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The 90-day truce granted to President Carlos Mesa by peasant and social organisations when he took office is approaching the two-thirds point, and already it is falling apart. Late November and early December witnessed a spate of protest actions in various parts of the country, most of them signalling impatience with what is perceived as government inaction.

Perhaps most significant was the decision by the landless peasants' movement, MST, to seize 20 farms they claim had been left lying idle. They specifically cited the government's delay in responding to their demands as the motive for their action. Under President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, MST squats had been forcibly evicted. The current string of seizures appears to be a probe to gauge the Mesa government's response.

In what appears to be an unconnected episode, peasant unions in south-central Potosí­ have announced that they will start blocking highways if the government fails to satisfy their demands.

In the Chapare, radical coca growers seem to be tiring of the calls for restraint by their leader, Evo Morales. Ambushes of the joint army-police eradication squads have resumed. On 29 November an explosive device was detonated as a patrol passed, killing one agent of the FELCN, the special antinarcotics forces, injuring five soldiers and wrecking an army truck. On 4 December, another agent was killed when his unit came under heavy gunfire.

These are revivals of protest actions that had begun before the change of government. The past couple of weeks, however, have also seen the emergence of others. The La Paz-Cochabamba highway, frequently targeted by the cocaleros, was blocked in early December by protesters from Aiquile, Totora and Mizque, demanding US$2.3m in government aid to rebuild the areas devastated by an earthquake in 1998.

In central La Paz, hundreds of relatives of those killed or injured in the September-October protests turned up in front of government house to demand an increase in the compensation offered by the government.

Patience to be stretched further
Against this backdrop, it seems that President Mesa is offering no immediate action. Evo Morales, after meeting Mesa in his capacity as leader of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), reported that the President had announced:

• A commitment to set up `working tables' to discuss issues such as land distribution and the situation of the coca growers.
  

• The celebration of a referendum on the future of Bolivia's natural gas and other hydrocarbons `in the first quarter of 2004.'
  

• The beginning of discussions on a constitutional amendment to adopt the constituent assembly as the mechanism for future reforms of the basic charter. [Mesa and Morales acknowledged, according to the latter, that there were `time constraints' on the introduction of this change.]

Of course, Morales took advantage of the occasion to present to Mesa his own blueprint for a new hydrocarbons law and treatment of the privatised firms and outsourced services — all based on the principle of `recovery of state ownership.' He also urged Mesa to ensure punishment of those responsible for deaths during the recent protests.

Against the backdrop of revived hostility towards Chile, Bolivian development minister Javier Nogales has been talking about treating the Chilean port of Iquique as a major threat, because it is the conduit for most of the smuggling into Bolivia. He particularly wants to tighten controls on the smuggling of secondhand Japanese cars known locally as transformers, because Chilean mechanics in Iquique shift their steering wheel from right to left. That job, he says, should be done by Bolivian mechanics, legally.

He faces opposition on two fronts. Importers of new cars want the trade in secondhand vehicles banned outright. Also, though unacknowledged, periodical `whitewashing' of smuggled transformers has become a habitual way of topping up tax receipts whenever they are flagging. Iquique, like other ports in northern Chile, sees its economic future linked more to Bolivia than to Chile's distant centre.

VENEZUELA | Growth outlook tempered. Central bank director Domingo Maza says he expects the economy to revive somewhat in the last quarter of the year, but not enough to justify the planning ministry's projection of a 10-11% contraction for the year as a whole. His own projection is for a contraction in a 12-15% range.

He is being ultra-cautious, since the economy has already clocked a contraction of just under 15% in the first three quarters (WR-03-47). This represents a substantial turnaround after the 29% plunge recorded in the first quarter, which was almost overwhelmingly due to the two-month strike-lockout staged by the opposition. The planning ministry has projected a positive growth rate of 6.5% for next year.

ECUADOR | Backtracking on crucial gas subsidy. The government of President Lucio Gutiérrez has decided not to eliminate the subsidy on cooking-gas in 2004, only weeks after the economy ministry proposed allowing its price to rise from US$1.60 per 15-kilo canister to US$5 [wr-03-45]. The news did not come in the form of an official communiqué: it was announced by the President's wife, congresswoman Ximena Bohórquez. Indeed, she went considerably further than the cooking-gas subsidy, adding that `there will be no increase in the prices for fuels, and electricity and telephone rates will be frozen.'

