Ibero-American News Digest
FLASH: LaRouche Visits Mexico, Again!
U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. was invited to address a conference at the International Relations Department of one of Mexico's most prestigious schools, the Technological Institute of Monterrey, on March 20. LaRouche was last in Mexico in November 2002.
During his several-day visit to the capital of the state of Nuevo Leon, LaRouche held a well-attended press conference (journalists from 11 local and national media were present), met with local trade-union and political leaders, and addressed a group of over 100 Mexican youth organized by the LaRouche Youth Movement, who came from all over Mexico, some of them driving up to 20 hours, to meet with the American statesman.
Assassination Attempt Against Nationalist Mexican Governor
The Governor of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, Jose Murat, a leading nationalist from the opposition PRI Party, was ambushed on the morning of March 18, while on his way to an official meeting, narrowly escaping assassination. Murat and his security detail's cars were riddled with bullets from pistols and automatic rifles. The perpetrators escaped. Murat suffered minor scrapes and a crack on the head from his vehicle's crash, and was taken to a local hospital.
U.S. Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, who was visiting Mexico at the time, made public his assessment, that this attempt was an extremely serious warning, and must be understood in the context of the Spanish terrorist bombings. The synarchists are going after Mexico's institutionsits Presidency, includedhe said, and any investigation of the capability for this, should start with the drug traffickers, and at the bordersboth north and south.
Governor Murat, who is considered a likely Presidential candidate in 2006, is one the most prominent leaders of the fight to defend Mexico's institutions. In 2002 and 2003, he helped defeat the Fox government's various attempts to privatize Mexico's oil and electricity, and to impose a value-added tax on food and medicine. In the period leading up to the 2000 Presidential elections, Murat was very active in trying to purge the rot in the PRI left by the succession of Salinas, de la Madrid, and Zedillo Administrations. Aside from his current post, he has served as a Senator from Oaxaca, in which capacity, he headed up the Foreign Relations Committee; as a Federal Deputy; and has held a number of executive positions within the PRI.
The people who failed to kill him March 18, delivered another threat to him while he was still at the Social Security hospital where he was being checked over following the attack. The threat came to the hospital switchboard, and warned that "you got away this time, but we're coming back to finish the job." Murat subsequently revealed that he has received 15 death threats in the past, and that his daughter was the victim of a failed kidnapping attempt.
At a press conference right after leaving the hospital, Murat charged that his assailants were "only a few, and they are cowards.... I will not be cowed or intimidated." Murat warned, "This [attack] doesn't just affect Oaxaca, this affects Mexico."
Assassination Attempt Raises Fears of Political Instability
Several Mexican political leaders expressed the fear that the assassination attempt against Gov. Jose Murat presaged political instability, and posed a threat to "governability." Congressmen, Senators, and other political leaders worried that the attack on Murat signalled a worsening of a fragile political stability, which would be exacerbated, especially during this year's upcoming elections. Both the Senate and the House of Deputies issued official denunciations, while President Vicente Fox personally called Murat to say that the attack was "an affront to the rule of law, social conviviality, and politics." Jesus Ortega Martinez, head of the PRD bloc in Congress, termed the attempt as "serious ... part of the deterioration of the country's political and social life." He warned that should the national situation become more "complicated ... it can lead us to extreme scenarios of political instability from which it will later be difficult to escape." PRI Congressional coordinator Emilio Chuayfet warned that the attack affected the PRI's "institutional credibilty," as well as Mexicans' confidence in themselves.
Interior Secretary Santiago Creel vowed that the full weight of his office would be brought to bear in investigating this attack to the fullest.
Brazil-Argentine Alliance Will Rattle Synarchists
One week after the International Monetary Fund backed down from forcing Argentina to default on a $3.1-billion payment on March 9, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva held what they called an "historic" meeting in Rio de Janeiro March 15-16, to forge a "common approach" toward multilateral lending agencies in dealing with the foreign debt. The centerpiece of that approach is a call to change the way the primary budget surplus is calculatedthis is the money set aside to pay debtso that, as their final communiqué states, it does "not compromise growth, and guarantees the sustainability of the debt, such that even investment in infrastructure may be maintained."
The significance of their meeting does not lie so much in the specifics they discussed, although these are by no means trivial. What is more likely to unnerve synarchist banking circles, is the fact that Kirchner and Lula met at all, at a time of great international financial turbulence, and spent several hours talking and working closely together to craft the final "Declaration on Cooperation for Fair Economic Growth." The document doesn't call for overthrowing the IMF system, but with references to problems in the "international financial architecture," it does reflect both leaders' recognition that the demands of that crumbling system increasingly jeopardize their nations' existence.
