Carlos Alberto Zuloaga, the son of Guillermo Zuloaga, the embattled president of Venezuelan private media outlet, Globovision, was in Washington, D.C. recently where he spoke at the Cato Institute. In a videotaped message from Venezuela, the elder Zuloaga said he had been prohibited from traveling outside of Venezuela as the government of Hugo Chavez continues to threaten the cable news channel with closure. “What you just saw in my father's message is the best evidence of the actual state of freedom of speech in Venezuela,” Carlos Zuloaga told the Cato crowd. As the Washington Post reports, on the same day Zuloaga spoke in Washington, D.C. the Venezuelan attorney general introduced a bill before the National Assembly which would punish so-called “crimes of opinion.” As Zuloaga argues, the legislation could send media professionals to prison for six months to four years for reporting information or opinions that the “government considers false or manipulative.” Regarding the future of his own station, Globovision, Carlos Zuloaga is doubtful that it will remain on the air for long, saying President Chavez is simply waiting for the most opportune time to strip its broadcasting license. A report in today’s Guardian makes it seem like that moment may be getting closer. Rory Carroll reports for the paper saying dozens of pro-Chavez militants raided Globovision’s headquarters on Monday, throwing tear gas and threatening employees with handguns. Over the weekend, through a separate measure, the licenses of dozens of radio stations were also revoked, but Monday’s raid is perhaps the most disturbing yet. In footage captured by video cameras at the Globovision offices, activists from the UPV, a radical party which backs the president and dresses in quasi-military gear, “arrive on motorbikes and rush on foot into the station.” At least one security guard was injured in the ransacking. For its part, the Chavez government did condemn the attack saying, “it rejects this type of violent action” against the private media outlet. But Guillermo Zuloaga insists that the Chavez government is at least indirectly to blame for Monday’s events, given its hostile rhetoric and threats against his company.
The AP reports on the issue of media takeovers in Ecuador as well this morning. There the wire service writes that President Rafael Correa has said “many” radio and TV channels will come under state control due to “irregularities.” Correa has long accused private media in the country of being corrupt, and, according the AP, twice fired an opposition broadcaster. However, no further details about future plans were discussed by the president on Monday.
New occurrences in the Honduras stalemate remain few but there are a couple of items to report on today. First, the AP reports that a “high level diplomatic mission” will soon travel to Tegucigalpa to meet with the coup government of Roberto Micheletti in yet another attempt to restore Manuel Zelaya to power. The announcement was made by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias on Monday. However, just hours before the Arias announcement, Micheletti displayed the same stubbornness that has become his hallmark over the last month. “The former president of Honduras can never return to the presidency because he has declared mediated talks a failure,” the de facto President said in a Monday statement. For the record, Zelaya has repeatedly said he supports the terms of the 12-point “San José Accord” which would restore him to power, albeit with limited executive powers. No specific names have yet been mentioned with respect to the diplomatic mission, although OAS Sec. General José Miguel Insulza indicated that he hoped a number of foreign ministers from the region would be part of the group. For his part, Manuel Zelaya left Nicaragua on Monday evening for Mexico City where today he meets with President Felipe Calderon. Also, TeleSur is reporting that late Monday, the Honduran Congress received the report from a seven-person congressional commission, recommending that the full body approve granting amnesty for all parties to the current crisis. The 128 person Congress will now discuss the measure and decide whether or not to support it.
In other news, two stories on Brazil this morning. First, McClatchy’s Tyler Bridges writes that Brazil is bringing itself out of the current economic crisis, and is doing so not through an overreliance on its export sector, but rather through the new spending habits of the country’s growing middle class. From 2001 to 2007, the poorest 10 percent of the population enjoyed a 49 percent increase in real income, says Brazilian economist Marcelo Neri, who called such a boom Chinese-like growth.” Some 27.8 million Brazilians [in a country out of nearly 200 million] joined the consumer economy from October 2003 to October 2008, and Neri credits this middle class expansion to an activist government that has “increased direct payments to the poor and raised the minimum wage.” And, second, the Wall Street Journal says all may not be so perfect, at least politically, for Brazil’s popular President, Lula da Silva. Corruption allegations are being leveled against José Sarney, former President and the head of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party. The party is the largest in Congress and has voted with the President’s PT consistently to form a coalition majority of sorts. If Sarney is forced to resign over the alleged ethics violations, the WSJ writes, the president may have difficulty finessing a congressional investigation into accounting practices at state-controlled oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA which, could potentially be damaging to the president’s own party.
The New York Times has an interesting story on Cuban doctors who have, over the years, defected to the United States in search of better pay. Mirta Ojito writes that some “6,000 medical professionals, many of them physicians, have left Cuba in the last six years.” In the words of one Cuban immigrant-doctor, “I can’t tell you that Cuban doctors are not well trained, but I can tell you that the books we used were edited in 1962, and for me, coming here was like starting all over again.”
Finally, from Peru, the AP reports that Peru may prosecute many indigenous protestors injured in Bagua in early June. If this happens, any hope that negotiations might resolve deep differences between the government and indigenous groups are slim, says the UN’s special envoy on indigenous rights. “It's very surprising that while there are criminal investigations against people accused of killing police, no one has been arrested or implicated for the abuses that led to the death of the indigenous protesters,” says Susan Lee, director of Amnesty International's Americas program.
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