Analysis: Venezuela helps Cuban refinery
By CARMEN GENTILE UPI Energy Correspondent MIAMI, Dec. 19 (UPI) — A Soviet-era oil refinery in Cuba is getting back
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South America
Does the Merida Initiative represent a New Direction for U.S.-Mexico Relations, or Does It Simply Refocus the Issue Elsewhere?
- Help for Mexico: the U.S. plan to support Calderon’s counter-narcotic initiative criticized for its secrecy, its assumptions, and its questionable evidence.
- Washington is encouraged to tackle the deadly magnitude of illicit U.S. weapons sales to Mexico and the mechanisms of supply and demand, as drug consumption rises in the country in spite of U.S. claims to the contrary.
- A redirection in policy could lead to a potentially problematic future, with dire results produced by U.S. drug policy and featuring Washington’s politicalization of the issue and inventing facts where none exist.
The ‘Merida Initiative’ Proposal
In a nation where drug kingpins have infiltrated many state and local governments, and where infighting among drug traffickers has cost more than 4,000 lives in the past 22 months—most of them Mexican—the latter country’s drug cartels have been engaged in a brutal drug war at the very time that they were seeking new trade routes, competing over prices, and hunting down new markets. To tackle this growing ring of violence, Washington has announced a $500 million aid package for Mexico in 2008 (part of an overall 3 year program, all-told to be budgeted at $1.4 billion). Titled ‘Merida Initiative,’ the newly-minted campaign is meant to help combat the trans-border war on drugs, fight organized crime, and counter terrorism throughout Mexico and Central America.
Sulfurous Fumes Detected over Guyana: Latin America’s Ominous New Geopolitical Scene Involving Georgetown, Washington and Caracas
To Our Readers
Today, December 14, 2007, from 12:45 to 2:00pm COHA Director, Larry Birns, will Appear on the Fox Business Channel from Washington to Discuss the Bank of the South and other U.S.-Latin American Trade Matters
With much of Latin America demonstrating a decisively distinct air of autonomous behavior when it comes to responding to U.S. regional policy initiatives, Guyana appears to want to emphasize that it should not be counted in their number. A high-level security conference between the U.S. and Guyana was kicked off on Tuesday December 11, just after the recent revival of a long simmering territorial dispute between Guyana and the Bush Administration’s arch nemesis, Venezuela. The conference was organized by the Guyana Defense Force and the U.S. Embassy’s Military Liaison Office, and is being held against a backdrop of heightened tension between Venezuela and Guyana over the November 15 incident in which the Guyanese government claims that Venezuelan soldiers used explosives and helicopters to destroy two dredges along the Cuyuni River. The Venezuelan government maintains that it was doing nothing more than expelling illegal miners from Venezuelan territory.
Read MoreBank of the South: Another step toward Latin American integration
- Member countries analyze the proposal as Banco del Sur (Bank of the South) is about to be launched
- Lula, while skeptical, is moving ahead
- Dealing with the opposition to the Bank
- Not a Chávez-controlled institution, but one aimed at development and integration, infrastructure loans and aiding each other’s investment requirements
Since coming to power in 1999, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez may have been seen as a controversial figure, universally known for his confrontational stance regarding U.S. foreign policy aims. However, his zeal for social reform, promotion of Latin American integration and his unquestionable good will toward other nations will reach a high-water mark on Sunday, December 9, 2007, when the Bank of the South will be formally launched.
Read MoreBrazil’s Bolsa Familia at Risk
- With the Calheiros scandal still hanging over it, an increasingly tarnished Lula administration cannot afford to lose the one social program that has brought it a modicum of luster
- Thanksgiving arrived the other day, but 36.1 million Brazilians would not have been at the table. The Getúlio Vargas Foundation reported last September that the income of 19.3 percent of all Brazilians is so low that they can't afford to maintain the minimum 2,288 daily dose of calories recommended by the World Health Organization
- The government's formula is to put children in school as a means of putting food on the table
- Now that the Provisory Contribution over Financial Movements (CPMF) tax is at risk, the funds for social programs might be equally endangered. This would be a catastrophe and would knock out Lula's only clearly successful major social justice program since he became president
- Can the new trend in international development–microfinancing–complement Lula's social flagship, the Bolsa Família program, or will it end up replacing it?
In the last few weeks, social reforms intended by Latin America's "New Left," to enhance the social content of their legislative programs, have been overshadowed by challenges to their political agenda. Not only have Venezuelans voted "no" to the constitutional reforms that would have expanded Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's power, but in an attack against President Evo Morales Bolivia's rich provinces have decided to draft a local applicable constitution that, if achieved, would claim more autonomy from the central government. However, this new counter-trend is not unique to Latin America's "New Left." Brazil and its centrist government are also in the midst of a considerable political challenge, as Lula's main social program, the Bolsa Família, is threatened by a killer tax-cut, and his ruling PT party is in a free-fall. His comrade-in-arm and president of the Senate, Renan Calheiros has just been forced to give up his post on the basis of corruption charges that have been lodged against him.
Read MoreEmpty Calories of Economic Growth and the Battle for Participatory Democracy—Latin America's New Middle Class
The past two decades have witnessed a series of political and economic rollercoaster rides all over Latin America. However, with economic "stability" being used as a tagline for positive growth and suitable political fervor, a novel way of life has been emerging that is affecting millions of citizens who now consider themselves members of a new middle class. This "Great Global Middle Class" has been illuminated perhaps more brightly in Latin America than anywhere else, due to its longstanding and hard-fought struggle with income inequality and socially repressive regimes.
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