A World Bank study had recommended allowing the price of the cooking-gas canister to rise to US$7. The IMF, which had accepted a delay in this matter at the time of reaching an agreement with the government, had been expecting action to be taken in 2004. The unions and indigenous organisations had threatened to stage an `uprising' if the cooking-gas subsidy was eliminated or reduced; a succession of governments have ended up backing away from such a prospect.

COLOMBIA | Bank agrees on buyback from reserves. The Banco de la República (central bank) has told the government that it could use up to US$500m of the country's international reserves to buy back debt, without compromising its ability to cope with `extreme volatility in the financial market'. That amount is equivalent to 4.65% of Colombia's reserves. The buyback is one of the steps announced by the government to reduce the servicing on its public debt, which would otherwise take up 36% of next year's budget — or three times as much as has been allocated to public investment at home.

Compromise, as we anticipated (WR-03-47), proved not to be an option to overcome the rift in the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Instead, within less than a week the split had spread from the congressional bloc to one of the most important PRI-controlled labour federations. In the broader political arena, both PRI factions have issued assurances that the work of congress — which includes the much publicised tax reform proposals — will not be obstructed, but these do not yet offer any clear indication of possible outcomes.

On 2 December the PRI's political commission voted 74:28 to remove party secretary-general Elba Esther Gordillo from her position as coordinator of the lower-chamber bloc, and convened the 222 PRI deputies to elect a new coordinator the following day. The pro-Gordillo faction, deeming the meeting illegal, stayed away. The event started out as a two-man race, but it was not long before one of them, Sami David, was persuaded to step down, allowing the other, Emilio Chuayffet (former governor of Mexico state and interior minister) to be elected unanimously by the 118 legislators present. They all chanted, `Unity! Unity!'

This theme allowed party president Roberto Madrazo to issue an obscure statement that appeared to endorse the outcome: he urged `unity around the principles and values that gave us birth as a party' [readable as an expression of sympathy with the stance of the populares who rebelled against Gordillo] and warned that `we will not allow interests alien to our party to try to take over the PRI bloc' [readable as directed towards a Gordillo purportedly serving the interests of the government].

Gordillo has fallen back on the party statutes, under which she was elected bloc coordinator for a three-year term, with no provision for removal save for a provable breach of party discipline. She has proclaimed to all and sundry that she remains in her post and in her offices, and will continue to conduct business as usual with her following of 104 legislators. This is already being challenged by Chuayffet, but up to the time of writing the president of the lower chamber, Juan de Dios Castro (PAN), had not made up his mind on whose entitlement he would recognise.

Meanwhile, Gordillo has taken her counter-rebellion beyond the confines of congress. On 5 December, 21 member organisations of the federation of government employees, led by the teachers' union — Gordillo's powerbase — announced that they were withdrawing to form a new umbrella body. The defectors claim to represent 1.5m of the federation's 1.8m members.

The tax reform
Two congressmen of the Gordillo faction held a meeting with President Vicente Fox, and though it is presumed that they discussed the legislative agenda, neither side revealed anything. On 6 December Gordillo promised that before the end of the current period of sessions (31 December) the lower chamber would approve a tax reform which would not include extending the value-added tax (IVA), as the government wants, to foodstuffs and medicines. Chuayffet was less precise, saying, `The other protagonists need not fear: the PRI is not obstructionist.'

Despite all predictions to the contrary, judge Juana Méndez has found former President Arnoldo Alemán guilty of money-laundering, fraud, diversion of public funds, embezzlement, criminal conspiracy, and breach of electoral legislation. She sentenced him to the maximum allowed by Nicaraguan law, 20 years, plus payment of a fine yet to be determined, police surveillance for three years after completion of the sentence, and loss of civic and parental rights.

