The Miami Herald reported this weekend on growing ties between South America and the Middle East – what it called a “hemispheric marriage” that, before events in Egypt, was to be “consummated” at an Arab-South America summit in Peru. The summit has since been postponed, putting any new plans to increase commercial relations between the two regions on indefinite hold.
However, even with the summit’s postponement, South America’s growing presence in the Middle East – be it through new trade deals, migration, or through the recognition of an independent Palestinian state – has been cited as one the many signs of a new and independent South American foreign policy (particularly vis a vis the US). As former Colombian deputy foreign minister, Andelfo García, says to the Herald, “It’s like a wave rolling through Latin America,” “The region has its own vision and wants to play a larger [international] role.”
Which brings us to events of the last two days. After bombing protestors in his own country Monday, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi appeared in grainy footage outside of his home in Tripoli Tuesday night to deny rumors he had fled the country for Venezuela. “I am in Tripoli and not in Venezuela,” Gaddafi told Libyan state TV. “Do not believe the channels belonging to stray dogs.”
That statement came in response to comments made by British foreign minister William Hague earlier in the day which suggested there was “credible information” indicating that Gaddafi was on his way to South America.
For their part, both Venezuela’s foreign minister and information minister denied such reports as well Monday (communiqué here), although some chatter continues today about the possibility of the Libyan dictator going into exile in Venezuela. A cordial relationship between Gadaffi and Hugo Chavez has been well-documented (The Guardian notes that Libya named a soccer stadium after Chavez), although ties between the two countries pre-date Chavez and have been defined by a variety issues, among them shared international oil interests.
But it’s not just Venezuela who has seen Libya as an important point of entry into the Middle East. More recently, as Al-Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo reports, the other half of the “Caracas-Brasilia axis,” Brazil, has also become a major economic player in Libya. A-J:
“Brazil’s biggest and most influential engineering and construction companies are also some of the most important players in construction projects in the northern African country that is now embroiled in a bloody citizen uprising against the 40-year rule of Muammar Gaddafi."
According to the news agency, the lifting of UN sanctions against Libya in 2003 opened the door to major infrastructure projects – some of the most significant of which (new highways, airport terminals, and dams) are being coordinated by three Brazilian construction companies: Odebrecht, Andrade Gutierrez and Queiroz Galvão. Deepening Brazil-Libya relations culminated in July 2009, says A-J, when former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited Libya with a group of 90 Brazilian businessmen to enhance “south-south” commercial ties.
It’s too early to say what the impact of events in Libya will bring, either domestically or internationally. But more than in Tunisia or Egypt, the role South America might play in Libya in the coming weeks and months ahead seems to be something worth watching – if only to better understand the possibilities and limits of South America’s new regional foreign policy, as well as the future of one of the more significant South-South relationships.
To other stories:
· Colombia’s El Tiempo reports on Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes’ visit to Colombia this week. Security and trade issues are atop the agenda, says the paper. On the former, Funes has gone so far as to suggest the possibility of a Colombian security training center being built in El Salvador to cooperate on “very specific technical matters.” Regional (as opposed to bilateral) security issues are also expected to be discussed between Funes and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.
· Honduran officials are also traveling abroad this week on a notable trip through Asia to learn about various “model cities” projects. Honduras Culture and Politics has the full report on stop one of the 63-person, Pepe Lobo-led excursion: South Korea. (More here and here and here on Honduras’s semi-quixotic “model cities” proposal).
· Largely absent from the “charter cities” program is any discussion of a still tense political situation in Honduras. For that, historian Darío Euraque, the head of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History under Manuel Zelaya, has just published a new book on the June 28, 2010 coup and its impact on issues of Honduran culture. With the author’s permission, Adrienne Pine has access to a PDF of the book at her site.
· EFE reports on the sentencing of former Senator Marco Uribe Escobar to 90 months in prison by the Colombian Supreme Court for his links to the AUC right-wing paramilitary organization. Uribe Escobar, a cousin of former president Alvaro Uribe, made an alliance with the AUC leader Salvador Mancuso in 2002 in order to win a seat in the Colombian Congress.
· Also in Colombia, BBC Mundo reports on some of the disappointments that have accompanied the transitional justice process, five and a half years after the Ley de Justicia y Paz went into effect.
· In Bolivia, news about a future tri-lateral counter-narcotics initiative that would include Bolivia, Brazil, and apparently the United States. Brazilian and Bolivian officials are expected to meet this week to hammer out more details about such cooperation – although still little information yet about what role the US would play in the pilot project.
· Via Havana Note, Cuban dissident blogger Ernesto Morales Licea (at the Huffington Post) shows just how out-of-touch anti-Castro US lawmakers like Marco Rubio and Robert Menendez are with realities, both on the island and off. Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Cuban government to release the last two journalists who remain in prison on the island, Pedro Arguelles Moran and Albert Santiago Du Bouchet. The RSF statement follows the release of journalist Ivan Hernandez last weekend. “Recent encouraging signs of an opening, including the unblocking of certain blogs and Web sites, will hopefully pave the way for a real debate between government and civil society,” says RSF.
· In Venezuela, the AP with more on student hunger strikers who are demanding international investigations into alleged rights abuses in the country. Specifically, the students have asked that the government allow OAS Sec. General José Miguel Insulza to visit Venezuela – a visit that would require a prior invitation from the Venezuelan government, according to Insulza.
· BBC Mundo with some details of the latest Wikileaks Latin America cable dump, about which I hope to have more in the coming days.
· The National Security Archive posts the complete text of an “historic ruling issued last October by a Guatemalan court that convicted two former policemen to 40 years in prison” for the forced disappearance of Guatemalan labor activist, Edgar Fernando Garcia nearly 30 years ago. The Archive also posts some of the key documents from the Guatemalan National Police Archive used to prosecute the case.
· And in The Guardian, Professor John Ackerman on how the US can and must move away from its support of a militarized drug war in Mexico by dealing with issues of assault weapons sales and drug consumption domestically and making “the reduction of violence and the establishment of the rule of law” the central objective of its foreign policy toward Mexico.
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