In this issue:

LaRouche: Targetting Cardinal Sandoval Could Trigger Religious Warfare in MexicoBolivia Stands at the Point of Disintegration

Fox Suggests Pemex Could Leave the Country

Message to Fox: 'Our Country Is Not for Sale'

One, Two, Many Recall Referendums in Venezuela

Chavez Wants to Stack Venezuelan Supreme Court

Brazil Blasts Zoellick as 'Infantile'

Soros Mucking Around in Ibero-America

From Volume 2, Issue Number 40 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Oct. 7, 2003

Ibero-American News Digest

LaRouche: Targetting Cardinal Sandoval Could Trigger Religious Warfare in Mexico

In a campaign statement issued on Sept. 29, Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche issued a statement "to express my concern about the attempt by some people to invoke the name of anti-clericalism, to stir up what would be recognized as a Cristero War atmosphere in Mexico." LaRouche warned in particular that the targetting of the Cardinal of Guadalajara, Juan Sandoval Iniguez, who, along with his family, is being investigated on drug-money laundering instigated by Jorge Carpizo McGregor, Attorney General under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-94), "is seen by experts in such matters as an attempt to reactivate a religious-warfare-like destabilization of Mexico." See In-Depth section for full LaRouche statement, and background article.

Bolivia Stands at the Point of Disintegration

Social upheaval is spreading across Bolivia, as protesters from various popular layers, led by coca-producers tied to mega-speculator George Soros, threaten a continuation of the nationwide shutdown, until President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada resigns. The violence which erupted in mid-September has escalated, ostensibly over the government's plans to export natural gas to the United States through Chilean ports. What makes the country a powderkeg, however, is the fact that it has been looted to the bone by two decades of IMF privatization and free-trade "reforms." Sanchez de Lozada, with a 9% popularity rating, is hanging by a thread.

By Sept. 26, road blockades had cut off the capital of La Paz from other cities, leading to food shortages as markets shut down, and price speculation took off. An indefinite general strike began Sept. 29, and have since escalated across the country. Despite efforts of the Catholic Church to mediate, all attempts at dialogue have broken down, and at least one of the government's coalition partners is threatening to exit.

On Oct. 2, agricultural and business interests in the southeastern city of Santa Cruz, a region with a history of separatist tendencies, suggested that now might be the time to make such a move. Ruben Costas of the Pro Santa Cruz Committee and Juan Armando Antelo of the Eastern Agricultural Chamber, proposed that either the country be "refounded," along the lines they propose, or each region of the country should just go its "own way."

Interior Minister Yerko Kukoc asked on Sept. 24: "Where is the money coming from?" to support the activities of tens of thousands of protesters, providing them with food, vehicles, and other necessities. He mentioned the presence of people "from Colombia," a reference to reports that members of the narcoterrorist FARC have been identified in Bolivia's coca-producing region. Others have called attention to the cozy relationship between cocalero leader Evo Morales and Venezuela's "leftist" synarchist President Hugo Chavez. The two say they have alternate plans to market Bolivian gas through Chavez's proposed continental oil company, "Petro-America." Morales, who missed becoming President by a hair in last year's Presidential elections, was in Libya the last week of September, and will be going to Venezuela, Switzerland, Cuba, and Mexico in October, "strengthening international relations," as he looks forward to becoming President in the near future.

Even crazier than Morales is cocalero leader Felipe Quispe, head of the Peasant Workers Labor Confederation (CSUTCB), who applauded the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Quispe said on Sept. 29 that it's time an Indian became President of Bolivia. "We'll be in the Government Palace, with the smell of coca, of the Indian, of Pachamama [Earth mother], and that's what we propose, because we are the majority." He warned that if the government doesn't accept his terms for dialogue, then "the Indian nation, which is the majority, will become independent, and we will found the Republic of Kollasuyo."

Fox Suggests Pemex Could Leave the Country

Energy privatization "reforms" were high on Mexican President Vicente Fox's agenda in his meetings with businessmen while he was in New York City for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 23. According to Mexican daily El Universal, he met with businessmen in a Wall Street hotel, and told them that if foreign capital was not permitted to invest in the national oil company, Pemex, "Pemex would leave Mexico." To explain this stunning statement, he used Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) as an example: PDVSA refines oil abroad because it's cheaper that way. Pemex is beginning to do the same, he said, because the Constitution prohibits association with foreign capital only inside Mexico. Outside Mexico, anything goes, apparently, to Fox's mind.

Energy reforms were reportedly the subject at various meetings, El Universal reported.

Message to Fox: 'Our Country Is Not for Sale'

Under this slogan, thousands of members of the Mexico's Electrical Workers Union filled Mexico City's famous Zocalo plaza on Oct. 1, joined by supporters from many other labor unions, teachers, and students, to show their opposition to plans to privatize the country's energy sector. Chants included: "Congress, watch out, our electricity's not for sale," and no to President Vicente Fox's "humiliating surrender" to "foreign looters."

It is widely acknowledged that Fox must strike a deal with the PRI, in order to get the constitutional changes required to ram through the privatization of Mexico's electricity and oil, and PRI head Roberto Madrazo appears ready to clinch that deal. However, a substantial opposition within the PRI leadership is battling Madrazo, with some demanding a party assembly to force Madrazo to defend his sell-out position to the rank and file.

