tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-131164732024-02-08T09:17:28.126-08:00Latin America StoriesFrom the glaciers of Tierra del Fuego to the ports of the Caribbean, I spent several years chronicling everything from people smuggling in the Dominican Republic to the rise of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez to the effects of the drug trade in Mexico and beyond.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117251045880171852005-06-01T20:23:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:17:13.158-08:00Tierra del Fuego's Cold, Cruel Sun<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Nowhere is the Damage to the Earth's Ozone Layer More Dangerous -- Residents Have Sunburns and Cancer to Prove it.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 4/02/2002</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>USHUAIA, Argentina</strong> - Frigid gusts make the trees grow sideways, penguins and sea lions slide from frosty beaches into icy waters, and flurries fall gently on the snow-capped glaciers ringing this small city at the bottom of the world. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />It may feel like winter year-round, even recently in late summer, but the blustery assault of Antarctic winds at the southern tip of South America can be a cruel illusion.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite freezing temperatures and an occasional blizzard, the sun on a clear spring day in Ushuaia can burn more quickly and dangerously than the rays on a beach in Miami. In fact, on a cloudless day from late August to December, especially after a recent snowfall, there may be no more dangerous place on the planet to spend time outdoors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The sun is strong - but it's not warm," said Nicolas Gamarra, 42, who, after spending half his life in Ushuaia driving a taxi, ignored his company's advice last year to install a special film on the windshield of his cab. "Without heat, we don't worry."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Many people in the city, including Gamarra, wonder whether they should be more concerned. Every spring over the past two decades, an expanding hole more than two times the size of Europe opens in the ozone layer and exposes this pristine city's nearly 50,000 mainly fair-skinned residents to the most unfiltered ultraviolet light anywhere but the unpopulated tundra of Antarctica.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The result of damaging man-made chemicals released over decades into the atmosphere, </span><img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/300/image0-24.jpg" height="308" width="227" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">the ozone depletion over the Tierra del Fuego islands has worsened ever since scientists discovered the hole in the late 1970s. While the rate of thinning has begun to slow, ozone levels in the region have declined - sometimes to less than half normal levels - despite an international treaty signed in 1987 that banned ozone-destroying chemicals.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The ozone won't return to normal levels until at least the middle of this century and scientists see Tierra del Fuego as ground zero in the debate over the biological consequences of the hole. Already, scientists have observed that increased radiation in the region has damaged everything from the DNA of certain plants near Ushuaia to the growth of icefish eggs near Antarctica.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And now, for the first time, studies show a direct link between days when the ozone hole extended over the region and skin ailments sustained by people in Tierra del Fuego and in Punta Arenas, a city of about 150,000 just north of Ushuaia in Chile.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In February, Jaime Abarca, a dermatologist in Punta Arenas, and two Chilean climatologists published a study in the Framingham-based Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology that documented the first cases of blistering sunburns on days with significant depletions of ozone. Another Chilean dermatologist also recently published a study showing over seven years a 28 percent increase in cheilitis, the cracking of skin around the lips.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the latest study, which won't be published for another six months, Abarca and a colleague document a 66 percent increase of skin cancer in Punta Arenas from 1987 to 2000. An earlier study by Argentine dermatologists found that cases of skin cancer in Ushuaia rose more than 50 percent between 1985 and 1995.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This may be a very serious problem," Abarca said from his office in Punta Arenas. "Most of the people here don't even understand that they have to take care. Their skin is not adapted to sudden surges of ultraviolet light - and the ozone is not likely to improve for at least another 50 years."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although pharmacies in the region market sunscreen in their display windows, setting them on pedestals like some shops feature perfume, few in this century-old former penal colony are worried about the ozone hole.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Scientists show graphs that make living in San Diego seem more dangerous. Dermatologists discount the skin cancer increases, attributing the rise to a growing and aging population. And the tourist office in the center of town doesn't offer information about the ozone hole because officials don't believe it's a serious problem - and they don't want to alarm the public.