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Venezuela accuses opposition of plotting coup, seven dead

19 Apr

0007402d-642By Brian Ellsworth and Andrew Cawthorne

(Reuters) – Venezuelan President-elect Nicolas Maduro accused the opposition on Tuesday of planning a coup against him after seven government supporters were killed in clashes over his disputed election victory.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles wants a full recount of votes from Sunday’s election after official results showed a narrow victory for Maduro, who is late socialist leader Hugo Chavez’s hand-picked successor.

Opposition demonstrations outside electoral authority offices around the country passed off peacefully on Tuesday, in contrast to Monday night when youths in Caracas and other cities blocked streets, burned tires and fought with police.

The authorities said the seven deaths included two people shot by opposition sympathizers while celebrating Maduro’s win in a middle-class area of the capital, and one person killed in an attack on a government-run clinic.

“This is the responsibility of those who have called for violence, who have ignored the constitution and the institutions,” a furious Maduro said in a speech to the nation.

“Their plan is a coup d’etat.”

Officials also said more than 60 people had been injured, including one woman whom protesters tried to burn alive, and 170 people were arrested.

OPPOSITION MARCH CANCELED

Maduro said he would not allow an opposition march that had been planned for Wednesday in Caracas.

Capriles later called off the rally, accusing the government of plotting to “infiltrate” the gathering to cause violence, and then blame it on the opposition.

The opposition has not responded to specific allegations relating to the deaths, but Capriles has repeatedly called for only peaceful demonstrations and said that the government was responsible for violence by denying the call for an recount.

The prospect of prolonged instability in the OPEC nation with the world’s largest oil reserves has unnerved markets.

Venezuela’s volatile and highly traded debt has tumbled on the dispute and unrest, with the benchmark 2027 bond off more than 3.0 percent on Tuesday.

A continuation of violent protests, despite Capriles’ entreaties, could damage the opposition’s credibility.

Maduro has played up attacks by rock-throwing protesters on popular government programs such as clinics staffed by Cuban doctors and subsidized state-run supermarkets, saying they prove Capriles wants to scrap Chavez-era social welfare programs.

That accusation was a principal plank of Maduro’s campaign.

State TV has played images of burning buildings and masked demonstrators, along with footage of a failed 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez but led many Venezuelans to question the opposition’s democratic credentials.

Chavez back then was toppled from power for 48 hours but bounced back quickly, purged critics inside the armed forces and stepped up the pace of his socialist policies.

The election was triggered by the death of Chavez last month after a two-year battle with cancer. He named Maduro as his successor before he died, and his protégé won the election with 50.8 percent of the vote against Capriles’ 49.0 percent.

Maduro, who had initially said he was open to a recount, called on his supporters to demonstrate all week. The National Electoral Council (CNE) has refused to conduct a recount.

‘TWO HALVES’

The electoral authority’s results showed him winning by 265,000 votes, but opposition sources said their count showed Capriles had received an additional 300,000 to 400,000 votes that were unaccounted for in the official tally.

Capriles’ team said it has evidence of 3,200 irregularities, from voters using fake IDs to intimidation of volunteers at polling centers. It wants an exhaustive review of paper ballots.

“We believe we won … we want this problem resolved peacefully,” Capriles told a news conference. “There is no majority here, there are two halves.”

The CNE said an audit of 54 percent of the voting stations, in a widely respected electronic vote system, had already been carried out.

The U.S. State Department, which had previously urged a full audit, questioned the CNE’s refusal to accommodate Capriles.

“The CNE’s decision to declare Mr. Maduro the victor before completing a full recount is difficult to understand. And they did not explain their haste in taking this decision,” said department deputy spokesman Patrick Ventell.

Capriles’ strategy could backfire if demonstrations turn into prolonged disturbances, such as those the opposition led between 2002 and 2004, which sometimes blocked roads for days with trash and burning tires, annoying many Venezuelans.

Senior government figures have raised the possibility of legal action against Capriles, the governor of Miranda state, for inciting the violence.

The controversy over Venezuela’s first presidential election without Chavez on the ballot in two decades raised doubts about the future of “Chavismo” – the late leader’s self-proclaimed socialist movement – without its towering and mercurial founder.

Maduro’s slight margin of victory raises the possibility he could face future challenges from within the leftist coalition that united around Chavez, who won four presidential elections.

At his last election in October, the former soldier beat Capriles by 11 percentage points even though his battle against cancer had severely restricted his ability to campaign.

(Additional reporting by Daniel Wallis, Eyanir Chinea, Diego Ore and Girish Gupta in Caracas; Sailu Urribarri in Paraguana; Javier Farias in Tachira; Paul Eckert in Washington; Editing by Kieran Murray, Paul Simao and Philip Barbara)

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Political Cartoon: Henrique Capriles & Right-Wing Riots in Venezuela

17 Apr

capriles-venezuela

Maduro Wins Venezuelan Presidential Election with 50.66 Percent of the Vote

17 Apr
Newly elected President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia Flores after the electoral victory on Sunday evening. (AFP / Luis Acosta)

Newly elected President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia Flores after the electoral victory on Sunday evening. (AFP / Luis Acosta)

By CHRIS CARLSON

Maracaibo, April 14th, 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Nicolas Maduro has won the Venezuelan presidential election with 50.66 percent of the vote against 49.07 percent for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. Maduro gave a victory speech immediately after, while Capriles initially refused to recognize the results.

The “first bulletin” results were announced by the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Tibisay Lucena, at around 11:20 p.m. Venezuelan time, with 99.12 percent of the votes totaled, enough to give Maduro an irreversible victory.

Nicolas Maduro received a total of 7,505,338 votes, against 7,270,403 for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, a difference of 234,935 votes. Total turnout was 78.71 percent of the electorate.

Of twenty four states and regional entities, Capriles won a majority in eight: Zulia, Miranda, Lara, Anzoátegui, Táchira, Mérida, Nueva Esparta and Bolívar.

Maduro won a majority in the other sixteen. In the October 2012 presidential election, Hugo Chavez won a majority in all states apart from Merida and Tachira in the Andean region.

Given the closeness of the vote, Maduro’s speech focused mostly on assuring the validity of his victory, and the reliability of the electoral body.

“If they want to do an audit, then do an audit. We have complete trust in our electoral body,” he said from outside the presidential palace.

“We have the only electoral body in the world in which 54 percent of the total votes are audited,” he added.

Maduro also noted that in other countries presidents often win by slim margins, and that it is recognized as a victory, and said to opposition sectors that “this is no reason to create violence”.

CNE Rector Vicente Díaz immediately requested that 100 percent of the electoral results be audited in order to make the results more transparent.

“This tight result has lead me to request that the CNE conduct a citizens’ audit of 100 percent of the ballot boxes. The country needs it,” he said.

Maduro immediately accepted the request, and assured there was no problem in doing a complete audit.

“Let’s do it! No problem. Perhaps they will find that my victory will be larger,” he said.

Maduro supporters had gathered at the presidential palace to await the results, and remained to celebrate the victory after Maduro’s speech.

Meanwhile, opposition supporters awaited in the Caracas neighborhood of Bello Monte to hear their candidate’s concession speech.

Initial comments from various opposition leaders appeared to indicate that they were confident they had won, and that they would not accept defeat.

Capriles wrote on his Twitter account hours before the official results were released that the government was planning to “change the results”.

“We warn the country and the world that there is the intention to change the will [of the people],” he wrote.

Upon the release of the official results, Capriles held a press conference in which he claimed that the victory was “illegitimate” and refused to recognize Maduro’s victory until all ballots are audited.

“I don’t make pacts with those who are corrupt or illegitimate,” said Capriles, assuring he would not agree to accept the results.

“The one who has been defeated is you and everything you represent,” he said referring to Nicolas Maduro.

Capriles claimed that the results are not trully representative of the Venezuelan population, and assured that the Maduro government was “completely illegitimate”.

