Venezuela

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COHA

The President and the Courts: Uribe’s Attacks on Colombia’s Highest Judicial Institutions

  • In a far-fetched move, Uribe accuses a Supreme Court Justice of bribing a paramilitary leader to implicate the President in a murder scandal
  • This is the latest incident in the tumultuous "parapolitics" scandal surrounding Uribe's antagonistic relationship with the courts
  • Even though Uribe's charges threaten judicial independence, his attacks invite no recrimination from Washington, contrasting with the U.S.' past condemnation of Hugo Chavez's putative interventions in the Venezuelan high courts
  • Uribe's stand could jeopardize his high-powered campaign for further financing of Plan Colombia and advancing the free trade agreement, which awaits a tough ratification battle in the U.S. Congress

As Colombia's corruption scandal continues to heat up, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has turned his anger on a longstanding nemesis: the country's Supreme Court. In his most recent sortie against the Court, Uribe released a statement on October 8 accusing Supreme Court Judge Iván Velásquez of offering "benefits" to jailed right-wing paramilitary leader José Orlando Moncada Zapata (alias Tasmania), if, in exchange, Tasmania would testify that he had been involved in a murder plot with the President. On October 4 and 5, Tasmania testified in court that Uribe had been involved in a plot to kill another paramilitary leader, Alcides de Jesús Durango. Almost immediately, Uribe released a statement declaring that before the incarcerated paramilitary leader delivered this testimony, the President had received a letter from him claiming that he had been bribed by Velásquez to make this accusation against the Colombian President.

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Pluralism Bursts into the Western Hemisphere

* While Russia, Europe and China are wooing Latin America and the Caribbean the Monroe Doctrine now becomes the "Putin, Zapatero and Chinese–Corollary"

*Iran's increased presence in the region may lead to bad press, but for now only shows increased investments

* The "Great Game" of political and economic influence is set to be played in the southern hemisphere

No one is arguing that Latin America and the Caribbean have become a priority matter for international diplomacy, save for the U.S., which has witnessed a massive retreat of Washington's vigilance for what it once insisted were its longtime national interests and influence in the hemisphere. Concentrating on its "War on Terror" has resulted in a detour of the U.S. military and diplomatic corps to a series of sorties, like Afghanistan, Iraq, and now, likely enough, to Iran. The 1823 Monroe Doctrine is no longer relevant as nations like Russia, the People's Republic of China as well as the European Union (and its individual members) increase their influence in the Western Hemisphere. This penetration is due to the fact that numerous hemispheric countries are themselves looking to diversify their pool of allies and trading partners by contracting ties to other nations besides the U.S., with Venezuela being at the core of this movement.

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Bush’s Blast against Latin America’s “False Populism” May Be Getting It All Wrong

Politicians find it exceedingly difficult to explain free trade's virtues without drowning the listener in a torrent of common coinage. For a recent example of this, take President Bush's speech in Miami, designed to shore up flagging congressional support for pending free-trade agreements (FTAs) with Colombia and Panama. Echoing those all-too-familiar Bush bromides, he insisted that approving these FTAs would fortify "freedom," strengthen "democracy," and increase "prosperity" in Latin America.

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BrazilPress ReleasesVenezuela
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Building a Global Southern Coalition: the competing approaches of Brazil’s Lula and Venezuela’s Chávez

To Our Readers

The following article, “Building a Global Southern Coalition: the competing approaches of Brazil’s Lula and Venezuela’s Chávez,” by COHA Senior Research Fellow Sean W. Burges, originally appeared in the Third World Quarterly Vol. 28, No. 7, 2007, pp. 1343-1358. From time to time, COHA issues to its extensive mailing list scholarly articles by members of its intellectual community. Their viewpoints and interpretations we feel are of importance and deserve to be presented to fellow Latin Americanists–even though they may on occasion be at variance on certain points with the viewpoint of COHA’s editorial board. We welcome submissions on regional issues, such as addressed here by Dr. Burges, or on other inter-American subjects of concern to other scholars and activists.

ABSTRACT. This paper will set out the two very different regional leadership strategies being pursued by Brazil and Venezuela, concluding that it is the Brazilian neo-structuralist vision that will have more success than the Venezuelan overseas development aid approach. The two different approaches to Latin American leadership point to substantive difference in how the regional system should operate in geopolitical and geo-economic terms, with the Brazilians favouring market-oriented system in opposition to Venezuela’s statist option. Contestation for regional leadership as set out in the article emerges as an early indicator of chilling of relations between Brazil and Venezuela and points to future scenario where other regional states may be able to play off contending would-be leaders.

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Lula Wants His Yellow Submarine

Nuclear-R-Us:
Is Brazil's proposed construction of a nuclear submarine the result of imperial ambitions
or a matter of diving to the depths of pandering politics on Lula's part?

  • Lula reignites the dream of the military junta: a Brazilian nuclear submarine.
  • Washington derides Iran's and North Korea's nuclear plans but mums the word when it comes to Brazil.
  • Is the Brazilian navy expecting to be attacked on the high seas by some far off land, or, is a new militarized geopolitical strategy being evolved by Brasilia, or, is Lula merely being pressured by his military to acquire this trophy weapons system which could cost the nation upwards of a billion dollars, yet do little to augment Brazilian security?
  • If Brazil goes ahead with its nuclear project, it may violate the spirit of the Treaty of Tlatelolco and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
  • Who is going to provide Brazil with the necessary technology and advice it needs in order to successfully develop a nuclear submarine? Russia or China? Or will it be Brasilia's new sister pact members India and South Africa, or perhaps Iran with which it has had a decade-long nuclear relationship. What will be the roles of the UN, IAEA and OPANAL?

On July 10, Brazilian President Inácio Lula da Silva announced his intention to fulfill one of the Brazilian Navy's ultimate dreams: to launch a nuclear-powered submarine.

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