Castro joins Latin American Left to celebrate first win in Uruguay

[Say_What]

<clips>

URUGUAY, once South America’s most prosperous country, plays host to an unlikely gathering of left-wing leaders tomorrow as it prepares to break with 170 years of history and swear in its first socialist President.

Tabaré Vázquez, a 65-year-old professor of medicine who was elected last October with 50 per cent of the vote, will be inaugurated as head of the Broad Front coalition, whose biggest component is a party founded by the former Marxist Tupamaro guerrilla movement.

The new head of the country’s Senate is José Mújica, a former Tupamaro leader who was held in a deep well for seven years by his military captors who said he would be executed if the guerrillas killed any more military officers.

With Uruguay joining most of its neighbours in voting the Left into power, Washington loses one of its few remaining close allies in the region. The most visible sign of this change will be the attendance at the handover of Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader and the US’s arch-enemy in the region.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1504140,00.html

[guajira]

1. B* the Uniter Does it Again!!

Years ago I was terrified of socialism/communism - worried that our country would be taken over by a leftist government.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if it would be the best thing that could happen. Of course I'm still a capitalist and always will be, but what is happening in the US now is almost more frightening than the Cold War years!!

Hi Say-What :hi:

[Say_What]

4. " more frightening than the Cold War years!!"

Hola guajira :hi:

You can say that again. I'd take socialism and a *leftist government* over those war mongering fascists currently in power any day. Some of us are old enough to remember when the US actually cared for and about its citizens--those days are long gone--started disappearing during RayGun's years.

AAA's Via magazine has an acticle about traveling to Cuba this month. The print version was full of great photos.

<clips>
We sit transfixed, sipping our minty rum cocktails, on this typically humid Havana evening as Café Taberna dancers snake sinuously past our table. They writhe to the seductive crooning of Nicolás Mena, the leader of the band Conjunto Son del Trópico and a legendary interpreter of the Afro-Cuban folk music called son. It matters little to the prevailing mood of tropical sensuality that at age 89 Mena is senior by only a few years to his fellow bandsmen and that the purity of the son tradition—which has spawned such musical offshoots as salsa, rumba, mambo, and even Dizzy Gillespie's "cubop"—is occasionally breached by renditions of "As Time Goes By" and "The Shadow of Your Smile." Indeed, as we had been informed earlier by an authority on Cuban culture, "This is a very sexy island." Our night in the airy tavern tucked into an alley off Plaza Vieja strongly supports that assertion.

As Mena wails, trumpets blare, wooden claves click, and bongos are banged. A few members of our party bounce onto the floor to form a conga line and are soon joined by one of our group's leaders, San Francisco's KRON television personality Henry Tenenbaum, and his wife, Melanie. The line grows incrementally, drawing in young Cubans from the bar and a smattering of German tourists who hurry forward from the back of the room. It's a grand night of merrymaking to an Afro-Cuban beat, a sort of hands-across-the-embargo unifying moment.

This is the Havana I'd hoped to find again. For reasons not entirely clear even to me, I tend to drop in on our estranged island neighbor every 30 years or so. I first came to Havana in 1948 as a teenager fresh out of high school. It was truly a wild place then, an unabashedly corrupt, if strikingly beautiful, metropolis peopled by mobsters, hucksters, streetwalkers, procurers, corporate vultures, tinhorn gamblers, and con artists of every stripe—a sort of Sodom of the Antilles. In other words, it was everything I'd hoped it would be. Fulgencio Batista, the once and future dictator, was in Miami, and Fidel Castro was in college. The government, if there actually was one, was bought and sold. And the streets were alive with music and dancing. I'd never seen anything quite like it—not that at age 17 I'd ever seen much of anything.

http://www.viamagazine.com/top_stories/articles/Cuba05.asp

[Frances]

2. Is anyone else aware of just how vulnerable the U.S. is becoming?

This article points out how Chavez wants to cut oil supplies to the U.S. and increase them to Asia. But Chavez doesn't just want to control Venezuelan oil. He wants Venzuela to join with Brazil and Argentia "to create a South American oil giant, to be called Petrosur."

I read in another article that Putin wants Russia to form an alliance with Brazil, China, and India.

Yet another article says that China is becoming the acknowledged leader in Asia. A fourth article says that China is looking for oil all over the world. A friend who has a relative working in oil in Venezuela says that the Chinese are everywhere there.