Here, VA.com publishes the CNE’s “first bulletin” results in full:

State Candidate Votes Percentage
Distrito   Capital Nicolás   Maduro 651.062 51.32%
Henrique Capriles 611.359 48.19%
Amazonas Nicolás   Maduro 35.867 51,94%
Henrique   Capriles 33.095 47,92%
Anzoátegui Nicolás   Maduro 382.599 47,31%
Henrique   Capriles 424.304 52,46%
Apure Nicolás   Maduro 134.192 61,21%
Henrique   Capriles 84.711 38,64%
Aragua Nicolás   Maduro 512.379 54,05%
Henrique   Capriles 432.265 45,60%
Barinas Nicolás   Maduro 210.667 52,00%
Henrique   Capriles 193.925 47,86%
Bolívar Nicolás   Maduro 347.332 47,75%
Henrique   Capriles 377.857 51,95%
Carabobo Nicolás   Maduro 606.772 50,39%
Henrique   Capriles 594.237 49,35%
Cojedes Nicolás   Maduro 107.370 61,15%
Henrique   Capriles 67.898 38,66%
Delta   Amacuro Nicolás   Maduro 46.012 59,68%
Henrique   Capriles 30.909 40,09%
Falcón Nicolás   Maduro 264.561 53,03%
Henrique   Capriles 233.279 46,76%
Guárico Nicolás   Maduro 226.667 59,09%
Henrique   Capriles 156.288 40,74%
Lara Nicolás   Maduro 457.670 47,31%
Henrique   Capriles 507.074 52,42%
Mérida Nicolás   Maduro 201.200 42,81%
Henrique   Capriles 267.997 57,02%
Miranda Nicolás   Maduro 734.719 47,24%
Henrique   Capriles 814.224 52,35%
Monagas Nicolás   Maduro 259.321 55,36%
Henrique   Capriles 208.102 44,43%
Nueva   Esparta Nicolás   Maduro 125.143 46,90%
Henrique   Capriles 141.236 52,94%
Portuguesa Nicolás   Maduro 297.469 65,19%
Henrique   Capriles 157.465 34,51%
Sucre Nicolás   Maduro 265.243 57,45%
Henrique   Capriles 195.797 42,41%
Táchira Nicolás   Maduro 233.249 36,90%
Henrique   Capriles 397.810 62,94%
Trujillo Nicolás   Maduro 232.684 59,73%
Henrique   Capriles 156.024 40,05%
Vargas Nicolás   Maduro 117.522 56,93%
Henrique   Capriles 88.013 42,63%
Yaracuy Nicolás   Maduro 182.060 56,47%
Henrique   Capriles 139.547 43,29%
Zulia Nicolás   Maduro 873.578 47,63%
Henrique   Capriles 956.987 52,18%

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Editorial: Hugo Chávez kept his promise to the people of Venezuela

5 Mar

hastaBy OSCAR GUARDIOLA-RIVERA

He wrote, he read, and mostly he spoke. Hugo Chávez, whose death has been announced, was devoted to the word. He spoke publicly an average of 40 hours per week. As president, he didn’t hold regular cabinet meetings; he’d bring the many to a weekly meeting, broadcast live on radio and television. Aló, Presidente, the programme in which policies were outlined and discussed, had no time limits, no script and no teleprompter. One session included an open discussion of healthcare in the slums of Caracas, rap, a self-critical examination of Venezuelans being accustomed to the politics of oil money and expecting the president to be a magician, a friendly exchange with a delegation from Nicaragua and a less friendly one with a foreign journalist.

Nicaragua is one of Venezuela’s allies in Alba, the organisation constituted at Chávez’s initiative to counter neoliberalism in the region, alongside Cuba, Ecuador and Bolivia. It has now acquired a life of its own having invited a number of Caribbean countries and Mexico to join, with Vietnam as an observer. It will be a most enduring legacy, a concrete embodiment of Chávez’s words and historical vision. The Bolívarian revolution has been crucial to the wider philosophy shared and applied by many Latin American governments. Its aim is to overcome global problems through local and regional interventions by engaging with democracy and the state in order to transform the relation between these and the people, rather than withdrawing from the state or trying to destroy it.

Because of this shared view Brazilians, Uruguayans and Argentinians perceived Chávez as an ally, not an anomaly, and supported the inclusion of Venezuela in their Mercosur alliance. Chávez’s Social Missions, providing healthcare and literacy to formerly excluded people while changing their life and political outlook, have proven the extent of such a transformative view. It could be compared to the levelling spirit of a kind of new New Deal combined with a model of social change based on popular and communal organisation.

The facts speak for themselves: the percentage of households in poverty fell from 55% in 1995 to 26.4% in 2009. When Chávez was sworn into office unemployment was 15%, in June 2009 it was 7.8%. Compare that to current unemployment figures in Europe. In that period Chávez won 56% of the vote in 1998, 60% in 2000, survived a coup d’état in 2002, got over 7m votes in 2006 and secured 54.4% of the vote last October. He was a rare thing, almost incomprehensible to those in the US and Europe who continue to see the world through the Manichean prism of the cold war: an avowed Marxist who was also an avowed democrat. To those who think the expression of the masses should have limited or no place in the serious business of politics all the talking and goings on in Chávez’s meetings were anathema, proof that he was both fake and a populist. But to the people who tuned in and participated en masse, it was politics and true democracy not only for the sophisticated, the propertied or the lettered.

All this talking and direct contact meant the constant reaffirmation of a promise between Chávez and the people of Venezuela. Chávez had discovered himself not by looking within, but by looking outside into the shameful conditions of Latin Americans and their past. He discovered himself in the promise of liberation made by Bolívar. “On August 1805,” wrote Chávez, Bolívar “climbed the Monte Sacro near Rome and made a solemn oath.” Like Bolívar, Chávez swore to break the chains binding Latin Americans to the will of the mighty. Within his lifetime, the ties of dependency and indirect empire have loosened. From the river Plate to the mouths of the Orinoco river, Latin America is no longer somebody else’s backyard. That project of liberation has involved thousands of men and women pitched into one dramatic battle after another, like the coup d’état in 2002 or the confrontation with the US-proposed Free Trade Zone of the Americas. These were won, others were lost.

The project remains incomplete. It may be eternal and thus the struggle will continue after Chávez is gone. But whatever the future may hold, the peoples of the Americas will fight to salvage the present in which they have regained a voice. In Venezuela, they put Chávez back into the presidency after the coup. This was the key event in Chávez’s political life, not the military rebellion or the first electoral victory. Something changed within him at that point: his discipline became ironclad, his patience invincible and his politics clearer. For all the attention paid to the relation between Chávez and Castro, the lesser known fact is that Chávez’s political education owes more to another Marxist president who was also an avowed democrat: Chile’s Salvador Allende. “Like Allende, we’re pacifists and democrats,” he once said. “Unlike Allende, we’re armed.”

The lesson drawn by Chávez from the defeat of Allende in 1973 is crucial. Some, like the far right and the state-linked paramilitary of Colombia would love to see Chavismo implode, and wouldn’t hesitate to sow chaos across borders. The support of the army and the masses of Venezuela will decide the fate of the Bolívarian revolution, and the solidarity of powerful and sympathetic neighbours like Brazil. Nobody wants instability now that Latin America is finally standing up for itself. In his final days Chávez emphasised the need to build communal power and promoted some of his former critics associated with the journal Comuna. The revolution will not be rolled back. Unlike his admired Bolívar, Chávez did not plough the seas.

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Venezuela begins seven days of mourning after death of Hugo Chávez

5 Mar

morre-hugo-chavez

 and  in Caracas

  • Vice president Nicolas Maduro takes up interim post
  • Wave of mourning breaks out in streets of Venezuela
  • Chávez to get state funeral in Caracas

Venezuelans began seven days of painful and public mourning on Tuesday night after the announcement that their president, Hugo Chávez, had died aged 58 after a long battle against cancer.

The country’s vice-president, Nicolás Maduro – tipped as a likely successor – broke the news on Tuesday night, prompting a wave of grief in the nation’s streets.

“We have just received the most tragic and awful information. At 4.25pm, President Hugo Chávez Frias died,” Maduro announced in a televised address, his voice choking. “It’s a moment of deep pain,” he said.

Chávez died at a military hospital in Caracas, the capital of the country he has ruled since 1999. As soon as the news was announced, supporters gathered at the city’s main square, Plaza Bolivar, and began chanting: “Chávez vive, la lucha sigue” – “Chávez lives, the battle continues.”

People wearing the red beret the president was known for sang a popular folk song with the words: “Those who die for life cannot be called dead.”