PRI Sen. Manuel Barlett, in fact, was a featured speaker, along with PRD Congressional coordinator Pablo Gomez, at the meeting of thousands of electrical workers where the march was announced Sept. 28. "The apostles of privatization no longer use the examples of privatization in other countries, because they ended in disaster," Bartlett told the meeting. "Now they say the problem is that the state has no money to invest. They lie.... We can no longer trust anyone but the rank and file, because all the privatizations have been done stealthily, in agreements made at the top, behind the people's backs."

At the Zocalo demo, both Fox and PRI legislative bloc leader Elba Esther Gordillo, an ally with Madrazo in supporting the reforms demanded by Wall Street, were repeatedly booed, with Gordillo receiving special denunciations as a "traitor," "sell-out," "PAN accomplice," and "daughter of Fox."

At least eight of the PRI's 17 governors have come out in favor of a deal with the Fox government, the majority of them from the north. The only PRI governor who has gone public in opposition is from the southern state of Oaxaca, Jose Murat. However, more than 20 PRI senators have taken a hard stand against any attempted constitutional changes on energy policy, and three of those—Manuel Bartlett, Oscar Canton and Miguel Angel Navarro—gave a press conference Sept. 30, to challenge PRI president Madrazo to call a PRI national assembly, while reminding the PRI governors that the time for their party's submission to the ruling PAN is over, and that "in no way can the governors speak in the name of legislators."

One, Two, Many Recall Referendums in Venezuela

Venezuela's National Election Council announced Oct. 1 that it had accepted the opposition's request that a referendum be held on whether President Hugo Chavez should be forced to step down, and that it had also accepted the Chavez government's request for referenda to remove 46 public officials from the opposition: seven governors 38 National Assembly deputies, and the Mayor of Caracas. When, how, and where all these referenda are to be held is still to be announced.

The Council had issued a new set of rules for holding the Chavez recall referendum on Sept. 26, which pushed the anti-Chavez referendum into 2004.

The Council had recently invalidated the millions of petition signatures gathered by the opposition earlier this year, claiming they had been collected prior to a constitutionally-mandated date. The new rules give the opposition four days to gather a minimum of 2.5 million signatures, after which the Council can take up to 97 days to validate, or invalidate them. The opposition is hoping to get twice the minimum required. Once validated, the recall vote could be held as early as next February, barring challenges and other stalling tactics the Chavez regime might cook up.

The opposition petition-gathering will begin in about three weeks, which is how long the opposition believes it will take to ready the signature gathering booths around the country, and the personnel to staff them. It is widely believed that Chavez would badly lose such a recall vote, if it were held today. Fully aware that that is the case, it is expected that the Chavez regime will throw everything—from court challenges to full-scale thuggery, against the recall initiative.

Chavez Wants to Stack Venezuelan Supreme Court

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is attempting to force through new laws that would make it easier for his majority-controlled National Assembly to impeach Supreme Court justices, thereby consolidating his control over the nation's judiciary. A skirmish broke out in the Assembly last week, when opposition and pro-Chavez legislators went at each other. Opposition Congressman Cesar Perez Vivas held a press conference, blood streaming down his face, demanding an investigation into the incident. Perez is in the forefront of the opposition's recall initiative against Chavez.

Chavez's new law would allow removal of judges by a simple majority, instead of the usual two-thirds majority. The opposition insists this is one more move by Chavez to consolidate a dictatorship in the country. Chavez currently controls the National Assembly by a narrow majority.

Brazil Blasts Zoellick as 'Infantile'

The U.S. and Brazil are in a brawl over trade policy, in the wake of the collapse of the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations in Cancun last month. On Sept. 22, U.S. Trade Representative and neo-con thug Robert Zoellick published an article in the Financial Times, which targetted Brazil as a leader of the "won't do" countries on free trade, who will have to be pushed aside for the "can-do" countries. Foreign Ministry official Luis Felipe de Macedo Soares, heading the Brazilian negotiating team at Free Trade Accord of the Americas (FTAA) talks currently being held in Trinidad and Tobago, while never mentioning Zoellick's name, used his address to the meeting to denounce those who "invent a manichean division between 'can do' and 'won't do' countries, as 'infantile' and 'ill-intentioned.'"

The U.S. and Brazil co-chair the negotiations for FTAA, which negotiations were scheduled to be completed by Jan. 1, 2005. The Brazilian daily Valor reports that Brazil now argues that the collapse of the WTO talks means that the January 2005 deadline is no longer viable, and negotiations must be stretched out—a position vociferously opposed by the U.S.

Soros Mucking Around in Ibero-America

Financial vulture George Soros made a point of meeting with Ibero-American Heads of State who were in New York City for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in the last week of September. Soros sought a private meeting with Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, and took the opportunity to lecture him on the need to impose "structural reforms," while expressing concern about what he described as Kirchner's "statist" tendencies. Press sources report that Kirchner assured him that he intended to be "the most liberal [economically] of everyone, in the true sense of the word." By that, he said, he meant that he intended to guarantee real "juridical and taxation certainty," to attract foreign investment. He assured Soros that, were he to discover that foreign private investors hadn't complied with privatization contracts," he would revoke those contracts, but they would be replaced by "private companies, not the state."

Aside from this, Soros was invited by the Mexican mission to the UN to attend the special dinner held for Mexican President Vicente Fox; Soros also showed up at Brazilian President Lula da Silva's presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations. Whether there was an exchange between the two, is not known to EIW.

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