Daily Headlines: August 18, 2016

* Haiti: The United Nations admitted to have “played a role” in a cholera outbreak that has killed at least 10,000 people in Haiti but stopped short of admitting peacekeepers caused the epidemic.

* El Salvador: The Salvadoran Supreme Court unanimously ruled to send former Colonel Guillermo Benavides to prison over civil war crimes and refused an extradition request from Spain relating to the 1989 massacre of a group of Jesuit priests.

* Venezuela: “Venezuela will represent a growing supply risk for oil markets in 2017,” concluded a recent report from Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

* Paraguay: Several hundred protesters participated in an anti-government march on the second anniversary of the inauguration of President Horacio Cartes.

YouTube Source – AFP (From January 2015: “Five years since the 2010 earthquake, the cholera epidemic in Haiti is still claiming lives, and there are recriminations over who was responsible for bringing it to the country.”)
 
Online Sources – Fox News Latino, Bloomberg, Reuters, The New York Times

Paraguay: Thousands Protest in General Strike

Several thousand Paraguayans took to the streets on Wednesday as part of a general strike against the government’s economic and social policies. 

The nationwide protests were organized by labor unions and were held on the twentieth anniversary of the country’s previous general strike in 1994.  Social groups, peasants and teachers were among the scores of participants in the general strike and called for a variety of demands including better education, reducing the fare on public transportation and agrarian reform.  Labor unions, for example, have sought a 25% across-the-board salary increase and are upset over a law permitting private companies to invest in government infrastructure in exchange for owning concessions and charging fees. 

“(The government) claims that there has been development, that funds are distributed across the nation.  But that money doesn’t flow to the workers or the peasants, nor does it arrive to the hospitals or the schools,” declared labor leader Teodolina Villalba.

The largest demonstration took part in the capital of Asunción where traffic reportedly came to a standstill and most businesses and schools were closed. Marches were also organized in the country’s interior cities and for the most part were peaceful aside from minor tensions resulting from the temporary shutdown of the Friendship Bridge connecting Ciudad del Este to Foz do Iguacu, Brazil.

Prior to the strike, president Horacio Cartes gave in by permitting the establishment of dialogues in order to hear the demands from the protesters.  Otherwise it appears unlikely that he will provide any more concessions such as the public-private investment plan that Public Works Minister Ramon Jimenez defended as necessary to improve government infrastructure.

Daily Headlines: September 20, 2013

* Vatican: In an interview released yesterday, Argentine-born Pope Francis called on Catholics to show greater acceptance towards gays, divorcees and women who have had an abortion or risk that “the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards.”

* Chile: Sen. Isabel Allende, the daughter of the president who was ousted in a coup over forty years ago, said that prison privileges should be halted for people convicted of human rights violations during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

* Paraguay: Recently inaugurated Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes claimed that he hoped his country would be reintegrated into the Mercosur trading bloc by “early 2014”.

* Honduras: Amnesty International urged authorities to do a better job protecting the lives of indigenous community leaders.

Video Source – YouTube via CNN
 
Online Sources- Amnesty International; Christian Science Monitor; Washington Post; euronews; The Latin Americanist

Daily Headlines: August 16, 2013

* Paraguay: Conservative business tycoon Horacio Cartes was sworn in yesterday as Paraguay’s first democratically-elected president since the controversial June 2012 ouster of Fernando Lugo.

* Mexico: A Mexican judge issued an arrest warrant for Rafael Caro Quintero, a former drug capo who was unexpectedly freed last week while serving a prison sentence for the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kike" Camarena. 

* U.S.: Valentin de Vargas, a “veteran character actor” of Spanish and Austrian background who was active in the Nosotros organization for Latinos in show business, was buried on Tuesday in New Mexico.

* Haiti: The U.S. Department of State issued a new Haiti travel advisory that includes warning visitors of “violent crimes and lack of emergency response infrastructure.”

Video Source – YouTube via user telesurenglish

Online Sources- Defend Haiti; The AV Club; The Guardian; France24; The Latin Americanist

Conservative Business Tycoon Wins Paraguayan Presidency

In Mexico last year the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) returned to the presidency after their seventy-one years of continuous rule was halted in 2000.  A similar story developed this weekend several thousand miles south in Paraguay.

Multimillionaire Horacio Cartes of the Colorado Party was declared the winner of Paraguay’s presidential elections with 45.91% of the votes versus 36.84% for Efrain Alegre of the ruling Liberal Party.  Thus, the Colorados return to the presidency after having their sixty-one years in power broken in 2008 by former catholic priest Fernando Lugo.

"My legs trembled at the thought of the enormous and amazing responsibility of being president of all Paraguayans," Cartes said in his victory speech on Sunday night. "I want the people who did not vote for us to know that I'll put all my effort into earning their trust," declared one of Paraguay's richest men who owns over twenty businesses.

The conservative Cartes and the center-right Alegre both reportedly ran campaigns with similar platforms promising to create jobs and improve economic conditions.  According to U.N. estimates over half of all Paraguayans live in poverty while only 1% of residents control 77% of the country’s land.

Both men also engaged in negative campaigning against each other regarding faced corruption charges. Cartes was jailed for nearly a year in 1989 for illegal currency dealings though that conviction was later overturned.  He’s also believed to be involved in money laundering and tax evasion as part of his offshore dealings with the Banco Amambay that he owns.

The two main candidates differed over the issue of gay rights, which was most evident when Cartes recently compared gay people to “monkeys” and threatened to “shoot myself in the testicles” if his son were to seek same-sex marriage.

The ugly campaign may have extended itself to the election itself; for instance, a Colorado party senator was suspended on Saturday after he was filmed allegedly offering cash to rival Liberal party officials in exchange for annulled ballot papers. Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Organization of American States electoral observer Oscar Arias praised the Paraguayan electorate though he did note “grievous electoral irregularities” such as the buying of votes.