As messages of condolence came from many world leaders, perhaps the most significant was from Barack Obama. He said: “At this challenging time of President Hugo Chávez’s passing, the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government. As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the US remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law and respect for human rights.”

Chávez, the symbol of Latin American socialism, succumbed to a respiratory infection on Tuesday evening, 21 months after he first revealed he had a tumour. He had not been seen in public for three months since emergency surgery in Cuba on 11 December.

He will be given a state funeral in Caracas on Friday, likely to be attended by millions of supporters and leftwing leaders from across the globe who have been inspired by Chávez’s doctrine of “Bolivarian 21st-century socialism”, grateful for the subsidised energy he provided or simply impressed by his charisma. His death will also trigger a presidential election, to be held within 30 days, to decide who controls the world’s greatest untapped reserves of oil.

His designated successor, Maduro, is likely to face Henrique Capriles, the losing opposition candidate in the presidential election held a few months ago in October 2012. Until then, according to the constitution, the interim president should be the head of the national assembly, Diosdado Cabello. However on Tuesday night the Venezuelan foreign minister, Elias Jaua, said Maduro was the interim president. It was not clear whether this would only apply until the official calling of the election and beginning of the campaign, or whether Maduro would remain in charge until the election result was determined.

Robert Menendez, chairman of the US Senate foreign relations committee, called for free and fair elections to replace Chávez. “Hugo Chavez ruled Venezuela with an iron hand and his passing has left a political void that we hope will be filled peacefully and through a constitutional and democratic process, grounded in the Venezuelan constitution and adhering to the Inter-American Democratic Charter.”

Replacing one of most colourful figures on the global political landscape will be an immense challenge. Born to a poor family on the plains, Chávez became a tank commander and a devotee of South America’s liberator, Simón Bolívar. A failed coup in 1992 propelled him into the limelight but it was his ballot box triumphs that made him an inspiration for the resurgent Latin American left and the most outspoken – and often humorous – critic of the US, the war in Iraq and George Bush, whom he described as a “donkey” and a “devil”. Formerly one of the most dynamic political leaders in the world with a globe-trotting schedule and a weekly, unscripted TV broadcast – often hours long – Chávez shocked his countrymen in June 2011 when he revealed that Cuban surgeons had removed a baseball-sized tumour from his pelvic region.

After that, he underwent several rounds of chemotherapy and two more operations in what he described as a “battle for health and for life”. His medical records were never made public, prompting widespread speculation about his imminent demise, but he and his supporters insisted he was recovering. Before the presidential election in October 2012, aides claimed he was well enough to complete a full term. During that campaign, Chávez was clearly affected by his illness. But although he made fewer and shorter appearances, he won more votes than in any of his earlier elections battles, prompting him to proclaim victory in a “perfect battle”.

Fears about his health escalated after he rushed to Cuba for hyperbaric oxygen treatment on 27 November. Less than a fortnight later, he made a televised address in which he said that doctors had discovered malignant cells that required surgery and urged Venezuelans to vote for Maduro if he was incapacitated.

Since his operation in December, Chávez has been visited by family members and several of his closest political allies, including Fidel and Raul Castro of Cuba, Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa and Bolivian president Evo Morales.

Beyond a set of four photographs released last month that showed a remarkably hearty looking Chávez smiling in a hospital bed and flanked by his daughters, the president has not been seen or heard for three months. This prompted frequent rumours that the president was dead or on life support. The government denied this and said he continued to run the country by writing down his orders.

But officials acknowledged that Chávez suffered multiple complications after his surgery including respiratory infections and bleeding. He had to undergo more chemotherapy and drug treatments and could only breathe through a tracheal tube. He returned from Cuba on 18 February at his own request, said officials. Since then he has been treated at Carlos Arvelo military hospital in Caracas.

Hopes for a recovery dimmed on Monday, when minister of communications, Ernesto Villegas, said the president’s condition had declined due to a “new and serious respiratory infection.”

Constitutional questions have been raised by his long hospitalisation and absence from public life, which he formerly dominated with dynamic and provocative appearances on his weekly television address, Hello Mr President.

When he failed to attend his scheduled inauguration on 10 January, the opposition asked who is running the country. The ruling party responded with a rally of more than 100,000 supporters, many carrying banners declaring “We are Chávez.”

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Political Cartoon: US waits Hugo Chavez’s fate

3 Jan

us-waits-chavez-fate

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Here to stay: Chavez wins Venezuelan presidency (PHOTOS)

9 Oct

(Photo from twitter.com user @PresidencialVen)

Incumbent President, Hugo Chavez, has won Venezuela’s tightly-contested presidential elections, clinching a fourth term with over 54 per cent of the vote, according to the National Electoral Council.

With more than 90 per cent of the ballot counted, election officials claim Chavez has won beyond doubt, with rival Henrique Capriles managing just 44,97 per cent of the vote.

“Thank you God! Thank you to everyone,” Chavez said on his Twitter account.

Chavez will take office for a six-year term beginning February 2013.

The election appears to have seen an impressive turnout, with Tibisay Lucena, the National Electoral Council president, stating 81 percent of nearly 19 million registered voters, cast ballots.

Supporters of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez celebrate outside the Miraflores Palace in Caracas.(Reuters / Jorge Silva)

Capriles has congratulated Chavez on his victory and told followers not to feel defeated. “We have planted many seeds across Venezuela and I know that these seeds are going to produce many trees,” he told supporters in a speech late Sunday, AP reports.

Joyful crowds of Chavez supporters cheered as the results were announced. Fireworks have been heard around the capital, Caracas. “Absolutely incredible. Everywhere I look fireworks are going off. The city won’t sleep tonight,” RT’s Lucy Kafanov tweeted from the Venezuelan capital.

Some regional leaders have already congratulated the president-elect with Bolivian leader, Evo Morales – a personal friend of Chavez – saying on his Twiiter feed, “Your victory is also ours. It is of South America and the Caribbean. Congratulations President Chavez!” Cuban President Raul Castro was also among the first to congratulate Chavez, the freshly-reelected leader told the audience in a speech.

Addressing to his supporters, Chavez pledged: “Venezuela will never return to neoliberalism, it will continue transition to the democratic socialism of the 21st century!”

The post-election night turned into a big party for Chavez supporters. Some of them went over the top, riding motorbikes and drinking too much alcohol, reports RT’s Lucy Kafanov. Venezuelan riot police have been deployed to prevent possible violence, she says.

Photo by Lucy Kafanov

Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar explained to RT that there are in fact two elections going on in the country. There are “internal Venezuela elections,” he says, and the geo-political ones.

“It is basically urban middle class, which would love to spend more – go to the malls all the time and sip Martinis in Miami like they always do, in fact in Venezuela, against the poor,” he stated. ”Forty-three per cent of Chavez government’s budget goes to social policies. So he has been building in past years a more [egalitarian] society. If you compare this to other countries in the developing world, it is a great achievement.”

“The problem with Chavez is very personalized by the president himself,” Escobar added. “And there is a lot of corruption built in the system. Much of what Capriles is saying is not strictly neo-liberal or right wing, he is neo-liberal right-winger, not exactly a democrat, but what he has been saying about corruption is correct. This is something that happens not only in Venezuela, but in Argentina and Brazil as well. And this opposition between the poor and the middle class that aspire to live like the middle class in Europe or the US, you find the same in Venezuela, Argentina or Brazil. There is class struggle, there is very hardcore all over these important countries in South America.”

Apart from these internal elections there are another elections, he explained, which is “Chavizmo” (as Chavez is called in Venezuela and all over Latin America) against Washington.

Escobar says that the US would love to see Venezuela as it was before Chavez’s years in power. Instead, Chavez’s new presidency will mean a “decrease of power of Washington’s agents or Washington itself in the integration of South America.”

Supporters of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez celebrate outside the Miraflores Palace in Caracas.(Reuters / Jorge Silva)

Six candidates competed for the presidency in the current elections, however, since the very beginning opinion polls suggested the race was between just two potential leaders.Incumbent President Hugo Chavez, representing the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, has proven prominent, but opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, representing the Coalition for Democratic Unity, was biting at his heels throughout campaigning. Capriles is the first opposition candidate in Chavez’s 13 years in power. The current leader and his young pro-US rival were neck-and-neck in opinion polls.

