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Development: On 7 April the Brazilian ministry of foreign affairs announced the completion of a new defence cooperation agreement with the US.

Significance: The brief Itamaraty Palace press release was clear that all the other members of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur, comprising the 12 South American countries) were informed about the deal which, it also stressed, “contains an express clause of guarantees that ensure respect for the principles of the sovereign equality of states, territorial integrity and inviolability, and non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states". This clause is in line with a resolution adopted by the Unasur defence council on 27 November 2009 and, the Brazilian government hopes, will pre-empt any hostile reactions to the agreement by the likes of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez .

The succinct Brazilian statement contrasts with the apparent inability of the US state department to explain properly and clearly its Latin America policy messages. Since President Barack Obama took office and heralded “a new era" in US-Latin American relations, there has been nothing but confusion in the region as to what, if anything, has changed.

To date, the mixed messages emanating from the US government has allowed the radical Left in the region to (re) interpret and shape regional perceptions of US policy under Obama - helped by the clumsy US handling of the six-month long Honduras coup crisis.

According to the Itamaraty, the agreement, which is expected to be signed by Brazil's defence minister Nelson Jobim and the US defence secretary Robert Gates early next week, is designed to “strengthen the dialogue between the two countries and open new prospects for cooperation in this field [defence], on a balanced and mutually beneficial basis".

It aims to: “improve the institutional coverage for existing and future bilateral cooperation in areas such as: a) visits by high level delegations, b) technical level contacts, c) meetings between defence institutions, d) exchanges of students, instructors and training personnel, e) training and development events, f) ship visits, g) sporting and cultural events, h) commercial initiatives related to defence, and i) programs and projects in defence technology."

When news of the deal was first leaked by the daily O Estado de São Paulo it was spun as a military base accord. O Estado reported that following a visit on 30 March to Brazil by the Commander of the US Southern Command, General Douglas Fraser, where he met Jobim and the head of Brazil's federal police, Luiz Fernando Corrêa, a new “multinational, multifunctional" base in Rio de Janeiro would monitor, control and combat drugs trafficking, arms trafficking, contraband flows and terrorism in the South Atlantic. That story prompted immediate fevered speculation about the possibility of US troops being stationed in Brazil.

Days earlier, the US ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, had announced that the US was on the verge of signing “military cooperation agreements" with two countries in Latin America. His remarks prompted Venezuela's President Chávez immediately to proclaim the proposed new accords to be “a clear threat".

The top US diplomat for the region, the Chilean-born Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, has spent much of his regional tour this week trying to address the speculation about the new deal. On Tuesday (6 April) in Bogotá, Colombia, Valenzuela insisted (in Spanish), “no-one has talked about installing US military bases in Brazil". He stressed that the US was discussing “security cooperation agreements" similar to accords it has in place with countries all over the world. He said that the idea had come about as a result of US-Brazilian co-operation in Haiti, where the Brazilian military heads up the United Nations stabilisation mission (Minustah).

What is clear from the Brazilians - and what Valenzuela and his colleagues have not conveyed with the necessary clarity - is that the agreement is not in any shape or form a replica of the controversial 'Defence Cooperation Agreement' signed by the US and Colombia in October 2009 - widely understood to grant the US access to seven Colombian bases (although it is, in fact, less limiting than this).

According to the Brazilians, any new 'facility' (it will expressly not be a military base) will be under Brazilian command. It will complement two others - one in Key West, Florida (the US Southern Command's Joint Interagency Task Force South), which monitors the Caribbean, and another in Lisbon, Portugal, which covers the North Atlantic. The US - and other countries - would post 'attachés' (military, police or intelligence officers) to the facility, where they would work under Brazilian management. The Key West facility includes representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and other Latin American countries.

The Brazilian press note that the deal is the first major bilateral defence accord since 1977, when Brazil unilaterally withdrew from a previous 1952 accord.

Cicig: cleanup will take a decade or more

Dismantling the clandestine 'security' network built up around former President Alfonso Portillo (2000-04) and others embedded in Guatemala's institutions is unlikely to take less than a decade, according to Carlos Castresana, head of Cicig, the UN-backed commission against impunity (Cicig). To the array of charges already filed against Portillo, Cicig's work has led to the addition of another: the use of diverted public funds to finance this clandestine network.

Portillo, who had already been indicted in Guatemala for embezzling defence ministry funds, was arrested in February in line with an extradition request from the US, where he has been charged with laundering about US$70m in funds pilfered from the Guatemalan public purse. His arrest and the new charges against him triggered an outcry in the Guatemalan media — which is ongoing —against what is portrayed as selective targeting by Cicig. The commission is accused of not going against other criminal and corrupt groups.

Castresana has underlined that Cicig's remit is confined to uncovering and assisting with the prosecution of clandestine groups linked to organised crime which are embedded within Guatemala's public institutions (rather than going tackling corruption per se). Portillo, he says, was not targeted because of his corrupt acts, but because he used the proceeds of those acts to finance the clandestine network.

Extent of infiltration
Castresana maintains, however, that there is more to the media barrage against him than a misunderstanding of Cicig's mandate. He recalls that a year ago there was an outbreak of media indignation when he stated that the clandestine networks also had a foothold in the media. 'Back then they demanded names. Well, now they have revealed themselves; they can be seen with the same transparency as we see them.' 'We knew that this would happen,' he adds. 'We weren't particularly frightened or alarmed, though we are bothered by some of the falsehoods that are being published.'

On 12 April the Cicig chief warned against expecting the clandestine networks to be eliminated soon. 'These,' he said, 'are groups that 20 or 30 years ago operated in the context of the armed conflict, and nowadays do so only for the money [...] They are very powerful; they have enormous capacity to twist the arm of the law [with] very powerful elements within the public prosecution service, the police and the judiciary. Let us make no mistake: there are judges on their payroll; there are politicians and legislators who work for these groups.'

Castresana says that these groups, in the past riven by 'mortal enmity', have begun protecting each other and closing ranks as the rule of law starts spreading. He explained that since it began operating in Guatemala two and a half years ago, Cicig has been able to identify these networks 'perfectly'. These groups in turn, had become increasingly convinced over the past couple of months of having attracted the attention of the anti-impunity commission and had responded with the 'media campaign' against him and Cicig. Their aim, he says, is to discredit the commission and the commissioner.'

