All Categories

Development: On 1 December Chile's rightwingers stepped up the pressure on Peru's president Alan Garcí­a over his apparent recanting of his promise to sack Peru's army commander.

Significance: Chileans, probably accurately, believe that Garcí­a is wavering over whether to sack General Edwin Donayre Gotzch because he wants to build up his popularity in Peru. In the Chileans' view Garcí­a wants to boost his dismal popularity (under 20% in the opinion polls) by tapping into Peruvians' traditional hostility to Chile.

Hernán Larraí­n, a senator from Chile's rightwing Unión Democráta Independiente, said on 1 December that if Garcí­a did not sack Donayre he would be endorsing the anti-Chilean views expressed by Donayre. Donayre was videoed, apparently drunk, making anti-Chilean remarks at a military party sometime in 2006. The video was broadcast on YouTube on 25 November 2008. Donayre said that he had given an order that any Chilean who entered Peru should go home in a coffin and if there were not enough coffins, plastic bags should be used. He also called on the ladies present at the party to turn themselves into ladybombs and seduce Chileans to help the Peruvian army.

Larraí­n said that if Garcí­a failed to put Donayre on to the retired list, or to sack him, he would be endorsing the General's remarks, which Larraí­n implied, made the issue more serious. Larraí­n, who is a member of the senate's foreign relations committee, said that Donayre's remarks and the attitude of the Peruvian government are equally offensive to the Chilean people.

On 28 November the Chilean government said that Garcí­a had promised President Michelle Bachelet, when he phoned her to apologise for Donayre's remarks, that Donayre would be put on to the retired list on 5 December. The Chilean government has said on several occasions, through either President Bachelet's spokesman or the foreign minister, Alejandro Foxley, that relations with Peru will not recover unless Donayre goes. The Peruvian government and Donayre, however, reacted furiously to these statements, protesting that Chile should not be giving orders to the Peruvian government.

Donayre himself tried to laugh off what he said and dismissed it as a piece of nonsense. At the weekend he claimed that he could remain in command of the Peruvian army for three or four more years.

Larraí­n challenged Garcí­a to be man enough to do what he had promised to Bachelet: sack Donayre and issue a public apology to Chile. Larraí­n said that he supported calls, from other rightwingers, that the Chilean ambassador to Peru should be recalled for consultations. Larraí­n said that he did not believe relations should be broken off over this issue, though he did believe that they had been adversely affected.

Some in the Peruvian government clearly believe that Donayre must go. The defence minister, Antero Flores-Aráoz, who pulled out of a trip to Chile at the end of last week, said that military standing orders were that no officer could speak to the press without permission; Flores-Aráoz said, pointedly, that this applied to Donayre and he should be very careful about what he said.

On the other hand, Peru's foreign minister, José Antonio Garcí­a Belaunde, said that he believed that the row would blow over. He admitted that Donayre's remarks were unfortunate, but he also said that Chile's reaction was disproportionate.

Development: On 15 January the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) predicted that in 2009 282,700 more Paraguayans will be classed as living in poverty.

Significance: This is bad news for the government, which is already struggling to contain unrest by social groups impatient to see positive change. President Fernando Lugo came to power in April 2008 pledging to improve the position of Paraguay's poor and his ruling coalition, the Alianza Patriótica para el Cambio (APC), includes some 20 social organisations.

The report by the UNDP evaluates the impact of the global economic slowdown on poverty levels in Paraguay. It forecasts that the percentage of Paraguay's population living in poverty will increase in 2009 from 35.6%, to 40.3%, as a result of slowing growth, a rise in unemployment, and a reduction in remittances sent home by Paraguayans working abroad. According to UNDP estimates, in 2008, of a population of 6,054,976, 2,156,412 people live in poverty and just over half (1,172,274) were classed as living in extreme poverty.

Development: On 22/23 February an estimated 2,000 militants from a dissident wing of the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (Movimento dos Sem-Terra, MST) invaded 20 plantations across 14 municipalities around Pontal do Paranapanema, in the east of São Paulo state.

Significance: The sensitive issue of land reform has not gone away in Brazil. The government of President Lula da Silva has fallen out with the MST, which directly accuses Lula of reneging on his land reform promises. The MST, which recently marked its 25th anniversary, will use the 2010 presidential election to put renewed political pressure on Lula and his ruling leftwing Partido dos Trabalhadores.

The militants, all linked to José Rainha Júnior, who leads a radical dissident wing of the MST,   said the occupations were designed to put pressure on the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra) to speed up the process on land reform in the area. Although it is currently supporting invasions in other plantations, the MST distanced itself from this mass invasion.

