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The department of Guatemala, which includes Guatemala City, accounts for 67% of all the cases of high-impact crime in the country's seven most crime-ridden departments. The UN office in Guatemala highlights the fact that contract killings account for much of the increase in violent deaths, which totalled 1,949 countrywide in the first four months of the year.

The Policí­a Nacional Civil (PNC) reports 4,247 cases of high-impact crime (a category which includes homicide, robbery, hold-ups, rape, kidnapping, disappearances & domestic violence) in the department of Guatemala, compared with 2,103 in the six other departments with the highest crime rates.

The report by the UN office in Guatemala, released in the first week of June, notes that firearms are the main instrument of violent death, followed by knives. It also says, 'The increase in violent crime has as its modus operandi the hiring of sicarios to carry out contract killings.' The 'signature' of these killings is the use of weapons like AK-47 assault rifles and the delivery of a coup de grace to the victims, whose valuables are not stolen.

Many of these contract killings are the result of turf wars between drug traffickers, and acts of revenge by gangs. The report notes that drug trafficking has spread throughout Guatemala, with the highest concentrations of activity in the departments of Guatemala, Petén, Escuintla, Zacapa, Izabal and San Marcos — a list which includes four of the seven jurisdictions with the highest crime rates.

It is worth noting that the departments least affected by crime are Alta Verapaz, Baja Verapaz, Chimaltenango, El Progreso, Retalhuleu and Totonicapán.

Interior minister Carlos Vielmann says that while crime rates remain excessively high, progress is being made. Since the beginning of the year, he says, the PNC has arrested 14,528 suspected criminals and recovered 387 stolen vehicles. Also, 'after the restructuring of the antinarcotics police', in May the authorities seized 72 kilos of drugs and captured 'several sicarios hired by organised crime'.

Guatemala's most dangerous departments High-impact crimes* in January-April
Department	Cases	Department	Cases
Guatemala	4,247	Jutiapa	292
Escuintla	563	Izabal	237
Petén	412	Chiquimula	215
Quetzaltenango	384
*Homicide, robbery, holdups, rape, kidnapping, disappearances & domestic violence.
Source: UN, based on PNC

With local elections just two weeks away, Ecuador's political parties have begun squabbling over how to convert votes into political posts. The larger parties, the Partido Social Cristiano (PSC), the Izquierda Demócratica (ID) and Pachakutik, favour the 'Imperial' voting system; the smaller parties, including President Gutiérrez's own Sociedad Patriótica (SP), favour a more proportionally representational system. Crucially, the supreme electoral tribunal (TSE) is backing the big parties. The dispute is becoming so bitter, however, that on 29 September the TSE actually recommended delaying the elections, scheduled for 17 October.

President Gutiérrez was unabashed in his criticism of the tribunal's decision. 'The TSE, in an unconstitutional manner, is providing support to parties such as the ID, the PSC and Pachakutik,' he said, adding that it was up to congress to decide on a formula for distributing posts.

The four-man committee of the TSE argued that they were forced to make a decision following congress's failure. 'We waited eight months for congress to choose a way of distributing votes, but they didn't do it,' Eduardo Villaquirán, the vice-president of the TSE, said. 'Seeing as we are only two weeks away from the elections and from the constitutional obligation to hold them, we decided to take the decision.'

As it stands now politicians will not debate the issue unless at least 67 deputies ask the leader of congress, Guillermo Landázuri, to include the topic in the parliamentary agenda. The smaller parties argue that 51 requests (a majority, since there are 100 seats in congress) should be sufficient. One independent deputy, José Luis Columbo, claims the smaller parties have 52 supporters in congress.

Ecuador is no stranger to electoral reform; in the last 26 years there have been 25 changes and many have taken place shortly before elections. Considering Ecuador has had nine different presidents in the same period, the reforms have hardly proved effective at guaranteeing political stability. In the longer term, the 'Imperial' voting system, by favouring the larger parties, could help to create a less fractious congress. These municipal elections, however, will be overshadowed by the controversy the TSE's decision has provoked. The results are also likely to make life more difficult for Gutiérrez, whose SP party will probably fail to garner the 5% of the vote it needs to avoid being struck off the electoral register.

• President Lucio Gutiérrez has ordered an investigation into the work of Diego Oquendo, a journalist who alleged that Gutiérrez had funded his electoral campaign with money from the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc). The allegations emerged from a radio interview with former social welfare minister Patricio Acosta, whom Gutiérrez fired earlier this year after the US put him on a list of foreign officials suspected of corruption. The investigation is set to provoke further accusations that the president is interfering with the freedom of the press.

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

Who is Carlos Mesa?

Carlos Mesa has been the new President of Bolivia since last Sunday. He was promoted from his position as vice-president after Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was forced to resign in the wake of a week of violent demonstrations, which led to the deaths of 74 in clashes with the military.

Mesa assumes the presidency after the decisive diplomatic intervention of Brazil and Argentina, which convinced Sánchez de Lozada to resign his post to avoid increasing the tension and risking more deaths.

Now, Mesa, a former journalist and stranger to politics, is charged with rebuilding public confidence in a country beset by economic, social and institutional crises and widespread hunger.

The file:

Born
12 August 1953

Place of birth
La Paz, Bolivia

Education
Graduated with a degree in literature from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés.

Public life
He shot to fame as a journalist and writer after writing one of the most widely sold books in Bolivian history 15 years ago: 'Entre urnas y fusiles' (Between the ballot box and the gun) chronicled the political lives of all of Bolivia's former presidents.

He is married to Elvira Salinas and has two sons, Borja and Guiomar.