More arrests
The criticism that followed Portillo's arrest did not stop Cicig from continuing to dismantle clandestine rings. On 8 April public prosecutors and Cicig officials accompanied members of an élite unit of the PNC, the national police, on a series of raids in Guatemala city, Izabal and El Progreso in which six people accused of the April 2008 murder of former ministerial adviser Ví­ctor Rivera were arrested — among them the alleged ringleader, active-duty Lieutenant-Colonel Cruz Magdaleno Reyes. They were charged with conspiracy to murder, illicit association and obstruction of justice.

A seventh individual, suspected of having been the actual killer, had been picked up a week earlier in Tennessee by US authorities, and is expected to be deported soon, as he lacked evidence of having entered the US legally. Already indicted earlier in this case was a former public prosecutor, Álvaro Matus, accused of having obstructed the investigation into the murder.

Rivera had headed up the national police's anti-kidnapping unit for more than a decade and later served as an adviser to the interior minister. On 7 April 2008, a week after having been dismissed from his post by President Álvaro Colom, he was shot dead in a residential district of the capital. From the outset his murder was considered an act of revenge by one of the criminal gangs he had acted against.

Development: This time last year, LatinNews flagged up the simmering coup in Honduras against the-then president Manuel Zelaya, which resulted in his removal at military gunpoint early on 28 June, 2009. One year on, the new president, Porfirio Lobo, has also alleged that sections of the country's entrenched rightwing political and business elite, which still hold sway over key state institutions, in particular the judiciary that moved against Zelaya, are now plotting against him.

Significance: Six months after taking office, Lobo appears unable to assert his authority over the myriad of conflicting interests in Honduras. The US, which fully supported Lobo's November 2009 election as the best way out of the institutional mess created by the coup, appears concerned, but its efforts to prod things along internally have recently led to a backlash.

Externally, the US, with the support of all of Central America (bar Nicaragua), is pushing for the rest of the region to recognise - and thereby strengthen - the Lobo government. It may now with some justification argue that 'idealists' led by Brazil, which first want to see Lobo put in place more reforms in support of national political reconciliation, including the return of Zelaya to the country, may actually produce a situation in which Lobo goes the way of Zelaya.

Lobo swept all before him in an easy election victory last November. He took 57% of the popular vote, and his traditional Partido Nacional secured a majority in congress and took 17 of the country's 18 departments. Since his investiture in late January he has fulfilled commitments negotiated with the US to form a government of national unity and put in place a Truth Commission to investigate the events surrounding the coup.

More notably, the supreme electoral court (TSE) has moved to put together a package of reforms among which figures prominently a proposal to make it easier to hold a plebiscite/referendum. (Zelaya was ousted for his efforts, against the wishes of the other state institutions, to hold a non binding voter survey to canvass support for a constituent assembly).

Yesterday (24 June), the president of the TSE, David Matamoros, announced a new joint congressional-TSE committee to refine proposals for constitutional reforms, electoral law reforms and political organisation reforms - which basically seek to make the system more participative ahead of the next scheduled election in late 2013. Matamoros said the committee would travel around the country to canvass locally on the proposals, which will go before congress in 2011. The rump of Zelaya's supporters, which are grouped under the umbrella opposition movement, Frente Nacional de Resistencia, are still clamouring for a constituent assembly and Lobo can ill afford to ignore them, especially given the external pressure on him.

Lobo first denounced the existence of a plot against him in late May. He named no names but the strong implication is that the same members of the reactionary elite that took umbrage at Zelaya - namely the supreme court - are now undermining his government.

Certainly the supreme court has been the most recalcitrant - it insists there was no coup in June 2009 but a constitutional succession, recently sacked some dissenting magistrates and appears nonplussed towards its role in the national reconciliation process - it insists it will not drop its pending long list of criminal charges against Zelaya, for which an arrest warrant is still outstanding. Lobo, who in May acknowledged there had been a coup, can't really move against the supreme court, although there have been rumours that congress is thinking of sacking its president, Jorge Rivera.

If anyone represents the face of this reactionary elite, it's the former de facto president Roberto Micheletti, who this week popped up in San Salvador, where he was received by the city's conservative mayor, Norman Quijano, of El Salvador's right-wing Arena party, as a “distinguished guest". Micheletti held forth on regional democracy and the main threats to the region - which he identified as organised crime/drug trafficking and “President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela".

He also expressed his support for Lobo but, curiously, said that Lobo should have identified the alleged coup plotters, so that they could be processed. His statement sounded more like a challenge to Lobo than a gesture of support.

Not for the first time, Micheletti strongly railed against the US (and Spanish) ambassadors, for their alleged interference in domestic affairs. It's worth noting that the human rights commissioner, Ramón Custodio, another reactionary, declared on 11 June that some foreign diplomats think they are “the fourth power" in Honduras.

Finally, one of the country's most powerful oligarchs, Miguel Facussé, yesterday alerted of moves by the Lobo-appointed director of the National Agrarian Institutute, César Ham, to “expropriate" his lands via a proposed new agricultural reform law.

Pointer: El Salvador's President Mauricio Funes was furious at Micheletti's trip to the country, yesterday expressing his “repudiation" of the conservative group that invited him, and stressing that the “dictator" Micheletti was persona non grata in El Salvador. Funes, against the wishes of the ruling leftwing Frente Farabundo Martí­ para la Liberación Nacional, supports the US-led push to reincorporate Honduras into regional forums.

Development: On 3 August President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa argued that Mexico should debate drug legalisation.

Significance: Calderón's move is a change of position. He said that he was still firmly against the legalisation of drugs, but he now believed that that there should be a debate on the issue. He now accepts that the argument, advanced by academics and NGOs that the legalisation of marijuana would hurt the drug gangs, should be heard and considered.

Calderón's change of heart could not have come at a more high-profile event. It came on the second day of the 'Diálogo por la Seguridad: hacia una polí­tica de Estado'. The dialogue is a forum which brings together Calderón's security cabinet with academics working on drugs and gang issues.