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For many others in Ushuaia, </span><img align="right" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-41.jpg" height="150" width="330" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">the ozone hole is something they've heard of but know little about. In their last year in high school, Piatoni Flavio and Vanessa Delgado, both 17, shake their heads when asked what they've been taught about the ozone hole.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Nothing," Flavio said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Turning her back on the bright midday sun, Delgado said: "There's no information here."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Julio Rodriguez, a policeman who spends countless hours outside patrolling the streets, isn't worried, either. With Argentina's economy in tatters, its president unelected and the fifth to take office in the past three months, and unemployment, inflation, and crime rising throughout the country, there are other things to fret about.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This country has so many problems right now, the least of my concerns is the environment," he said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Those who have spent years studying the thinning ozone, like Susana B. Diaz, a scientist leading a team measuring radiation in Ushuaia, explain their lack of concern by drawing a picture of the Earth. In it, the city benefits from being at the bottom of the planet. Despite less ozone, Diaz and others say, sun rays pass through the atmosphere at a slanted angle, traveling through more ozone than those that enter more directly near the equator.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The soft-spoken scientist said she rarely, if ever, wears sunscreen and believes Abarca and officials in Punta Arenas, which broadcasts ozone alerts in local media using a red, yellow, and green-light warning system, are going overboard.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"What they are doing is making an alarm - overreacting," she said while pointing to graphs showing radiation levels lower than in San Diego. "They're giving people the idea that they can't go outside during the ozone hole. That's wrong."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One dermatologist, however, believes prudence is wiser than skepticism and counsels her patients to let their children play outside - but if it's spring, only with sunscreen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Maria Monica Pages de Carlot is one of only four dermatologists in Ushuaia. She has made presentations at schools and pressed local authorities to air radio and TV advisories about the potential harm from the sun. After more than a decade working in Tierra del Fuego, seeing about 400 patients a month, she has treated a range of skin ailments. But it wasn't until two years ago that she really sensed the potential danger of living beneath the ozone hole.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On Oct. 12, 2000, hundreds of people lined the streets of Ushuaia for hours to attend the annual parade celebrating the city's founding. It so happened, and without any warning to the public, the ozone that day dropped to one of the most dangerous levels since scientists began monitoring the hole. After the parade, Carlot and the other dermatologists received an uncommonly large number of patients seeking treatment for severe sunburns.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This was a surprise for us, but thankfully it hasn't been common," Carlot said. "We're really not sure what the long-term effects will be if the ozone hole doesn't improve. We need further studies."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For Abarca, all the information he and other scientists have compiled proves the hole's danger. With predictions still sketchy about when the ozone hole will ultimately close, he believes officials in Ushuaia are wrong to act otherwise.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He acknowledged that sun rays pass through more atmosphere in Ushuaia than in cities such as Buenos Aires or Boston, where ozone levels are far more normal. But he said the depleted ozone allows more of the short wavelengths of ultraviolet light - the most carcinogenic sun rays in the spectrum - to reach the ground than in any other populated area in the world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Is this not reason enough to be worried?" he asked.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And when the Argentines say residents are protected because </span><img align="left" height="170" src=" http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-242.jpg" width="260" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">they almost always cover themselves head-to-toe to shield the cold, Abarca said he believes that's another reason the ozone hole is so dangerous. In spring, when temperatures warm and ozone declines, the fair-skinned people frequently shed their heavy parkas. With little exposure to the sun, they're more likely to sustain sunburns, especially if the sunlight is magnified by snow.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What's needed now, he and others argue, is increased education about the ozone depletion and a system that alerts residents throughout the bottom of South America when to expect a serious drop in ozone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"No one wants to make the tourists go away," Abarca said. "But we are telling the truth, not overreacting. This is a problem that cannot be ignored." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117250302271423802005-05-31T23:14:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:18:02.112-08:00Anger in Argentina<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" border="0" height="400" src=" http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-25.jpg" width="276" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Economic Woes Darken Outlook</b><br /><br />By David Abel | Globe Staff | 3/31/2002<br /><br /><strong>BUENOS AIRES</strong> - Three months ago, the shattered glass of bank windows littered the city's streets, graffiti screamed from seemingly every corner for the overthrow of the nation's politicians, and daily looting, rioting, and marches led to bloodshed, with one outpouring of fury leaving 27 dead in front of the president's pink palace.<br /><br />Today, late summer rains have washed away much of the graffiti, banks have replaced their broken windows with metal shutters, and the bloody marches have dwindled to random roadblocks and groups of protesters clanging pots and pans.<br /><br />Three months after Argentina defaulted on the largest debt of any nation in history, and after this once-prosperous land of European immigrants saw a provincial governor become the fifth president in two weeks, the rage here has given way to a mix of fear and resignation.<br /><br />"I come from a sad country," says Carlos Toscano, a cab driver who quoted Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina's literary giant, echoing many others like him who have seen their wages cut in half and their workday double in length to make ends meet.<br /><br />The country's current calm, Toscano and others insisted, is deceptive. Without an elected government and with pressure building for political change, the outlook for Argentina is getting worse.<br /><br />Inflation is creeping up, and the value of the peso, once equal to the dollar, has plummeted by a third. Life savings for many residents have either vanished with the January devaluation or are out of reach, the result of strict controls to prevent a run on banks.<br /><br />Unemployment, crime, and poverty rates are rising, and many in the upper and middle classes are fleeing the country while a growing number of working class families are losing their homes. Neither the International Monetary Fund nor Washington appears likely to bail out the country through loans or grants.<br /><br />"I inherited a bankrupt country on the verge of anarchy," Eduardo Duhalde, who took over as president on Jan. 1, said in a nationally televised speech before the country's congress this month. "There is a crisis of representation. People do not have confidence in their representatives and their courts."<br /><br />A century ago, Argentina was ranked the seventh wealthiest nation in the world, with a per-capita income greater than France, Japan, Spain, and nearly that of the United States. Then came decades of corrupt civilian governments, populist demagogues, and a succession of harsh military dictatorships that culminated in the early 1980s with the murder of some 30,000 people.<br /><br />Now, across this large country rich in natural resources, with its elegant capital styled after Paris and an educated middle class rivaling most of the developed nations, Argentines are asking themselves a question that previous generations have asked: What is wrong with this country?<br /><br />Sitting on a beach about 200 miles south of here in the resort town of Pinamar, where "for sale" signs hang on many homes, Mariana Rojas explains it this way: "Unlike normal countries, the politicians here don't care about the people," says Rojas, 27, who's moving back home to live with her family after losing her job as an advertising account manager. "They're in it for themselves. The rest of us just end up suffering."<br /><br />About 1,500 miles to the south, at the tip of Tierra del Fuego, Marcelo Salina sits glumly by a computer at a cafe in the mountain-rung city of Ushuaia, mulling a move to another country. Several weeks ago, the 27-year-old was a computer programmer for Sanyo and AIWA. When both firms closed, he took a job for a fraction of the pay at a local Internet cafe.<br /><br />"You could say that I'm lucky I found a job," he says. "This is not what I want to do, but it's better than nothing."<br /><br /></span><br />
<img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-15.jpg" height="330" width="235" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In a nation where money is increasingly scarce, Salina is fortunate to have any income. About a quarter of Argentines are unemployed and nearly half live below the poverty line. One newspaper here reported that nearly 50 percent of all high school students this year are dropping out to help their families earn a living.<br /><br />The crisis has even extended to the one refuge Argentines have long taken to reclaim their glory: soccer. A wave of violence spread through stadiums around the capital this summer, resulting in four deaths and dozens of injuries. The bloodshed has led to calls to suspend the season.<br /><br />Meanwhile, as the government struggles to pay federal employees and keep hospitals open - despite more than $140 billion dollars in debt - the public has shown little patience. At a national meeting of neighborhood associations two weeks ago, representatives drafted a resolution calling for, among other measures, the nationalization of banks, nonpayment of the debt, and a grass-roots campaign to "kick out all the politicians."