In major news this morning, the New York Times and Miami Herald report on the latest developments from Guatemala. The NYT piece offers few new details to the story but, interestingly, notes that the protests against Mr. Colom and the government have in some places transformed into protests against Guatemala’s serious problem of violence in general. “This movement is not for Rodrigo, but for all those who have been murdered,” remarked Víctor Toriello, a cousin of slain lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg at a recent rally. For his part, Mr. Colom recognizes the severity of charges leveled against him and the potentially destabilizing effect that they might have. “We are living a serious and profound crisis, possibly the most complicated crisis that we have had in the years of democracy in Guatemala,” said President Colom this week. In particular, Guatemala’s business community has turned on Colom, and his wife’s involvement in the scandal is “relished by Mr. Colom’s detractors” because of her long support for social programs for poor people in rural areas, says the NYT. An AP report in the MH, meanwhile, says prosecutors have received an anonymous, “credible” tip which implicates three individuals in the killing of Mr. Rosenberg. Human Rights Prosecutor Sergio Morales said he has sent the information to the U.N. commission and an FBI agent who arrived last week in response to Colom's request to help with the investigation, and the informant is now trying to be contacted.
From the Washington Post an interesting piece from Colombia on the incentives being offered to coca growers to stop harvesting the plant. In Southern Colombia, the WaPo writes, an “ambitious state-building effort designed to incorporate a once-forgotten region into the legitimate economy by bringing in police and courts, paving roads, improving schools and offering farm aid” is underway. The plan is now being duplicated in five other regions in the country, and the paper writes that it is an alternative to both planes spraying herbicides on coca-growing areas and soldiers being sent in to uproot coca bushes. From 2007 to 2008, coca production fell 75 percent in a quadrant of the southern state of Meta where the plan was first implemented. And, today, 2,385 farm families are receiving emergency food aid and technical help from agronomists as they start to grow rice, sugar cane and other crops instead of coca, officials say. Since 2007, about $90 million has been spent on the program, with 15 percent of it from the United States and the Netherlands.
In the LA Times an AP report on Asst. Secretary of State Tom Shannon’s visit to Bolivia. Shannon met yesterday with Bolivian President Evo Morales who said past diplomatic problems could be overcome if the new U.S. government refrained from meddling in Bolivia's internal affairs and the two nations treated one another with “mutual respect. Shannon said the meetings were “a good start” toward renewing ties with the Andean country.
And an interesting story on love and immigration making the Wall Street Journal and other papers this morning. The paper reports on the resignation of a popular mayor in the small West Texas town of San Angelo, a month after winning a fourth term. The mayor, J.W. Lown, says he is in love with a man from Mexico, currently living illegally in the U.S. Rather than hide the man from immigration authorities, Lown, who has dual Mexican citizenship, said he would be resigning to continue the relationship in the man’s home country of Mexico.
In other news, the NYT also reports this morning from Venezuela where intelligence police raided the office of Globovisión executive Guillermo Zuloaga Thursday night. The network is a fierce critic of President Hugo Chávez. The raid was captured on the television station’s security cameras and follows an investigation of Globovisión, initiated this month at the orders of Mr. Chávez after the station reported on a mild earthquake in the country before state media. Wilmer Flores Trossel, the director of the intelligence police, told reporters that the reason for the operation was evidence that “an important set of automobiles encountered in a state of concealment.” Mr. Zuloaga apparently also operates a car dealership out of his residence. Meanwhile, as news of the raid spread, Mr. Chávez took over the airwaves of all private television networks for a few minutes, including those of Globovisión, to broadcast the nationalization of several small iron and ceramics companies.
The AP in the MH writes that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said Thursday that it would be “inappropriate” for him to seek a third consecutive term as president. In front of a business forum, Uribe added that he would not want future generations to look on him with bitterness as someone stuck on power.
Two more stories from Mexico in the NYT from the AP. First, video was recently released from internal security cameras that captured the jail break that freed 53 inmates, many with drug cartel connections, earlier this week. The tapes show guards at a Mexican prison standing by and watching as inmates walked out of the prison facilities. Only when the convoy sped off did the guards draw their guns. The AP writes that the video “provides a rare inside look at lax security inside Mexico’s prisons, a problem that makes prosecuting drug smugglers vastly more difficult.” But some traffickers are being detained it seems. The AP writes that Raymundo Almanza Morales, one of Mexico’s 37 most wanted traffickers, was captured Wednesday in the northern city of Monterrey along with three other suspects.
Finally, two opinions. Andres Oppenheimer in the MH two days ago writes that there are reasons to believe Alvaro Uribe will seek a third term. “It will become increasingly difficult for Uribe to tell his supporters that he will not run after they have spent considerable time and money,” says the columnist. And, second, “the president may fear that if he leaves office he would face charges by victims of human rights abuses.” An editorial in the MH says “The appointment of former President Bill Clinton as a special United Nations envoy to Haiti may be the best thing to happen to that impoverished Caribbean nation in years.” However, the paper adds that this may be the last chance for “Haiti's elite and its political class…to show that they can improve their own country in exchange for aid from abroad,” with a cleaning up of corruption being the country’s top priority.
Photo: Reuters
No comments:
Post a Comment