Daily Headlines: April 24, 2013

* Mexico: President Enrique Peña Nieto’s push for major reform in areas such as banking, telecommunications, and oil production could be in jeopardy partly due to allegations of vote buying by the ruling party.

* Latin America: Over 1800 police officers seeking better working conditions went on strike in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, while hundreds of Puerto Rican cops have supposedly ended their sickout protest.

* Brazil: Finance Minister Guido Mantega announced a series of measures aimed at boosting an ethanol industry hampered by increased production costs despite greater global demand for biofuels.  

* Guatemala: Senior U.N. official Adama Dieng called on Guatemalan judicial authorities to “act responsibly and prevent any attempt at interference, obstruction of justice or manipulation of the law” in light of the annulment of the genocide trial against former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt.

Video Source – YouTube via user telesurenglish

Online Sources- Los Angeles Times; Washington Post; United Nations; ABC News; MercoPress

Daily Headlines: August 20, 2012

* Venezuela: At least twenty people died in a prison riot on Sunday night and which occurred over a week after a local rights group warned about an increase in prison violence.

* Mexico: Authorities have replaced all 348 policemen working as security at the Mexico City International Airport roughly two months after three officers were killed in a shootout.

* Puerto Rico: A majority of voters rejected a pair of proposed constitutional changes that Gov. Luis Fortuño claimed would’ve been “great tools to fight crime.”

* Argentina: The government will reportedly file a complaint with the World Trade Organization against E.U. restrictions on biodiesel imports.

Video Source – YouTube via user Noticias Internacionales (Excerpt from a July 2012 Venezuelan TV news report highlighting the problems with the country’s prison system.)

Online Sources- Bloomberg, The Australian, Huffington Post, CNN, Fox News Latino

McCain ups campaign rhetoric on Brazil, Colombia

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain has recently increased his rhetoric on Latin America; more specifically, he has made remarks designed to appeal to Brazilians and Colombians.

In an interview with a Brazilian newspaper, McCain said that he would back Brazil’s entry onto the U.N. Security Council as well as an expanded G8. Aside from backing an increased international political and economic role for Brazil, McCain told the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper that he would halt subsidies for U.S. ethanol production. (A possible nod towards Brazil’s burgeoning biofuel industry).

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has yet to make a U.S. presidential endorsement though he did call a possible Barack Obama presidency “a huge step forward.”

Earlier this month, McCain’s campaign announced that he would be visiting Colombia next month and would meet with President Alvaro Uribe. El Tiempo said that McCain would only fly out for a day but would use his time to defend a possible free trade pact between both countries.

Sources (English)- AFP, PRESS TV, Reuters UK, The Latin Americanist,

Sources (Spanish)- El Tiempo

Image- New York Daily News

Did Fidel Castro predict the world food crisis?

It's probably exaggerated to consider former Cuban president Fidel Castro as a prophet, but over a year ago he warned about problems that have led to rising food prices. As we posted in March 2007, the convalescing Castro wrote the following in Granma:

The sinister idea of using food as fuel was definitely established as the economic component of U.S. foreign policy.

The tragedy is not in reducing energy but in the notion of converting foodstuffs into fuel.

Give financing to poor counties to produce ethanol from corn or some other crop and there won’t be a single tree to defend humanity against global warming.

In our country, lands that are used for alcohol production would be more suitable to produce food for the people and to protect the environment.

Castro might have been correct in at least one respect; U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that the increasing use of biofuels has had “apparently some effect” on food prices.

Sources- Reuters Africa, AFP, The Latin Americanist

Image- MSNBC

Evo Morales honored by NYC politicos

Bolivian president Evo Morales received a proclamation from several New York City Council members yesterday. The honor was given to Morales by legislators of the council's Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus in recognition of his efforts on behalf of indigenous peoples.

Morales was in the “Big Apple” in order to attend a U.N. forum on the global impact of climate change on indigenous peoples. Much like his Peruvian counterpart Alan Garcia, Morales expressed worry over the priority given by some countries to the use of biofuels:

"This is very serious," he said. "Cars come first, not human beings. But, for us, how important is life and how important are cars? So I say life first and cars second."

In his U.N. speech earlier, Morales called on the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to develop policies to curb the use of biofuels "in order to avoid hunger and misery among our people."

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been one of the leading proponents of biofuel usage and has rejected claims that they are causing spikes in global food prices.

Sources- Reuters UK, Reuters, New York Sun, The Latin Americanist

Image- BBC News

Lula to emphasize biofuels at G8 summit

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will promote alternative fuel sources during next month’s G8 summit in Germany. Despite being criticized by Fidel Castro and blamed for abuses against sugar cane cutters, Lula said that biofuels could “un-warm” the effects of global warming and should be welcomed by develop countries.

In addition, Lula said that he would not support a bill that would allow him to seek a third term in the presidency. “Any proposal to allow a third term is a joke to the Brazilian democracy,” Lula told the press yesterday.

Image- BBC News (Lula at the 2003 G8 conference)

Links- Monsters & Critics, The Latin Americanist, San Francisco Gate, Bloomberg

Fidel speaks out again on biofuels as well as Brits captured in Iran

Cuban newspaper Granma published another article today by former dictator Fidel Castro where he reiterated criticisms of U.S. biofuel usage. Under the headline “The Internationalization of Genocide” Fidel asks if the desire by industrialized countries to use corn and other foodstuffs as biofuels comes at a severe cost to underdeveloped nations. Fidel also accused British navy personnel currently being held in Iran of invading Iranian maritime territory and compared it to “provocations" by Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue.

Much like last week’s article, Granma has only published it in Spanish; hence, here are a few key translated quotes:

• Nobody in Camp David [during the meeting of the U.S. and Brazil presidents] has answered the fundamental question: where and who will administer…corn and other cereals that the U.S., Europe, and other rich countries want to produce…as ethanol for large corporations?
• The colossal waste of cereal to produce fuel…will only serve to save 15% of the fuel used by automobiles in rich countries. President Bush…declared his intention to apply this formula on a global scale which means nothing else than an internationalization of genocide.
• The capture of British soldiers in Iranian waters is similar to the provocations by the so-called “Brothers to the Rescue” when they ignored President Clinton’s orders to incur into Cuban waters. (Editor’s note: Castro is referring to this 1996 incident where the Cuban air force shot down two civilian planes).
• [In response to comments made by the Bush administration on hunger in Cuba] I am obligated to remind them that infant mortality in Cuba is less than in the U.S. I can assure that there is not a single Cuban without free health care. Everyone has an education and an offer for a job despite nearly half a century of economic embargo and the intent of the U.S. government to starve and economically choke the Cuban people.
• The U.S. completely ignores world opinion against all forms of nuclear weapons.
• The worse is yet to come; a new war to assure the production of gas and oil which places the human species on the border of a holocaust.

Links- CNN, BBC News, Granma, The Latin Americanist, Miami Herald

Image- CNN