Timeline:

1976 - 1985 Founder and director of Cinemateca Boliviana. Works in radio, the press and television.
1982 - 83 Deputy director of the daily 'Ultima Hora'.
1983 Launches an influential television programme 'De Cerca', which consists of penetrating political interviews.
1986 - 90 Directed Channel 6 'América Televisión' and 2 'Telesistema Boliviano'.
1990 Creates the company Periodistas Asociados de Televisión (Associate journalists of television) along with Amalia Pando, Ximena Valdivia and Mario Espinoza. Now known as Red de Televisión, it is the company from which he directed his main news programmes. He becomes a member of the Bolivian history society.
1994 He wins the International Journalism Prize 'Rey de España', in recognition of his contribution to journalism in the Hispanic world.
2000 Wins the journalism prize from the Fundación Manuel Vicente Ballivián.
2002 Becomes the independent running mate of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in Bolivia's presidential election. Elected vice-president on 4 August.
2003 Sworn in as President of Bolivia after the resignation of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada

Strong points
Despite his inexperience in politics, Mesa is widely respected, something which sets him apart from Bolivia's corruption-tainted political classes. Mesa is one of the most renowned intellectuals in Bolivia. He enjoys the unqualified support of the US, Brazil and Argentina in his unexpected presidential foray. The majority of Bolivia's political parties see in Mesa someone who will concentrate on seeking ways to combat the average Bolivian's economic penury by ways outside of the never-ending fiscal adjustment programmes dictated by the IMF and pursued by all of his predecessors.

He is also popular with the people for immediately distancing himself from Sánchez de Lozada after he sent the troops in on 13 October. While others hedged their bets to see how events unfolded, Mesa instantly withdrew his support.

Weak points
As an unelected president he has no mandate and no party political power base, which means he has no congressional power. He is not a politician and seems unprepared to negotiate congressional support, which is good for society but could paralyse his government.

Options
Mesa has two options. He could either work down the political route in congress, which would mean forging an ad hoc alliance, or appeal over the political parties directly to the people. So far he is leaning towards the second option. He has worked on developing a public persona of a decent, honourable man, addressing the people directly to apologise for the dreadful death toll and promising to leave in 90 days if they feel he has not done a good job. This way he has sidestepped congress and established himself as a caretaker president.

Several political commentators have suggested that Mesa has an historic opportunity, like Brazil's Lula and Argentina's Néstor Kirchner, in presenting a non-traditional political vision, revising the prevailing neoliberal dogma of the 1990s (he is, for instance, likely to reject the IMF's fiscal adjustment package). They argue that Sánchez de Lozada lost his grip on power precisely because of his rigid adherence to economic orthodoxy. The problem with this is that it presupposes that Mesa intends to hang around. At the moment he is putting interim measures in place and forming a constituent assembly. At that point, presidential elections will probably be called.

His future will depend upon his ability to balance the competing demands of coca growers and US pressure to proceed with coca eradication. He also needs to placate miners and fend off all talk that the situation in Bolivia is degenerating into a 'race war' as Felipe Quispe, the leader of the Altiplano farmers, is suggesting.

People Profile - César Nakazaki Servigón, Peru

Who is he? César Nakazaki defended former President Alberto Fujimori against the four human rights abuse charges on which he was convicted on 8 April.

Why watch him? Nakazaki's defence of Fujimori was based on challenging the prosecution to prove that Fujimori had given the orders that led to the massacres at La Cantuta and Barrios Altos (in which 25 people were killed) and to the kidnapping of two of Fujimori's critics. Unlike some in Fujimori's entourage, notably Keiko Fujimori, the former president's daughter, Nakazaki accepted that the three man tribunal from the supreme court had the right to try Fujimori. Nakazaki argues, and is basing the appeal against Fujimori's conviction on these grounds, that the prosecution has failed to prove that Fujimori gave orders that led to crimes. 

Born: 1964, Lima.

Education:  He is the son of a paediatrician, César Nakazaki. He was educated at the Colegio Manuel Pardo in Chiclayo, and then took a law and political sciences degree at Lima University.  His legal patron is José Santos Chichizola who taught at the university and also had a flourishing private practice.

Public Life:  Nakazaki is Peru's most prominent criminal lawyer.  His critics say that he takes on too many cases and leaves a lot of the important legwork to underlings. In Fujimori's case, Nakazaki left the crucial period of disclosure, when both sides reveal the evidence they will use in the case, to two of his underlings, so pressing was his business elsewhere.  Nakazaki is famous for getting prominent military officers, politicians and businessmen acquitted. On the other he led the legal campaign for compensation for the victims of two fires in 2002, at the Utopia discotheque and Mesa Redonda, a huge public market, which killed, respectively, 29 and 290 people. He has also defended Magaly Medina, a sensationalist TV journalist who films celebrities in compromising circumstances. She went to prison briefly in October last year. 

Timeline:

1982: Lima University.

2000 onwards:  involved in a series of high profile legal cases.

Strengths:  Nakazaki has a high profile in Peru. He is involved in virtually all the major legal cases. He makes innovative legal arguments and appears to get most of his clients off. His argument in Fujimori's case is that Fujimori's anti-terrorism policies had nothing to do with the charges against him. He argues that the prosecution had to prove that Fujimori was directly involved in the crimes of which he was accused and, Nakazaki claims, there is no evidence that he was. Nakazaki will argue again in the appeal that Fujimori cannot be held responsible for the criminal implementation of his policies by junior officials.

Weaknesses:  His critics say that he takes on too many cases and skimps on preparatory work. They claim that this was what happened in the Fujimori case. Nakazaki admits that he has yet to read all of the 711 page judgment against Alberto Fujimori but nevertheless claims that it is wrong. He says that in the next few days he will go through the judgment and find the holes in it.  