In the US 14 states have decriminalised possession of marijuana for medical use and this November, California is likely to become the first state in the US to legalise the possession and sale of marijuana.  Interestingly, the Mexican bishops' conference advocates the legalisation of soft drugs (which it claims that most forms of marijuana are). At the Dialogo, Miguel Molina, an adviser to the directorate of the national intelligence agency, Cisen, said that the question now was what Mexico would do when California legalised marijuana in November.

Friday 10 September

Nicaragua: The IMF will continue its visit to discuss the fourth and fifth revision of its three-year programme with Nicaragua (until 17 September).

Brazil: Final day of a three day visit to Brazil by China's defence minister, General Liang Guanglie. The visit is in line with a declared commitment from both sides to boost military cooperation. Guanglie expressed an interest in carrying out joint training exercises involving both armies and airforces next year.

El Salvador/Mexico: President Mauricio Funes will meet Mexico's Felipe Calderón in Mexico to discuss security. Funes requested the meeting after the massacre of the 72 illegal immigrants in Tamaulipas, Mexico on 24 August.

Colombia: Four French senators from the so-called “France-Andean countries friendly group" will continue their official visit to Colombia (until 14 September). The delegation will meet government and NGO representatives in Bogotá as well as Caragena and Medellí­n.

Ecuador: On the last day of his official visit to South Korea, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa will take part in a seminar on investment, organised by the private sector.

Region: The minister of foreign relations of Taiwan, Timothy C.T. Yang starts a tour of Latin America that will take him to Panama, Paraguay, and St. Lucia. Yang will be meeting with various government officials in order to examine the different cooperation projects that the island nation conducts in those countries, as well as discussing bilateral relations.

Saturday 11 September

Uruguay: The ruling Frente Amplio will hold a two day national meeting to analyse the last five years of government in Uruguay.

Chile: Human rights organisations, unions and social movements will hold a demonstration to mark the 37th anniversary of the military coup led by Augusto Pinochet, in demand of a “fairer and more democratic" country.

Sunday 12 September

Brazil: TV debate between the main presidential candidates ahead of the 3 October election.

Monday 13 September

Panama/Colombia: Panamanian and Colombian officials will meet in Bogotá to continue discussions regarding a bilateral free trade agreement (until 17 September).

Honduras/Mexico: Honduran president Porfirio Lobo will meet his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderón to discuss the Tamaulipas massacre and Honduras's efforts to be re-admitted to the Organisation of American States (OAS). Lobo will then travel to New York to attend the UN General Assembly.

Wednesday 15 September

Argentina: elections to choose three new members of the judicial appointments committee (Consejo de la Magistratura).

Mexico: 200 year anniversary of the “grito" which formally began Mexico's struggle to obtain independence from Spain.

Thursday 16 September

Chile: bicentennial celebrations commence, marking the 200 anniversary of Chile's first national government established on 18 September 1810 and the beginning of the country's struggle for independence.

Development: On 21 October, Roberto Gil, a federal deputy for the ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), urged the lower chamber's Sección Instructora, the body in charge of determining whether public servants can be stripped of their privileges, to quickly come to a decision about the case of deputy Julio César Godoy, so that the chamber could vote on the issue.
 
Significance: Godoy is wanted by the Procudadurí­a General de la República (PGR) since 2009 for his suspected links to drug trafficking gangs. However, as a recently sworn-in federal deputy, he is immune from prosecution. It appears that the PAN, which is trying to forge an electoral alliance with Godoy's former party, the left-wing Partido de Revolución Democrática (PRD), in order to defeat the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in the upcoming July 2011 Estado de México elections, is adopting a strong stance against Godoy in order to avoid potentially damaging repercussions from the case.

Earlier this month, Godoy was forced to quit the PRD and become an independent deputy after further incriminating evidence was presented against him in the form of an alleged recorded conversation between him and the leader of La Familia Michoacana, one of the country's main criminal gangs (based in central Mexico).

Speaking on behalf of the PAN, Gil, expected to announce his candidacy for the party presidency this weekend, urged the president of the Sección Instructora, César Augusto Santiago Ramí­rez (PRI), to urgently deal with the case “in order to avoid the issue affecting the institutional life of the chamber of deputies". He stressed that the case, though “very complex, is of a criminal nature, not political".

Meanwhile, the PRD announced on 21 October through its parliamentary spokeswoman, Leticia Quezada, that Godoy's position in the PRD caucus in the chamber of federal deputies would be examined. According to Quezada, the PRD will consider requests received from several of federal deputies calling for Godoy's expulsion. Quezada said that the final decision will be made by the PRD party president, Jesús Ortega.

Development: On 6 December Mexico's supreme court ruled that the new law governing the operation of the state-oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), is constitutional.

Significance: The ruling opens the way for Pemex to launch a tender for foreign companies to become involved in increasing oil production from mature and old oilfields. On 2 December the supreme court had ruled that the incentives the new law offered to foreign oil companies were constitutional. The 6 December ruling confirms that Pemex's board can enter into subcontracting deals with private companies.

The tender will give private operators incentives, according to how much oil they produce. The new law is designed to encourage foreign oil companies to become involved in the development of Mexico's potentially huge deepwater oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico and the complicated onshore oilfield of Chicontepec.

The supreme court was asked to ruled on the constitutionality of the new Pemex law by left-wingers and nationalists in congress, who argued that the law overturned Pemex's monopoly on oil production. The supreme court only had reservations about a technical issue concerning how many board meetings dissident directors may call when they oppose a policy supported by a majority of the Pemex board.

Development: On 26 January the federal Procuradurí­a General de la República (PGR) announced that it would investigate the killing of a bodyguard to the mayor of Ciudad Juárez on 25 January.

Significance: According to Héctor Murguí­a, the mayor, the bodyguard was killed by federal policemen in cold blood. The mayor said on 26 January that despite the killing he neither wanted the army nor the federal police to leave the city, the most violent in the Americas. He added that he was now re-opening an office to which local residents could report abuses committed by federal police officers or the army.

Key points:

Four federal police officers on duty in central Ciudad Juárez were apparently told by a taxi driver that there were some armed men acting suspiciously a couple of blocks away. The police went off and saw that there were a lot of heavily armed men milling around. The police say that they asked the armed men to lay down their weapons, a request they allegedly ignored, yelling at the police and then pointing their weapons towards them.