Finally, Europe is growing more confident and independent of the U.S. If I recall correctly, the gross national product of the European Union is now greater than that of the U.S.

It sounds to me as though the days of the U.S. being the world's only superpower are numbered. And it sounds to me as though the U.S. is in deep trouble when it comes to oil. The Republicans have been such bullies that they have pushed South American and Russian oil into the hands of China.

Anyone want to reassure me?

[mom cat]

5. No reassurance from me. We are quite vulnerable since the coop

of 2000 and the followup in 2004.

[NEOBuckeye]

6. No reassurance from me, either.

I hope this Leftist resurgence spreads and returns to the US as well.

I'm beyond sick of GOPolitics, and would very much like to see stupid Bush and the stupid Republicans driven out of power, and into prison where they belong.

[Blue to the bone]

19. Your friend is correct, there are many Chinese in the oil industry...

...in Venezuela.

[AP]

20. Venezuela doesn't want to cut oil supplies to US. That's a lie.

Venezuela sold oil to the US for the first time in 1919 and has never stopped selling it to the US except once, and that was for a couple days during the anti-Chavez strikes that were organized by interests probably more loyal to the US than to Venezuela.

Venezuela does 25 billion dollars in business with the US annually, 22 billion of which is oil. Venezuela owns Citgo which does something like 3 billion in business with the US.

Venezuela has not interest in cutting off the US.

The problem is that Venezuela believes more in the free market than the US, and is doing business with China and Europe as well, and that trade is going to increase prices, which is going to be a problem for the US. The US doesn't like that free market, and part of the plan to upset it is to demonize Chavez so that they can get a gov't in VZ which doesn't believe in the free market and isn't loyal to the citizens of VZ who benefit from PDVSA sales of oil at prices determined by the free market.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. What the article does not mention

is that Uruguay was South America's most prosperous country under a semi-socialist government. Then it was hit with a double whammy: first lost of its financial base because of falling prices for agricultural products that were its only source of foreign exchange, and then a guerilla movement dissatisfied with the way the government was handling the economic crisis.

A right-wing military group took over the government, ostensibly to get rid of the Tupamaros. They were right up there with the Argentine human rights abusers and even handed Argentine refugees over to them. As you might expect, they followed all the advice about "free trade" and privatization, which wrecked the economy even further.

So if Uruguay has just acquired a leftist government, maybe that will eventually bring them back to where they were in the 1960s.

[Say_What]

7. Government of Hope to be Inaugurated in Uruguay

<clips>

... Referring to PAN, Vazquez pointed out "it will not last forever, as the first thing those affected by hunger and poverty need is a job, and the new administration will deal with that."

The future government also announced it will re-establish, maintain, and strengthen diplomatic relations with all South American countries, and spare no effort towards regional integration. In fact, a day after Vazquez swears in as president, he will sign an important agreement with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

As many as 160 delegations and the main leaders of the Latin American leftwing are expected to attend Vazquez´ inauguration ceremony Tuesday.

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={6441E9A5-DBCC-4253-97DE-FE0CE2869F15}&language=EN

[Mika]

8. How the fuck is Cuba the US's "arch-enemy"?

The elephant afraid of the mouse.

---

www.freethefive.org

[Judi Lynn]

13. The author could use some time with a map, and a truthful history book!

Poor, sick bastard. Maybe he's been using maps like this one, from 1591:



I'm afraid some people are beyond help if they see the situation as a "David and Goliath" relationship, with Cuba being the dangerous one!

[reprobate]

9. Oh, what irony. fifty yrs of trying to destroy Castro, and he wins!

The entire Latin American hemisphere is now united against the Great Satan. In fact, most of the world is now united against the Great Satan.

Whatever spews out of DC, IMO, American Preditory Capitalism is destroying itself. And frankly, it's about time.

[ragin_acadian]

10. hey, i celebrate any nation that determines it's own destiny

without american intervention.

[Hardrada]

11. Aw shoot, 'nother dam country we gotta invade.

Say, just where is Uroogway anyhow? Gotta call up the last Reserves and the Young Republicans!

[Dirk39]

12. If you get a gun from Castro as a present:

Please keep it and use it, Tabaré Vázquez!

Don't be the next Allende!