Prospects:  Fujimori's appeal will be a crucial test of the Peruvian legal system. The system was praised by human rights' activists for delivering the verdict on 8 April, and the 25 year jail sentence against Fujimori,  but it seems  that the court's judgment that Fujimori was the “autor mediatico" (indirect perpetrator) is legally questionable. The court also ruled, unusually, that the prosecution had proved its case only “beyond reasonable doubt." These two judgments (indirect perpetrator and reasonable doubt) may give Nakazaki enough scope to get the verdict overturned on appeal. Nakazaki argues that Fujimori was not directly responsible for, or involved in, the massacres at Barrios Altos and La Cantuta and therefore cannot be guilty: indeed one witness, colonel Pino said that the death squad Grupo Colina, which carried out the killings, was an adhoc squad. The prosecution alleged that Fujimori funded the Grupo Colina through secret accounts but there is no unequivocal evidence of this. 

When President Rafael Correa failed to get more than the slimmest margin of approval for his plan to conduct a full-speed reform of the judiciary by committee, hopes were aired that he might choose to tread carefully. These were dashed almost immediately: Correa appointed his representative on the reform committee even before the official results of the 7 May referendum had come in, and within days his interior minister was threatening to impeach a judge who threw out the charges filed by the government against one of the purported key participants in the September 2010 police mutiny.

One of the options put before the electorate in the referendum held on 7 May was the creation of a three-person 'transitional judicial council' charged with overhauling the judicial system within 18 months. This would entail removing the current nine-member Consejo de la Judicatura (CJ, judicial council; the body which governs and oversees the judiciary), itself 'transitional', that had been entrusted with implementing the new statutes of the judicial function introduced in 2009. The electorate was very nearly split down the middle on the matter: 46.12% for, 42.58% against.

In April this year the ruling Alianza País (AP) filed impeachment proceedings in the national assembly against the sitting CJ on charges of dereliction of duty, corruption and influence peddling. This was widely seen as an attempt to influence the voters, and could have made an impact if the impeachments had gone through before the referendum. They didn't: the AP was unable to muster 58 votes, 25 short of the required two-thirds majority.

On 12 May, before the official announcement of the referendum results, Correa appointed Paulo Rodríguez, an official at the registry office, to represent the executive on the transitional council, as well as a new justice minister, Johanna Pesántez (previously one of Correa's juridical advisers), who is charged with 'supporting' the new council. It is expected that the AP will secure the appointment of the legislature's representative, guaranteeing the government a majority, regardless of who is appointed for the notionally independent FTCS (which combines auditing and anti-corruption functions).

The next day judge Hugo Sierra dismissed the charges (which included attempted magnicide) against the last four people accused of playing key roles in the 30 September 2010 police mutiny, which Correa has portrayed as a coup attempt. Prominent among this last batch was Colonel César Carrión, director of the police hospital where Correa had been ensconced during the event. The judge handed down his ruling only hours after the newly appointed justice minister, José Serrano, had preventively announced that the government, given an adverse outcome, would not only file an immediate appeal but also initiate criminal proceedings against judge Sierra, accused of 'manipulating the hearings.'

This was the latest defeat in the government's attempt to prosecute the purported leaders and promoters of the mutiny. In April another judge had ordered the release of retired Major Fidel Araujo, now a close associate of opposition leader and former president Lucio Gutiérrez.

Development: On 7 July Peru's foreign minister, José García Belaúnde, was called to congress to explain the credentials with which Alexis Humala, brother of President-elect Ollanta Humala, travelled to meet Russian government officials.

Signficance: Russia's minister of foreign affairs, Sergey Lavrov, received Alexis as an "emissary of the president-elect". The worrying thing is that allegedly, no-one -not even Ollanta Humala, his spokespeople, the foreign ministry or the senior members of Gana Perú- knew about Alexis's trip. Although Ollanta has been asked to give an explanation for his brother's trip, it is for the foreign ministry to elucidate how Alexis obtained the necessary documentation to travel and if he did so (or not) on an official capacity. Dubbed in the media as "Humala-nepotism", the scandal threatens the nascent political alliance with Alejandro Toledo's Perú Posible (PP) .

Key Points:

• Alexis, who speaks Russian (he is married to, but now separated from, a Russian), had meetings with representatives from Gazprom, Russia's biggest natural gas company. He was joined on his trip by the congressman-elect Josué Gutiérrez Cóndor and by Hugo Loarte Santillán, a former Toledo government official who was kicked out of the PP.

• The Peruvian embassy in Russia was informed of Alexis's trip, but not of its purpose. García Belaúnde tried to pass the buck, saying that it was likely that the Russian embassy in Peru had suggested the meeting and that he had only found out via Peru's embassy in Russia. It is not clear, however, who or which department of the foreign ministry liaised with the embassy in Russia.

• Alexis's trip has major political implications, especially for PP's deal with Gana Perú in congress. Javier Reátegui, an official spokesperson of PP, which supported Humala's presidential bid in the second round, said the meeting "was a terrible blow to transparency".

• Even members of Gana Perú such as congressman-elect Javier Diez Canseco said that: "there must be a formal communiqué to explain what has happened. If Daniel Abugattás said he had no knowledge of this [trip], then this trip has not been discussed even at the very core of the party."

Development: On 8 May, the governor of the Argentine province of San Juan, José Luis Gioja, won a referendum (65.96% to 34.04%) that enables him to reform the provincial constitution to run for a third consecutive term.

Significance: San Juan has now joined Salta as one of two provinces where the governor can serve three consecutive terms in office; Gioja's reference to former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) - who reformed the constitution of Santa Cruz province to allow for indefinite re-election- as his inspiration for the reform in San Juan is unlikely to sit well with either the opposition or the Cristina Fernández administration which is actively trying to deny it would seek a constitutional reform proposed by members of the ruling Frente para la Victoria (FPV) to allow for Fernández's indefinite re-election should she secure a second term on 23 October.

