Mexican students studying to be teachers released a hostage on Wednesday—in the municipality of Nahuatzen—due to concerns about his health. But they continue to hold five others. The students are supported by the Michoacán State Teachers Organization, which warned that the remaining captives, who are state policemen, would be freed only when a demand for 1,200 new teaching jobs is met.
Racial slurs, insults, build up to the ambassador’s wife slapping one of the women, and the ambassador, Rodrigo Riofrio Machuca, joining in and kicking the women. The eyewitnesses say that the women fell to the ground and he continued kicking. When the police showed up and refused to arrest him, the women followed him and saw him enter the Ecuadorian embassy.
Video from the security cameras is missing.
Apparently the only people investigating are the journalists. One witness gave them an 8-minute video of the incident.
The Peruvians want their president to expel this ambassador.
The mother says he called them “ignorant Peruvians” and made a disparaging reference to the country’s large indigenous population.
Ummm… no; the mother in the video asserts that the ambassador made a racial slur against indigenous Peruvians, and then blamed them for the (bad) state of things.
In Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, at least according to the chavista-controlled board of election, won last night. Henrique Capriles Radonski demanded a recount, asserting that electoral fraud had taken place. Here’s his speech last night (in Spanish),
Evidence has emerged of a link between the FARC and Islamist terrorist groups in the North African Maghreb after two Colombian nationals were arrested in Algeria last month by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Spanish intelligence services.
Luis Alberto Lacalle, abogado y presidente de la Republica Oriental del Uruguay de 1990 a 1995 envia un afectuoso saludo a la Fundacion HACER de Washington DC desde el 25 Aniversario de la Fundacion Libertad de Rosario
The deceased ELN leader was a member of the guerrilla group for 17 years and was purportedly heavily involved in the group’s extortion racket and cocaine production.
“Imagine a country where not only are the borders secured by armed guards, but once you entered the country, if you even spoke about politics — at all — if you even mentioned anything politically, you would be deported. Imagine a country where everyone is required to be tracked all the time. Where all of these immigrants are constantly monitored. Imagine where the idea of immigrants even having a word on the internal politics of a country would be enough to get them deported.”
“I can imagine a country like that. That country is Mexico.”
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For the eighth time in 10 months, Peru’s central bank has raised deposit requirements on dollar-denominated accounts to stem the flow of hot money into its fast-growing economy and dampen currency appreciation.
With the sol approaching a 16-year high, Peru’s central bank said that as of April 1, the reserve ratio will rise 0.25 percentage points. The bank, which has ruled out Brazilian-style capital controls, has also been aggressively buying dollars in the spot market to slow the trajectory of the sol.
So far, its strategy has worked, with the sol weakening 1.33 per cent against the dollar this year, after appreciating 5.7 per cent in 2012.
The Peruvian bank’s struggle to rein in its currency is shared by fast-growing neighbour Colombia, which last week said it was willing to double its spending on dollars, to $10bn, this year to take some of the steam out of the peso.
Both countries are enjoying the fruits of years of prudent economic management – but rapid economic growth and low inflation have come hand-in-hand with the kind of current appreciation that makes exporters squeal.
Welcome to the Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean. The top story in our hemisphere this week: the announcement of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s death. While the government has announced a presidential election for April 14th, don’t expect chavismo to give up power anytime soon.
The cult of adoration is now under way, which fills a need peculiar to Latin America, as Enrique Krauze explains,
In Latin America the need to turn politicians into secular saints is due to the distrust many feel for the region’s weak institutions and a worship for so-called men on horseback—heroes who come to the nation’s rescue, said Mr. Krauze. The region’s deep Catholic tradition of anointing and then venerating saints is also an important factor, he said.
When Congress finally decided in 2012 to allow people to obtain the salary information of its employees, it also required them to find the name of each employee and submit it online. In other words, if someone wanted the information on the legislature’s 25,000-strong work force, then that person had to independently identify them and submit 25,000 separate online requests.
If only it were that easy here in São Paulo. One clerk at the state’s high court, Ivete Sartório, was reportedly paid about $115,000 after convincing her superiors that she should be compensated for not taking leaves of absence. But when asked recently about her wages, a spokesman for the court, Rômulo Pordeus, said that Ms. Sartório’s “matriculation number” was needed to request the information.
When asked how any curious taxpayer could get that number, he replied that it was in Ms. Sartório’s possession, and that he did not want to bother her about it.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s lionization of his Venezuelan friend Hugo Chávez caused a political firestorm in the Islamic Republic, as doubts arose over whether the two countries could carry on their tight alliance now that Mr. Chávez is dead.
11) The Bay of Pigs (1961): After training a Cuban militia to overthrow Castro, Kennedy got cold feet and didn’t give the men all the air support they were promised. As a result, they were easily defeated by Castro’s men and today, Cuba is still ruled by a hostile, anti-American dictatorship.
Yes, Mexican students studying to be teachers are holding hostages in protest against president Peña Nieto’s proposed changes. Mary O”Grady reports on Mexico, Where Teachers Take Hostages