From all reports, in approving the document's final version, Lula personally overrode his monetarist Finance Minister Antonio Palocci, the architect of Brazil's orthodox economic policy. Palocci didn't want any link made between primary budget surplus and economic growth in the document, for fear of upsetting "the markets." Palocci also didn't appear at the final press conference at which the document was presented.
The focus on the primary budget surplus touches on a fundamental point: Lula's acceptance, at Palocci's urging, of a primary budget surplus equivalent to 4.25% of gross domestic product, in order to guarantee debt payment, has been disastrous for Brazil's economy. It has paralyzed growth and caused high unemployment, provoking growing discontent among the leadership and base of the ruling Workers' Party.
In Argentina, Kirchner is battling the IMF demand that he increase the primary budget surplus above the 3% of GDP agreed on in the current loan accord. In an interview published in the March 16 Clarin, IMF acting Managing Director Anne Krueger threatened that unless the surplus figure were increased, the country would face renewed crisis and isolation from international markets. Kirchner responded emphatically that the 3% figure is "a ceiling, not a floor," and will not be changed.
The hysteria that came out of synarchist banking circles and their media outlets following the Argentine default threat, makes clear why a Kirchner-Lula alliance would be viewed as a potential threat. The IMF itself is so financially precarious, that it had to give in to Argentina, rather than take the chance that a default could bring down the whole fragile system. Argentina accounts for 15% of the Fund's outstanding loans, and Brazil and Argentina together account for 50%. Were Argentina and Brazil to coordinate their policies in a meaningful way, where would that leave the IMF and its synarchist backers?
Kirchner told Lula during their conversations that "we shouldn't be afraid of change ... because we can't condemn ourselves to live in today's social situation for the rest of our lives." After Lula's collaborators had formulated a document that the Argentines considered too weak, it was Lula who made the decision to go with the stronger wording. After all, Lula reportedly said, "Two mountains (Brazil and Argentina) can't give birth to a mouse." Within 60 days, the two countries will have a concrete proposal ready to present to the IMF and allied institutions, and have invited Paraguay and Uruguay, their partners in the Common Market of the South (Mercosur), to join them in dealing with the IMF as a group.
Concerns About Kirchner's Safety After Helicopter Incident
There are concerns about Argentine President Nestor Kirchner's security, after the helicopter he was travelling in fell to the ground from a distance of two meterstwicehaving been unable to gain altitude in windy weather, on March 13. The second time, it landed dangerously close to a ravine, according to press reports March 15. This incident, similar to one last August, occurred in the province of Mendoza, where Kirchner had given a speech, and caused considerable concern among some of his closest aides. The Argentine President is also known for breaking protocol, and going off into crowds to talk to people, without concern for security. One Peronist deputy from Mendoza commented, "I'm worried about the President's security.... He has to be a little more careful; it would be terrible for Argentina, if anything were to happen to him." Also travelling in the Sikorsky helicopter were Chief of Staff Alberto Fernandez, Defense Minister Jose Pampuro, and the Governors of Mendoza and San Juan.
Cheneyac Otto Reich Threatens El Salvador on Eve of Elections
President Bush's special envoy to Ibero-America, the neo-conservative Otto Reich, publicly threatened this week that a victory by former left-wing FMLN guerrilla leader Schafik Handal in the March 21 Salvadoran Presidential elections would bring retaliation from the United States against the small Central American country, El Diario de Hoy reported March 14.
The election threatens to polarize the country once again, along the dividing lines of the civil war which destroyed the country in the 1980s. The two candidates leading the polls at the eve of elections, are Handal, who is campaigning on a platform of economic change, and Tony Saca of the rightwing ARENA Party, who champions free trade.
"We would have to evaluate our relations" with El Salvador, Reich insisted, given that we don't share the same values vis-à-vis democracy, property rights, and terrorism with the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). He called Handal, a prominent member of the Sao Paulo Forum (the continental umbrella group of terrorists and left-political leaders founded by the Cuban Communist Party in 1990), "authoritarian," and an open admirer of Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. He urged the Salvadoran population to think hard and long about electing someone who could well turn into a dictator, drawing an obvious parallel to Chavez. Said Reich, "the choice [of a President] is sovereign, but the response will also be sovereign," adding that the U.S. reserved the right to revise all aspects of its relations with El Salvador in the event of Schafik Handal's election to the Presidency.
Reich's warnings take on an added import, in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. intervention in Haiti and Aristide's downfall there.
His comments bring to mind the intervention of then U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia Manuel Rocha, who, during July 2002 run-off elections for Bolivian President, gave a speech warning that an election victory by Sao Paulo Forum darling and cocalero leader Evo Morales would lead the U.S. to cut off all aid to that country. The ambassador's comments so enraged Bolivia's electorate that Evo Moraleswho gratefully applauded Rocha's big-stick interventionnearly won the election.
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