Key points:

• On 5 May, in response to the call from a supporter who asked her to stay in power for another 10 years, Fernández said: "no, that's too much...I think my body would give in"; the opposition quickly flagged up the fact that Fernández did not point out that she is constitutionally barred from seeking more than one consecutive re-election.

•  "I told the president...that when I took the most difficult decision in my life, which was to send the [constitutional] reform proposal to congress, I followed the example of a fighter and of a bloke [sic] who gave his life for his ideals, and who never left his convictions aside each time he ruled:...Néstor Carlos Kirchner", said Gioja.

• "I don't have a knife underneath my poncho. This is a political decision to give continuity to the project for one more term... I am not going to perpetuate myself in power; I'm 61 and I don't plan to go to the government palace with a walking cane", declared Gioja yesterday. His reassurances failed to wash with his critics however, given that in 2008 he had said he wouldn't seek the constitutional reform he has just secured.

When the heads of government of Mercosur meet in Asunción on the sidelines of President Nicolás Duarte's inauguration on 15 August, the Big Two - Brazil and Argentina - will face the barely disguised irritation of their hosts over their failure to do anything to alleviate the 'asymmetries' within the trading bloc. They had promised to do so at their last summit, held in Asunción last June. 

Foreign minister José Antonio Moreno Rufinelli has flown down to Montevideo to enlist the support of the Uruguayan government to make a joint presentation to their bigger partners. They both want to make sure the 15 August meeting is not overshadowed by Lula da Silva, as the last one was.

Human rights, environmental and religious organisations in the violence-plagued state of Olancho are accusing the administration of President Ricardo Maduro of permitting an atmosphere of impunity that has led to the death of environmental activists. The national human rights organisation Cofadeh says wealthy landowners, logging companies and industrialists use death threats and murder to intimidate Olancho citizens who protest illegal logging and dam construction. 

Catholic priests and environmental activists, who in June led a 160-kilometre `March for Life' from Olancho to the presidential palace, received so many death threats that Amnesty International expressed concern for their safety. Amnesty's appeals to President Maduro in June failed to prevent the 18 July murder of one of the `March for Life' leaders, 23-year-old Carlos Reyes. The founder of the Olancho environmental movement (MAO) was gunned down in his own back yard. No arrests have been made in this murder. 

Olancho residents say the `intellectual authors' of the 2001 assassination of anti-dam activist Carlos Flores have also escaped prosecution. Flores's cousin, Gilberto Flores, is assigned a police escort since an AK-47 was levelled at him from a passing car. Still protesting illegal logging and dam construction, Flores told an international fact-finding mission, `[Olancho] is going dry. This has happened over the last 20 years, along with the exaggerated exploitation of our forests. There are around 100 trucks full of timber leaving Olancho each day.'

The June `March for Life' demanded a 10-year ban on logging in Olancho, an audit of the region's biological diversity, and cancellation of the Babilonia dam project in the remote Sierra de Agalta National Park. President Maduro refused to meet the 3,000 protesters at the end of their six-day march.

`Armed environmentalists'
On 28 July, President Maduro told news reporters that he would crack down on an `armed environmental group' that threatened to use violence to stop illegal logging in Olancho. Comparing this group to the Zapatistas in Mexico and Shining Path in Peru, Maduro said, `These kinds of attitudes give the country a bad image, an image of a land where armed people take justice into their own hands.' A week later the president took to TV and radio airwaves to assure citizens that his government is on the side of law, order and environmental protection. `I. reject violence as a way to resolve our differences, Maduro said.

Cofadeh claims that the report of armed environmentalists is a fabrication designed to justify military intervention and repression of the region's growing environmental movement. Olancho has the highest biological diversity in all of Honduras, according to Mark Bonta, assistant professor of geography at Delta State University, Mississippi. `Logging is rapidly destroying Olancho's unique old-growth pine and thorn forests,' says Bonta, who has published research on Olancho's ecology.

Impeachment proceedings have been formally requested against former President Gonzalo (Goni) Sánchez de Lozada for alleged human rights abuses during the repression of the protest movement of last October, which ultimately resulted in his resignation [WR-03-41]. Chief prosecutor Oscar Crespo filed the request with congress on 21 November, after having studied six separate accusations brought by private individuals.

Crespo did not, however, confine his attentions to Goni: also included in his request are Goni's cabinet, plus protest leaders Evo Morales, Felipe Quispe and Alejo Véliz. A successful impeachment would bar those accused from holding public office, and the files would be passed on to the supreme court for eventual criminal prosecution.

This is the first time proceedings have been brought against a head of government since former dictator Luis Garcí­a Meza (1980-81) underwent a 7-year trial in absentia, which ended with his being sentenced in April 1993 by the supreme court to 30 years' imprisonment, Bolivia's maximum. Garcí­a Meza was extradited from Brazil in 1995.

President Hipólito Mejí­a has had his way: he is now the sole registered presidential candidate of his Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD) — a party whose statutes bar standing for reelection, even in the law allows it. The question is whether it was worth the effort: the latest opinion poll shows the frontrunner, Leonel Fernández of the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD), even further ahead than before.

The poll, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland, shows that Fernández has increased his support from 58% last September to 65% in late January — far more than enough to sweep the floor in the first round. Mejí­a, on the other hand, has seen his backing decline from 20% to 13%, which has left him a poor third, after Eduardo Estrella, of the Partido Reformista Social Cristiano (PRSC), who has risen from 14% to 16%.