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Judi Lynn]

14. Tabaré Vázquez probably got a good look at US right-wing foreign policy

during the 7 years he was kept in the bottom of a WELL, for his involvement with the Tupamaros.

It's amazing that after all that time Nixon's administration spent trying to kill them all off, they have made a comeback, anyway!


Tabaré Vázquez

Nixon sent a fiendish torturer, a former Indiana policeman, Dan Mitrione, to Uruguay to try to destroy the Tuparamaros. You may find this interesting, if you've not already read it:

Things got so bad in Mitrione's time that the Uruguayan Senate was compelled undertake an investigation. After a five-month study, the commission concluded unanimously that torture in Uruguay had become a "normal, frequent and habitual occurrence inflicted upon Tupamaros as well as others. Among the types of torture the commission's report made reference to were electric shocks to the genitals, electric needles under the fingernails, burning with cigarettes, the slow compression of the testicles, daily use of psychological torture ... "pregnant women were subjected to various brutalities and inhuman treatment" ... "certain women were imprisoned with their very young infants and subjected to the same treatment."

Eventually the DII came to serve as a cover for the Escuadron de la Muerte (Death Squad), composed, as elsewhere in Latin America, primarily of police officers, who bombed and strafed the homes of suspected Tupamaro sympathizers and engaged in assassination and kidnapping. The Death Squad received some of its special explosive material from the Technical Services Division and, in all likelihood, some of the skills employed by its members were acquired from instruction in the United States.
(snip)

Dan Mitrione had built a soundproofed room in the cellar of his house in Montevideo.In this room he assembled selected Uruguayan police officers to observe a demonstration of torture techniques. Another observer was Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, a Cuban who was with the CIA and worked with Mitrione. Hevia later wrote that the course began with a description of the human anatomy and nervous system.

Soon things turned unpleasant. As subjects for the first testing they took beggars ... from the outskirts of Montevideo, as well as a woman apparently from the frontier area with Brazil. There was no interrogation, only a demonstration of the effects of different voltages on the different parts of the human body, as well as demonstrating the use of a drug which induces vomiting-I don't know why or what for-and another chemical substance. The four of them died.
(snip)etc.,

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Uruguay_KH.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A list of Dan Mitrione's accomplishments in Uruguay:

Mitrione himself, during his year-long stay, trained personnel in transportation techniques, established a police training facility and a radio network for Montevideo police, and set up a joint operations center of communications to facilitate cooperation between the police and the army.

To accomplish what he called "Uruguay's total penetration," Mitrione designed and initiated the following measures according to Costa-Gavras and Franco Solinas, authors of State of Siege:

• A network of spies and infiltrators in high schools and universities.
  
  
• Hidden cameras in terminals, etc., to photograph all persons traveling to socialist countries.
  
  
• An increase in the size of the city militia from 600 to 1,000 men.
  
  
• New gases, new .45-caliber machine guns, an increase in the use of shotguns. Inspection of all mail and publications coming from socialist countries.
  
  
• Inauguration of police training courses in the recruitment of informers, interrogation techniques, use of explosives, etc.
  (snip/...)

http://www.trivia-library.com/a/assassination-attempts-dan-a-mitrione-government-agent-part-1.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

During the 1960s, Uruguay is in the midst of a long-running economic decline under the watch of US corporations and a US-supported anti-democratic regime, with widespread poverty, labor strikes, student demonstrations, and militant street violence, and the largely nonviolent Tupamoros, "perhaps the cleverest, most resourceful and most sophisticated urban guerrillas the world had ever seen," with widespread public support and secret admirers in key positions in the government, banks, universities, professions, military, and police.


"The Tupamoros normally avoid bloodshed when possible. They try instead to create embarrassment for the Government and general disorder." — New York Times, 8/1/70 (E.g., publishing raided files of big private corporations to expose corruption and deceit, or publishing transcripts of trials in "People’s Court" of temporarily kidnapped corrupt public officials.)


The US-armed and US-trained military crush the Tupamoros in 1972, institute 11 years of repressive dictatorship, with "the largest number of political prisoners per capita in the world (about 60,000 people, roughly 2 percent of the population), … each one of them was tortured." — The Guardian (London) 10/19/84, Human Rights Quarterly, 5/82.