Chavez was first elected in 1998 and since then has been waging what he calls a “Bolivarian revolution” towards socialism. He has received a lot of negative coverage from Western media, many regarding him as a reactionary, seeking to cling to power for another presidential term. His controversial foreign policies have provoked the anger of the US on more the one occasion.

He has condemned the support of the opposition in Syria and advocates Iran’s right to enrich uranium. In addition, he has been a key figure in the movement for Latin American integration and the exclusion of the US regarding internal policies.

In contrast, 40-year-old Capriles resolved to radically change Venezuelan foreign policy upon election, heralding a possible strengthening of ties with the US. Born in 1972, Venezuelan politician and lawyer Capriles was mayor of Baruta Municipality of Caracas. Since November 2008 he has been governor of the country’s Miranda state.

Supporters of Venezuela’s opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles react to the results of the election that pitted him against President Hugo Chavez, at Capriles’ press center in Caracas.(Reuters / Christian Veron)

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The NYT and the School of Assassins

17 Aug

by JOAN ROELOFS

Saturday, August 11, The New York Times printed a front page article about the nun, Sister Megan Rice, age 82, who committed civil disobedience at the Oak Ridge Tennessee nuclear reservation in a protest against nuclear weapons. The article also informs us that she had been arrested in 1998 protesting at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. The Times then notes that some of the trainees from that school “went on to commit human rights abuses.” You might think of denials of same-sex partner medical benefits, or censorship of soldiers’ mail; in fact, the abuses were (and still are) assassination, torture, and military overthrow of elected governments.

The Times then states: “The school has since been closed.” This is not the case at all. The name has been changed to Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, with the same curriculum.

The SOA, aka WHISC, is probably the best known locale of foreign military training, because of the vigil and civil disobedience organized every November by the School of the Americas Watch organization. Some mainstream news sources note this event; The New York Times usually ignores it. Perhaps that is why they think the school is closed; if it is not in the NYT, it can’t possibly exist.

SOA graduates include the murderers of Jesuit priests, the lay missionary and 3 nuns, Archbishop Romero, and the El Mazote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador; and many other victims. SOA training manuals advocate torture. The recent overthrow of Honduras government was the work of graduates of SOA. Other alumni are Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia.

Ecuador, Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela have withdrawn participation in SOA.

“Multicultural” education doesn’t stop with the SOA. More than 200 institutions in the US train foreign military personnel, and US military sponsored training occurs all over the world, in our overseas institutions and in situ. The 571 page State Department Report on Foreign Military Training for 2010 indicates that approximately 67,100 students from 159 countries participated.

“Education” is offered through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Program, and activities funded through Defense and State Departments. All armament sales are accompanied by training. The State Department International Military Education and Training (IMET) is a major offering. The Expanded IMET (E-IMET) program (arising from criticism of our past trainees’ post-graduate projects—assassination, torture, military takeovers, etc.) is supposed to teach respect for civilian control of the military, human rights, and belief in the rule of law.

Among the DOD programs is Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET). US Special Operations Forces (SOF) train “with friendly foreign forces. . . The primary purpose of JCET is always the training of US SOF personnel, although incidental training benefits may accrue to the foreign forces.”

Programs exist for combating terrorism, counter-narcotics training, humanitarian demining, and a whole university of military and civilian subjects. Civilian government leaders of many countries are also invited and participate in the trainings.

The WHISC brags that it teaches peaceful skills such as public administration, but the purpose is clear: when the troops take over a country they have to know how to do it. Perhaps the DOD has learned from the experience of Lawrence of Arabia: his men captured Damascus, but didn’t have any public administration skills, so lost it.

Each branch of the military has its own network of schools, the military academies have exchange programs, there are regional centers, and civilian institutions have foreign military students. Even military prep schools can get into the picture; some start at pre-Kindergarten. Private contractors also perform training.

Some examples of participating institutions among the 200 are the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (In D.C., Senegal, and Ethiopia); the US Army JFK Special Warfare Center and School, Fort Bragg, NC for Special Forces training (Green Berets); and the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies (Marshall Center).

Land-grant universities were originally planned to include military training, and they are today important centers for these programs. Indonesian special forces—Kopassus—were trained at Norwich University in Vermont. When this was revealed by a reporter, a scandal ensued, the reporter was fired from her newspaper, and the program was shut down. However, the University’s president recently announced that the relationship was resuming.

Among the many countries participating in our military training are Sweden and Switzerland, sometimes thought to be neutral. They are affiliated with NATO, in a “Partnership for Peace” status. So also is Russia, and its troops joined ours in anti-terrorism training this May in Colorado. Another odd grantee is the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, as Lora Lumpe points out in her excellent 2002 Report on military training.

One goal of these programs is to enable foreign military forces to support combined operations and “interoperability” with US forces. Military hardware is also advertised and demonstrated, being an important part of US exports.

The larger picture is positioning the US as a “holding company” for all the world’s militaries. These are also being groomed to penetrate civilian governments, in some cases by the old fashioned military coup. More sinister is the influence our past trainees, now heavily represented in foreign defense ministries, exert on the temporary elected governments in countries considered democracies—especially those considered the most democratic, such as Sweden and Denmark. Currently fashionable “networking” is indeed a potent technique of US domination.

Source

Is the US Poised to Regain Control of Latin America with Regional Proxy Wars Through Colombia?

21 Jun

The Summit of the Americas, Drug Legalization, ‘Asymmetric’ Relations & Security Cooperation

by ANNIE BIRD

The Summits of the Americas began in 1994 as forums to promote free trade. In 2009 the Summit’s focus shifted to demands for the inclusion of Cuba in regional political bodies and the end of the U.S. economic embargo, a debate which continued in this month’s Sixth Summit in Cartagena.

But a new topic made its way into the news from the April 14 and 15 Summit in Cartagena, the call to discuss ‘decriminalization’ of drugs. Strangely, the call was launched by precisely the presidents which have most embraced militarization under the guise of the drug war. Though spearheaded by Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, reportedly a former CIA asset and former general accused of carrying out crimes against humanity, Perez Molina claims he thought of the proposal together with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes on April 15, Presidents Obama and Santos signed the U.S. – Colombia Action Plan for Regional Security Cooperation, an agreement for security cooperation throughout the hemisphere and in West Africa, whose stated objective is to respond to increased insecurity generated by organized crime.

The call for debate on such an important and sensitive topic by Washington’s military allies, while the U.S. launches with them a new regional ‘security’ project is confusing. But it also occurs as the U.S. attempts to challenge a set of popular South American leaders intent on forging an independent Latin America.

U.S. dominance is a sensitive subject in Latin America, and there is very little political capital to be gained from pandering to Washington. To the contrary, those that challenge the U.S. have become extremely popular, which leads to the suspicion that the call from the drug warriors for a debate on “decriminalization” could be a red herring to garner popularity for a new set of U.S. friendly Latin American presidents.

Colombian Host Helps US Retake Center Stage at the Summit

As South American leaders focus on building up a Latin American economic and political block with independence from its northern, English speaking neighbors, the Summits have been the sites of diplomatic tensions.

In 2009, during the last Summit in Trinidad and Tobago, US press reports focused on Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega’s “rant” against U.S. imperialism and reported on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s gift to Obama of the book “The Open Veins of Latin America” as an affront.

Whatever deference to Obama may have been missing in Trinidad and Tobago was more than made up for in Colombia where it was reported that in the ceremonial dinner Obama sat on a raised platform well above the other presidents, who could not be served until Obama arrived and was seated, well over an hour after everyone else.

Miami, the unofficial business capital of Latin America and nerve center of the political network that advance the interests of U.S. based corporations in Latin America was also given the opportunity to again flex its muscles in the context of a Summit in a Summit of corporate CEO’s convoked by the Colombian president of the Inter American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno.

Immersed in his battle with cancer, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez did not attend. In the 2005 Summit Chavez pronounced the original summit agenda, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), dead and buried, as Venezuela launched an alternative, the Bolivarian Alliance for Latin America (ALBA).

The only point of North- South tension reported from the Summit was the panel discussion turned debate, facilitated by co-panelist President Santos, between Obama and Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, in which Vanity Fair reports that Rousseff referred to the ‘asymmetric relationship’ between the U.S. and Latin America a dozen times.

