Informative Notes

30 September 2002

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LATIN AMERICA:

The development of the countries of Latin America is being affected by the crisis in Argentina, which has stirred up ripples in Paraguay, Colombia, and Brazil, to quote just three countries, and this is leading to worrying short-term prospects. (1)

• Colombia arrested an important drug trafficker, seizing four tons of cocaine produced by paramilitaries in the south-west of the country, with an estimated value of US$190 million.
• the American Department of State released US$41.6 million of military aid to Colombia for the struggle against drugs and terrorism.
• Colombia refused to extradite people accused by the new International Criminal Court of having committed war crimes on its territory, so as not to disrupt efforts to achieve peace in the country.
• the Colombian Air Force (FAC) undertook operations against the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), with a view to trying to break the will to continue the struggle of the leaders of the Eastern Block (one of the five big commands composing the FARC) near La Uribe, historically an area controlled by these guerillas in the east of the country. The Colombian security forces seized a huge arsenal of explosives and rocket-launchers suspected of belonging to the Marxist FARC, the principal guerilla group, made up of some 17,000 men.
• around thirty guerillas belonging to the FARC and the EPL (People's Liberation Army) were killed in Colombia during fighting with the national Army.
• the Colombian Air Force killed some 200 guerillas in bombing raids on two camps in the north-west of the country.
• Colombian government troops killed eight guerillas in southern Colombia, capturing a further eight guerillas (FARC)
• Americans seem to be a target for the guerillas in Colombia, a country with 42 million inhabitants that has gone through 38 years of internal conflict leading to more than 200,000 deaths. The country is suffering from bomb attacks, including many in the east, on the frontier with Venezuela.
• the 24-hour strike by civil servants in Colombia was well supported.
• the arrest in Colombia during August 2001 of three presumed members of the IRA (Irish Republican Army), whose mission was apparently to train members of the FARC (Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces), was seen by radicals within the Party of the First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Protestant David TRIMBLE, as a proof of the bad faith of the Irish Republican paramilitaries. (See EUROPE)
• the leader of the Colombian paramilitaries, Carlos CASTAÑO, agreed to go on trial in the United States, a country which had requested his extradition on drug-trafficking charges.
• a woman who has been a symbolic figure in the struggle against corruption in Colombia, Ingrid BETANCOURT, having been a hostage of guerillas for seven months has been giving rise to worries about her health and even her very survival.
• after the return to power of President Hugo CHÁVEZ in Venezuela, in the wake of the failed military coup of 12 April 2002, there has been a drying up of news in the Venezuelan press.
• traffic accidents have become considerably more numerous in Bolivia.
• Paraguay was torn between two leaders. It closed Customs facilities at the international airport in Ciudad del Este, a town considered to be a major centre for smuggling, lying on the triple frontier with Argentina and Brazil. (See « Informative Notes » for 21 September 2002 relating to the Near and Middle East).
• more than 12,000 demonstrators called for the resignation of the Paraguayan President Luis González MACCHI, accused of corruption in the context of a serious economic crisis.
• a vigorously repressed demonstration triggered further violence in Paraguay.
• the mobilization of thousands of people in Paraguay (over 60 civil associations) in a number of the country's cities was aimed at denouncing the austerity plan proposed by President Luis González MACCHI's government.
• Mexican President Vicente FOX stated he wanted to democratize Mexico.
• Mexico withdrew from the Interamerican Mutual Defence Treaty, signed in 1947 and considered by several countries as no more than a relic of the Cold War.
• the Mexican Government informed the Organization of American States (OAS) that it was withdrawing from this Treaty signed by 23 countries, including the United States. The U.S.A. had invoked it after the attacks of 11 September 2001. Before the permanent council of the OAS, the Mexican President mentioned the necessity of setting up modern multi-dimensional security structures to respond to the real needs of the American hemisphere.
• Mexico would wish priority to be given to multi-dimensional security objectives, involving:
  