Pact unravels
The first sign that this might happen came on 4 December, when Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega said that his party's pact with Alemán's Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) was likely to collapse due to the latter's insistence on Alemán's release as a precondition. Two days later the PLC withdrew its support from the `consensus' reached on next year's budget; on Sunday they followed up announcing that they no longer supported the postponement of next year's municipal elections.

It was that same Sunday that judge Méndez handed down her sentence. She sidestepped the legal challenge to the money-laundering charge on the grounds that this would have had to be linked to drug trafficking, by arguing that there had been a clear attempt to launder ill-gotten gains. The core charge against Alemán was that he had transferred US$10m from 15 different government agencies into bank accounts of his own in Panama. The chief prosecutor's office at the time said that this was a verifiable minimum, and that the full amount diverted might reach US$100m.

For now Alemán, 57, remains under house arrest at his El Chile farm; judge Méndez has ordered medical reports on his ability to endure prison (his own doctors say he suffers from three ailments that would rule out prison confinement). An appeal has already been filed by Alemán's lawyer against the sentence in its entirety — and it may also be appealed by state prosecutor Mayra Paiz, who has been arguing that the money-laundering charge is inapplicable.

One thing that has raised some eyebrows is judge Méndez's acquittal of former chief tax collector Byron Jerez, Alemán's right-hand man while in office, who had been charged with the same offences as the former President.

Political connotations
Unclear at this stage is the extent to which pressure from the US, the IMF and international donors affected the outcome of the Alemán case. The verdict on Alemán seems to match what Washington had prejudged. The PLC has been making a public show of aligning its budget stance with IMF requirements, and can produce, together with the pro-Bolaños Liberals, the votes needed to pass it. The celebration of municipal elections next year pleases the IMF, inasmuch as their postponement was part of the Sandinistas' scheme to reallocate budget appropriations, and also the US and local business and civic associations because they are seen as `strengthening governability' — by which they mean that they are expected to be unfavourable to the Sandinistas. The big question is what follows: the Liberal `reunification' that Washington has been promoting, or a Sandinista-Bolaños entente?

The Madrazo-Gordillo split in the PRI has been interpreted by some local commentators as the first real round in the battle for the PRI's presidential nomination for the elections due in 2006. What happened on 7 December within the ranks of the leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) does not require interpretation: it was the launch of the presidential bid of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, mayor of Mexico city and the man opinion polls currently give the highest probability of winning.

Formally, it was not a party event. Engineered by Jesús Martí­nez, leader of the Izquierda Democrática Nacional faction, it marked the creation of the Amigos de Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a campaigning and fundraising organisation deliberately modelled on the one set up to promote Vicente Fox's candidacy. As in the case of the latter, it does not commit the party, which must undergo its statutory selection process, and enjoys greater freedom of movement. In Fox's case, the Amigos were credited with attracting more votes (and more funds, some questionable) than Fox's Partido Acción Nacional (PAN).

This said, the event was attended by one of López Obrador's undersecretaries, Martí­ Batres Guadarrama. It was he who explained that Querétaro had been chosen as the venue for the launch because it is one of the states where the PRD most sorely needed to build up a following. What is true for the PRD is even more true for López Obrador, who enjoys far greater support in the capital than in the states. In keeping with the spirit of the event, Batres avoided formally endorsing his boss's candidacy — that was left to Martí­nez.

President Vicente Fox has been sounding a bitter note regarding the US and his `great friend' George Bush Jr. Last week, in one of his many discussions with the press about the midpoint of his term of office, he said, `The 11 September affair got in the way and priorities there changed — then the Iraq affair and all that it entailed. President Bush and the US government have forgotten us and that is wrong: they have forgotten the bilateral relation when the first thing we should look out for is our neighbours.'

This comes only days after Fox had Mexico's ambassador to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, removed after having said that the US continues to treat Mexico as its `backyard' — though Fox, like other Mexicans, chose to pretend that this was the ambassador's view of Mexico's status [WR-03-46].

After joking that he had already `paid the price' for having vowed to achieve a 7% economic growth rate, Fox came up with a far more modest outlook for the second half of this term: `If some conditions are fulfilled, perhaps the country may move on to growth rates of 3.5% to 4.5%. This is not a commitment or a promise; it is just a comment.'