The MST and the Lula government remain at odds over land reform efforts. MST leaders still fume that Lula reneged on an electoral promise to re-settle one million peasant families on unused lands. The agrarian reform minister, Guilherme Cassel, claims that 520,000 families have been resettled by the Lula administration, more than under any other government.

Analysts say the MST has lost some of its focus on in recent years, stretching beyond its original remit to become a wider anti-globalisation protest movement. It has also been weakened by the government's Bolsa Familia welfare scheme, which reaches around 11.2m low-income families.

Mexico:The finance ministry is now forecasting that the economy will contract by 2.8% in 2009 but grow by 2% in 2010.

Brazil: Industrial production fell 17% year-on-year in February 2009. It rose 1.8% month-on-month.

Development: On 10 May the Bolivian prosecutor Marcelo Soza announced that he wanted a report from the Financial Investigations Unit (UIF) on leading Santa Cruz businessmen.

Significance: Soza's announcement is designed to counter complaints by the opposition that he is smearing leading figures in Santa Cruz (and vehement opponents of Morales) by linking them to three alleged presidential assassins. The three men (Eduardo Rózsa, Michael Dwyer and Arpad Magyarosi) were gunned down in the Las Americas hotel in Santa Cruz on 16 April and they have since been linked to the Santa Cruz autonomy movement led by figures such as Branko Marinkovic and Santa Cruz governor Rubén Costas.

On 7 May two of the three witnesses arrested in relation to the case, Juan Carlos Gueder Bruno and Alcides Mendoza Malavi complained that they had been maltreated by the police and put under pressure to name members of the Santa Cruz business lobby. Both Gueder and Mendoza are prominent figures in the thuggish Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, which rightwing politicians in Santa Cruz use to intimidate Morales's supporters. They deny having named Marinkovic and Costas contrary to what Soza reported. Soza claimed that the UIF report would ultimately clarify whether the businessmen were involved or not.

A congressional investigative committee is also due to present its report into the alleged “international terrorist group" before the end of the month.

Development: On 16 June the Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR) said that it supported the campaign for voters to vote against all political parties by casting a blank or spoilt ballot paper in the congressional and local elections on 5 July.

Significance: The EPR's endorsement may put off waverers. The EPR is the country's only active guerrilla movement. Although the EPR has taken pains to avoid causing casualties in its attacks (most notably on oil and gas pipelines in 2007) it is still committed to an armed rather than political struggle.

The EPR issued a communiqué claiming that a large void vote on 5 July would undermine the current political system. The EPR called on voters to write Partido Democrático Popular Revolucionario-Ejército Popular Revolucionario (PDPR-EPR) on their ballot papers.

Development: On 22 July the deposed president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, left Managua, Nicaragua, with a caravan of supporters en route north to Estelí­, from where he intends to set up camp before attempting to return to Honduras in the next few days.

Significance: Having denounced as a failure the talks led by Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias to broker a solution with the de facto government led by Roberto Micheletti, Zelaya will be hoping that this last high stakes gamble  - which, like his previous attempt to fly into Tegucigalpa airport on 5 July, will likely be televised live - will push the de facto government into accepting a compromise deal allowing for his reinstatement to serve out the remainder of his term (to 27 January 2010).
 
Zelaya may be calling Micheletti's bluff, but he will not want to let the one month anniversary of the coup this Sunday (26 July) pass without some symbolic act. The US and the Organisation of American States (OAS), OAS are desperately trying to avert a violent confrontation, putting severe pressure on the Micheletti administration to back down.

The US yesterday again appealed to both sides to accept the San José Accord put forward by Arias on Wednesday (22 July); “Our advice to both parties is to accept the Arias plan and move forward", said the US state department spokesman, PJ Crowley.

Crowley strongly reiterated that Zelaya should not try to return, “Any step that anyone takes - either the parties directly, other countries in the surrounding area - any step that would add to the risk of violence in Honduras or in the area, we think would be unwise".

The secretary general of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, also cautioned Zelaya against any “hasty moves".

This crisis, which began on 28 June, now appears close to breaking point, with the Honduran armed forces last night issuing a statement warning that they could not guarantee Zelaya's security should he re-enter Honduras and suggesting that his own supporters may even try to make a martyr out of him. 

Yesterday, Zelaya said that he would hold the head of the armed forces, General Romeo Vásquez, responsible if anything happened to him.

