chávez government claims to have taken over more than 5.4 million acres of farmland from private owners, “yet food imports have tripled since 2004, the year before Chavez began his aggressive reform program.” And the WSJ says the Venezuelan government and a local unit of Banco Santander (Banco de Venezuela) reached a deal over the weekend that nationalizes the bank, with Santander receiving $1.05 billion in return.
From the NYT, a profile of Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s self-selected successor Dilma Rouseff. The health of Rouseff, currently the popular president’s chief of staff, has been called into question recently as news emerged that she is being treated for cancer currently. According to the NYT, her health has become a media obsession in Brazil, “with breathless updates on every development of her cancer treatment.”
From the MH, a special report on Colombian refugees fleeing their native country for Ecuador due to civil conflict. The refugee crisis in Colombia is second to only Sudan in terms of the number of people who have been displaced. According to the report, “the $2 million ‘Enhanced Registration’ project in Ecuador takes the asylum process to the field and shortens the waiting period -- from several months to just one day -- for a government decision on refugee status to those seeking asylum.”
Also on Ecuador, the WaPo examines the Ecuadorean proposal of having wealthy countries “pay Ecuador to leave its oil -- and the carbon dioxide that would result from using it -- in the ground.” Many environmentalists have called the idea a “potentially precedent-setting approach to conservation in developing countries.” But with the financial crisis—and President Rafael Correa’s ambiguous position on the issue--have also come new obstacles for implementing the proposal, says the paper.
Finally two opinions on Cuba and the OAS, both from the MH. Andres Oppenheimer writes that the U.S. should support ending Cuba’s suspension from the OAS, while also backing a formal request from the General Assembly that “the island allow political parties and free elections so that it can be readmitted.” Opposing such a position, Sen. Mel Martinez writes that “Cuba's readmission to the OAS would be a perversion of principle and a stunning reversal of democratic progress; it would be the dissolution of this hemisphere's significant commitment to freedom and would make the OAS a hollow body.”
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