April 15, Obama and Santos Announce the U.S. Colombia Action Plan for Regional Security

The diplomatic role Colombia played in restoring the U.S. President’s asymmetric relationship in the Summit was backed up by the signing of a political-military agreement aimed at strengthening the U.S.’s military presence in the region. President Santos, who was Minister of Defense under Alvaro Uribe, and President Obama “on the margins” of the Summit on April 15th signed an agreement to establish the U.S. Colombia Action Plan for Regional Security.

The White House described the agreement as building on, ie. expanding U.S. Colombian security operations from Central America to the whole hemisphere and even Africa. The White House referred to the ‘success,’ without describing specific benchmarks to demonstrate ‘success’, of Operation Martillo, launched last year, partnering the U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force- South (JIATF-S) and the Colombian Navy and Air Forces in Central America.

JIATF-S, a unit under the U.S. military’s Southern Command (SouthCom), left Panama for Miami 19 years ago when the U.S. left the Canal Zone. Last year JIATF-S came back to Panama providing “Operational Support” in a newly reopened U.S. military base which serves as the Center of Operations for the Central American System for Regional Integration’s Regional Security Strategy (SICA-COSR).

COSR will most likely be the regional center for the JIATF-S’s C4I border surveillance program, which creates technology canals of radars and other electronic surveillance equipment linked to Colombian and Mexican border control technology.

The White House also mentions that the Colombian National Police are providing assistance and training through the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) to all of Central America except Nicaragua, Central America’s only ALBA member since the 2009 military coup in Honduras. In December 2011, Panamanian President Martinelli announced that the US and Colombia were partnering in creating a border control school for the region’s police and military in Panama.

CARSI is being implemented through SICA’s Regional Security Strategy, which is promoted by a ‘group of friends,’ spearheaded by the United States and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington, DC, but which also includes, among others, Colombia, Chile, Brazil and Germany. SICA- ESCA is expected to have an annual budget of over US$1 billion, provided by the Group of Friends, mostly in the form of 22 loans from the IADB.

From Central America to the Hemisphere: Biden’s Lunch with Central American Presidents While General Fraser Explained SouthComs Agenda to Congress

In preparation for the 6th Summit of the Americas, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Mexico and Central America on March 4, 5 and 6. He began in Mexico where the State Department’s Merida Initiative partnered with President Felipe Calderon’s drug war in 2006, and has resulted in an estimated 50,000 deaths.

On Tuesday March 6, Biden lunched in Tegucigalpa with all the presidents of Central America mainly to discuss CARSI, the Central American version of the Merida Initiative. The same day the Commander of the US Southern Command, General Fraser, presented his annual address to the Armed Services Committee in the House of Representatives, focusing strongly on Central America.

In the context of Biden’s visit, the US ambassador to Honduras, Lisa Kubiske, commented that the diminishing engagement of the US in the Middle East means that US Armed Forces can increase their commitments in Central America, a scenario that is already taking shape.

Fraser explained that the US agenda in the hemisphere is stability, and spoke extensively about Central American crime gangs as a threat to stability in the region, which he claimed require a military response and assistance from the State Department in training and funding police forces. Another threat to stability he described were alleged protests and unrest in certain ALBA nations, while he expressed concern about overtures from the Iranian government to Venezuela.

He also asserted that “criminal activities extend into the Venezuelan government,” ironic given Biden’s presence in Honduras where deep implications of government officials and security forces in organized crime, including gangs, have been completely overlooked by the U.S.

The politically charged discourse behind the ‘drug war’ underscores the fact that since 2006 the U.S. has established a massive military presence from Mexico to Colombia, in what looks like a move to insure that the independent governments of South America don’t spread north, and now, apparently, the U.S. and Colombian security agenda is throughout the Hemisphere.

At the 5th Summit of the Americas, the Left Controlled Central America

In 2009 Biden also visited Central America to prepare for the Summit, but the cards were stacked very differently. Left leaning governments, many affiliated with former revolutionary movements, had taken control of Central America through elections.

Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista movement, was president of Nicaragua, firmly staked out in office with a large base of support and a political pact with the opposition. Mauricio Funes of the FMLN political party, born from the revolutionary movement, had just been elected president of El Salvador. Guatemala’s president, Alvaro Colom, who had undertaken his first presidential bid in 1999 as the candidate for another revolutionary movement turned political party, the URNG, brought some URNG associated political figures into his administration.

In Honduras, Manuel Zelaya had led his nation into joining ALBA, and consolidated an overwhelming base of support. Panama was ruled by Martin Torrijos, son of the “leftist” de facto military leader Omar Torrijos (1968-1981) whose 1981 death in a plane crash is widely speculated to have been the work of the CIA. A year before the 5th Summit of the Americas Torrijos had met with Raul Castro in Cuba to discuss signing an energy agreement. Oscar Arias, then President of Costa Rica, though a firm US ally is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and many consider him a moderate.

Central America Turns to the Right, with a Big Push from the North

Just three months after the 2009 Summit, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was deposed in a coup broadly understood in Honduras to have been backed by the U.S. government. Guatemala’s Alvaro Colom was succeeded by Otto Perez Molina, a retired general and a firm US ally. Mauricio Funes, an outsider in the FMLN political party, has made many concessions to US interests, particularly in relation to security matters recently sweeping all FLMN aligned appointees from top security positions and replacing them with former military.

Panama’s Torrijos was succeeded by the right wing Ricardo Martinelli, who comes from one of Panama’s oldest economic and political oligarch families, and in Costa Rica Laura Chinchilla is considered right wing and very pro US. Daniel Ortega remains in office, though his 2011 reelection has been the focus of intense criticism from the State Department, former diplomats, and the media.

Political Opportunism: Drug Legalization Call from Guatemala’s Perez Molina

With three months in office, Perez Molina has leapt into the spotlight by promoting a debate around legalization of drugs, donning the hat of reformer as opposed to his previous fame as a former military intelligence chief implicated in war crimes like torture and genocide. Even before Perez Molina assumed office, in December 2010, he surprised all by advancing a call for dialog about the possibility of “depenalization,” ie. legalization, of drugs.

The strangeness of Perez Molina’s position stems from his wholehearted embrace of militarization in the framework of the war on drugs. During the first two months of his presidency his new appointees on repeated occasions have criminalized social protest, stating that those who block highways are backed by organized crime and drug traffickers.

On February 14, 2012 Guatemala’s Vice Minister for Security, former colonel Julio Rivera Clavería, referred to the leaders of the Sasiguan, Cunen indigenous community, which opposes the construction of a hydroelectric dam on their lands by the Italian energy company ENEL, as drug traffickers. On February 14 Sasiguan residents caught three police officers leaving the scene after the destruction of over 50 acres of crops, the latest in a series of actions harassing and intimidating the community. The three were detained and taken to the community’s traditional indigenous leaders. Rivera led a force of 600 soldiers to “rescue” three security guards, accusing community leaders of being drug traffickers.

Perez Molina has also enthusiastically promoted use of the Guatemalan military’s special forces unit, the Kaibiles, in anti-drug policing, while placing Kaibiles in the highest three command positions in the military. On April 6, 2011 Guatemalan Vice Minister of Security Mario Castaneda reported that current and former Kaibles were training members of the Zeta drug gang and participating in drug smuggling, while noting that a series of weapons robberies from military bases in Guatemala and Honduras had benefited Zetas.

The Mexico–Guatemala- Colombia Axis: Creating Latin America’s “Independent” Block Favoring Northern Businesses Interests

With his forceful yet polished personality, Perez Molina is quickly projecting regional leadership advancing statements that appear to confront US policy, like that Guatemalan troops are capable of fighting the drug war and that he did not intend to ask for US troop support. Strong words for a man who visited SouthCom together with his vice president and three highest ministerial appointees in November, even before taking office, to pave way for cooperation. In 1994 he was reported by an investigative journalist to have been a CIA asset, and he has been extremely close to the US embassy as his frequent appearances in Wikileaks documents attest.

Perez Molina is an adept politician and there is a lot of political capital to be garnered from appearing to challenge the US in Latin America, especially on drug policy. It is not lost on Latin Americans that the US is the main supplier of weapons to the region’s drug cartels, that it is US and Canadian consumption that drives the drug trade, and that most of the casualties in the US’s drug war are Latin Americans, and their democracies.