The Micheletti administration remains adamant that Zelaya faces arrest upon his re-entry (on 18 political and criminal charges) and last night imposed an extended curfew in border zones.

It also maintains that internal talks are still ongoing between the supreme court, the attorney general and the Micheletti team over the latest proposal put forward by President Arias. Yesterday, the main opposition presidential candidate, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who is leading the 2009 race in the polls, appealed to Zelaya not to proceed with his return attempt and urged continued dialogue towards a peaceful solution.

The army is out in force at the three main border crossings from Nicaragua and roads leading from the border have been blocked.

However, a report today (24 July) in the daily “La Tribuna" cites one of Zelaya's accompanying former ministers, Allan Fajardo, as saying that Zelaya has not yet decided on the best route into the country.

He said that Zelaya, who was driving a jeep yesterday, also had a helicopter and a plane at his disposal (presumably the helicopter, like the plane, is on loan from Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez ) and did not rule out flying to El Salvador or Guatemala to make an approach from there, or alternatively, attempt a sea landing from either the Pacific Gulf of Fonseca or the Caribbean coast.

Based on Fajardo's account, it appears that Zelaya would cross unarmed, but he may be accompanied by a Honduran contingent. If a large convoy attempts to cross, that could likely lead to a confrontation.

Pointer: The US has an estimated 500-550 troops on the ground in Honduras, stationed at Soto Cano airbase close to Comayagua in central Honduras. It is unclear how the US would react in the event that Zelaya's return was accompanied by violence.

Development: On 2 September gang members raided a drug rehabilitation unit in Ciudad Juárez and killed 17 recovering addicts.

Significance: The attack was on the “El Alviviane" unit in the historic centre of Ciudad Juárez and demonstrates, once again, that the government's security strategy of flooding violent areas with troops and federal policemen is not working. The government has 8,000 troops and federal policemen in Ciudad Juárez.

This attack was the third on a rehabilitation unit in Ciudad Juárez, which is by far the most violent city in Mexico. The last attack was on 1 June, when gangsters killed five recovering addicts.

Separately, the federal Procuradurí­a General de la República (PGR) arrested six senior security officials in the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo, accusing them of being involved in drug trafficking.

Among those arrested were the PGR's top two officials in the state, as well as Salvador Rocha Vargas, the state government's top security official.

El Salvador: Remittances to El Salvador between January and September 2009 totalled US$2.58bn, representing a 10.3% decline compared to the same period the previous year.

Development: On 22 November the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, admitted that the 33-member hemispheric body, which includes the US, is divided on whether to recognise the general election in Honduras on Sunday, 29 November.

Significance: The OAS will meet informally today (23 November) at its Washington HQ to try to come up with a common position on the election. Insulza is keen that the US understand that any pragmatic decision to recognise the elections as the best way out of the five-month long coup crisis may have lasting consequences. He warned, “What is at stake, beyond Honduras, is a precedent. It's a type of 'corrective coup', that is to say, I throw out a government, but I call elections. That cannot happen. There is still political instability in Latin America and that generates temptations_on the part of all sectors to impose models by non-democratic means". However, he offered no Plan B.

In an interview with the Chilean daily La Nación Insulza admitted a “potential division" in the OAS but stressed that there was nothing to criticise in the US position. The White House, he said, was still expecting a “gesture" from both sides so that it might accompany the election process. The US agreed to recognise the elections upon signature of the 'Tegucigalpa-San José Accord' on 30 October, however last week the state department appeared to suggest that it might think twice about giving the nod to the elections if key elements of the agreement - including the formation of a national unity government - were not in place in advance of the polls. “There was not a change in position_what there is, is non-compliance of the two sides, particularly on the part of Señor Micheletti" (the de facto president), he emphasised.

Insulza has argued that the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, should be at the head of a national unity administration. He repeated yesterday that Zelaya's return “would have to be before the elections, afterwards it would be very difficult".

The OAS will not send an observer mission to Honduras, which it voted to expel on 4 July, following the 28 June coup.

Development: On 12 January the 128 seat Honduran congress voted overwhelmingly (by 123 votes in favour) to leave the Venezuela-led Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (ALBA), to which the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, signed up in August 2008.

Significance:   Congress yesterday also began debating the question of a political amnesty for Zelaya and the other participants in the 28 June coup d'etat against him. The incoming president, Porfirio Lobo, is anxious that congress approve the amnesty for Zelaya, as part of efforts to clear the political slate ahead of his investiture in two weeks time (27 January).