In the most extreme case, nine top Tupamoro leaders, following months of the most brutal physical torture, are kept in complete solitary confinement for over a decade. "In over eleven and a half years, I didn’t see the sun for more than eight hours altogether. I forgot colors—there were no colors." – Mauricio Rosencof, who spends his confinement at the bottom of a well.
(snip)

"People were in prison so that prices could be free."

— dissident Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/poli/soa/uruguay.htm

[Say_What]

17. US Shenanighans in the 1971 Uruguayan presidential election

Manipulating elections is standard practice for the USSA--both at home and abroad. As Cuba’s vice president and president of its National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, said recently in an interview: ...American propaganda machinery excels at manipulating elections. ...Remember the 2004 referendum and elections in Venezuela. A number of U.S. politicians and the U.S. media got very concerned with fair voting in Venezuela but not in their own states.

<clips>

NIXON: "BRAZIL HELPED RIG THE URUGUAYAN ELECTIONS," 1971

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 71

Newly declassified documents detail the Nixon administration's broad-gauged efforts to prevent a victory by the leftist “Frente Amplio” in the Uruguayan presidential elections of 1971. The documents show that Nixon was aware of – and may in fact have been complicit in – Brazilian efforts to influence the election results. Six weeks ago, an Associated Press report by Ron Kampeas, citing a newly declassified document from the Nixon collection at the National Archives, first revealed that during a meeting with then British Prime Minister Edward Heath President Nixon admitted, “Brazil helped rig the Uruguayan elections.”

Responding to these new revelations, the National Security Archive’s Southern Cone Documentation Project today releases 15 additional documents pertaining to U.S. policy toward Uruguay during this period. The documents show that the U.S. was concerned that leftist groups not succeed in Uruguay as they had in Chile the previous year with the election of Socialist candidate Salvador Allende. This concern was shared by Brazil as well as Argentina, whose military intelligence components were carrying on close consultations on – and had previously had an agreement to intervene in – Uruguay's political affairs. The U.S. Embassy recommended overt and covert activities to counter Frente publications and also suggested cooperation between Brazil and Argentina to support Uruguay's internal security operations.

Brazilian President Emílio Garrastazu Médici visited Washington on December 7-9, 1971, two weeks after the Uruguayan elections with the outcome still uncertain. Garrastazu Médici held several meetings with President Nixon, the National Security Council adviser Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State William Rogers and the soon to be Deputy Director of the CIA, Vernon Walters. In several of the memos reporting conversations with the Brazilian President, Richard Nixon mentions Brazil’s help in influencing Uruguay’s elections. Henry Kissinger highlights Garrastazu Médici’s support of the "Nixon Doctrine" in Latin America. Under the doctrine, a nation like Brazil, was to be a surrogate regional power acting in U.S. interests.

Uruguay held its elections on November 28, 1971. “Frente Amplio” leaders complained of U.S. and Brazilian-supported harassment of its candidates and campaign. On February 15, 1972, the electoral tribunal announced the victory of Juan María Bordaberry of the incumbent Colorado Party with 41% of the vote, only a few thousand votes more than the Blanco Party candidate who received 40%. To the Embassy’s relief, the “Frente Amplio” ended up in a distant third with only 18% of the vote.

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB71/

[Say_What]

18. Dan Mitrione---what a guy!! Torture’s Teachers

The Nazi's would be proud :puke:

<clips>

...Thanks to Mr. Hevia, I was finally hearing Mr. Mitrione’s true voice:

"When you receive a subject, the first thing to do is to determine his physical state, his degree of resistance, through a medical examination. A premature death means a failure by the technician.

"Another important thing to know is exactly how far you can go given the political situation and the personality of the prisoner. It is very important to know beforehand whether we have the luxury of letting the subject die…

"Before all else, you must be efficient. You must cause only the damage that is strictly necessary, not a bit more. We must control our tempers in any case. You have to act with the efficiency and cleanliness of a surgeon and with the perfection of an artist…

A few months later, Mr. Mitrione paid with his life for those excesses. Five years late, thanks to the effort of such men as former Senator James Abourezk, the police advisory program was finally abolished.

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/langguthleaf.html

[mutus_frutex]

24. Tabare was not kept in a well..

And he wasn't a part of the MLN-Tupamaros. Jose Mujica, Raul Sendic and Mauricio Rosecof were indeed kept in a well. It was a favorite tactic of the military.