The first acting president in Latin America to clearly call for legalization was Colombian President Santos in November 2011, though in August 2011 Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon stated that if the US could not curb consumption it must implement ‘market based solutions’ to the importation of drugs to the States, solutions not involving illegal border crossings.

The Drug War Must End, But Is there a Hidden Agenda?

On February 23, 2009 the Wall Street Journal launched the current legalization debate, publishing a powerful op-ed by former presidents Fernando Cardoso, Cesar Gaviria and Ernesto Zedillo of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico respectively, asserting that “Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption simply haven’t worked,” and calling for a review of US led drug war policies, noting that the “alarming power of the drug cartels is leading to a criminalization of politics and a politicization of crime. And the corruption of the judicial and political system is undermining the foundations of democracy in several Latin American countries.”

The US’s drug war in Latin America is criminal and must end. But the call to ‘debate’ drug policy is being advanced by the same US aligned political figures that have most embraced the militarization of the region in the name of the drug war.

The US’s agenda in Latin America is regaining hegemony. But US allies have been lacking political personalities capable of garnering strong support in their home countries. Openness to dialog or even limited reform on drug policy, which appears to challenge Uncle Sam’s agenda, could go a long way in gaining popular support, generating an apparently ‘independent’ block of right leaning political figures to challenge the South American lineup, while continuing security operations to impose transnational business interests through repression and criminalization.

Source

Venezuela’s Minimum Wage to Rise 32.25% in 2012

29 Apr

By Ewan Robertson

Mérida, 9th April 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuela’s national minimum wage is to increase 32.25% in 2012, announced Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday.

In a televised address from Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Chavez explained that the wage rise would take place in two phases. On 1 May the minimum monthly salary will increase by 15%, from 1,548 bolivars (US $360) to 1,780 bolivars (US $414). Then on 1 September the wage will increase a further 15% to 2,048 bolivars (US $476), a net rise of 32.25%.

The wage increase means that in dollar terms Venezuela will have the highest minimum wage in Latin America. Including legally guaranteed monthly food tickets, currently valued at 977 bolivars (US $223), the wage rise will represent a gross minimum income of almost US $700 for formally employed workers in Venezuela.

The measure also looks set to rise above inflation, at 27.6% in 2011 according to the Venezuelan Central Bank. With net inflation of 3.5% in the first three months of this year, the government is currently on track to meets its target of 20 – 23% annual inflation for 2012.

Chavez stated that the wage increase will cost the Venezuela state 20,055,678 bolivars (US $4,664,000), which will be paid for with oil income and taxes. “This leap forward in favour of the workers forms part of the project of redistribution of national income to achieve substantive equality,” he said.

The increase will benefit 3,903,408 public sector workers, as well as private sector workers and Venezuela’s 2,500,000 pensioners through the social security system and new “Greater Love” social program.

The Venezuelan president also cited figures which demonstrated that the number of workers receiving the minimum wage in the country’s formal economy had fallen from 65% in 1999, when his administration entered office, to 21% in 2010.

According to Venezuela’s National Institute of Statistics, unemployment was 9.2% for February. Of those employed, 41% work in informal employment, down from 55% when Chavez entered office.

In 2011 the minimum wage increased by 26.5%.

“Every year without fail the [Bolivarian] Revolution has decreed an increase in the minimum salary, as a way of solidly constructing social justice. It is one of the reasons why Venezuela is the country with the lowest indicator of inequality in this continent,” emphasised Chavez in his address.

The Venezuelan head of state also outlined advances in drafting the new Labour Law, which is expected to be passed by presidential decree on 1 May.

Chavez said the law will contain provisions for a new Social Benefits Fund, which will guarantee that money destined for benefits payments to workers is not diverted to other ends. The Fund will be supported by Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, through a new body PDVSA Social, which will receive 4% of PDVSA dividends.

Reactions

Venezuela’s pro-government umbrella union the National Union of Workers (UNT) indicated that the 32.25% wage increase is close to their own suggested rise of at least 33.59%.

UNT coordinator Marcela Maspero stated that the rise does not solve all issues regarding salaries in Venezuela.

“It is necessary to do more to give workers a salary that allows them to live with dignity and cover basic material, social and intellectual necessities,” she said.

Alternative news website Aporrea drew attention to the issue of salaries above minimum wage, as it was not announced whether they would also see similar increases as part of the rise.

Venezuela’s business federation Fedecamaras criticised the salary increase as “an isolated measure” that would not raise citizen’s buying power in the context of an “adverse climate against private investment”.

The wage increase comes among various government policies to guarantee living standards and combat inflation in Venezuela, including the introduction of regulated prices for 19 basic household and bathroom items on 1 April this year.

Source

Cuba’s Cure

7 Feb

Why is Cuba exporting its health care miracle to the world’s poor?

by Sarah van Gelder

Cubans say they offer health care to the world’s poor because they have big hearts. But what do they get in return?

They live longer than almost anyone in Latin America. Far fewer babies die. Almost everyone has been vaccinated, and such scourges of the poor as parasites, TB, malaria, even HIV/AIDS are rare or non-existent. Anyone can see a doctor, at low cost, right in the neighborhood.

The Cuban health care system is producing a population that is as healthy as those of the world’s wealthiest countries at a fraction of the cost. And now Cuba has begun exporting its system to under-served communities around the world—including the United States.

The story of Cuba’s health care ambitions is largely hidden from the people of the United States, where politics left over from the Cold War maintain an embargo on information and understanding. But it is increasingly well-known in the poorest communities of Latin America, the Caribbean, and parts of Africa where Cuban and Cuban-trained doctors are practicing.

In the words of Dr. Paul Farmer, Cuba is showing that “you can introduce the notion of a right to health care and wipe out the diseases of poverty.”

Health Care for All Cubans

Many elements of the health care system Cuba is exporting around the world are common-sense practices. Everyone has access to doctors, nurses, specialists, and medications. There is a doctor and nurse team in every neighborhood, although somewhat fewer now, with 29,000 medical professionals serving out of the country—a fact that is causing some complaints. If someone doesn’t like their neighborhood doctor, they can choose another one.

House calls are routine, in part because it’s the responsibility of the doctor and nurse team to understand you and your health issues in the context of your family, home, and neighborhood. This is key to the system. By catching diseases and health hazards before they get big, the Cuban medical system can spend a little on prevention rather than a lot later on to cure diseases, stop outbreaks, or cope with long-term disabilities. When a health hazard like dengue fever or malaria is identified, there is a coordinated nationwide effort to eradicate it. Cubans no longer suffer from diphtheria, rubella, polio, or measles and they have the lowest AIDS rate in the Americas, and the highest rate of treatment and control of hypertension.

For health issues beyond the capacity of the neighborhood doctor, polyclinics provide specialists, outpatient operations, physical therapy, rehabilitation, and labs. Those who need inpatient treatment can go to hospitals; at the end of their stay, their neighborhood medical team helps make the transition home. Doctors at all levels are trained to administer acupuncture, herbal cures, or other complementary practices that Cuban labs have found effective. And Cuban researchers develop their own vaccinations and treatments when medications aren’t available due to the blockade, or when they don’t exist.

Exporting Health Care

For decades, Cuba has sent doctors abroad and trained international students at its medical schools. But things ramped up beginning in 1998 when Hurricanes George and Mitch hammered Central America and the Caribbean. As they had often done, Cuban doctors rushed to the disaster zone to help those suffering the aftermath. But when it was time to go home, it was clear to the Cuban teams that the medical needs extended far beyond emergency care. So Cuba made a commitment to post doctors in several of these countries and to train local people in medicine so they could pick up where the Cuban doctors left off. ELAM, the Havana-based Latin American School of Medicine, was born, and with it the offer of 10,000 scholarships for free medical training.

Today the program has grown to 22,000 students from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and the United States who attend ELAM and 28 other medical schools across Cuba. The students represent dozens of ethnic groups, 51 percent are women, and they come from more than 30 countries. What they have in common is that they would otherwise be unable to get a medical education. When a slum dweller in Port au Prince, a young indigenous person from Bolivia, the son or daughter of a farmer in Honduras, or a street vendor in the Gambia wants to become a doctor, they turn to Cuba. In some cases, Venezuela pays the bill. But most of the time, Cuba covers tuition, living expenses, books, and medical care. In return, the students agree that, upon completion of their studies, they will return to their own under-served communities to practice medicine.

