In this issue:

Brazilian Catholic Bishops: 'Creditors Can Wait, But the Unemployed Cannot'

Energy, Economic Crises Fragment Ibero-America

Bolivia Explodes in Strikes, Government Precarious

Peru's Interior Minister Ousted

Radical Right and Left Use Venezuela To Polarize the Continent

World Bank To Create Derivatives Market in Colombia

PEMEX Initiates Mass Purge of Nationalists

From Volume 3, Issue Number 19 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published May 11, 2004

Ibero-American News Digest

Brazilian Catholic Bishops: 'Creditors Can Wait, But the Unemployed Cannot'

Brazilian President Lula da Silva's failure to deliver on his promise to raise the minimum wage more than a bare minimum has earned him a public rebuke from the National Council of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB). After repeated assurances that the government would raise the minimum wage more than 9% (that is the increase in consumer prices over the past 12 months), on April 29, the government announced an increase of only 8.3%, to R$260, or $88 a month, citing the need to adhere to the International Monetary Fund's fiscal austerity conditionality. To cover for its cowardice in the face of the financiers, the government announced a small increase in its bonus payment for poor households with more than three children.

Wall Street was happy, but Brazilians were not. The CNBB issued a "Labor Day Message" which was read at the May 1 mass in Sao Paulo attended by Lula.

"Brazil is going through a profound economic and social crisis, characterized by record levels of unemployment and underemployment. More than 25 million people work in the informal sector, or even in illegal activities," the CNBB declared. The minimum wage's loss of buying power is accelerating, every day providing fewer of the basic necessities needed by a family. The inequalities worsen daily, and with it, the danger of the social fabric being ripped apart. We cannot become inured to this harsh reality.

"The public resources cannot be allocated only to payments on the domestic and foreign debt," the Bishops said. Payments must be made to investments which create jobs, and to initiatives which fulfill the constitutional requirement of eradicating poverty in our country. Creditors can wait, but the unemployed cannot."

The Federal Civil Servants' Confederation, the largest civil servants' union in the country, immediately announced that it will call a 24-hour strike of its 600,000 workers on May 10, to protest the low increase.

Energy, Economic Crises Fragment Ibero-America

The economic and energy crises wrought by IMF policy are producing political conflict among nations that should be allied with each other on the issues of infrastructural and economic development, a fact that points to the urgent need for Lyndon LaRouche's policies.

* Chile and Bolivia: Chilean President Ricardo Lagos cut off talks on an Economic Complementarity Agreement (ACE) with Bolivian President Carlos Mesa, and called for a boycott of Bolivian exports, after Mesa stipulated that "not one molecule" of the natural gas which Bolivia is shipping to Argentina can be reexported to Chile. Among other things, this will devastate the Chilean port of Arica, which is dependent on shipping Bolivian freight for its economic survival. The rightwing Mayor of Santiago, Joaquin Lavin, demanded that Chile never consider granting Bolivia access to the sea via the Pacific, because of its action on oil.

* Argentina and Chile: Tensions are intensifying over Argentina's reduction of natural gas exports to Chile, carried out in order to deal with its own artificially created natural gas shortage. Numerous current and former Chilean government officials are demanding harsh reprisals against both Argentina and Bolivia, while a Chilean businessmen's delegation has already met with Argentine counterparts in the natural gas-rich province of Neuquen, to discuss finding a "private sector" solution to Chile's shortages, involving Neuquen Governor Jorge Sobish, who is a political enemy of Argentine President Nestor Kirchner. Chilean Foreign Minister Soledad Alvear has warned that Chile will consider resorting to arbitration, if the problems with Argentina aren't resolved.

* Venezuela and Ecuador are getting in on the act as well. The Ecuadorean government of Lucio Gutierrez has just signed a deal to provide Chile with oil, to offset Argentina's reduction of gas exports. Venezuela's synarchist President Hugo Chavez is, in the meantime, strengthening economic and political ties with Bolivia, against Chile, with vocal support for Bolivia's demand that Chile return to it the coastal territory seized during the 1879-81 War of the Pacific.

Bolivia Explodes in Strikes, Government Precarious

The Bolivian Workers Federation (COB) began a nationwide strike on May 3, which, while not initially supported by all sectors, has the potential, in combination with the narco-insurgency going on in the rest of the country, to bring down the Mesa government and set fire to the whole region. The strike ostensibly is in protest of the government's continued adherence to free-trade neo-liberalism, including gutting pensions, privatizations, and natural resource giveaways.

Both President Carlos Mesa and the Roman Catholic Church have appealed for a suspension of the strike to facilitate negotiations, out of fear that the strike could topple the government. So far, general negotiations have failed, and the Mesa Administration is concentrating on bilateral negotiations with individual labor sectors, to try to dilute the strike effort. However, insurgent provocateurs have already launched themselves into the fray. The lunatic Congressman and "ex-guerrilla" Felipe Quispe (aka Mallku), best known for having publicly praised the perpetrators of 9/11, has already pledged his indigenous and cocalero followers in the Pachacuti Indigenist Movement to the strike effort. Quispe has promised that his forces, which were active in the revolt last year that toppled the Sanchez Lozado government, will contribute by blockading roads and highways. The military, in turn, has announced that it will deploy to protect those highways.