[Say_What]

30. School of the Americas tactic

Part of what happened to Sister Dianne Ortiz in 1989 Guatemala:

<clips>

...The manuals also refer to one or two weeks of "practical work" with prisoners which suggests that U.S. trainers may have taken part in interrogations with Latin American militaries. This supports claims by Latin American prisoners and U.S. nun Diana Ortiz, tortured by the Guatemalan army in 1989, that "U.S. personnel were present in interrogation and torture rooms."Sister Ortiz was kidnapped, taken to a secret prison and repeatedly raped and tortured by troops commanded by General Hector Gramajo (a CIA asset and graduate of the U.S. Army School of the Americas). She stated that "the chief of her tormentors was a {U.S.} American who seemed to be linked to the U.S. embasssy." The Guatemalan soldiers called him "Alejandro".

Ortiz's back and chest were burned more than 111 times with cigarettes. She described being "lowered into an open pit packed with...bodies of children, women and men, some decapitated, some lying face up and caked with blood, some dead, some alive and all swarming with rats." She was also forced to kill another prisoner and Alejandro threatened to blackmail her with evidence of this act.

A U.S. court held Gramajo responsible for Sister Ortiz's rape and torture and ordered him to pay $47.5 million in damages. The General ignored the order and blamed Ortiz's burn marks on a sadomasochistic lesbian love affair. He was repeating a story first circulated by Lewis Anselem, the State Department's human rights chief at the U.S. embassy in Guatemala.

Ortiz's ordeal was experienced by thousands of Guatemalans during the 1980s when the military, guided by the CIA in "practical work", carried out a massive program of political murder and torture. Allan Nairn reported in 1995 that the CIA "has systematic links to Guatemalan death squad operations." U.S. and Guatemalan officials informed Nairn that "CIA operatives work inside a Guatemalan army unit that maintains a network of torture centers and has killed thousands of Guatemalan civilians. At least three of the recent G-2 chiefs have been paid by the CIA."

http://www.ckln.fm/~asadismi/ciatorture.html

[mutus_frutex]

35. Mauricio Rosencof wrote a beautiful story while in a hole.

It's called "la Margarita" and Jaime Roos (one of the most famous Uruguayan musicians) put music to it.

Its a story of teenage love, which speaks directly to the culture of most uruguayans.. I don't know.. Every time I listen to it I feel kinda bad since I'm pretty far away...

Cheers.

[Say_What]

36. Can you believe it, a search of his name with pages and pages of results

and almost NONE in english. I did find this, however, his autobiographical Letters that Never Came

<clips>
This is an autobiographical novel in three parts. Part 1 is a rich evocation of life in a working-class neighbourhood in Montevideo, Uruguay, in the mid-1930s, as seen through the eyes of Moishe, the child of Polish-Jewish immigrants. In what is a daily routine, Moishe's father waits for the postman at the window, always hoping for news of his family from the Old Country. Don Isaac's relatives are prisoners of the Nazis, so all he can read Moishe and his mother is letters from before. Interspersed among the child narrator's reminiscences are the letters those relatives might have written, bearing witness to their suffering. Letters that never came.

In Part 2, we find Moishe in the dungeons of the military junta that governed his country through the 1970s and part of the 1980s. Held in isolation, tortured and starving, he takes refuge in the world of his imagination, composing another letter that never came -- a letter to his father that embodies his own quest for identity -- while his parents, penniless, are evicted from their house and stigmatised as the mother and father of a 'subversive'.

Part 3 of Rosencof's text is largely a meditation on the redemptive power of the word, real and imagined. This poignant, humane work, as Uruguayan and Jewish as it is universal, links the cruelty of the Holocaust to that of the Uruguayan military and the resistance of Hitler's victims to his own. The Letters that Never Came was originally published in Spanish in 2000 in Uruguay.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0826333737/qid=1109701061/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-2715345-0719869?v=glance&s=books

---

I like Eduardo Galeano too. After imprisonment he was forced to leave Uruguay and went to Argentina, but when put on a death squad list he left and lived in Spain.

<clips>

Where the People Voted Against Fear

A few days before the election of the President of the planet in North America, in South America elections and a plebiscite were held in a little-known, almost secret country called Uruguay. In these elections, for the first time in the country's history, the left won. And in the plebiscite, for the first time in world history, the privatization of water was rejected by popular vote, asserting that water is the right of all people.