The curriculum at ELAM begins, for most students, with up to a year of “bridging” courses, allowing them to catch up on basic math, science, and Spanish skills. The students are treated for the ailments many bring with them.

At the end of their training, which can take up to eight years, most students return home for residencies. Although they all make a verbal commitment to serve the poor, a few students quietly admit that they don’t see this as a permanent commitment.

One challenge of the Cuban approach is making sure their investment in medical education benefits those who need it most. Doctors from poor areas routinely move to wealthier areas or out of the country altogether. Cuba trains doctors in an ethic of serving the poor. They learn to see medical care as a right, not as a commodity, and to see their own role as one of service. Stories of Cuban doctors who practice abroad suggest these lessons stick. They are known for taking money out of their own pockets to buy medicine for patients who can’t afford to fill a prescription, and for touching and even embracing patients.

Cuba plans with the help of Venezuela to take their medical training to a massive scale and graduate 100,000 doctors over the next 15 years, according to Dr. Juan Ceballos, advisor to the vice minister of public health. To do so, Cuba has been building new medical schools around the country and abroad, at a rapid clip.

But the scale of the effort required to address current and projected needs for doctors requires breaking out of the box. The new approach is medical schools without walls. Students meet their teachers in clinics and hospitals, in Cuba and abroad, practicing alongside their mentors. Videotaped lectures and training software mean students can study anywhere there are Cuban doctors. The lower training costs make possible a scale of medical education that could end the scarcity of doctors.

U.S. Students in Cuba

Recently, Cuba extended the offer of free medical training to students from the United States. It started when Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi got curious after he and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus repeatedly encountered Cuban or Cuban-trained doctors in poor communities around the world.

They visited Cuba in May 2000, and during a conversation with Fidel Castro, Thompson brought up the lack of medical access for his poor, rural constituents. “He [Castro] was very familiar with the unemployment rates, health conditions, and infant mortality rates in my district, and that surprised me,” Thompson said. Castro offered scholarships for low-income Americans under the same terms as the other international students—they have to agree to go back and serve their communities.

Today, about 90 young people from poor parts of the United States have joined the ranks of international students studying medicine in Cuba.

The offer of medical training is just one way Cuba has reached out to the United States. Immediately after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, 1,500 Cuban doctors volunteered to come to the Gulf Coast. They waited with packed bags and medical supplies, and a ship ready to provide backup support. Permission from the U.S. government never arrived.

“Our government played politics with the lives of people when they needed help the most,” said Representative Thompson. “And that’s unfortunate.”

When an earthquake struck Pakistan shortly afterwards, though, that country’s government warmly welcomed the Cuban medical professionals. And 2,300 came, bringing 32 field hospitals to remote, frigid regions of the Himalayas. There, they set broken bones, treated ailments, and performed operations for a total of 1.7 million patients.

The disaster assistance is part of Cuba’s medical aid mission that has extended from Peru to Indonesia, and even included caring for 17,000 children sickened by the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine.

It isn’t only in times of disaster that Cuban health care workers get involved. Some 29,000 Cuban health professionals are now practicing in 69 countries—mostly in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. In Venezuela, about 20,000 of them have enabled President Hugo Chávez to make good on his promise to provide health care to the poor. In the shantytowns around Caracas and the banks of the Amazon, those who organize themselves and find a place for a doctor to practice and live can request a Cuban doctor.

As in Cuba, these doctors and nurses live where they serve, and become part of the community. They are available for emergencies, and they introduce preventative health practices.

Some are tempted to use their time abroad as an opportunity to leave Cuba. In August, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a new policy that makes it easier for Cuban medical professionals to come to the U.S. But the vast majority remain on the job and eventually return to Cuba.

Investing in Peace

How do the Cuban people feel about using their country’s resources for international medical missions? Those I asked responded with some version of this: We Cubans have big hearts. We are proud that we can share what we have with the world’s poor.

Nearly everyone in Cuba knows someone who has served on a medical mission. These doctors encounter maladies that have been eradicated from Cuba. They expand their understanding of medicine and of the suffering associated with poverty and powerlessness, and they bring home the pride that goes with making a difference.

And pride is a potent antidote to the dissatisfaction that can result from the economic hardships that continue 50 years into Cuba’s revolution.

From the government’s perspective, their investment in medical internationalism is covered, in part, by ALBA, the new trade agreement among Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba. ALBA, an alternative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas, puts human needs ahead of economic growth, so it isn’t surprising that Cuba’s health care offerings fall within the agreement, as does Venezuelan oil, Bolivian natural gas, and so on. But Cuba also offers help to countries outside of ALBA.

“All we ask for in return is solidarity,” Dr. Ceballos says.

“Solidarity” has real-world implications. Before Cuba sent doctors to Pakistan, relations between the two countries were not great, Ceballos says. But now the relationship is “magnificent.” The same is true of Guatemala and El Salvador. “Although they are conservative governments, they have become more flexible in their relationship with Cuba,” he says.

Those investments in health care missions “are resources that prevent confrontation with other nations,” Ceballos explains. “The solidarity with Cuba has restrained aggressions of all kinds.” And in a statement that acknowledges Cuba’s vulnerabilities on the global stage, Ceballos puts it this way: “It’s infinitely better to invest in peace than to invest in war.”

Imagine, then, that this idea took hold. Even more revolutionary than the right to health care for all is the idea that an investment in health—or in clean water, adequate food or housing—could be more powerful, more effective at building security than bombers and aircraft carriers.

Source 

Cold War Butcher in Custody

21 Jan

CIA-trained ‘terrorist’ in US court

Margarita Morales Fernandez couldn’t be in court to see the former CIA agent who allegedly killed her father and 72 others aboard a Cuban airplane in one of the world’s worst airline attacks before September 11, 2001.

Fernandez and hundreds other victims are carefully watching the trial of former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles in US federal court.

His 11 charges include perjury for lying to US immigration officials, but terror-related offences are not on the docket.

“It will be 34 years since the terrorist attack that killed my father, but I remember it like it was yesterday, “Fernandez told Al Jazeera in a phone interview from Havana, Cuba. “I don’t think this trial takes us closer to justice.”

Victims of terrorism

On October 6, 1976 a bomb exploded on Cubana Airlines flight 455, blowing it out of the sky and into the waters off Barbados, killing everyone on board, including Fernandez’s father, the captain of Cuba’s national fencing team.

Posada, 82, a Cuban-born Venezuelan-citizen, was considered the mastermind— a CIA-trained explosives expert who would stop at nothing in his personal vendetta against Cuban president Fidel Castro. Planned in Venezuela, the attack killed mostly Cuban nationals.

“The terrorist activities of Posada Carriles are part of the [current US court] indictment, but they are not what he is being prosecuted for,” said José Pertierra, a Cuban-born Washington lawyer who is representing Venezuela’s interests at the trial. “He is only being prosecuted for lying about them [attacks]… to an immigration judge in a naturalisation hearing.”

Venezuela jailed Posada for the bombing, but the wily operative escaped from prison disguised as a priest and eventually fled to the US, stopping in other Latin American countries along the way where he continued his anti-Castro activities. Venezuela has repeatedly called for his extradition.

“For many years, the truth has been hidden,” Fernandez said. “But I want people to learn that there are a lot of victims of terrorism in Cuba as well as in the US and other countries.”

Fury and personal vendetta

To examine the life of Luis Posada Carriles is to re-live the worst periods of the Cold War – and beyond. Angry about Cuba’s 1959 revolution, he joined CIA Brigade 2506 in February 1961 to invade the island as part of the ill-fated attack known as the Bay of Pigs, declassified documents reveal.

While Posada himself did not fight at the Bay of Pigs, CIA officials thought he was promising and he joined US army in 1963 at their behest, training at Ft. Benning, Georgia. By 1965, he was a paid CIA operative stationed in Miami.

“The CIA taught us everything,” he told The New York Times in 1998. “They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb trained us in acts of sabotage.”

He stayed with the agency in Miami until 1967, and later became a “paid asset” in Venezuela from 1968 to 1976, according to declassified documents.