Though the current level of support for Fernández would preclude it, the pollsters tested reactions to two second round scenarios. Against Mejí­a, Fernández would win 73:16; against Estrella, 67:23.

No `ley de lemas'
The last chance Mejí­a's PRD rivals seemed to have to test relative strengths before the electorate, fizzled out when the chamber of deputies decided to shelve the ley de lemas (the bill authorising the fielding of several candidates per party) that had been approved by the senate. The lower chamber gave up on it after the electoral council had said it simply did not have the time to make the necessary changes to accommodate a new system.

Few doubt that Mejí­a will make full use of his position of power to try to catch up with and overtake Fernández. The strategic director of Fernández's campaign, Danilo Medina, while admitting that the effort is likely, dismisses its chances of succeeding: `They say that they have the government and all the money in the world to buy the votes of the poor. This is true, and they are indeed unscrupulous, but they forget that the hearts of the people are with Leonel [...] There is no possibility that they can steal victory from Leonel Fernández, because the country has never seen such a bad government as the one led by Hipólito Mejí­a.'

Medina has a special incentive to see his candidate through: in 2000 he was the PLD's candidate, and after being defeated by Mejí­a in the first round made the unusual gesture of bowing out of the run-off.

Starting-line outlook
% of voter preferences
First round
Candidate	Party	Sep	Jan
Eduardo Estrella	PRSC	14	16
Leonel Fernández	PLD	65	58
Hipólito Mejía	PRD	20	13
Runoff option I	Fernández	Mejía
	73	16
Runoff option II	Fernández	Estrella
	67	23
Source: Penn, Schoen & Berland.

At a meeting last week of Bolivia's oil-producing regions, which discussed the government's planned new hydrocarbons law, the representatives of the southern department of Tarija went beyond the agenda to threaten a boycott of the referendum on the future of Bolivia's gas industry, unless the central government meets some of its demands. Chief among these is that the vote should not be carried out in a single, nationwide constituency, as planned. As Tarija has only 4% of Bolivia's population but 90% of its gas, the locals maintain that their opinion will not be properly represented. The government's line is that it is not Tarija but Bolivia as a whole which owns the gas.

Country	Source	April	May	June	Last 12m	Jan-Dec 2003
Argentina	Indec	0.90	0.70	0.60	3.10	3.70
Bolivia	INE	0.02	0.41	0.74	3.94	3.94
Brazil	FGV	1.15	1.46	1.29	5.89	26.41
Chile	INE	0.40	0.50	0.40	-0.30	1.10
Colombia	Dane	0.46	0.38	0.60	6.07	6.49
Costa Rica	DGEC	0.91	0.67	1.07	11.29	9.87
Ecuador	Inec	0.65	-0.48	-0.31	3.65	6.07
El Salvador	Min.Ec.	0.86	0.70	0.17	3.90	2.50
Guatemala	BCG	0.50	0.83	0.40	0.45	5.85
Honduras	BCH	1.10	0.80	0.60	8.60	8.10
Mexico	Bco.Mx.	0.15	-0.25	0.16	4.21	3.98
Nicaragua		0.83	0.88	0.31	7.61	6.48
Paraguay	BCP	-0.20	0.20	0.90	1.60	9.30
Peru	INE	-0.02	0.35	0.56	0.46	2.78
Uruguay	DGEC	1.23	1.04	0.33	8.68	10.19
Venezuela	BCV	1.30	1.20	1.90	33.40	27.10
US	DOL	0.30	0.60	0.30	1.70	1.60
Previous: WR-04-29

Country	Source	July	August	September	Last 12m	Jan-Dec 2003
Argentina	Indec	0.50	0.3	0.59	6.42	3.70
Bolivia	INE	0.53	0.35	-0.03	4.27	3.94
Brazil	FGV	0.91	0.69	0.33	6.70	12.53
Chile	INE	0.20	0.4	0.1	1.50	1.10
Colombia	Dane	-0.03	0.03	0.3	6.49	6.49
Costa Rica	DGEC	1.30	0.97	0.78	13.78	9.87
Ecuador	Inec	-0.61	0.02	0.24	1.61	6.07
El Salvador	Min.Ec.	0.31	0.2	0.2	4.70	2.50
Guatemala	BCG	0.48	0.29	0.78	8.05	5.85
Honduras	BCH	0.60	0.3	0.1	8.40	8.10
Mexico	Bco.Mx.	0.26	0.62	0.83	5.06	3.98
Nicaragua		0.62	0.23	0.59	9.09	6.48
Paraguay	BCP	0.20	1.5	-1.03	6.70	9.30
Peru	INE	0.19	-0.01	0.02	4.03	2.48
Uruguay	DGEC	1.01	1.2	0.27	9.59	10.19
Venezuela	BCV	1.40	1.3	0.5	20.80	27.10
US	DOL	_	0.1	_	_	1.60
Previous: WR-04-40

If industry and foreign trade minister Luiz Fernando Furlan had been a card-carrying member of the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), by now he would probably have lost his job. Last week he came out with criticism of government policies that would not have been tolerated from party members; he took on Lula's priority attention to Mercosur and the rest of South America and the tolerance of the Real's appreciation against the US dollar. But then, Furlan is a businessman who describes himself as 'a spokesman for the productive sector'.

Though usually quite outspoken, Furlan has never delivered as stinging an assessment as the one he conveyed through an interview published on 13 January by the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo. His main message was that Brazil should stop paying so much attention to Mercosur and the Andean Community and concentrate on striking trade deals with the richer countries. 'There are in the government,' he said, 'sectors that have not yet understood that the big market we must open is that of the rich countries.'