This version contradicts Murguí­a's testimony. He said that he was visiting the house of the spokesman for the diocese of Ciudad Juárez when the federal police turned up and started shooting. 

Separately, the national human rights committee (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, CNDH) reported that 111 innocent civilians had been killed by the federal police or the army in 2010. Raúl Plascencia, the CNDH's president, said that in the vast majority of cases there had been no prosecutions. He added that the CNDH had received 16,066 complaints and issued 86 recommendations to 115 authorities (i.e. federal, state and municipal) but added that all law enforcement agencies were reluctant to implement CNDH suggestions.

Development: On 16 March the US State Department confirmed that it had used drones in anti-drug trafficking operations over Mexico.

Significance: President Felipe Calderón has yet to comment. Indeed in his official report to the Mexican senate on his recent trip to the US, he made no mention of the drones, which were first used only last month (February 2011). The US line is that the drones were being used at the suggestion and with the permission of the Mexican government.

Key points:

Alejandro Poiré, the technical secretary of the Consejo de Seguridad Nacional, said that the use of drones was part of US cooperation arrangements with Mexico and confirmed that Mexico had requested the use of drones for specific missions. Poiré implied that there were no implications for Mexican sovereignty because all such operations were run by the Mexican air force.

The revelation that the US is deploying drones over Mexico is another indication that the US, increasingly, is doing things in Mexico without, necessarily, telling the Mexican government. 'The New York Times' reported on 15 March that the US had started to use high altitude drones in Mexico in February 2011. Calderón has also yet to comment on operation 'Fast & Furious', which began in 2009, under which the US deliberately supplied assault rifles to Mexican gangs in order to track the gangs' supply chain.

Separately, John Muller, the director general of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told the House of Representative's justice committee on 16 March that one “couldn't talk about success [in Mexico's war against the gangs] given the number of deaths and atrocities south of the border."

Development: On 6 May the head of the supreme electoral court (TSE), Marí­a Eugenia Villagrán, announced that, as of June, information regarding the electoral process will be broadcast in four of the main indigenous languages (k'iche', mam, kaqchikel and q'eqchi') via 30,000 radio spots on 90 different radio stations.

Significance: This is the first time that the TSE has complied with the 2003 law of national languages which compels state institutions to provide information translated in the indigenous languages spoken in each region. It also suggests that the long marginalized indigenous sector (which conservative estimates put at 40% of the national population, comprising 24 different groups) could play a more important role in the 11 September election.

Key points:

Although it will be possible to hear the spots across the country, the TSE explained that the main objective is to have an impact in the seven (out of 22) departments with an indigenous majority: Totonicapán, Sololá, Quiché, Alta and Baja Verapaz, Chimaltenango and Huehuetenango.

This attempt to mobilize the indigenous vote follows a change to the electoral law, which took effect before the 2007 election, increasing the number of polling stations (JRVs) by 65% from 8,910 in 2003 to 13,756 in 2007. New polling stations were created in areas that contained over 500 registered citizens, taking into account criteria such as residence, access, distance and security, as part of efforts to improve voter participation. This particularly affected rural communities in the country's interior, many of which are primarily composed of indigenous populations, and was thought to benefit President Alvaro Colom and his centre-left Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE) - which won 20 out of Guatemala's 23 electoral districts.

The European Union's electoral mission report on the 2007 election cited an unprecedented interest in the indigenous electorate from the competing political parties, both as a result of the decentralization but also the likely “significant media repercussions" of the decision by indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchú to run for the presidency (although she ultimately took only 3% of the vote). Menchú is planning to stand again in September.

AsiaInt Economic Intelligence Review, April 2005

Click here for full text:
http://www.asiaint.com/arl/arl5908.asp - 2,501 words

Concerns over corruption and the rule of law - or the lack of it - have kept foreign investors out of Indonesia over the last year or so. In the meantime, the country's bankers have been much more confident, with the result that lending has surged from a low base. Essentially, the bankers have shown their confidence in the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The growth in lending varies widely across the country. However, figures from Bank Indonesia indicate that the expansion - and implicitly the growth of the economy - has been fastest outside Jakarta. Going forward, it appears likely that the country will benefit from the long process of reform and restructuring in the banking sector. Indonesia's largest banks enjoy greater size and/or foreign support than their counterparts in the Philippines or, indeed, in some vastly richer countries_

CHILE: Leftwingers bring lawsuit against Bush

FREE-TRADE AGREEMENT: Fifth round begins for Andean-US talks

URUGUAY: Government signs bilateral deal during last week in office

US ELECTIONS: Latino votes likely to be key on 2 November

IMMIGRATION: Human rights group calls for investigation into shootings

CHILE
A group of Chilean leftwingers have submitted a lawsuit to the Santiago-based court of appeals demanding that President George Bush be indicted for war crimes and torture if he steps foot in the country. The Poder Democrático y Social (Podemos) group, comprised of the members from humanist, communist and Christian left parties, as well as the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, also wish to charge the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and the former chief administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer. Bush is due to visit Chile for a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, to be held in Santiago from 19-21 November. Although the suit is unlikely to have much success, one communist party member, Lautaro Carmona said, 'it represents the feeling of a large section of the Chilean population'. Chile opposed the invasion of Iraq at the UN.

FREE-TRADE AGREEMENT
The fifth round of free-trade talks between the Andean countries of Ecuador, Peru and Colombia with the US began in Guayaquil on 26 October. President Gutiérrez inaugurated the talks by asking the different countries to bear in mind 'their responsibility in ensuring that the result of the negotiations reflect the interest of diverse sectors of their societies'. According to insiders, progress in this round of talks has been slow because of the proximity of the US elections; most of the Andean trade negotiators believe if Bush wins the talks could conclude by the seventh round, if Kerry wins it could take much longer. The hotel where the talks are taking place is heavily guarded to prevent protestors from disrupting proceedings. The indigenous association, Conaie, is holding a parallel conference to express their opposition to any free-trade deal.

