Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

August 5, 2013 By Fausta

The everybody-wants-a-canal Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

LatinAmerPanama has shown that having a Canal is cool, so now everybody wants one. This Carnival is dedicated to their pipe dreams.

ARGENTINA
The ANSES-PDVSA link 

As the Economist reported in February, ANSES is already under fire in Argentina for failing to index pension funds to inflation, meaning that many of Argentina’s seniors are receiving far less money than they put in the system. More generally, CFK has turned the agency into a large slush fund for social programs that go to political supporters. Argentina’s opposition hopes to make an issue over why ANSES can find over a billion and a half dollars to pay Venezuelan debt when Argentina’s seniors can barely get by on their pensions and the average Argentine citizen must fight for every peso-to-dollar conversion they need to do international business.

Shocking video of train drivers sleeping and reading a book
CCTV is released of train drivers in Buenos Aires, sleeping, reading a book and checking their emails while behind the controls.

BRAZIL
Religion in Brazil
Earthly concerns
The promise and peril of a papal visit

Brazil jail massacre police guilty
Twenty-five Brazilian police are given life sentences for their part in the 1992 Carandiru jail massacre in Sao Paulo that left 111 prisoners dead.

Samples of Sales Taxes on Products in Brazil

CHILE
‘I want to dig a deep hole and bury myself again’: Chilean miners stunned by decision not to prosecute over accident
The decision that no one will face charges over the mining accident in Chile that left 33 men underground for 69 days has left many speechless

UN official tells Chile to stop using anti-terrorism law against Mapuche in land dispute
A United Nations investigator has urged Chile’s government to stop using an anti-terrorism law against Mapuche Indians who are fighting to recover their ancestral land.

COLOMBIA
Army blame leftist guerrillas as Colombia’s largest oil pipeline is attacked
Colombia’s largest oil pipeline was hit by an explosion causing a significant oil spill in an attack blamed on leftist guerrillas, according to the army.

COSTA RICA
Costa Rica tops list for women’s rights in the Americas, but report warns of ‘troubles’ ahead
Costa Rica leads its Latin American neighbors in women’s and civil rights but trails in government responsiveness and civil society participation.

CUBA
Cubans killed activist: Spanish politician
Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya did not die in a car crash last year but was instead “assassinated” by Cuban secret services, a Spanish politician who was at the wheel of the car said in an interview published on Monday.
(h/t Babalu)

The Cuban Sugar Missile Crisis: ‘Obsolete’ live munitions and grenade launchers found on N. Korean ship

HONDURAS
Prisons in Honduras are ‘in control of inmates’

JAMAICA
As Cost of Importing Food Soars, Jamaica Turns to the Earth

MEXICO
Mexico blast blamed on explosive mix
An official inquest says an explosion that killed 37 people in January at Mexican state oil firm Pemex was caused by a mix of methane gas and solvent vapours.

PANAMA
Live ammunition found on North Korean ship held in Panama
Sniffer dogs found ammunition for grenade launchers and other munitions aboard the Chong Chon Gang

PERU
Humala humbled
A lonelier president faces protests

British climber feared dead after scaling 19,000ft mountain in Peru alone
A British climber is feared dead after failing to return from a solo ascent of a 19,000ft mountain in Peru.

PUERTO RICO
84 Haitians abandoned off Puerto Rico

People smugglers have abandoned 84 men and women from Haiti on a deserted island off the west coast of Puerto Rico.

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO
Politics in Trinidad and Tobago
Own-goal

URUGUAY
Drug legalisation in Uruguay
The experiment
Another blow against prohibition

VENEZUELA
Groll: Meet the NSA’s new data centers: Russia, China and Venezuela

Otto Reich sues Derwick Associates

Bronze medal in prison overcrowding

PDVSA Creates Privatization-Like Program To Increase Oil Production

Chavez’s heirs in full psychotic dissociation

The week’s posts:
Good news: Colombia eradicates “river blindness”

Colombia: WSJ reviews 2 novels

Venezuela imports US$3 billion worth of Cuban surveillance equipment

Among the Snowden headlines,

Argentina: Wall-to-wall Papal photo up

Panama: More Cuban weapons in the N. Korean freighter

High intensity drug trafficking areas: Caribbean security threats

Brazil: Santos Basin/Libra field among top 6 key oil & gas discoveries of 2013

Central America: Everybody wants a canal


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Filed Under: Argentina, Brazil, Carnival of Latin America, Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Honduras, Jamaica, Latin America, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela Tagged With: Ángel Carromero, Chilean miners, Chong Chon Gang, ELN, Fausta's blog, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

October 8, 2012 By Fausta

The “six more years of Hugo Chavez” Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

ARGENTINA
The president and the potbangers
Times are getting tougher for Cristina Fernández, but she is not beaten yet

Wall Street Billionaire Battles Argentina, Has Ship Detained Over $1.6B Bond

BRAZIL
Brazil judges split on Lula aide
Supreme Court judges delivering their findings on a big corruption case disagree whether former chief of staff Jose Dirceu led scheme to buy opposition support.