If congress approves a political amnesty for Zelaya, he might finally be able to leave the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigapla, where he has been holed up since 21 September last. However, he might still have to face the courts on other common crimes, including illicit enrichment, that will not be included in the amnesty.

The amnesty may also extend to six senior military commanders, who illegally removed Zelaya from the country on 28 June. These officials are due to appear before a special session of the supreme court, presided over by Jorge Rivera, tomorrow (14 January) to answer to charges of illegal expulsion and abuse of authority.

The move to leave Alba was first proposed by the de facto president, Roberto Micheletti, on 16 December, and was supported by Lobo. The move is largely symbolic, as Venezuela had already suspended all diplomatic and economic relations with Honduras in the immediate aftermath of the coup. It also suspended discount oil sales to Honduras under President Chávez 's Petrocaribe regional initiative.

Development: On 24 February the ministry of non-renewable natural resources reported that private oil companies operating in the country intended to double their investment spending in 2010.

Significance: The problem is that this increase is from a very low base. Overall, foreign oil companies intend to invest US$417m in Ecuador in 2010, up from US$212m in 2009.

This increase is puny beside what these companies are committing to Colombian and Venezuela. In Colombia, foreign operators are likely to spend US$4bn this year, while in Venezuela the huge heavy-oil Carabobo projects will demand investments of well over US$20bn in the next five years.

Foreign oil companies' share of Ecuador's total oil output has fallen steadily in recent years. Since 2007, foreign oil companies total output had fallen by 17% and now amounts to only 204,000bpd.

Friday 9 April

Argentina: President Cristina Fernández arrives in the US on a four day trip. On Monday 12 April she will take part in the Nuclear Security Summit convened by President Barack Obama. 

Chile:  Following a day-trip to Argentina, the new Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera, continues his first official trip abroad in Brazil, where he will meet his counterpart President Lula da Silva, as well as the two leading presidential candidates, Dilma Rousseff and José Serra. 

Ecuador: Legislative committee is due to present its report to congress on the proposed new Water Law.

Saturday 10 April

Brazil: The president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, concludes a three day trip to Brazil, the first visit by a Liberian leader to Brazil.  She was accompanied by a six-member ministerial delegation. President Johnson-Sirleaf is scheduled to end her trip with a visit to the Vale mining complex Serra dos Carajás

Mexico: Deadline for the registration of all mobile phones with a new government agency, Renaut.

Monday 12 April

Costa Rica: President-elect Laura Chinchilla will begin a two-day tour of Central America to discuss issues related to the fight against narco-trafficking and organized crime with her regional counterparts.  On 12 April she will meet El Salvador's Mauricio Funes and Honduras' Porfirio Lobo.  On 14 April she will meet Guatemala's Alvaro Colom and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega.

Region:  Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC to be attended by 40 heads of state, including the presidents of Argentina and Brazil (Cristina Fernández and Lula da Silva respectively).

Wednesday 14 April

Brazil: President Hu Jintao of China will be in Brazil for the second summit of BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), scheduled for 14-17 April. He will continue on to Chile and then to Venezuela, where he will help President Hugo Chávez prepare for Venezuela's bicentennial celebrations (19 April).  Hu Jintao was last in the region in 2008, when he visited Cuba, Costa Rica and Peru.

Argentina: Amado Boudou, the finance minister, will unveil the country's proposal to restructure its defaulted debt with the creditors who rejected the 2005 swap; the government and local analysts expect that 60%-80% of creditors will accept the offer.

Colombia: The Partido Conservador (PC) will hold a party congress to ratify Noemí­ Saní­n as its presidential candidate for the 30 May elections. The PC will also give Saní­n powers to forge electoral alliances.

Development: On 19 May, port and container workers in Peru's main port, Callao, will continue to strike despite the deployment of a marine commando unit in an attempt to regain normalcy.

Significance: To date, the strike has cost the Peruvian economy an estimated US$400m. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts real GDP growth of 6.5% year-on-year in 2010, much of which comes from exports. The strike has brought the entire export sector to its knees. Although other Peruvian ports have sought to compensate, none match the capacity of Callao.

The strike is representative of Peru's poor record in mediating industrial action. The solution now rests with congress, which in response to the strike has brought forward a debate over the so-called Portworkers Law to today (19 May). The workers are pushing for the approval of reforms to the law to facilitate better pension rights, unionisation and training.

The deployment of 80 marines against the 1,000 striking workers was an insufficient response. The arrest of 30 strikers has not strengthened the government's bargaining position. The strikers see a change in the law as the only solution. On 18 May, the secretary general of the Callao port workers' union, Wilmer Estévez, said that if the reforms were approved the strike would end.