On another second-term issue, his wife's purported presidential ambitions [WR-03-39]. Fox said, `She will be free to make her own decisions, particularly regarding her personal project of life. She will have all my support for whatever decision she takes.' This, he hastened to add, did not mean that he would `interfere or favour outcomes' in the next elections.

Mexico's role as the outer perimeter of Nafta is coming under growing pressure as ever-bigger numbers of Central Americans seek to reach the US through its territory. In the first 10 months of this year the Mexican government has repatriated 151,697 Central Americans who had been seeking to migrate illegally to the US. This represents an increase of 37% on the same period of last year — and only reflects that portion of the flow that was checked.

As usual, the bulk of the migrants came from Guatemala and Honduras, but this year there was a remarkable increase in the number of repatriations to El Salvador: 16,802 in all, or 47% more than in January-October 2002.

These figures were produced by Ana Luisa Fajer, international relations coordinator of the Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM), at a meeting last week with fellow members of the regional conference on migration, CRM. Its purpose was to update repatriation procedures for regional migrants and to coordinate action for the assisted repatriation of the extra-regional ones.

The gathering was held under the slogan, `Dignified, Safe and Orderly Return of Migrants.' This is a dig at the US, which has been strongly criticised by Mexico for not meeting these standards, particularly since the tightening of border controls after September 2001.

GROWTH OUTLOOK | Private analysts downgrade expectations. None too surprisingly, the central bank's monthly survey of economic expectations show the consensus growth outlook for this year reduced once again, this time from 1.43% to 1.16% — which has become a new low (WR-03-45). The economists consulted by the bank expect the growth rate in the fourth quarter to be 1.9%. It is now likely that the central bank and the government will follow suit and bring their own forecasts down from 1.5%.

The survey reveals that confidence in a rebound remains fairly strong: the consensus is 3.3% in 2003 and 3.8% in 2004. The Mexican economy contracted by 0.3% in 2001; last year it grew by only 0.9%. The OECD said days ago that Mexico's current long-term growth potential of about 4% is `too slow for a country with low levels of income and productivity and high rates of population growth.'

As to foreign direct investment, the survey consensus is that it will total US$11.77bn this year, then rise to US$13.74bn in 2004. The latest official figure puts FDI in the first nine months of the year at US$8.1bn, which suggests that it would have to rise substantially in the fourth quarter to meet the survey's projection.

INVESTMENT | Assembly plants pledge US$900m. The economy ministry announced last week that the maquiladora sector has submitted a plan that envisages `investments above the regular ones of US$900m' next year. According to the ministry, the `multiplier effect' of those investments would translate into the creation of almost 50,000 direct jobs.

Most of the investments will go to the northern states, which have suffered the bulk of the job losses over the last couple of years. Among the firms planning additional investments for 2004 are Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba and Motorola.

For the second time in four years the star of Cuba's dollar economy, Cubanacán, has been hit by a scandal over managerial `irregularities'. Details are still somewhat hazy, but it is clear that the president of the tourism holding company, Antonio Vega, has been removed from his post and placed under de facto house arrest. The news was only announced on 4 December, but local sources say the changes had already taken place the previous week.

One of the most favoured local theories is that `irregularities' in Cubanacán's finances started coming to light after a July decision to bar the use of US dollars for transactions by state enterprises — which were ordered to exchange their dollar holdings for convertible pesos, the domestic currency which is quoted at 26-27 per US dollar. Though several explanations were offered at the time for this measure, in practice it had two main effects: the commission charged on purchases of dollars began to act as a `stealth' tax on imports, and the central bank began to have a clearer idea of state enterprise transactions.

Cubanacán runs 51 hotels, many in partnership with foreign firms, has a nationwide chain of dollar stores, two marinas, a number of restaurants and bars, car hire and taxi services. It is reckoned to handle about 40% of Cuba's tourist trade, which earns the country about US$2bn a year.