URUGUAY
The leftwing Encuentro-Progresista-Frente Amplio coalition, favourites to win the presidential election on 31 October, reacted angrily to a bilateral investment deal the government signed with the US on 25 October. The EP-FA is livid that the present Partido Colorado government has signed this deal with less than week left in office, even though it knows the EP-FA is strongly in favour of any such deal with the US being done through the Mercosur trade bloc rather than on a bilateral basis. President Jorge Batlle, whose party is sure to come a distant third in the election, defended the move by saying that the treaty had been hanging around in congress for too long and was no different to the deals Uruguay had already signed with Mexico and Finland.

US ELECTIONS
According to the US Census, 16m Latinos will be eligible to vote in the elections on 2 November. How their votes split between President George W Bush and his challenger, Senator John Kerry, could decide the result. Latinos (or Hispanics) account for 7% of the total electorate. Latinos are likely to be decisive in key races such as Florida (27 electoral college votes), Arizona (10) and New Mexico (five). The general view in the US media is that Latinos are wild cards, just as likely to vote for Bush as Kerry. To win the presidency Kerry or Bush needs a minimum of 270 votes in the electoral colleges.

IMMIGRATION
The Arizona Coalition for Human Rights is asking for an independent investigation into two cases in which US Border Patrol officials apparently attacked undocumented migrants in the state. Isabel Garcia, the co-director of the human rights group, said that only an independent investigation could determine what had happened. In one incident an undocumented Mexican migrant was shot dead by a Border Patrol officer on 21 October. It is not clear whether the migrant was challenged before being shot. Some reports claim that the migrant who was shot was a people trafficker who was being chased from New Mexico by the Border Patrol. In the other incident, on 3 October, an undocumented migrant was shot in jaw when he went to undo his seat belt after being stopped by the US Border Patrol. In both cases human rights officials allege that the Border Patrol used undue force.

Haiti: On March 22 the former US Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush visited Haiti. Following the devastating 12 January earthquake on the island (with 222,500 fatalities), Clinton and Bush established 'The Fund for Haiti' at the request of President Barack Obama. The pair met President René Préval to discuss the management of emergency funds and the potential for future investment. Clinton, the UN special envoy for Haiti, said that the talks centred on Haiti's long term aid and development requirements. The Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) act was created in 2006 and implemented on 19 March 2007. HOPE I and II gave Haiti favourable tariffs and trading terms. Its aims were to assist progress toward a market-based economy, increasing employment, enhancing rule of law and protection of human rights. It also provided duty-free entry to the US for garments manufactured in Haiti. Clinton stated that alternations to the existing HOPE legislation could lead to Brazilian and Korean investment in the textile sector. He said he intended to quickly mobilise bipartisan support to get these changes approved by congress, in an effort to create “more than 100,000 jobs in Haiti in short order".

Panama: On 22 March the US supreme court said it would not reconsider former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega's request to prevent his extradition to France on money laundering charges. The high court turned down Noriega's petition for a hearing without comment. Noriega has already been convicted in absentia in France with violating anti-money laundering laws by allegedly using drug money (US$3.1m) to purchase an apartment in Paris, but the French government has offered him a fresh trial once in France. Noriega ended a 10-year US jail sentence in September 2007 but he remains in a Miami prison. In 1992, shortly after his arrest (during the US invasion of Panama) a US federal judge declared him a Prisoner of War (POW) after he was convicted of US drug trafficking charges. Because of his POW status, Noriega's lawyers contended that under the Geneva Conventions he should have been repatriated to Panama in 2007. However, this overlooks the fact that the federal judge had ruled in 1992 that his POW status did not preclude his extradition. Lower courts rejected his argument and the US supreme court refused to hear his case. Noriega was originally sentenced to 40 years for cocaine trafficking, money laundering and racketeering, reduced for good behaviour. For security reasons, the US has not said when he might be extradited.

Ecuador: On 22 March Ecuador's attorney general said it would appeal against the ruling of a New York Court (11 March) in favour of the US firm Chevron's right to pursue international arbitration against the Republic of Ecuador. A US federal judge ruled that Chevron would be able to pursue arbitration under the bilateral investment treaty between the US and Ecuador on the basis that Chevron claims it was not fairly treated by the Ecuadorean courts and arbitration would ensure a “fair and impartial court proceeding". The international arbitration will mean that if Chevron is found liable under a separate action, in the Ecuadorean courts, led by indigenous groups claiming that Chevron's subsidiary, Texaco, failed to clean up after its operations as it promised, any penalty will not be paid until the arbitration case is concluded. Chevron has stated that if the arbitration decision is in its favour, the firm will transfer the costs to Ecuador, and oblige the state energy firm Petroecuador to pay for the environmental damage Chevron claims has take place since Texaco left Ecuador in 1992.

FRIDAY

BOLIVIA: Meeting between the Argentinean planning minister Julio de Vido and the Bolivian hinister of hydrocarbons Carlos Villegas to analyse a fall in Bolivia's gas exports to Argentina.

BRAZIL: Official visit by Spain's minister for work and social affairs, Jesús Caldera Sánchez-Capitán, to Rí­o de Janeiro.

SATURDAY

MEXICO: Conclusion of the Monterrey Cultural Forum 2007 with a dialogue on "Cultural Politics".

SUNDAY

ARGENTINA: An act will be signed in Buenos Aires to create the regional development bank Banco del Sur by the leaders of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

PARAGUAY: Internal elections within the PLRA (Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico), Paraguay's second-largest political force, to choose the party's candidates for the legislative elections on 20 April 2008.

GUATEMALA: 5th Inter-American Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility.

A new wave of attacks in São Paulo, on police and security personnel, public buildings and buses, appears to have caught the authorities unaware, despite the fact that a steady build-up had been under way at least since mid-June. The government, which attributed the attacks to the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), the gang which staged a bloody uprising in early May, said the latest wave had been 'unplanned'.

According to Saulo de Abreu, São Paulo's public security secretary, the most recent attacks, on 12 July, were a response to 'unfounded' reports that several of the top leaders of the PCC were about to be transferred to a high-security prison in another state (Paraná). The reports did appear to have some foundation: what Abreu specifically denied was that the state government had drawn up a list of the PCC inmates to be transferred, and that a list published in the local media was 'false'. He did not quite deny the intention to carry out the transfer.

The May uprising was launched in response to the government's intention of transferring several PCC bosses to higher-security prisons within São Paulo state.