CIA- trained and well- connected

After the Cuban attack, and his escape from prison, Posada returned to the CIA’s payroll in the 1980s, supervising arms shipments to the Contras in Nicaragua as part of what became known as the Iran-Contra affair, a murky scandal where the US government funneled money from arms sales to Iran—its official enemy- to right-wing militias in Nicaragua.

His history with the CIA and other clandestine operations means that Posada “has a lot of secrets to tell and friends in high places in Washington,” Pertierra, Venezuela’s lawyer, said in an interview with Al Jazeera outside the court-house.

Cold War history and imagery loomed large during the trial. At one point, a middle-aged man wearing all black clothing, a beret, combat boots and dark glasses, who said he was a member of the Black Panther Party, the iconic 1960s black-rights militant group, walked into the court room. He left soon after, looking bored with the proceedings.

But Posada’s crimes are not just a matter for historians, as Fernandez quickly points out. “Since our father died, our family has been so sad,” she said.

His attacks continued long after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 2000, a Panamanian court convicted him of attempting to kill Cuban president Fidel Castro with 200 pounds of dynamite. He was pardoned by the country’s outgoing president four years later and set free.

Confession

During an interview with The New York Times in 1998, Posada admitted to organising a series of hotel bombings in Cuba a year earlier, injuring 11 people and killing Italian businessman Fabio diCelmo. “We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don’t come anymore,” Posada told the newspaper. “The Italian was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I sleep like a baby.”

Understandably after comments like this, Posada’s attorneys wouldn’t let him speak to media during the trial. The author of the New York Times piece will be called as a witness during the case. Posada has since stated that he mis-spoke in the interview because he is not fluent in English.

Posada, 82, turned up in Miami in 2005 and gave a public news conference, angering some US officials. He claims to have arrived in Miami on a bus, after sneaking into the US by crossing the Rio Grande River from Mexico. He was indicted by a Grand Jury in Texas for unlawfully entering the US in 2005, although the charges were later dismissed.

That year, Venezuela again asked for his extradition. But officials denied extradition to Venezuela or Cuba, stating that Posada could be tortured in those countries.

“The only evidence I have seen of torture in Cuba comes from the US military base at Guantanamo Bay,” Pertierra said.

Pertierra, along with officials from the Department of Homeland Security, think the claim that Posada crossed into the US through Texas is preposterous, as the illegal journey across the border is too arduous for a man in his eighties facing health problems.

“I have to ask myself, did he really cross the desert?” Gina Garrett-Jackson, a lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security, said while being questioned in the witness stand during court testimony on Tuesday.

Jackson faced cross-examination by Posada’s attorneys, who argued that she involved the Department of Justice and other branches of government in Posada’s initial immigration case in order to lay the groundwork for criminal charges related his to terrorist activity.

Mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks

Posada had initially presented a claim for political asylum in the US, before his legal team unilaterally withdrew that plan.

Jackson said Posada failed the requirements for political asylum in the US in 2005 due to his conviction for plotting the bombing in Panama and other mis-deeds.

In court, lawyers played audio recordings of the 2005 asylum hearing, when Jackson, who was working for the Department of Homeland Security, questioned Posada.

“This Cuba bombing campaign in 1997 was a very big event, would you agree?” Jackson asked.

“I don’t know, I have no opinion,” Posada responded.

A 2006 statement from the US Department of Justice states: “Luis Posada-Carriles is an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks … a flight risk … [and] a danger to the community.”

But the Justice Department’s view does not seem to be shared by other branches of the US government. The incriminating secrets Posada likely posses, tense relations between the US, Cuba and Venezuela and domestic political concerns—the anti-Castro Cuban population in Miami holds national electoral clout far beyond its numbers – mean that extradition or terrorism charges seem unlikely.

“This case illustrates the double face of the US war on terrorism,” Pertierra, who represents Venezuelan interests, said as court adjourned for lunch. “You can’t pick and choose which terrorists you prosecute and which ones you protect. You can’t have first class victims and second class victims; all victims must be mourned equally.”

Source

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US Strategy in Latin America was Wrong

15 May

Three years ago I wrote an article arguing that the political changes sweeping across Latin America were epoch-making and probably irreversible, and that they would fundamentally alter the relationship between the region and the United States. Some of the most important economic causes of the region’s shift to the left – including the unprecedented long-term growth failure since 1980 – were unrecognised then and remain mostly unacknowledged to this day.

At the time, Washington’s stated strategy was to isolate Venezuela from its neighbours. This was before the election of additional left governments in Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Paraguay and El Salvador. I argued that this strategy was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what was happening in the region, and that it would only succeed in isolating the United States from its southern neighbours.

All this has come to pass, but more interestingly, for the first time we have an acknowledgement of this failure from the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. At a press conference last Friday, she said in response to a question about Venezuela:

“When we look around the world, actually, we see a number of countries and leaders – Chávez is one of them but not the only one – who, over the last eight years, has become more and more negative and oppositional to the United States. … The prior administration tried to isolate them, tried to support opposition to them, tried to … turn them into international pariahs. It didn’t work.”

This is a remarkable confession, and it didn’t get a fraction of the attention it deserved. Clinton did not name the countries, but in Latin America, Bolivia would have to be included as a country where Washington has incurred resentment by supporting opposition movements against President Evo Morales. And of course there is the 47-year failure of the embargo against Cuba:

“We’re facing an almost united front against the United States regarding Cuba. Every country, even those with whom we are closest, is just saying you’ve got to change.”

She didn’t mention that they are also saying that Washington must change its policy toward Venezuela. President Lula da Silva of Brazil, who has consistently defended Hugo Chávez, has told Barack Obama as much and reportedly counselled him at the Summit of the Americas not to listen to his advisers – most of whom have appeared to seek continued hostility toward Venezuela and possibly Bolivia.

It is remarkable that pressure for a reality-based view of the world has had to come from the south, and says a lot about the state of civil society in the US. How is it that nobody from our leading foreign policy institutions could have figured this out years ago? On Cuba, there has been dissent – partly because there are powerful business interests that want access to the island, and partly because 47 years of failure is a long time even for slow learners.

But on Venezuela, the primary focus of US foreign policy in the hemisphere for the past seven years, there has been an overwhelming consensus of fantasy and hype. Chávez is the only democratically elected leader in the world, facing a media that is still overwhelmingly controlled by his political opposition, to be successfully maligned as a “dictator”. And a threat to the US – what exactly has he done to the US, anyway, other than provide a $100m annual subsidy to poor people here for heating oil?

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The sad reality is that while the US has at least some civil society organisations that can present an independent view to the public on domestic issues, on foreign policy issues we are much more like Russia. The vast majority of expert opinion on foreign policy that is allowed access to major media in the US consists of government officials, former government officials or people who or are otherwise influenced by the government. This is one reason why it was so easy to invade Iraq and so difficult to get out of there or out of Afghanistan – in spite of the American public’s long-standing lack of enthusiasm for sending combat troops overseas.

Hillary Clinton also took note that Russia, Iran and China are gaining economic and political influence in Latin America, and recognised that we are operating in “a multi-polar world.” This is also obvious – China has recently invested billions in Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba and Ecuador, and agreed to a $10bn currency swap arrangement with Argentina. This week China also passed the US as the number one recipient of Brazilian exports. But Clinton’s recognition of a “multi-polar world” is unusual and probably unprecedented for a US secretary of state.

The signals from Washington remain mixed. The state department last week took another gratuitous swipe at Venezuela, listing the country as a “terrorist safe haven”, among other unsubstantiated allegations. (A few days later, Venezuela deported five Colombian guerillas to their home country). Obama’s top economic adviser Larry Summers recently made a point of saying that Argentina would not qualify for the IMF’s flexible credit line, from which Mexico had just received a $47bn commitment.

Washington is the IMF’s principal overseer. Mexico and Brazil also each have access to a $30bn currency swap arrangement with the US Federal Reserve. These are large commitments, and a reminder that Washington is still using its clout in a time of crisis to play political favourites, rather than contributing to regional balance of payments support.

But Clinton’s unprecedented reality-based remarks are an indication that she and Obama may have taken home some important lessons from their conversations with other presidents at the Summit of the Americas on 22 April. Such new thinking would be long overdue.

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/07-10

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