Headlines from Latin American News/Noticias de Latinoamérica

Call it another salvo in Bush v. Chavez with Ecuador's Raphael Correa as a secondary target and Colombia's Alvaro Uribe as a proxy aggressor.

Armed with nothing more than absolute faith, a robe and slippers Buddhist Monks have made their position known about the Constitutional Referendum. The stakes are very high. Knowing and surviving the consequences of September’s protest monks stand defiant and have gone on the offensive regardless of the risks.

By JAMES J. BRITTAIN and R. JAMES SACOUMAN - March 4, 2008

After years of increased violations of civilian human rights, the ongoing suppression of trade-unionism, assassinations of left-of-centre activists and politicians, and a political reality that has witnessed 75 governors, mayors, and Congressional politicians alleged or found guilty of having direct links to the paramilitary...the Colombian state has deemed it necessary to illegally encroach upon those nations that deviate from their ideological model of political and economic centralization...[A]fter the actions realized on 1 March, 2008 it is clear that the Colombian state, with the full backing of the United States, will impose its own ideological goals and values, through force...

[Also...] A Response to the Muder of Raúl Reyes in Ecuador
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America by James J Brittain and R. James Sacouman (CounterPunch)

PORLAMAR, Venezuela — Few places capture the disarray of this country’s public health system like the Hospital Luis Ortega. Unconscious patients lie on cots strewn near the reception desk. Paint peels from walls neglected for years. Soldiers stand guard to prevent worried relatives gathered on the curb from bursting inside.

“Those who call Chávez a vulgar populist are wrong,” said Julio Araoz, one of 96 Nicaraguans flown here to correct ailments leaving them partly or completely blind. Before doctors restored his vision in one eye a week ago, Mr. Araoz said he could barely stand to hear Mr. Chávez’s name or that of his ally, President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.

Latin America's alternative to the IMF and World Bank.

The Vatican has condemned what it called growing "neo-marxist" influence in Latin America which threatens the Roman Catholic Church...The Synod of Bishops for America said it was worried by the "development of an ideological tendency, often a neo-marxist inspiration," that was influencing Latin American countries' home and international relations.

Indigenous representatives attending an intercontinental Indigenous gathering in Vicam, Sonora Mexico have called for a boycott of the 2010 Olympics Games. The meeting, which was attended by over 1500 delegates representing nations from the US, Canada, Mexico, Central America and South America, began on October 11thth and ended on October 14th. Indigenous people met to discuss 515 years of invasion and resistance to colonial occupation of Indigenous lands, with the Olympics a central theme.

Greg Grandin, a history professor at New York University, is the author of several books on American influence in Latin America, most recently last year’s Empire’s Workshop.

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Every year as October 12 approaches, there is a certain sense of dread that can be felt in indigenous communities in the Americas. That it is a federal holiday [Columbus Day] in the United States is regarded as hideous, a celebration of genocide and colonization. However, beginning thirty years ago, indigenous peoples formed an international movement, demanding, for one thing, that October 12 be commemorated as an international day of mourning for the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

Remembering His Death, Celebrating His Life

On October 9, 1967, 40 years ago today, Che Guevara was assassinated in Bolivia by his CIA-assisted and -directed captors.

He told the frightened soldier who was sent to execute him in the small room where Che lay, seriously wounded: “I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man."

Caracas, Sept 22 (Prensa Latina) Latin American financial markets are watching attentively the growing weakness of the US dollar, due to the high-risk credit crisis and unrest about the future of the US economy.

...President Hugo Chavez has ordered measures to reorient the capitals to the euro and the Asian currencies to minimize the negative impact from a weak dollar.

The Bolivian government has declared it has documents that prove the US illegally interferes in the country's domestic affairs.

Paraguay now illustrates three new characteristics of Latin America's right-wing militarism: joint exercises with US military in counterinsurgency training and monitoring of social organizations, the use of private mercenaries for security and the criminalization of social protest through "anti-terrorism" tactics and legislation.

National protests rock Peru as President Alan Garcia navigates through an increasingly tumultuous labor and teacher uprising. Rejections of a free trade agreement with the US and neoliberal economic policies are at the heart of the national uprising which has left three people dead and several wounded.