Since shortly after the May uprising the PCC had been conducting a two-pronged offensive: on the one hand, attacks on prison guards at or near their home; on the other, a new series of prison mutinies. The prison guards' union has reported 14 members murdered since mid-May, five of them since the beginning of July, and that 10 others had chosen to leave their homes after receiving death threats. It says the PCC's intentions had become clear with the discovery in June that personnel records had been stolen from prison system archives.

The police had received a further warning in the form of a tip-off which allowed, on 26 June, the disruption of a group of PCC gunmen as they were preparing to conduct attacks on prison guards. The prison guards, though, were not the only targets: in early July members of the civil police narrowly escaped being killed in drive-by shooting at their homes; on 8 July an officer guarding the federal courts building in central São Paulo was gunned down.

The most spectacular of the June prison riots took place in the Araraquara establishment, where inmates destroyed all four cell wings and the authorities responded by enclosing all 1,447 of them in a yard and soldering the gates shut, creating what even the government describes as a 'humanitarian crisis'. In the Mirandópolis prison, where 1,200 inmates are crammed into space designed to hold only 200, one major riot was quelled in June, only to be followed by a second one in early July.

To make matters worse, on 6 July the prison guards' union called its members out on a strike which has since spread to 50 of the state's 174 prisons. At the top of its list of demands is that the guards be allowed to bear arms outside the prisons as well as inside, so as to stand a better chance of defending themselves from the PCC gunmen. 

A prison guard was among the six people known to have been killed in the attacks staged on 12 July, and the link between these attacks and the developments in the prisons was made quite evident by placards left at the scenes of several incidents, decrying the 'oppression' prevailing in the prison system. A police officer and three private security guards were also among the 12 July fatalities.

The authorities have signalled willingness to grant the prison guards their main demand, and have also started talking about releasing prison inmates charged with lesser crimes in order to alleviate the overcrowding that has been fuelling the riots. Overall, it is reckoned that the São Paulo prisons were built to hold 106,500 inmates, but actually house 138,000 — 38.2% of Brazil's entire prison population.

A raft of recently published statistics show that Mexico is in danger of losing even more of its brightest and best young people to the US. One statistic showed that 89% of all science students with scholarships provided by the Mexican government to study in the US did not come home. Furthermore, 30% of all Mexican PhDs now live in the US.

There is more than anecdotal evidence to suggest that the brain drain has picked up. US Census numbers show that between 1995 and 2002, the number of foreign-born Mexicans earning between US$50,000 and US$75,000 in the US increased nearly 10-fold. The Census numbers also showed that the number of Mexican-born people who were earning over US$75,000 increased 12-fold in the same period.

It is not only right at the top of the income scale that Mexicans are moving to the US. We have noted on several occasions that studies of undocumented Mexican migrants to the US show that they tend to be better educated than the average Mexican, at least in terms of years of completed schooling. A recent article in World Policy Journal by Christian Stracke showed that at least 1.2m Mexican migrants to the US had completed some education after high school. As Mexico has only 5.2m people with any post-school qualifications, the figure means that 20% of its stock of highly-trained people prefer to live in the US.

PEOPLE PROFILE is published every Tuesday and describes the professional background of key people emerging in the political and economic scenario.

------------------- MARTIN REDRADO----------------------

WHO IS MARTIN REDRADO?

Deputy foreign minister, he has responsibility for international trade negotiations.

Why watch him?
He is in charge of Argentina's FTAA trade strategy and will have a key role in Miami later this week. The FTAA is in danger of failing due to the hardline taken by the chief protagonists, Brazil and the US. Argentina has shown itself to be more open to a redefinition of the FTAA. Redrado is likely to act as an intermediary between Brazil's vice-president of the FTAA, Adhemar Bahadian and the US negotiators.

Place of birth: Buenos Aires

Education:
Universidad de Buenos Aires. Degree in economics. Masters in public administration from Harvard University

Public life: He was head of the central bank in the early years of Domingo Cavallo's stint as economy minister under the presidency of Carlos Menem.

Timeline:
1996-1998 Secretary of State in education ministry
1994-2003 Founder and president of Fundación Capital, an entity committed to economic investigation and the design of public policy.
1998-2003 President of Trident Investment Group, subsidiary of Medical Management of America.
2002-2003 Deputy foreign minister and secretary of foreign relations and international trade

Strong points

He has considerable experience in international negotiations. He represents a balance between the extreme anti-FTAA feeling found among some members of President Néstor Kirchner's cabinet and the pro-FTAA stance of the Menem and de la Rúa administrations. Argentina's foreign minister Rafael Bielsa has invested his full confidence in Redrado, delegating to him the meat of the technical negotiations.

Weak points
Redrado's role as an intermediary between the Brazil and the US will be constrained somewhat by the fact that he will have to side with Brazil out of Mercosur solidarity and due to the strong relations forged between President Kirchner and Lula.

Prospects
Redrado will throw his weight behind Brazil's idea of a more modest and flexible FTAA, rather than the US's original concept of a standardised agreement. Brazil and its supporters argue that the differing levels of economic development between North America and the rest of the Americas would mean that US companies could steamroller their way across Latin America if tariff protection was removed. They argue that it was unfair that Latin America should have to remove protection on industrialised goods, where the US was more competitive, while the US refused to amend its agricultural subsidies.

Who is he? He is running third in the presidential opinion polls. He is a film-maker, actor and media personality and a dissident member of President Michelle Bachelet's Partido Socialista (PS).

Why watch him? Enrí­quez-Ominami, 35, claims to represent a younger generation tired of traditional politicians. He broke with the PS after it refused to hold a primary to pick a presidential candidate. While the assumption has been that the presidential race would be between Sebastián Piñera of the centre-right Coalición por el Cambio and Eduardo Frei, candidate for the centre-left quadripartite Concertación (of which the PS is a member), an opinion poll by TNS Time, on 5 May, showed Enrí­quez-Ominami running on 14% support. Although this was less than half Frei's support (29%), no political commentator had previously considered the PS dissident to be much more than a token candidate.

Date of Birth: 12 June 1973.

Education: Graduated in philosophy from the Universidad de Chile. Also studied film at the Alta Escuela Femis-Paris, France.