Quispe, who portrays himself as the leader of the Aymara Indians in western and central Bolivia, has also called on his "brothers in Peru" to rise up against the white authorities, and referred to last week's mob-killing of a hated Peruvian Mayor by Peruvian Aymaras as "an historic act." He urged solidarity, because "now is the time to liberate ourselves, to fight for an indigenous nation, which sooner or later we are going to self-govern." He has called for this "self-liberation" to spread to the Aymara communities in Argentina and Chile, as well. Several indigenous groups have already launched a hunger strike in southern Bolivia, and are threatening to occupy Bolivia's oilfields, if government legislation on oil and gas development is not repealed.

Peru's Interior Minister Ousted

The latest blow to the discredited Toledo government in Peru was delivered by the Congress, which voted 62 to 39 on May 5, to oust Interior Minister Fernando Rospigliosi. Rospigliosi was held responsible for the mob-lynching of the Mayor of the town of Ilave on April 26, because he failed to send in police reinforcements, despite weeks of building protest. President Alejandro Toledo was not happy, calling Rospigliosi "one of the best ministers," but, with reported 8% support ratings from the population. Toledo is in no position to buck Congress. Five members of Toledo's own Peru Posible party had voted for Rospigliosi's ouster. Toledo's few remaining supporters are so nervous, they recently proposed a bill to make it harder to remove the President from office!

The ouster came the day after more than 3,000 cocaleros arrived in Lima, chanting such slogans as "Urgent! Urgent! A New President!" The cocaleros say they will camp out in Lima until their demands are met, with their spokeswomen, Nancy Obregon—a familiar face in George Soros's drug-legalization circuit—promising that they are prepared to do "whatever it takes" to get their way. They gave the government 48 hours to accept their demands: Ending the government drug eradication program and shutting down its liaison office with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; legalizing coca sales; and even setting up "industrialization" of coca. Obregon said that when their food runs out, the thousands of coca growers will begin a hunger strike, but they are not leaving until they get their demands passed as law.

A bill legalizing the coca leaf is already before Congress. Congress sent a delegation to meet with the cocaleros, discussing the formation of a mediating commission, which would include the Prime Minister, the Minister of Agriculture, Congressmen, and the growers.

Radical Right and Left Use Venezuela To Polarize the Continent

Just as the neo-cons increase the pressure for the overthrow of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, out comes FARC spokesman and leader Raul Reyes, hailing Chavez as the great ally of the narcoterrorist FARC. The same day (May 4) that President Bush's Special Envoy for Ibero-America, Cuban-American neo-con Otto Reich, used the annual conference of the Council of the Americas to warn that U.S.-Venezuelan relations would "deteriorate" if the Chavez regime continued to aid "violent groups" in Ibero-America, Colombian narcoterrorist leader Reyes (he who so famously embraced former New York Stock Exchange head Dick Grasso when the latter visited the FARC in the jungles of Colombia), described as now being "number two" in the FARC, told the terrorist-run ANNCOL news agency that Chavez is "a true Venezuelan patriot," who will, they expect, be able to resist overthrow by the Venezuelan oligarchy. "The FARC sympathizes with the government of Hugo Chavez," Reyes said, "because it is a Bolivarian government which is developing a Bolivarian process... committed to the ideals of our Liberator."

Thus, once again, we see the (Synarchist) neo-conservative gang, with Miami's Cuban-Americans in the lead, and Fidel Castro's (Synarchist) allies in the continent, led by the FARC and Hugo Chavez, working together to trigger generalized war in Ibero-America for years to come. Hugo Chavez reiterated on his Sunday TV program on May 2 that if the U.S. uses its military presence in Colombia to attack Venezuela, "There will be war for 100 years."

For his part, Reich announced that he will be leaving his post as Special Envoy soon, to return to the more lucrative private sector, frustrated that he has not been able to "accelerate" the end of the Castro regime in Cuba, nor sufficiently help the Venezuela people prevent a dictatorship. There isn't a dictatorship yet in Venezuela, he said, but we have "to be very careful."

World Bank To Create Derivatives Market in Colombia

According to El Pais of April 30, Colombia has just signed a Master Derivatives Agreement (MDA) with the World Bank, according to which that country will be able to play derivatives games based on its loans from the World Bank! Or, as the World Bank's own press release puts it, to give Colombia "access to the full range of risk management that [the World Bank] offers to its clients, which should afford the government significant additional flexibility in carrying out a prudent sovereign debt-management strategy."

The MDA was signed between Colombian Finance Minister Alberto Carrasquilla and World Bank Treasury Deputy Kenneth G. Lay (no, not the Enron ex-chairman Kenneth L. Lay, although he might as well be!). This is the third such MDA between the World Bank and a member country.

In offering these "financial products," the World Bank says it will allow borrowers "to use standard market techniques to transform the risk characteristics of their outstanding World Bank loans." The Bank says it intends to function as a bridge between "market institutions" (a.k.a. the roulette wheel) and its borrowers, while entering into separate agreements with each member country, which gives them the benefit of the Bank's own AAA credit rating.

PEMEX Initiates Mass Purge of Nationalists

Mexico's state oil company, PEMEX, has announced that 5,000 employees are to be fired by the end of September, according to El Financiero of May 4. PEMEX engineers, who denounced the decision, charge that those who oppose the privatization of the company, and defend the nation's sovereignty over its oil, are being targetted in the purge. Although the firings are being justified as necessary to cut costs, these engineers point out that the company is hiring from the private sector top executives, who want to privatize the company, and who also receive far higher salaries than many engineers combined, the which will lessen any "savings" from the purge.

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