He noted that Brazil accounts for only one out of every 65 dollars the US spends on imports, 'but we grant priority to celebrating limited agreements with the Andean Community and markets of scant significance [while] not advancing with the FTAA or with the EU, where the fruits would be swifter'.

Within Mercosur, he would like to see Brazil get more aggressive: 'The rules of Mercosur must be modified. For the past eight years there has been no advance; to the contrary, every day there are more transgressions. This must have limits. [Brazil] cannot go on paying the bills of those who don't invest, don't modernise and block everything [...] The Brazilian market is more important to Argentina than the Argentine market is to Brazil.'

Furlan was most critical of the government's inaction in face of the appreciation of the Real, but he said that the full extent of the damage this has caused must wait until July, because export cycles tend to last about six months. 'I am a spokesman for the productive sector,' he said, 'who sees with great concern the excessive appreciation of the Real. My obligation is to make exporting viable.' Lula has not commented on Furlan's tirade, but shortly after it was published he publicly reiterated that his top priority is integration, starting with South America.

• Alvear beats Zaldí­var for DC nomination. The Christian Democrats have decided to heed the opinion polls more than proclamations of organisational prowess. On 16 January, when the 600-strong Junta Nacional voted to select a presidential candidate, 54.8% opted for former foreign minister Soledad Alvear over senator Adolfo Zaldí­var, the president of the party. With her former colleague at the defence ministry, Michelle Bachelet, nominated by the Socialists, this strengthens the probability that this year Chile may pick its first woman president.
  
  It may not be Alvear, though that still depends on what mechanism the ruling Concertación alliance chooses to select its candidate. An opinion survey by CEP released on 11 January puts Bachelet in the lead with 43% of preferences, overtaking rightwing candidate Joaquí­n Laví­n, who attracted only 26%. Alvear came third with 9%. The Concertación is expected to nominate its candidate by April at the latest. Elections are scheduled for 14 December.

Nahum Acosta, the former official in President Vicente Fox's travel office accused of passing information about his boss's itinerary to a prominent drug trafficker, has been freed after a judge ruled that the evidence presented by the prosecution was insufficient to sustain the charge. Hints that the case might go this way had been circulating ever since officials started toning down the allegations about Acosta [WR-05-08].

The evidence against Acosta came from a crossborder telephone trail conducted partly by the DEA at the request of Mexico's Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (AFI). This showed a call to Nahum's phone - of unknown content - from one of the Beltrán Leyva brothers (members of the 'board' that runs the Juárez cartel). There was also a recorded conversation in which Héctor Beltrán Leyva appears, in the prosecution's interpretation, to be discussing the payment of US$5,000 to Acosta. The public prosecution service, the PGR, had charged Acosta with 'membership' of the Beltrán Leyvas outfit.

Judge José Luis Gómez did not find the evidence persuasive enough: on 9 April he threw out the case and ordered Acosta to be released from the La Palma top-security prison. Deputy chief prosecutor José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos has said he disagrees with the judge's ruling and will be appealing against it. Acosta's lawyer has said he is considering suing for wrongful arrest. The presidency appears relieved at being rid of what seemed to be turning into a political hot potato, with the ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) accusing the PGR of seeking to discredit it, and the media echoing claims that the whole affair was an internal vendetta against Acosta. A communiqué from the presidency said that the judge's ruling was 'a guarantee of the impartiality with which cases are reviewed'.

The suggestion by Colombian authorities that the recent deadly attack by Farc guerrillas on Teteyé [WR-05-25] in which 22 soldiers were killed had actually been launched from Ecuadorean territory has triggered a string of charges and countercharges that have considerably soured relations between the two countries. President Alvaro Uribe and Alfredo Palacio are due to discuss the spillover of the war at a meeting on 7 July in San José, on the sidelines of a summit on bananas.

The claim that the Farc guerrillas had attacked from across the San Miguel river - that is, from inside Ecuadorean territory - was first made by the mayor of Puerto Así­s, Jorge Coral, and obliquely endorsed later by Uribe. The Ecuadorean military commander of that stretch of the border dismissed the charges out of hand, though not very convincingly, since only days earlier a large number of Farc fighters had been seen marching through Ecuadorean territory.

To drive home the point, when the commander of Colombia's military forces, General Carlos Ospina, crossed over to Tulcán on 1 July to discuss the situation with his Ecuadorean opposite number, Admiral Manuel Zapater, he handed over the coordinates of 21 points along the border, from the Pacific to where the San Miguel river flows into the Putumayo, which he claimed the Farc was using regularly for the passage of personnel and arms.

This provoked an angry response from the Ecuadorean authorities, who said that this was only happening because Colombia did not patrol its borders effectively, a complaint often heard from Venezuela about Colombia's northern borders. There was more irritation when statements by the captured Farc envoy Rodrigo Granda to a Colombian prosecutor were leaked to the press: Granda had purportedly said that former Ecuadorean president Lucio Gutiérrez had given assurances that there would be no attacks against the Farc on Ecuadorean soil.

Ecuador's complaint is that Colombia is taking for granted the fact that the Ecuadorean military has already deployed about 8,000 men along the border, and has left matters up to them. It also complains that Colombia is doing nothing to halt the flow of Colombian refugees across the Ecuadorean border (their numbers have been put at close to 500,000). Indeed, one of the reactions to the recent Colombian accusations was the revival of Ecuador's threat to start imposing visa requirements on visiting Colombians.

In the run-up to the Palacio-Uribe meeting, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Antonio Parra stated emphatically that Ecuador would not become involved in the Colombian war. This time round nobody had suggested that it should. The statement has been interpreted as reflecting what Ecuadorean military experts believe is Colombia's border strategy. They see Colombia pursuing a 'hammer and anvil' approach, in which the hammer is the southward drive of Plan Patriota (see page 3) and the intended anvil is Ecuador's military deployment along the border.