Public Life: Marco Antonio Enrí­quez-Ominami comes from a political family. He is the son of a leftwing guerrilla, Miguel Enrí­quez (who founded the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria and was killed fighting against the Pinochet regime). His mother, Manuela Gumucio, a film maker, then married Carlos Ominami, who served as economy minister in the first Concertación government (1990-1994) and is currently a senator for the PS.

Enrí­quez-Ominami made his name as a film director, producer and actor, serving as executive director for the production company, Rivas y Rivas since 1998 and appearing as a regular on TV and radio panel discussions. He has made numerous films and documentaries including “Chile, Los Héroes están Fatigados", selected to open the International Festival of Audiovisual Programs, FIPA in Biarritz, France in 2002. In 2005 he set up Fundación ChileMedios, which, among other projects has organised televised meetings between leading political figures and aims to promote political debate.

Enrí­quez-Ominami worked on the senatorial campaigns of his adoptive father, Carlos Ominami, in 1993 and 1999 and together they published in 2004, “Animales Polí­ticos", a book about the state of political and cultural debate in Chile. He also worked on Ricardo Lagos's presidential campaign in 1993 and 1999 as well as the 2004 municipal elections. In December 2005, he was elected deputy for the 10th district for 2006-2010 with a record number of votes for the district. As deputy he sits on the permanent committees for science and technology as well as agriculture. In early May 2009 he confirmed he would run as an independent candidate for the December 2009 elections. This means he has to resign from the PS before July 2009.

Timeline:

1993: Works on Ricardo Lagos's presidential campaign and the senatorial campaign of his adoptive father, Carlos Ominami.

1998: Executive director for film and TV production company, Rivas y Rivas.

1999: Works on Ricardo Lagos's presidential campaign and the senatorial campaign of his adoptive father, Carlos Ominami.

2005: Creates Fundación ChileMedios.

December 2005: Elected deputy for the 10th district for the period 2006-2010.

May 2009: Confirms will stand as independent candidate for the December presidential elections.

Strengths: A youthful, media-savvy popular personality, Enrí­quez-Ominami is well placed to capitalise on the current discontent with the ruling Concertación. The ruling coalition has seen multiple desertions over the last few months by heavyweights such as Jorge Arrate and Alejandro Navarro who left the PS declaring themselves disillusioned with its increasingly centrist line. Enrí­quez-Ominami in particular took objection to the party's decision to back Frei, who comes from the Concertación's centrist Partido Democráta Cristiano (PDC) as presidential candidate for the ruling alliance. Frei, a former president (1994-2000), is the embodiment of the political elite and believed by many to be out of step with the times. This was implicitly acknowledged in his decision to opt for an overtly youthful campaign team, led by 27 year-old, Sebastián Bowen. In contrast, Enrí­quez-Ominami, who is campaigning on a progressive platform, is more convincing in his claims to represent genuine change. One sign of the threat he poses is the fact that his unexpected performance in the TNS Time poll prompted the Concertación parties to hold an emergency meeting. PRD President Juan Carlos Latorre, admitted that, while serving as a boon to the opposition, Enrí­quez-Ominami's candidacy “worried the Concertación".

Weaknesses: As an independent, Enrí­quez-Ominami lacks any party machinery. Critics say that he lacks credibility and his candidacy is aimed rather at castigating the ruling coalition than offering concrete proposals. Meanwhile Bachelet - who is enjoying unprecedented popularity ratings of 67% - has made her support for Frei clear and criticised Concertación dissidents for dividing the coalition.

Prospects: Enrí­quez-Ominami's surprising surge in the polls cannot be ignored by the ruling coalition. While unlikely to win the presidency himself, the PS maverick could well play a crucial role in determining the outcome of the elections. Local pollsters speculate Enrí­quez-Ominami could take 3% of Piñera's vote and 6%-7% of Frei's vote in the first round while in a second round - which is currently on the cards - half of those who would vote for Enrí­quez-Ominami could back Frei while only a quarter would back the rightwing candidate. His support could well prove decisive, a prospect which has not gone unnoticed by the Concertación; the deputy for another of its members, the Partido por la Democracia (PPD), Ramón Farí­as urged the ruling alliance to listen to Enrí­quez-Ominami and attempt to incorporate him into Frei's campaign. Enrí­quez-Ominami's adoptive father, Carlos Ominami, also admitted that his son's candidacy could have a negative impact on votes for Frei. It is worth noting, however, that with nearly a third (28.8%) of Chileans yet to decide on who to vote for (according to a poll published on 2 May by a national newspaper, El Mercurio), the outcome of the race is far from certain.

BRAZIL | Rio crime rates fall. Figures released in the first half of May by the Instituto de Segurança Pública (ISP) show a substantial decline in crime rates in Rio de Janeiro state. In 2010, the number of culpable homicides fell to 4,767, or 18% fewer than in 2009 and 31% fewer than in 2002, the most recent peak year. This left Rio state with a culpable homicide rate of just under 30 per 100,000 inhabitants; the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, the state's crime hotspot, accounts for almost 40% of the state's population.

In 2010, reported cases of ‘latrocínio' (robbery causing death) were down 18%. Also down were the so-called ‘autos de resistência' (deaths resulting from confrontations with the police): in 2010 they totalled 855 (-18%). Other categories of crime showing declines in 2010 were street robbery (-11%) and theft of vehicles (-19.4%).

These trends have continued into the first quarter of this year. Compared with the same period of 2010, the following were recorded: autos de resistência (-23.6%), burglary (-22%); theft of vehicles (-20%); culpable homicide (-17.3%); and street robbery (-11.6%).

While some of the improvement can be attributed to the introduction of the permanent police ‘pacification units' (UPPs) to Rio's favelas [SSR-09-07; 10-03], the continuing rate declines into this year are credited to the policy adopted in November-December 2010 to mount major occupations of gang-controlled favelas by police with military support and to maintain a military Força de Pacificação (FP) there for a longer than usual period [SSR-11-01].

CHILE | Anti-hydroelectric campaign. At least 70 people were arrested in demonstrations by about 10,000 people across Chile that launched a campaign against the construction of a major hydroelectric project in the southern region of Aysén, a US$3.2bn scheme that involves installing five dams on the Pascua and Baker rivers and which is meant to generate 18,340GW a year. Though the site of the Hidroaysén project is well to the south of the main concentrations of Mapuche people, the degree of sensitivity to schemes affecting natural resources in Patagonia was illustrated by the support the demonstrations attracted in the Mapuche heartland. Several analysts see the environmentalist campaign merging with those of Mapuche militants.