The movement headed by President-elect Tabare Vazquez ended the monopoly of the two traditional parties--the Blanco and the Colorado parties--which governed Uruguay since the creation of the universe.

And after each election you would hear this exclamation: ''I thought that we Blancos won but it turns out we Colorados did"--or the other way around. Out of opportunism, yes, but also because after so many years of ruling together, the two parties had fused into one, disguised as two.

Tired of being cheated, this time the people made use of that little-used instrument, common sense. The people asked, Why do they promise change yet ask us to chose between the same and the same? Why didn't they make any of these changes in the eternity they have been in power?

Never had the abyss between the real country and electioneering rhetoric been so evident. In the real country, badly wounded, where the only growth is in the number of emigrants and beggars, the majority chose to cover their ears to block out the oratory of these Martians competing for the government of Jupiter with highfalutin words imported from the moon.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1113-20.htm

[0007]

15. Won't be long now that citizens in the U.S. will be receiving

good care packages from other counties..

[Mika]

16. Lets hope that Negroponte/Al Gonzales don't send in the jackals

BushCrimeNazis Inc. is more brazen than ever, plus they have incorporated & concentrated the most treacherous players in history (who have past involvement in the Latin Americas) into the current regime.

I hope security is in place. :scared:

---

click the pic


www.freethefive.org

[Say_What]

21. American Millionaires Buck Bush for a Cuban Cigar

<clips>

American Millionaires Buck Bush for a Cuban Cigar

Cuba put on its annual cigar festival this week. And while President Bush's crackdown on travel to the Caribbean island kept the usual entertainment personalities and executives away, there were plenty of Americans among the cigar aficionados from around the world feasting on shellfish, sipping rum and smoking the world's most popular premium cigars.

Cuba sells some 120 million hand-rolled premium cigars each year, 70 percent of the world market not including the United States, where they are banned under the 43-year-old trade embargo on the communist-run country.

Some four million genuine Cuban cigars and a few million fakes are consumed in the United States each year, trade sources estimate, despite being prohibited under the embargo.

"It's like anything you can't get. It always tastes better," said Paul, an American sitting on the veranda of the Club Havana puffing on a Montecristo, Cuba's best-known and most expensive cigar.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=529474&page=1

[Judi Lynn]

22. Shift to the left in Uruguay sets off alarm bell in the US

Shift to the left in Uruguay sets off alarm bell in the US
By Richard Lapper, Latin America Editor
Published: February 28 2005 20:06 | Last updated: February 28 2005 20:06

The inauguration on Tuesday of Uruguay's new president, Tabar Vázquez, looks on the surface at least like a jamboree for the leftwing interests that are growing in influence across Latin America.

Mr Vázquez, elected with a majority of just over 50 per cent last October, has already invited a number of former guerrilla fighters and hardline trade unionists into his cabinet.

On Tuesday he will welcome to Montevideo a string of leftwing leaders, ranging from Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's radical nationalist president, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil to Felipe Pérez Roque, the Cuban foreign minister, and Evo Morales, the Bolivian coca growers' leader who is a particular bête noire for the US.Fidel Castro, Cuba's president, would have been there but pulled out after doctors said the long air journey might delay recovery from his recent knee injury.

One of Mr Vázquez's first acts will be to re-establish diplomatic links with Cuba, broken in 2002 after his predecessor, Jorge Batlle, condemned its human rights record. On Wednesday morning Mr Chávez, the new star of the continent's anti-capitalist left, will hold a “mini-summit” with Mr Lula da Silva and Argentina's Néstor Kirchner, before addressing a rally in Montevideo.
(snip/...)

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/152ba0d8-89c3-11d9-aa18-00000e2511c8.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gee, don't you wonder what prompted the old President of Uruguay to break relations with Cuba in 2002?



Jorge and George

Check these photos to see Mel Martinez, _Bush's Miami Cuban "exile" ex-head of H.U.D., standing by the former President, on the left side of photo #2, and Jeb, George H. W. Bush, and George P. Bush surrounding him in photo #1!

http://uruguay.usembassy.gov/batlletripspa.htm

Not too obvious, are they?

[mutus_frutex]

25. It is well known that he was forced by the * administration.

Criticizing Cuba and severing relations was the price Uruguay paid for the loans that essentially saved it from default during the Argentinian crisis.