According to retired Ecuadorean Colonel Patricio Haro, not deploying troops to control the border is a deliberate part of this strategy. Its aim, he says, is to get Ecuador involved in the war: the more the Farc crosses into Ecuadorean territory, the higher the probability of incidents that would provoke Ecuador into active participation in the war.  

Haro also believes that tying down troops in border control goes against the grain of the Plan Patriota strategy, which is based on keeping the army units mobile at all times. Hence, for example, the response to the Teteyé attack was the temporary deployment of a mobile army brigade to the area. On both grounds Haro predicts that there will be no change in Colombian border policy, whatever the presidents appear to agree.

His view is not shared by all of his colleagues. Another retired colonel, Luis Hernández, distinguished for his actions during the brief 1995 war with Peru, has gone on the record forecasting a shift towards the positioning of more 'static' Colombian units along the border.

It is worth noting that the speculation about a 'hammer and anvil' strategy is not all that novel. When Plan Colombia was first being mooted - and efforts by the US to muster a multilateral force to aid Colombia failed - there was much talk about schemes to provoke neighbouring countries into intervening through staged crossborder incidents. No evidence of this has ever surfaced, and on the whole the attitude of Colombia's neighbours has been chiefly one of containing any spillover. This has been the case even in Venezuela, the country most affected by crossborder incursions.

Intelligence failure
The Colombian military and civilian authorities have acknowledged that the Teteyé attack, like other similarly deadly Farc raids, had been the result of intelligence shortcomings. Commentators in Ecuador have been emphasising this, drawing attention to the scale of these shortcomings.  

Thalí­a Flores y Flores, writing in the newspaper Hoy, asked: 'How is it possible, if there is satellite cooperation from the US, that they did not detect the mobilisation of a contingent of 500 guerrillas? How is it possible that, over many years, they should not have detected the extraordinary construction of a 278-kilometre road that cuts across half of Colombia's jungle from Meta [in central Colombia] to the border with Ecuador?'

Chilean Christian Democrats in 'separatist' bid

Rightwing candidate Sebastián Piñera's intuition that he might find a constituency among disgruntled Christian Democrats appeared to be proven at least somewhat right when, this last weekend, the newspaper La Tercera reported that DC president Adolfo Zaldí­var was threatening to field a separate DC-only list of candidates to the senate, breaking a longstanding practice of seeking agreement on nominees from all member parties of the ruling coalition. The DC, already chafing at the fact that the 'minor' partners in the coalition, the Socialists and the Partido por la Democracia (PPD), will have the presidential nomination for the second term running, believes it is being denied a fair share of the senatorial candidacies.

Four months after the launch of the 'México Seguro' anti-crime campaign, a new federal public security minister has announced a fresh, 10-point plan - not so much to replace 'México Seguro' as to enhance it (even though many of its features will sound familiar to Mexicans who have seen several such initiatives come and go over recent years).

Eduardo Medina, who took over as public security minister after the death on 21 September of Ramón Martí­n Huerta [WR-05-38], outlined his plan to congress on 5 October, proclaiming that its first phase should be completed by the end of the year (though he did not set any specific targets for this). Medina has served for five years as director of Cisen, Mexico's state intelligence service. His plan involves:

- Setting in motion at least 20 regional anti-crime operations, particularly targeting the drugs trade and the strengthening of Mexico's northern and southern borders, and offering rewards for information leading to the capture of highly dangerous criminals.

- Blocking mobile phone signals from at least 20 prisons and seizing weapons, phones and banned objects and substances in six federal prisons and 100 run by state governments.

- Purging the security forces and interconnecting the databanks of the national public security system with those of all police forces countrywide.

- Supervising the firms providing private security services, as well as those equipping and selling armoured vehicles, and establishing national hotlines to report emergencies and criminal activity.

- Increasing the security budget for 2006 by at least 20% and introducing a programme of citizen participation in crime prevention.

Medina also announced that the 'México Seguro' campaign will be extended soon to Mexico City. As in the case of the surrounding Edomex this has been criticised by the opposition as being chiefly an electioneering ploy.

Just before Medina unveiled his plan the federal chief prosecutor, Daniel Cabeza de Vaca, told congress that the chief cause of the violence in the border city of Nuevo Laredo was the penetration of the local police by the drug-trafficking gangs. 'In Nuevo Laredo,' he said, 'a police officer earns M$3,000 [US$278] a month, so there is evidently no contest with the drugs trade.' He said his office, the PGR, has been helping overcome the problem by 'building a new model of police force, both municipal and ministerial'.

In Nuevo Laredo at least 139 violent deaths reported since the beginning of the year have been attributed mainly to the turf war between the drug cartels. This is 17% of the countrywide tally. Apart from the initial focus on the northern border states and Sinaloa, drug-related violence has spread to southern Guerrero and neighbouring Michoacán. 

On the southern border, Medina's other target, the main threat is posed by the mara street gangs which the new security ministers fears could become, if unchecked, 'a national security problem'.

 

Luis Ibérico, president of the congressional defence committee, has called on the government to increase defence spending and resume social spending in the areas threatened by what he calls the 'second reconstruction' of Sendero Luminoso (SL), the guerrilla organisation which in December killed 13 police officers and a member of an Asháninka community in actions believed to be connected to the drugs trade.

According to Ibérico this 'second reconstruction' involves the reorganisation of its guerrilla army and of its 'single front' in the political arena. In a first stage, entailing the accumulation of force in the central jungle area, SL is engaging in 'more virulent deployments, attacks, sabotage actions and annihilations with a view to stockpiling arms'. So far, apart from the ambush in Ayacucho that killed five police officers on 5 December [WR-05-49], there has been one more major clash on 20 December: a police patrol ambushed by about 20 SL guerrillas on the highway running from Tingo Marí­a to Aucayacu, in the department of Huánuco. Eight officers were killed and one was injured.