Vigil Held on Carandiru Massacre Anniversary

CHILE
Slow-Burning Challenge to Chile on Easter Island

COLOMBIA
Colombian President in Recovery

Colombian band Bomba Estéreo’s “El Alma Y El Cuerpo” (Soul and Body) Updated 2X

CUBA
The sacrificial lamb has been shorn and taken to the altar. Immolation postponed.

Rumplestiltskin, Cuba detains anti-Castro blogger for 30 hours
Yoani Sanchez, a social media maven, and her husband are detained while en route to a politically sensitive trial.

ECUADOR
Ecuador president says he’ll advise Tunisia on debt renegotiations

EL SALVADOR
Gangs’ Truce Buys El Salvador a Tenuous Peace

GUATEMALA
Guatemalan Protests Leave At Least Six Dead as Police Clash with Demonstrator

MEXICO
Univision: Juarez drug cartel leader ‘El Diego’ was captured with Fast and Furious weapons

Ho hum: Mexican teenagers slaughtered with Fast and Furious guns

Mexico’s Cartels Increase Their Muscle In The U.S.

PANAMA
Makes One Think

PARAGUAY
Paraguay post-impeachment
A Liberal spring
The interim president enacts reforms

PERU
Peru rebels burn down helicopters at jungle airfield
Three helicopters were destroyed in the attack on the airfield in Cusco province
Left-wing Shining Path rebels in Peru have burned three helicopters used by a private gas consortium, officials say.

PUERTO RICO
Humor: Estudiantes Universitarios Molestos Que No Pudieron Abuchear A Fortuño En Persona

Puerto Rican Identity, In and Out of Focus

VENEZUELA
The Other Election: Venezuela

Hugo Chavez Might Actually Lose His Election on Sunday

Venezuela’s presidential election
The autocrat and the ballot box
A united opposition and discontent over government mismanagement mean a genuine electoral challenge for Hugo Chávez

Chávez’s Foreign Fan Club
The Venezuelan election will have ramifications throughout Latin America and beyond

Will Hugo Chavez lose the election tomorrow?

How Hugo Chávez Became Irrelevant

Chávez’s Stamp Most Keenly Felt on Farms

The week’s posts:
Venezuela: “God’s timing is perfect”

#Venezuela: The results – it’s Chavez

#Venezuela election: Live coverage on line

Venezuela: Election results “between 9-10PM tonight”

Venezuela: Tupamaros threaten death to opposition

Watch now: @Univision’s Operation ‘Fast and Furious’: Arming the enemy (English subtitles, complete show)

Colombia: President Santos has prostate cancer


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Filed Under: Argentina, Brazil, Carnival of Latin America, Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean, Colombia, crime, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Hugo Chavez, Luis Fortuño, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela Tagged With: Adál Maldonado, Ángel Carromero, Fausta's blog

August 6, 2012 By Fausta

Cuba: Still no offshore oil, but 1 more foreigner taken hostage

First, Ángel Carromero’s the hostage in question: Cuba Takes Another Foreign Hostage
After Oswaldo Payá’s suspicious death in a car accident, the regime arrests the driver, a Spanish rights activist.

Cuba wants to make itself an international travel mecca. But it also needs to keep the Cuban people away from pesky foreigners who could put counterrevolutionary ideas, like the notion of the right to earn a decent living, in their heads.

Last week the military dictatorship demonstrated how it plans to solve this dilemma when it arrested Spaniard Ángel Carromero and charged him with vehicular manslaughter in the car wreck that killed Cuban dissidents Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero.

There is every reason to believe that the regime is making an example out of Mr. Carromero—a member of the youth wing of the Popular Party in Spain—not because of his driving but because of his politics. Foreigners: be warned.

Angel Carromero’s family retained an attorney from a firm that specializes in representing foreign companies and individuals before the Cuban courts.

The priority at this stage is for the lawyer to be able to see Carromero as soon as possible in the jail where he is being held and to file a habeas corpus motion to get him released, Spanish Consul-General Tomas Rodriguez-Pantoja said.

Cuba says Carromero and Swedish citizen Jens Aron Modig (who returned to Sweden) brought 4,000 euros ($4,900) for Paya’s dissident organization, though Paya’s family denies that he received any money from the Europeans.

In other Cuba news, 2nd Cuban Offshore Oil Well Also a Bust

The drilling operation carried out by PC Gulf, a subsidiary of Malaysia’s Petronas, and Gazpromneft of Russia, concluded July 31 off the western province of Pinar del Rio, Cuban state oil company Cubapetroleo said in a statement.

And Hugo’s saving their sorry butts,

After Repsol opted out of a contract to sink a second well and Monday’s announcement of Petronas’ failed try, the massive semisubmersible now passes to Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA for an attempt near the island’s western tip.

But fear not, Hugo’s got soundbites for local consumption, saying that “developing an oil industry without other industries is a sucker’s game.”

Maybe all those medical treatments are affecting his memory and made him forget he’s been in office for a dozen years.

UPDATE,
Pirates of the Caribbean!

@fausta A new source of hard currency for Cuba? IIRC, pirates once were found in the sunny Caribe? no?

— CiLH (@CiLH1) August 6, 2012

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Filed Under: Communism, Cuba, Hugo Chavez, oil, Venezuela Tagged With: Ángel Carromero, Fausta's blog, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

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