[Judi Lynn]

28. I went to look for more on what you mentioned about the loans.....

as it's interesting. Found this immediately, from August 19, 2002:

Some economists criticize MERCOSUR for not dealing with the crisis as a bloc."The region is going through a critical moment, and each country is facing the situation on its own, as though international factors weren't acting in unison. There's a hard-line, right-wing government in the United States and the IMF keeps proposing recessive policies that worsen the region's social and economic crisis, but the responses are isolated," said Uruguayan Sen. Alberto Couriel, an economist.

"For the region and all of Latin America, dealing with international relations requires greater unity, political cooperation and, especially, common proposals," Couriel added.

"To change the situation, it is necessary to change the model and act jointly with the other countries in the region."Government officials, meanwhile, insist that the problems will end when the IMF grants new loans. While international lenders hold up new credit, insisting on stronger economic measures, officials wait "without daring to say that the time has come to act as a bloc against pressure from the United States and lenders," Argentine economist Ral Dellatorre said.

Uruguayan banks reopened on Aug. 5, after the country received a US$1.5-billion bridge loan from the United States. By the end of the year, it will have recieved a total of $3.8 billion from the IMF, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.
(snip)

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=3550

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So this is some more pushing and shoving, trying to buy off countries which _Bush was doing while we all sat here in the dark on our thumbs. Sickening. We had no idea.

Looks like resistance has been building to _Bush steadily. It's going to be a wonderful day when he finally leaves the office and someone gets a chance to start repairing the damage.

[mutus_frutex]

29. What is worst:

Uruguay was doing reasonably well (by Uruguayan and 3rd world standards.. :-) when all the argentinian mess started. Since Uruguay does most of its business with Argentina, and they decided to hold of payments in the meanwhile, we got fucked.. :-)

The loans were a true extortion because Uruguay was in good standing and would have gotten the money anyway.

Cheers..

[mutus_frutex]

23. So many errors in this article:

The Frente Amplio was not founded by the Tupamaros. It was founded as a coalition of many left parties including the socialist and communist parties, christian democrats, anarchists, etc. The Tupamaros officially became part of the Frente Amplio after the return to democracy.

The Tupamaros are NOT marxists, at least not on an official basis. They range a lot from person to person.

Cheers..

[Judi Lynn]

26. Thanks for explaining the Frente Amplio.Damned hard to get the truth

about anything in Latin America. We've been kept totally in the dark, with only excessive amounts of propaganda to live on!

Need all the information we can get.

[mutus_frutex]

27. No problem..

I don't see many threads about my country, so I try to explain things that are wrong.

There are soooo many misunderstandings about Uruguay that it's just amazing. Besides, it seems we are the butt of a disproportionately large of jokes considering our size... :-)

[mutus_frutex]

31. My wife just made me realize something...

In the original article doesn't say that the Frente Amplio was founded by the Tupamaros.. This is what happens when one reads too fast..

Cheers..

[Judi Lynn]

33. Oh, gosh! After reading your post, I reread the original article, too.

Learned I had misread it, also! I was totally stumbling around. Need to take more time, no doubt.



The man mentioned in the article who was kept in the well for many years by the right-wing, U.S.-supported government was actually José "Pepe" Mujica.

URUGUAY:
Former Guerrillas Preside Over Both Houses of Parliament

Darío Montero

MONTEVIDEO, Feb 15 (IPS) - Former guerrillas now preside over both houses of Uruguay's new Congress, which took office Tuesday, and the left holds an absolute majority for the first time in the history of this South American country.

As president of the Senate, former rebel leader José Mújica swore in Senator Julio María Sanguinetti, who served as president of Uruguay from 1985 to 1990 and from 1995 to 2000. Another novel aspect is the fact that the ruling party -- in this case the left-wing Broad Front coalition -- will dominate both chambers of parliament for the first time in decades.

This will provide socialist president-elect Tabaré Vázquez with some breathing room after he takes office on Mar. 1, but will also give him less excuses if his government fails to live up to its campaign pledges, political scientist Jorge Lanzaro told IPS.
(snip)

Mújica spent part of his 15 years in prison in a dried-out well, as one of the 1973-1985 military dictatorship's nine so-called "hostages" who received especially rough treatment.