The Asociación de Exportadores (Adex) claims that the reforms would damage export competitiveness. The private sector is worried that other strategic industrial sector workers could follow suit.

Friday 25 June

Region: The President of Syria, Bachar al Assad, will begin his first official visit to the region, stopping off in Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil and Argentina.

Ecuador: Second day of a two-day summit of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Treaty of Commerce of the Peoples (TCP), to be attended by indigenous and Afro-descendants from the region.

Mexico: The Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, David T. Johnson, will visit Mexico.

Colombia: XXVII Ibero-American congress of florists will take place.

World Cup (WC): Brazil v Portugal

Unasur: the V summit of the heads of the judiciaries of the member states of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) will continue in Cuenca, Ecuador, until Friday 2 July.

Saturday 26 June

WC: Uruguay v South Korea

Sunday 27 June

WC: Argentina v Mexico

Tuesday 29 June:

Argentina-Uruguay: Argentina's new foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, and his Uruguayan counterpart, Luis Almagro, will hold their first meeting.

Development: On 4 August Leviante Araki Araki, the president of the Easter Island assembly, threatened to lead a movement to take the territory out of Chile and into Polynesia.

Significance: The governor of Chile's V district, (which includes Easter Island), Raúl Celis, dismissed Araki's view as “a minority one" and said that there was no chance of Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui) leaving Chile. The islands lie 3,000km west of Chile.

Araki made his claim as a part of a long running dispute over land: locals are squatting on government land claiming that it is their ancestral territory. Locals also want restrictions of immigration from the mainland.

Celis also pointed out that Araki's position as president of the assembly was not as important or as representative as it sounded. He noted, however, that a law to restrict immigration to Easter Island had been approved by the senate and was now being driven through the lower chamber by the government. On ancestral lands, Celis said that the government was working out compensation for lands seized in the past 50 years.

Development: On 12 September, the leading candidate to replace President Lula da Silva on 3 October, Dilma Rousseff of the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores, endured a wringing at the hands of her three main opponents in the latest televised presidential debate.

Significance: Rousseff is managing to deflect the spate of corruption allegations being thrown against her by an increasingly desperate opposition, making it clear last night that these are purely electorally motivated and do not involve her directly. It's only the chattering classes and the conservative media that are really bothered - the broad mass of the electorate tends to dismiss the entire political class as corrupt in one way or the other and voters are purely interested in guaranteeing continuity with the current economic bonanza - which they associate implicitly with the popular and successful Lula administration.   Rousseff is within a hair's breadth of victory.

According to the latest Datafolha poll, the main opposition candidate, José Serra of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB), is losing votes, despite his all out assault on Rousseff and the PT government in the past few weeks. He is now lagging 23 percentage points behind Rousseff on 27%, to her 50%. Notably, the third placed candidate, Marina Silva of the Partido Verde, is picking up votes among the more educated and high income sectors; clearly, she is stealing votes not only from Rousseff but also from Serra. The Rousseff team thus needs to keep an eye on Silva, who will be seeking to upset the apple cart at the last minute by preventing Dilma's anticipated first round victory.

There are two more debates on 28 and 30 September. In order to win in the first round, a candidate needs to secure 50% plus one of the valid vote (i.e. excluding blank and spoiled votes). Voting is mandatory in Brazil for over 18s - people get round this by casting blank or spoiled votes. According to Datafolha, Rousseff now has 56% of the valid vote. Moreover, nearly three quarters of respondents in the latest poll (72%) believed she was on course for victory, up from 69% in a week earlier poll.

Rousseff yesterday accused Serra and his team of a “negative and slanderous agenda" after the opposition magazine Veja ran a story accusing Rousseff's former right hand woman and her successor at the ministry of the presidency, Erenice Guerra, of involvement in a graft scheme. The magazine suggested that a lobbying firm run by Guerra's son, Israel Guerra, had taken kickbacks worth some US$3.0m from a São Paulo-based air cargo firm bidding for a US$52m contract with the state-run postal service. Rousseff has also been under fire by Serra over a separate scandal involving the illegal breach by the PT of the tax records and bank account details of his daughter and senior PSDB members.

Development: On 21 October, Colombian security forces, using information extracted from the computers of the late military strategist of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc), 'Mono Jojoy' (Jorge Briceño), captured 'La Mona' (Luz Delia Hincapié Gaviria), leader of the Red Urbana Antonio Nariño (Ruan), and seized a car bomb loaded with 10kg of pentolite.