In mid-1999 the government dismissed top Cubanacán executives (and those of two other state tourism firms, Rumbos and Horizontes) for what was publicly described as `errors' and `indiscipline'. Though not much else was said, the episode was considered grave enough to merit the replacement of tourism minister Osmany Cienfuegos by Ibrahim Ferradaz. This time round, Ferradaz, still on the job, has personally taken over direct control of Cubanacán.

Hints of something big
Local régime watchers are now wondering if the Cubanacán affair may not have been already in the wind a couple of weeks ago, when Ricardo Alarcón, president of the national assembly, included in a speech to an international audience in Havana what at the time seemed a non-sequitur: `Cuba is firmly committed to maintain its unchanging policy of acting with rigour against possible criminal acts that may be committed by a leader unworthy of his position, whatever his rank and previous responsibilities.'

To this has been added the report that armed forces chief Raúl Castro — Fidel's brother and heir-designate — has taken a personal interest in the investigation into Cubanacán. This is taken to be indicative of the seriousness of the `irregularities' involved.

Political violence continued throughout last week in Haiti's main cities. In Gonaí¯ves, where the mayoralty was set alight on Tuesday, the opposition Front de Résistance reported that four of its activists had been murdered; they blamed the police. On 5 December in Port-au-Prince police stood by while a pro-Aristide mob raided the state university's sciences building where students were preparing a protest demonstration. Sixteen students were injured by gunfire, and a score more were forced to kneel and beaten. Also among the injured was the dean, Pierre Marie Paquiot, his deputy, Wilson Laleau, and two journalists. Police inspector-general Woody Bertomieu said his force had been helpless because it is barred from entering the university.

US actress Jane Fonda has embarked on a campaign to make women's murders in Guatemala as much of an international issue as those of Ciudad Juárez in Mexico [WR-03-46]. She visited the capital last week and promised to return with an `army' of women activists to demand action on the murder of about 700 women since 2000, with 270 reported this year alone, she said, adding, `You have even more women killed than in Ciudad Juárez.'

As in Juárez, there is hype here. A survey released in September by the local news agency Cerigua says that 291 violent deaths of women were reported in Guatemala between January 2002 and end-August this year. There were 78 disappearances of women in the same period. Guatemala has a murder rate of 101 per 100,000 inhabitants, just under twice the Central American rate and three times that of Latin America as a whole. Women make up just over half of Guatemala's population of 10.2m.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC | Bid to force down the dollar rate. President Hipólito Mejí­a last week exacted from banks, exchange houses and remittance companies an agreement to bring down the dollar rate, which had been trading above RD$43, to RD$30 within one week (for results to the end of last week see table on page 13). A monitoring commission, headed by the chief of the armed forces, General José Miguel Soto Jiménez, has been set up to ensure implementation of the agreement. The basic theory is that the dollar rate has been pushed up by speculation; the commission's first step has been to demand from banks and exchange operators the identification of those involved in all transactions in the last 11 months. The government has said that the IMF demanded the lowering of the dollar rate as a condition for final approval of the standby agreement the Dominican Republic has been negotiating.

COSTA RICA | Bowing to US pressure. The US threat to leave Costa Rica out of Cafta appears to have succeeded. President Abel Pacheco has announced a climbdown on the two conditions demanded by the US [WR-03-39]. At the negotiating round this week in Washington, Costa Rica will present an offer to gradually open up its telecommunications sector to private enterprise, starting with the high-value-added activities. It is also preparing a proposal for `some degree of opening' of the insurance business, currently monopolised by the Instituto Nacional de Seguros (INS). This will begin with `the consolidation of some existing accesses.'

CUBA | Revised growth forecast. Interior minister Ricardo Cabrisas last week said that the Cuban economy was likely to register 1.5% growth this year. This comes only shortly after Osvaldo Martí­nez, chairman of the national assembly's economic affairs committee, predicted a growth rate of more than 2%. Cuba's growth rate last year was 1.1%. Whichever forecast comes true, this will be the third year running in which Cuba's economic growth falls well below the 4% target set to recover from the 30% contraction that took place in the 1990s.

GUATEMALA | Company closures multiply. In the first nine months of the year, 3,309 companies closed down in Guatemala; 25% more than in the same period of 2002. Among the closures were those of four foreign companies and 35 maquiladoras (assembly plants) — almost three times as many as in 2002. Only 11 new companies were registered in January-November, compared with 27 a year earlier.

