Via Instapundit,
Interpol Confirms Authenticity Of Raul Reyes’s Computer Files
Welcome to this week’s Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean. If you would like your posts on Latin America and the Caribbean included in the next Carnival, please email me: faustaw2 “at” gmail “dot” com. Please send only posts directly related to Latin American and Caribbean news and politics, not to commercial endorsements and advertising of resort areas and the like.
This week’s big story:
Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s largest province with 1.5 million inhabitants which Simon Romero describes as
a boomtown in the fertile lowlands. There avenues of glistening office buildings house some of Bolivia’s largest private companies and the headquarters of most foreign corporations operating in the country.
Besides finance and resource extraction, Santa Cruz is also home to agribusiness concerns that produce much of the nation’s food.
has voted for autonomy from the central government by an 85% margin, thereby rejecting Evo Morales’s and Hugo Chavez’s socialist plans:
“I hope the government will hear the call of its people now, and not the call of [Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chavez] and will start choosing its own course and accept this autonomy and decide it’s time to sit down and talk”, former president and leader of the opposition Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga told the BBC.
Evo Morales, who has taken steps to increase state control of the economy by ordering foreign energy and telecommunications companies to give control to the government, is not taking this well and rejected the autonomy vote claiming that as many as half the ballots were invalid. There was some rioting following the vote.
Three other eastern states – Beni, Pando and Tarija – hold autonomy votes next month.
More links and details below in the Bolivia section.
WEBSITE OF THE WEEK
Financial Times’ Americas
LATIN AMERICA
Waving, not drowning: Cocaine now moves by submarine
ARGENTINA
Cristina in the land of make-believe
Argentina rattled by Falkland drilling plans
BOLIVIA
Santa Cruz Autonomy Vote Passes In Bolivia– Morales Supporters Promise War
Santa Cruz de la Sierra: Arriesgandolo todo por la autonomía
Via Babalu, Los Ponchos Rojos
At least 21 injured in Santa Cruz autonomy referendum
Bolivia region ‘chooses autonomy’
BRAZIL
Good news from Brazil: S&P’s rates it “Investment grade’, but the big story in the country was that soccer star Renaldo got caught with three transvestite prostitutes because of “psychological problems due to his knee injury.”
CHILE
Thousands evacuated as Chile volcano spews ash
Chile: One, two, three,…FOUR times a lady!
COLOMBIA
Colombia captures drug dealer wanted by US
CUBA
‘This the Development of the World’
Via Babalu, Babalu, Art Deco Havana:
Committee of elders Raúl institutionalises a gerontocracy
ECUADOR
Ecuador considers enshrining women’s right to sexual pleasure. Maybe they’ll meet up with some of the older Chileans?
The sins of legitimizing terrorists
JAMAICA
A new face
MEXICO
Democrats stalling on Mexico aid to fight drug insurgents
Mexico’s Revolutionary: Felipe Calderon’s Multi-Front War for Modernity
PARAGUAY
Via Maria, IRAN’S WINNING LATIN POWER PLAY
Paraguay wants to renegotiate Itaipu treaty with Brazil
PERU
Alan García: Peru’s Born-Again Free Marketeer
PUERTO RICO
Puerto Rican superdelegates back in the news
VENEZUELA
Hugo’s All-Too-Predictable Shortages
Party in the House of Pain: Tout le Seattle Will Be There Sans Moi Bien Sur
Unfraternal: Squabbles in the ruling party
US Terror report cites Venezuela, Iran Syria
Special thanks to Maggie, Maria, Eneas, Larwyn, and GM Roper.
Love your Carnival!
Perhaps some readers are not aware of WHY the Autonomy referendum took place.The Autonomy referendum for Santa Cruz, to be followed by ones in Tarija, Pando, and Trinidad, was a reaction to the underhanded way in which Morales ( I call him InMorales) “settled” the rewriting of the Constitution. From MABBlog of Feb 29.
“Well, the government has apparently gotten tired of talking and has decided to “push” through its will. Yesterday, the government faction in Congress “approved” three laws, with the help of a ring of security supporters outside the parliament building. Opposition parliamentarians could not enter the building. So, the government approved the referendum law which will ratify the new constitution, the referendum law which will ask people on how large the property of land can be and modified a law which was being interpreted by the departmental governments giving them power to call for referendums. The modification of the last law, of course, is giving the central government the exclusive power to call on such referendums.”
So, Evo tried to pull a fast one, which is unfortunately within the Bolivian tradition of Natush Buschian respect for law, and the Autonomy votes are an attempt to deal with it.
Good news for some, bad news for others. El Universal reports that “Interpol confirms authenticity of Raúl Reyes’s computer files.”
Double thank you, Gringo!
I just realized that Evo looks like the cable TV psychic Los Indio. Without the feathered headress or the incense of course.
Hey,thanks for stopping by my blog and adding this link.
Interesting website you have here.