URUGUAY | Amnesty law stays in place. On 20 May a tie in the lower chamber of congress effectively killed the initiative to repeal the 1986 ‘Ley de Caducidad', the law that ‘extinguished' the possibility of prosecuting officials for crimes committed during the period of military rule (1973-85). Technically, the law could be put to another vote by the plenum, in which a two-thirds majority would have to be mustered to secure approval. The outcome of the 20 May vote, in which the tie resulted from the abstention of one legislator of the ruling Frente Amplio bloc, makes it clear that there is no prospect of a turnaround of the required magnitude.

The Ley de Caducidad was endorsed by the Uruguayan electorate in two successive referendums in 1989 and 2009. President José Mujica, like his predecessor, Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010), had openly opposed its repeal.

ARGENTINA-URUGUAY | Gualeguaychú protest resumed. On 8 May the Gualeguaychú environmentalists opposed to the pulp mill installed on the banks of the Uruguay River staged a mass demonstration that included a brief interruption of traffic on the international Gualeguaychú-Fray Bentos Bridge. They insist that the mill ‘continues to pollute' the river despite the July 2010 bilateral monitoring agreement signed between Argentina and Uruguay, and say that they will maintain their protest campaign ‘until the plant goes away'.

Development:  On 30 June, reading carefully from a 14-minute speech, President Hugo Chávez addressed the Venezuelan people on state television and confirmed the widespread rumours that he has cancer.

Significance:  The frail looking president did not elaborate on his medical condition, gave no timeline for the expected duration and intensity of his treatment and did not give any indication as to when he might be able to return to Caracas from Havana, Cuba. He insisted that in close collaboration with his loyal lieutenant, Vice-President Elías Jaua, he remains at the helm of government. However, his constitutional position will inevitably now come under question. 

Notably, Jaua came out soon afterwards with a call for "maximum unity" in the ruling Partido Unido Socialista de Venezuela (PSUV).  Chávez is surrounded by fiercely loyal ministers – and he also has the support of the army. It's not in the interest of anyone in the Bolivarian Revolution (including those that have profited handsomely from it) to provoke instability. However, the president looks fallible for the first time and it may be only a matter of time before the cracks begin to appear, potentially between a civilian and a more military wing.

Key points:

• Chávez revealed that he had undergone two operations in Havana, one early on 11 June to remove an abscess in the pelvic area and another (date unspecified) to remove a cancerous tumour, apparently discovered afterwards, also in the pelvic area.  The president admitted he had been negligent with his health, which may suggest - as claimed by the only Venezuelan commentator with the apparent inside line into what's going on, Nelson Bocaranda – that the president had had symptoms typical of prostate cancer for several months. Chávez looked tired and, understandably, was downbeat, referring to earlier times in his life – most notably the failed coup against him in April 2002 – when he had "climbed out of the abyss". Hardly stirring words.

• There is no doubt that the president and his inner circle have acted irresponsibly – and also undemocratically. The government has not said who was in charge while the president was (twice) on the operating table. The hermetic seal over information that is a matter of state would be unthinkable in most democracies. In the US (and elsewhere), the president's annual medical check-ups are made public as a matter of routine. 

• By way of regional contrast, the Paraguayan government was open and transparent about President Fernando Lugo's bout of cancer in 2010 (though initially, confused and contradictory official reports caused uncertainty until an accurate prognosis emerged). This was also the case in Brazil in 2009 when Dilma Rousseff, then minister of the presidency, was treated for a mild lymphoma. Last week (22 June) in Argentina, the office of the presidency gave a supremely detailed account of a minor head gash suffered by President Cristina Fernández after a fall.

• The opposition, which has to tread very carefully, immediately expressed its sympathy and solidarity with Chávez and said he should be given space, as a human being, to recover. The most likely unity candidate for the 2012 presidential race, Henrique Capriles Radonski, the popular state governor of the central Miranda state, had already taken the appropriate line earlier this week when he said that he wanted Chávez back in the country fully recovered so that they could battle fairly at the ballot box in 2012. This is the line that Radonski will stick to, staying above the fray.

• However, others in the opposition are entitled to raise the question as to a caretaker president. Under Article 233 of the 1999 constitution, promulgated by Chávez, if the president becomes permanently unavailable (our emphasis) to serve during the last two years of his constitutional term of office, the executive vice-president takes over the presidency of the republic until such term is completed.

• Under Article 234, a president who becomes temporarily unavailable to serve is replaced by the executive vice-president for a period of up to 90 days, which may be extended by resolution of the national assembly for an additional 90 days. If the temporary unavailability continues for more than 90 consecutive days, the national assembly has the power to decide (via majority vote) whether the unavailability to serve should be considered permanent.

• The president can re-shuffle his cabinet at any point. There have been rumours that Adán Chávez, the president's older brother and governor of the family's home state Barinas, was angling for the number two post.  That doesn't seem likely after Adán, a known hardliner, made a clumsy statement equating armed battle with the ballot box, which apparently infuriated Hugo. The president notably mentioned only Jaua by name in his speech.  Others close to the throne include the foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro (and his wife deputy Cilia Flores), and the oil minister, Rafael Rodriguez, who doubles as president of the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa).  Hardliners include Adán Chavez, Deputy Diosdado Cabello and the head of the army, General Henry Rangel Silva.

• The opposition has scheduled its primaries for 12 February 2012. The presidential election is due in November/December next year. There are also municipal elections due in 2012. Tactically, the opposition may decide to bring forward its primaries, but to do that without looking callous and opportunistic it must also put forward a positive agenda for change in Venezuela, without attacking an ailing president. Now is the time for the opposition to prove it is politically mature enough to recover power.

Pointer: Daily life goes on in Venezuela (albeit amid prison riots, food shortages and a serious electricity crisis), but the government is deliberately downplaying a series of protests. Ironically, Venezuelan doctors yesterday (30 June) began what the national federation of doctors described as "an indefinite national strike" in demand of back pay and in protest at deteriorating conditions in the country's hospitals.