Brazilian authorities are being forced to revise their assumptions regarding their country's role in the international drugs trade. Hitherto the main emphasis has been on Brazil's known role as a conduit for drugs coming mainly from Colombia, en route to European markets — and internally, on the growth of the big drug-trafficking gangs of Rio and São Paulo, which have expanded from local retailing to major drugs-for-arms deals with Colombian guerrillas.

Now they will have to include Brazil's incorporation into the cocaine-processing chain, after the discovery last week of a large cocaine laboratory in São Paulo. When they raided the lab, federal police agents seized 250 kilos of cocaine paste. Experts later concluded that the establishment was capable of turning out about one tonne a month of refined cocaine.

Some small processing labs had been found in the past, but none of this size, and none in the heart of a major city. The estimated production of this single lab is equivalent to a fifth of the cocaine production potential of Bolivia, as calculated by the UNODC.

Also seized in the raid was a stash of money and a small arsenal. Two people were arrested, one of them a lawyer who is suspected of owning the lab.

The police said that the cocaine was intended for distribution both within Brazil, mainly in São Paulo and Rio, and also abroad. Nothing has been said yet about the connections between this lab and local drug gangs, but it is clear that whoever has moved into processing will enjoy an edge over their rivals — which may prompt them to follow suit.

São Paulo is the stomping ground of the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), a gang that has become bold enough to launch coordinated attacks against the city police: about fifty in November, which left a toll of three police dead and a dozen or so injured. In early December there were three more presumed PCC attacks on police establishments in São Paulo, in which three of the assailants were killed. Like its Rio counterparts, the PCC is directed from inside state prisons, by gang leaders who use their lawyers as go-betweens.

One constant feature of the confrontation between landless peasants and landowners has been the litany of warnings about the risk that it could become violent. Two reports issued last week by Catholic church organisations show that it has already become much more violent than in recent years.

The Commissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT), which supports the landless, reports that in the first 11 months of this year there have been 61 killings of peasants. This compares with 43 last year and 20 in 2001.

Even more dramatic is the report from the Conselho Indigenista Missionário (Cimi), which says that 22 Indians were killed in January-October this year — more than three times as many as in the whole of last year, and the highest figure on record in the last decade.

Former President Eduardo Duhalde appears to have had his ear closer to the ground than President Néstor Kirchner, on the politically and socially sensitive issue of the piqueteros, the groups renowned for blocking highways to press their demands for unemployment subsidies [WR-03-47].

A survey conducted by the consulting firm OPSM shows 87.4% of respondents opposed to the piquetero practice of obstructing the country's highways. Only four weeks ago the proportion of those disapproving was 61.2%. As many as 62.1% believe that this kind of protest endangers the democratic system.

And it is not only their methods that are being rejected: the proportion of respondents declaring support for the motives of the piqueteros has fallen from 73.9% at the beginning of the year to 56.2% now. This has come hand in hand with growing scepticism about those motives. While 23.7% accept the stated motive of unemployment and 14.1% cite poverty, 20.7% see political aims behind the protests, 15.4% see them as provoked by groups of activists, and 10.1% cite corruption. The scepticism has been growing rapidly: three weeks ago fewer than 1% cited either activist groups or corruption.

While Duhalde has used strong language to condemn the piquetero organisations (he has described them as `a new kind of small-and-medium enterprise') and has called for a firmer hand against their protests, Kirchner continues to proclaim that he will not resort to repression. Indeed, over the past few days some of the demands for more subsidies have been met.

Among political analysts there are those who maintain that Kirchner is being Machiavellian: waiting for the piqueteros to shun his `openness to dialogue' explicitly enough to play on the growing anti-piquetero public mood, and only then turn to repression.

Duhalde vs Kirchner?
Still unclear is what game Duhalde is playing in the broader political arena. In his old fiefdom of Buenos Aires province, his successor, governor Felipe Solá, is facing increasing opposition from the local Partido Justicialista (PJ) bosses who formed the backbone of Duhalde's powerbase. They are clearly intent on preventing Solá from using the governorship to create a powerbase of his own, beyond duhaldismo. In this contest, Kirchner appears as an ally of Solá.