  
  • a struggle against extremes of poverty
  • improved public health to combat epidemics
  • the prevention of natural disasters
  • a direct fight against terrorism
  • concerted actions in the case of economic crises
  
  
  together with a modern and up-to-date organization for responses to threats of a military nature. (2)
• in Mexico groups of Indians mobilized: native people's organizations in the States of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Morelos, Michoacán, and Guerrero undertook a large number of actions to defend their rights and to protest against the ratification of the law on native inhabitants passed in 2001, which they find far too limited. These approximately 12 million Indians, almost all poor and marginalized, have some local autonomy. They have brought a case before the Mexican Supreme Court and demonstrated outside it.
• members of former paramilitary organizations in Guatemala blocked one of the main highways in the north of the country, calling on the Government to make payments to them for the services rendered during the civil conflict that ravaged the country for 36 years.
• Argentina has had to learn to live in a constant state of precariousness over four years of permanent economic crisis. The country has become accustomed to living in poverty, even though for many years it was the most cosmopolitan and « European » of the Latin American nations. Since the December 2001 crisis, marked by banking restrictions and the devaluation of the peso, something like 20 billion U.S. dollars have left bank accounts to end up under the proverbial mattresses of private individuals. The criminal fraternity have found rich pickings, with the crime rate now close to that in near-by countries such as Colombia, Mexico or Brazil.
• a large number of demonstrations and a wave of violence and kidnappings occurred in Argentina.
• the IMF allowed postponement for one year of the repayment of US$2.7 billion that was to fall due on 9 September 2002. Argentina must pay back a total of US$4 billion to international organizations before the end of the year, with a further US$10 billion, approximately, due in 2003.
• Haiti continued to slip into chaos, suffering from a climate of banditry, harming the country and isolating it from the rest of the world. The plan proposed by the Organization of American States (OAS) might go some way to solving the crisis. What is really more and more necessary, however, is the organization of fresh elections leading to the installation of a transition government.
• the Dominican Republic reinforced security along its border with Haiti in an effort to combat arms and drug trafficking.
• Brazil showed its interest in opening up its oil market to foreign investors. The country is the world leader in exploration and exploitation of deep-sea oil deposits and currently lies eighteenth among world producers of crude.
• drug dealers caused a reign of terror in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Orders for this supposedly came from the « Comando Vermelho » (CV - Red Command) criminal organization. Shopkeepers in several districts of Rio de Janeiro were ordered to shut their businesses, but the situation returned to normal after a while.
• the Brazilian President Fernando Henrique CARDOSO signed two decrees setting out the boundaries for two new protected areas in Amazonia.
• Brazilian financial markets reverted to speculative hysteria, with the local currency, the real, at its lowest level since it was first created in 1994 and with the stock market taking a nose-dive. This may be the effect of forecasts of a possible victory by the left-wing candidate, LULA, from the Workers' Party in the first round of the presidential elections on 6 October 2002.
• Brazil issued a formal complaint against farming subsidies in Europe and the United States (cotton and sugar).
• in El Salvador, the civil war that lasted from 1980 to 1992 caused more than 75,000 deaths, between civilians and combatants, plus 7,000 missing and severe damage to the national economy.
• Chile and the European Union concluded an Association Agreement during April 2002, to be ratified in the near future. This triggered an international campaign by the Mapuche Indians against the Agreement, since they saw it as harming them and bringing into question the very existence of the Mapuche ethnic group, representing no more than 8% of the Chilean population (15 million inhabitants). The treaty for economic association and political co-operation was agreed between Chile and the European Union on 26 April 2002. The Mapuches are trying to recover lands formerly occupied by their community and today in the hands of forestry companies. They decry the fact that Chile has given no guarantees to put in place long-term sustainable development and that the growth in commercial activities may result in uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources on the ancestral homelands of the Mapuche nation.
• Chile commemorated its own « 11 September », the date of the twenty-ninth anniversary of the coup d'état by General Augusto PINOCHET against the government of President Salvador ALLENDE. In Chile there was a bomb attack against premises belonging to the Chilean Air Force (FACH).
• around a thousand troops from 10 countries on the American continent, including the United States, were to participate in military training (manoeuvres and exercices) in Chile in October 2002.
• in Nicaragua, law courts issued an international arrest warrent for embezzlement of public funds to the tune of US$100 million against eight close former associates of ex-President Arnoldo ALEMÁN (in office 1997 to January 2002). Those involved are apparently now resident in the United States, according to the authorities.
• more than 100,000 people were evacuated in eastern Cuba prior to the arrival of hurricane « Lily », and then over 500,000 people had to be moved in several regions of Cuba, as winds blew with sustained speeds in excess of 140 kilometres per hour (nearly a hundred miles an hour).

Latin America is one of the « vital organs » of the world economy as well as a very good indicator of development. A collapse there would have incalculable consequences, and not only for the social and economic well-being of the region itself. If it coincided with the outbreak of war in Iraq, the whole world economy would be not just shaken, but completely destabilized.

30 September 2002

Marc LAMBINET, Ph.D