Significance: The government's ability to prevent a powerful bomb in central Bogotá shows that it is strengthening its advantage over the Farc. The Farc, due to its reduced military capabilities, is being forced to resort to terrorist attacks to show its muscle. Terrorist acts require fewer resources than those necessary for military operations.

The impact of an attack on strategic and highly secure targets in central Bogotá would nonetheless be extremely effective, shaking up the population and potentially damaging morale among the security forces.

According to Defence Minister Rodrigo Rivera, security analysts discovered a list of potential targets including military and police installations and important public figures such as President Juan Manuel Santos, former president Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010) and the heads of the national police and military forces. While foreign diplomats did not appear on the list, an annual ball in Bogotá organised by the wives of locally based diplomats, scheduled for tonight (22 October), was cancelled on 17 October due to suspicions that the Farc might have intended to carry out an attack at the event.

The capture of Hincapié is an important blow to Farc morale. In addition to being the leader of the urban militia in Bogotá, she was wanted for her participation in an operation that freed 98 inmates from the maximum security prison La Picota in June 2001.

Development: On 6 December Jaime Bayly, a controversial talk show host, revealed that President Alan Garcí­a had told him that he would launch a coup d'état if Ollanta Humala, a leftwing nationalist, won the April 2011 presidential elections.

Significance: Garcí­a, according to Bayly, was speaking at a dinner party hosted by Bayly at a time when Bayly himself was musing a presidential bid. His revelation coincided with the news that Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the jailed former president, Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), and confirmed presidential contestant for next April, had chosen Garcí­a's former defence minister, Rafael Rey Rey, as her vice presidential candidate.

Rey is a longstanding Fujimorista, which suggests that Garcí­a is hedging his bets over the 2011 presidential contest. His preferred candidate, Mercedes Aráoz (his former economy minister), has yet to make any progress in the opinion polls. The latest poll, by Datum, put another former president, Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), in the lead, with 26% of voting intentions ahead of Keiko's 22%. The presidential race will almost certainly go to a run-off between the top two candidates. In previous polls Toledo was third behind both Keiko and Luis Castañeda, a former mayor of Lima. Humala is on 10%, according to Datum, with Aráoz on only 4%.

President Garcí­a confirmed that he had met Bayly, as Bayly described, but stressed that Bayly had put a different construction on his comments.

Garcí­a said that Bayly had asked him how much he was paid as president and when Garcí­a said US$3,000 (a month) Bayly said that that wouldn't cover his monthly outgoings. According to Bayly, Garcí­a had then said: “No seas cojudo, hombre, la plata llega sola" (Don't be daft, the money comes by itself). Garcí­a said on 7 December that by this he had meant that after leaving office a president typically boosts his earnings five or 10-fold.

On Humala, Garcí­a insisted that he had never referred to Humala by name nor had he said that he would organise a coup if Humala won the presidency. Garcí­a admitted, however, that he had said that a complete change in the country's political and economic direction (as advocated by Humala) could lead to social and economic turmoil, which would force him to act.

Development: On 26 January, Argentina's minister of health, Juan Manzur, publicly criticised a Brazilian Dengue prevention campaign in São Pablo, in which the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits dengue, is portrayed as Argentine.

Significance: Dengue outbreaks are a constant worry for health officials in the Southern Cone, especially during the summer months. Yesterday, Manzur visited the border with Bolivia in the north-western province of Salta where he is coordinating efforts with Bolivian health authorities from the department of Tarija to prevent the spread of the disease from Bolivia, where a national sanitary emergency was declared on 21 January.

Key points:

The campaign's poster depicts a Brazilian national football team player kicking a ball at an Aedes aegypti mosquito dressed in the Argentine football jersey; the poster is entitled “we will win this match". The “Argentine" mosquito is under the heading “death" whilst the Brazilian player is under “life".

Manzur stated that “there are no borders" for the disease and said he was worried by the way the Brazilian campaign presents the mosquito, given that the northern giant has many more cases of Dengue than any of other countries affected by the disease. If people are misinformed about the origins of the disease and how it is transmitted, prevention and treatment campaigns may fail, creating more problems for health authorities in neighbouring nations.

In 2010, Brazil reported 1m cases of Dengue (15,500 of which were the hemorrhagic type) with a total of 550 deaths. Argentina had some 50,000 infections and a dozen deaths. In recent weeks, Bolivia has reported the infection of some 1,200 people in the department of Beni, which borders Brazil, with eight deaths.