Both Brazilian foreign minister Antonio Patriota and presidential foreign policy adviser Marco Aurelio Garcia say there is no conflict between strengthening UNASUR, on the one hand, and allowing Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico to create their own, more liberal trade bloc, on the other. The four countries plan to sign an agreement next week making a new Pacific economic bloc official. Analysts say the project is both a step toward increased economic integration along the continent’s west coast as well as an attempt to open up new economic opportunities in Asia.
The statements from Brazil’s top foreign policy hands came during a visit with former Colombian foreign minister and new UNASUR secretary general Maria Emma Mejía, who was in Brazil for a meeting of the South American Council on Infrastructure and Planning (Cosiplan) – an organization created under the UNASUR umbrella last year to coordinate regional infrastructure projects and monitor foreign infrastructure investment from, among other places, China. Interestingly, Mejía’s views on the relationship between UNASUR and the Pacific bloc are essentially the same as those of Patriota and Garcia. Rather than being a counter to UNASUR or MERCOSUR, Mejía says the new bloc is “evidence of the dynamism of the region.”
And what about Venezuela, the left wing regional alternative to the Pacific bloc’s right? They too seem to see no conflict, at least yet, between the new Chile-Peru-Colombia-Mexico bloc and a broader agenda of regional integration. Chavista deputy, former economy minister, and Parlatino representative Rodrigo Cabezas, tells EFE that the new Pacific bloc, on the one side of the continent, and MERCOSUR, on the other, will be the foundation of a “Gran Comunidad Económica Latinoamericana.” [Venezuela’s official entry into the latter is still pending final approval by the Paraguayan Senate]. “Integration is based on complete respect for the various ideological positions found throughout Latin America,” Cabezas told the news agency, “and because of this, it’s possible to conceive of an integration with diversity that will always be present in Latin American governments.”
Venezuela hosts its Latin American neighbors at the second meeting of the Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (CELAC) in July – an attempt to create regional structures that exclude the US and Canada. EFE reports on today’s first preparatory meetings for the summit, which bring foreign ministers and representatives from 32 Latin American and Caribbean states to Caracas.
Today’s bullet points:
· The AP and LA Times report on the deportation to Colombia of an alleged FARC representative in Europe. Joaquin Perez Becerra was arrested upon after arriving in Caracas from Frankfurt, Germany on Saturday. The AP says the arrest of Perez came after Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos phoned Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to request that Venezuelan authorities make the arrest. In an interview yesterday, Santos called Perez “the most important operative of the FARC” in Europe and said Chavez’s decision to have him detained was another sign that the Venezuelan president is “true to his word.” For Hugo Chavez, the story is a bit more complicated, however. As the Nuevo Herald reports, a number of pro-Chavez Venezuelan social movements, many of which CFR’s Joel Hirst labels a “front for terrorism” in an article for Fox News which seems more than a bit over the top, staged significant protests in front of the offices of the Venezuelan intelligence services (SEBIN) Monday, denouncing the arrest and an individual they call a “revolutionary journalist.”
· Also in Venezuela, news over the weekend that the Venezuelan government plans to increase a windfall oil tax, taking advantage of a recent spike in international oil prices. The Venezuelan president says he’ll use the excess cash to fund a new social development fund. Chavez also announced Monday a 25% hike in Venezuela’s minimum wage. The wage raise starts next week with a 15% increase and will be completed in September with another 10% increase. According to AP, the new minimum wage will benefit more than 6 million people, who will earn $360 a month once the full increase is phased in. Presidential elections are set for 2012.
· Haitian election officials are delaying the certification of 19 legislative contests whose final vote tallies were significantly higher than preliminary results suggested. AP says the OAS has been brought in once again to “sift through the results” after both the UN and US expressed concern over the legitimacy of the new vote totals. After receiving the complaints, Gaillot Dorsinvil, president of Haiti's provisional electoral council (CEP), said the panel would delay publishing the results for 19 legislative races “for the sake of transparency and in the best interests of the nation.” But according to the Miami Herald, Dorsinvil defended the CEP’s final vote count, saying they were the result of electoral litigation by the candidates and their attorneys who disagreed with the preliminary results. As usual, CEPR’s Haiti Watch has an excellent breakdown of all the races in question.
· AP reports on the “rescue” of another 51 migrants in a home in Reynosa. Among those freed were six Chinese, 14 Guatemalans, two Hondurans, two Salvadorans and 27 Mexicans. The “rescue” comes after 68 migrants were found in another house in Reynosa last week. Interestingly, Mexican officials say four municipal officers have been arrested for the kidnapping of those individuals. It’s still unclear what the Mexican state does with its “liberated” migrants.
· The San Diego Union-Tribune says an investigation into links between 62 police officers in Tijuana and organized crime syndicates has all but collapsed eight months after the investigation began.
· Mexico’s El Universal reports on a new social initiative, “A Ganar,” funded by the Carlos Slim Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, the IDB, and USAID, and intended to help so-called “ni-nis” in Ciudad Juarez.
· Insight Crime translates Plaza Publica’s recent feature on the Zetas apparent return to Guatemala’s Alta Verapaz region after a two-month state of siege.
· Nicaragua’s Cofidencial and Costa Rica’s La Nación have begun publishing a new trove of Wikileaks US diplomatic cables. The first article to come out of the new release looks at US concern over the Ortega government’s ties with Libya – particularly the fact that Muammar Gadafi’s nephew has advised Daniel Ortega on matters of foreign policy.
· Latin America News Dispatch reports some 35,000 new documents released by the Brazilian National Archive earlier this month, which, among other things, show that the Brazilian Air Force intelligence continued to surveil left wing political parties, trade unionists, and students for at least a decade after the country’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship. Among those monitored, according to the new documents, were now ex-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and members of VAR Palmares, a resistance group to which current President Dilma Rousseff belonged.
· Newsweek’s Mac Margolis writes a glowing profile of Rio’s Public Safety Secretary José Mariano Beltrame and his project of “pacifying” Rio favelas using what Newsweek describes as a combination of “wiretaps, computerized crime mapping, and brute force.”
· At Foreign Policy, Francis Fukuyama and Seth Colby look for solutions to Mexican drug violence in Medellín, where they write an equally glowing piece about the Colombian city’s renovation under former mayor Sergio Fajardo. Only in the second to last paragraph do they suggest the city’s peace could be temporary:
“After bottoming out in 2007, Medellín's homicide rate has since doubled (though it is still one-fifth of what it was at the city's early-1990s nadir). Nearly everyone in the city agrees that the uptick in violence was the result of the Colombian government's 2008 decision to extradite to the United States former paramilitary leader turned crime boss Diego Murillo Bejarano, locally known as Don Berna. What that meant, in effect, was that the critics had been correct: The Colombian government hadn't actually successfully demobilized the drug-trafficking paramilitaries. Instead, by seriously crippling the competing guerrillas, the government had given a monopoly to Don Berna. It was peace achieved through market dominance, not demilitarization -- and when Don Berna's extradition decapitated his organization and prompted a violent scramble for power among lower-ranking lieutenants, the peace fell apart.”
· And on Mexico and other matters, David Rothkopf, also at FP, provokes thought and calls for introspection about the demand-side of the drug wars in the US. He also gets the rumor-mill turning, writing that former US ambassador to Argentina and current Deputy US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Anthony Wayne, is the frontrunner to replace Wikileak casualty Carlos Pascual at the US Embassy in Mexico City.
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