"Life brings these little twists, and I don't think that even the most creative novelist could have thought this one up," said Mújica.

(snip/...)

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=27470



José Mújica

Hope he will live a long, healthy, and FREE life, uninterrupted by dangerous accidents and/or assassinations.

[mutus_frutex]

34. Altough it might seem strange

Uruguay is a VERY civilized country. After the dictatorship there hasn't been any political assassination, or any accident that might be considerer one. And unless something really strange happens in the near future I don't think the left will have much trouble governing.

Regarding the health of Pepe Mujica, well, my family tells me that he isn't well and that it's quite unlikely that he will live much longer. Most of the Tupas that were held by the military in the conditions that he was held, died shortly after their release. Raul Sendic is a case that breaks my heart. He was probably the most intelligent of them all, by far (and they are a very intelligent bunch overall). He was an excellent writer and communicator.

Cheers..

[Vladimir]

32. Freedom, as they say, is on the march n/t

[Judi Lynn]

37. Cuban Catholics angry over treatment of cleric

Cuban Catholics angry over treatment of cleric
U.S. says Ortega ‘detained briefly’; followers say he was harassed



Jorge Rey / Getty Images file
Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega delivers Mass celebrating the Virgin of Regla in the Havana suburb of Regla in September 2003.
By Mary Murray
Producer
NBC News

Updated: 11:32 a.m. ET March 1, 2005HAVANA - Cuban Catholics are reacting strongly to reports that U.S. authorities mistreated the archbishop of Havana when he arrived in Miami last Friday aboard a charter flight from the Cuban capital.

The story, first carried by the Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald and picked up by Cuba’s state-owned media, reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents removed Cardinal Jaime Ortega from the general processing area in the Miami International Airport and escorted him to a private interrogation room, where he was held for three hours and questioned about issues unrelated to his travel, including his political views on the Cuban government and the four-decade-old U.S. trade embargo.

The newspaper also claimed that authorities threatened to deport the churchman when he refused to allow agents to inspect his luggage on the grounds that he carried a diplomatic passport issued by the Vatican.

A U.S. government spokesman has disputed the press accounts of the incident but told the Miami Herald that the prelate was “detained briefly” and “treated in the utmost courteous manner.”

Miami radio reports that the Vatican plans to issue a formal diplomatic protest over Ortega’s treatment.
(snip/...)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7051202/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This man, Jaime Ortega, has been believed to be one of those considered when the current Pope leaves office:

....All the European cardinals together, including the Italians, account for almost half the votes. Cardinals from the developing world make up 38 percent of the electors, most of which are from Latin America, where half of the world’s 1 billion Catholics now live.

"Geography is one factor in a complicated cocktail," says John Allen, the Vatican correspondent of National Catholic Reporter.

"There is also age, the question of charisma and holiness, and where one stands on doctrinal issues.

"Many cardinals would love to elect someone out of the third world, because it would be a powerful symbol of solidarity and support for victims of globalisation.
(snip)

Currently, first in the line of probable successors is the Archbishop of Milan, Dionigi Tettamanzi. One bookmaker gives Tettamanzi odds of 2-1. The runner up is the Archbishop of Havana, Jaime Ortega y Alamino with a 4-1 chance, and Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria with a 6-1 chance.
(snip)

http://www.christianpost.com/article/church/488/full/31.cardinals.appointed.by.john.paul.ii/1.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fine way for _Bush's people to treat the Archbishop of Havana.

[Judi Lynn]

38. Uruguay restores diplomatic ties with Cuba

Uruguay restores diplomatic ties with Cuba

www.chinaview.cn 2005-03-02 09:31:12




Uruguay's president Tabare Vazquez (R) and Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez embraced after signing and exchanging notes on re-establishing the relations. (Xinhua Photo)

MONTEVIDEO, March 1 (Xinhuanet) -- The new socialist government of Uruguay announced Tuesday to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba, three years after they were downgraded by then president Jorge Batlle.

Only three hours after taking office as Uruguay's president, Tabare Vazquez presided over the ceremony for the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two Latin American countries.

"We received with pleasure the representatives of the sister nation of Cuba, and wished that relations between both countries had never been severed," said Vazquez.
(snip)

"The tokens of friendship and solidarity of Uruguay toward Cuba are permanent," Perez said after signing the documents.
(snip/...)

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-03/02/content_2637595.htm