Duhalde has explicitly stated that those who claim to be his friends should be Solá's friends as well — and Kirchner's. However, say the more conspiratorial analysts, since his public criticism of Kirchner's policies towards the piqueteros, he seems to have cut off contact with the President.

On 3 December, Eduardo Moliné O'Connor became the first Argentine supreme court justice to be removed from office by impeachment. The only small comfort he was awarded was that he was only voted out on two of the nine charges filed against him.

Impeachment proceedings have now been initiated against another justice, Adolfo Vázquez, on the same charges as filed against Julio Nazareno (who resigned) and Moliné. Two other justices, Carlos Fayt and Guillermo López, have announced their intention of stepping down in March.

After appearing to descend into farce for the better part of a week, the impeachment proceedings against three supreme court justices [WR-03-42] is back on track, drastically slimmed down. All but six of the 20 charges originally filed against them have been dropped.

Just over a week ago the lawyers for the three justices sought to appeal to what was left of the supreme court against the procedures laid down by the senate for the hearings — particularly the fact that each was allotted only three hours to present a defence against charges laid out in close to 1,000 pages of text. This did not prosper, so the defence retaliated by seeking to have admitted in evidence 29 tomes of judicial records.

On 3 December the four congressmen entrusted with the role of accusers announced that they were withdrawing most of the charges to concentrate on only six which, they say, `in their substantial part have not been denied by the defence.' The senate now expects to conclude the impeachment proceedings by 12 December.

Bonifacio Rí­os, one of the three justices being impeached, has chosen to present his defence (and those of his peers Carlos Fernández Gadea and Luis Lezcano) to the episcopal conference of the Catholic church. Though this body can offer him no redress, he says his aim is to clear his name and honour.

The supreme court is now functioning with only three titular justices: Raúl Sapena, Jerónimo Irala and Felipe Santiago Paredes. In order to deal with any substantial case, they have to co-opt judges from the appeals courts to sit with them.

The 7 December referendum on Uruguay's state oil company Ancap (WR-03-45) was a resounding victory for the leftist Encuentro Progresista-Frente Amplio (EP-FA) which, no longer coy, is portraying the 62% `yes' vote as having gone beyond its stated aim — repealing the law that lifted Ancap's monopoly and allowed it to enter a 30-year partnership with a private partner — to become a `punishment vote' against the government's economic policies. Turnout, at 83%, has been described as low because voting is mandatory in Uruguay. Nonetheless, the fact that only 36% actually voted against repealing the law clearly shows which way public sentiment has tilted.

The outcome strengthens EP-FA leader Tabaré Vázquez, internally against senator Danilo Astori, who argued strongly against repeal, and externally against his likely challengers from the two `traditional' parties, former presidents Julio Marí­a Sanguinetti (Colorado) and Luis Alberto Lacalle (Blanco). Both of these went out on a limb seeking a `no' vote and may have to review their stances between now and their parties' internal elections, due next June.

Vázquez said that the referendum result showed `what kind of state the people want.' This is more than political rhetoric: it does reflect a growing mood, not only in Uruguay, which challenges the oft-proclaimed conviction that the recent `reforms' (chiefly deregulation and privatisation) are `irreversible'.

A long-awaited facedown between the judiciary and the military has been triggered by a judge's decision to summon army officers and soldiers to testify on the fate of a teacher presumed to have been secretly buried on army premises. The military have refused to obey, invoking the 1986 law (ratified by referendum) that shields them from prosecution for crimes committed while in power. The judge, Alejandro Recarey, invokes instead the primacy of information: that same legislation placed upon the government the burden of investigating the fate of the `disappeared' — a stipulation successive governments have failed to honour fully. 

The government, after trying unsuccessfully to reverse Recarey's order, says it will seek a supreme court injunction to halt the action, but supreme court president Roberto Parga has already stated publicly that `the judge enjoys technical autonomy.' Recarey says he will send the police to compel the military to answer the summonses if they persist in their disobedience.