The government recently appropriated about US$15m for 'anti-subversive' purposes, stationed two armoured vehicles in Aucayacu, and ordered the establishment of new military 'anti-subversive' bases in Yungay (Ancash) and Quiruvilca (La Libertad).

There was talk about President Evo Morales getting a taste of his own medicine when, in fairly rapid succession, airline employees, bus owners, public-sector health workers and teachers either launched or announced strikes and mobilisations somewhat similar to those staged by Morales when he was in opposition. So far the president has been able to steer a course between maintaining order and considering the protesters' demands without giving ground across the board.

Vice-President Alvaro Garcí­a Linera has expressed understanding of the attitudes of groups with what he described as long-repressed demands while criticising them for rushing to take action when the government had shown willingness to listen to them. He has also noted that the organisations which took part in the great protest mobilisations of 2003 were not among those taking to the streets now.

Indeed, the participants in the current wave of protests are diverse and the nature of their demands is even more varied.

The LAB strike

Morales's first serious confrontation with protesters came when the employees of the privatised air carrier Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano (LAB) blocked the runways, escalators and accesses in main airports, bringing traffic to a standstill in Cochabamba and Tarija. Morales put the military on standby to ensure the continuity of airport services and sent in the police to break up the blockades, which they did with liberal recourse to tear gas.

The LAB protesters started out, in February, demanding the renationalisation of the company. LAB was privatised in 1996, with the Brazilian airline Varig taking just over half the shares and the state retaining 48% in a trust managed by a foreign firm on which the government could not lay its hands. Varig began to sell off bits and pieces of LAB, but was unable to turn around its fortunes. In 2001 the Bolivian entrepreneur Ernesto Asbún acquired a controlling interest from Varig; under him the company saw its debt rise to US$160m.

The government filed corruption charges against Asbún and took over management of the firm, but the constitutional tribunal overturned the intervention in late March and freed Asbún on a relatively small bail. This led Morales to wonder aloud how much the members of the tribunal had been paid.

The government refused to take over LAB's debt, but proposed to its employees the formation of a new state-owned air carrier. The workforce rejected this and occupied the airports, only to find themselves forcibly ejected. New negotiations ensued, and by early April the employees had dropped their demand for the renationalisation of LAB. On 5 April Asbún agreed to sell his shareholding for US$3m, presumably to the employees, who want to vote him out. There is some doubt about what will happen with LAB's debt.

The bus owners

The Confederación Sindical de Transportistas (CST), which despite its name is a business association rather than a trade union, launched a countrywide strike on 4 April which brought seven of the country's 10 biggest cities to a standstill. What they want is the repeal of a decree which would force them to pay more tax (or, in many cases, start paying taxes). 

On paper, 177 bus owners have officially declared 248 buses and jointly pay about US$1,843 in tax under the so-called 'integrated régime'. The government wants all detected buses, 1,167 according to the latest tally, to be registered and all of them to pay tax under the general régime, increasing fiscal revenues to US$2.3m.

The government refused to countenance this demand and set in motion an operation involving bus owners unaffiliated with the CST and the army, to maintain public transport services. Within a day the services had been restored almost everywhere except on the main highways, and all but the biggest transport firms had called off the strike.

More to come

Two big public-sector unions, the Federación de Trabajadores en Salud (health workers), and the Confederación Nacional de Maestros Urbanos de Bolivia (urban teachers) have announced strike action, the former for this week, the latter for 21 April. Their demands include a 10% pay raise, more jobs and the reform of existing legislation governing their employment.

Morales's response, delivered at a public event in Cochabamba on 8 April, was: 'From where are we going to pull out 8,000 jobs in education, when the government has no money and we are trying to attend their legitimate demands? They [the union leaders] know this [...] I want it to be understood that this is a decidedly political action to harm the government.'

Officials have been spreading the word that healthworkers and teachers have already been promised a 7% pay increase, and that the government has already created 3,500 new jobs in education.

A third action of a different kind is being planned for 9 June by the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), the umbrella labour confederation, and the Movimiento Sin Tierra (MST), the movement of the landless. They are recruiting volunteers for an expedition to the Silala springs in southwest Bolivia on the border with Chile.

The idea is to establish a settlement of about 300 families there (so far only 50 have signed up). This is a highly sensitive matter, inasmuch as Bolivia is involved in a long-running dispute with Chile over the Silala waters that cross the border and are used to feed some big mining establishments. 

Bolivia wants Chile to pay for the water; Chile refuses on the grounds that the Silala is an international river upon which Bolivia has no exclusive claim. Bolivia, refutes this on the grounds that what the Chileans call the Silala (or Siloli) river is actually not a river at all, but the result of having canalised a connection between more than 200 springs that surface on the lower eastern slopes of the Cerro Silala. The area they have earmarked for settlement is at an altitude of 3,600 metres above sea level, so the COB and the MST have been confining their recruitment efforts to families already living high up on the Andes.

Angel Durán, leader of the MST, says that the scheme would require government support in order to prosper for the construction of houses, roads and installations for agricultural development. There has been no indication that anyone has looked at the feasibility of this enterprise in purely economic terms: it seems to be wholly political in nature, an attempt to force Morales's hand by raising the banner of Bolivian assertiveness before Chile. Neither the MST nor the COB have been close allies of Morales. So far the government has given no indication of how it views the scheme, possibly in the hope that it will fizzle out for lack of sufficient volunteers.