<br /><br />With the economy in tatters, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">nearly everyone has been affected. Mirta Acuna de Baravalle, 77, who lost her pregnant daughter 25 years ago during the nation's "dirty war" and since then has spent nearly every Thursday protesting in front of the president's office, has yet to collect on the government's pledge to pay reparations to the relatives of those who disappeared. "It's just another robbery," Baravalle said. "Unfortunately, we've come to expect that here."<br /><br />David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.<br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117423199377186842005-05-31T22:16:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:18:50.137-08:00Silencing Critics in Venezuela?<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-274.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" border="0" height="419" src=" http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-274.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | The Boston Globe | 9/14/1999<br /><br /><strong>CARACAS</strong> - Swaggering on the stage in a floppy red beret, the stocky speaker halts his long, epithet-loaded diatribe, winks and points proudly at pals in the crowd, then launches anew into his attack on the "corrupt nest of vipers" who dare criticize him.<br /><br />This is not a speech by Hugo Chavez, the feared and revered leader of a failed 1992 military coup who was elected president in December by a sweeping majority. It's an actor mimicking the president in a satire that has been packing in audiences since Chavez took office.<br /><br />But Rolando Salazar, who caricatures the president with studied detail, is not sure if his play is a comedy or tragedy.<br /><br />"Chavez says he respects freedom of expression, but you don't know," said Salazar after a recent performance of "The Reconstitution," named for the president's controversial plan to rewrite the nation's 38-year-old constitution. "We could be shut down tomorrow. We don't know. Anything can happen at any moment."<br /><br />Freedom of expression remains alive and aggressive in this South American nation of 23 million people. The evidence is in the pages of critical editorials in the capital's numerous newspapers, on radio talk shows across the country, and on the sophisticated nightly news programs on TV.<br /><br />But critics of Chavez's increasingly centralized government fear their dissenting voices may soon be silenced, much as the nation's Supreme Court and Congress were usurped and all but shut down by a new constitutional assembly, loyal to Chavez, that has proclaimed itself the nation's "supreme" body.<br /><br />Americans will get a chance to take their own measure of Chavez next week when he speaks to the United Nations General Assembly and then visits top officials in Washington, which banned him from entering the country for several years after the bloody 1992 coup attempt. Venezuela gets more than average attention from Washington because it supplies a significant portion of US oil imports.<br /><br />"Free expression will fall off," predicted the historian Jorge Olavarria, one of only 10 Chavez opponents elected in July to sit on the 131-person constitutional assembly. "Right now it's great camouflage for the regime. But it's rubbish to say there's liberty here. This is just the beginning."<br /><br />Olavarria and others say they already see the warning signs of an impending clampdown: government paranoia about its image, verbal attacks on specific journalists, and an evident distaste for democracy's checks and balances.<br /><br />The constitutional assembly has already acted against the mounting criticism. After announcing that the assembly would take action to reverse the increasingly ominous picture of events being painted by the international press, pro-Chavez assemblyman Edmundo Chirinos said in late August, "The proliferation of articles against the process Venezuela is undergoing is not casual; it is an orchestrated campaign."<br /><br />Chavez vows that his government has no intention of ending free expression. And those who say the opposite, he argues, seek to discredit his "peaceful, social revolution" with falsehoods.<br /><br />"We aren't going to raise the flag of tyranny or arbitrariness or persecution," Chavez said during a call-in radio program last month. Since February, when he took office, Venezuelans have had "absolute freedom of press, freedom of thought, freedom of expression," Chavez insisted.<br /><br />His supporters point out that Chavez's predecessors often flouted free speech. It was not uncommon for government officials to tape journalists' conversations, threaten editors, pressure advertisers, and pay bribes for favorable coverage.<br /><br />Under former President Rafael Caldera, the government imposed strict exchange-rate controls, forcing the Venezuelan press to approach the government for the dollars needed pay for imported newsprint. Newspapers favorable to the government often had a full supply of paper; those known to be critical had to cut back on the number of pages they published because officials delayed approval of the dollar exchanges they needed to import paper.<br /><br />Press freedoms in Venezuela have never been as broad as in the United States. Journalists are required to have a degree from a Venezuelan university and membership in the national journalists' union. Defamation is a criminal offense in Venezuela, punishable by up to 18 months in prison.<br /><br /></span><br />
<img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-152.jpg" height="330" width="230" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Today, the critics fear what they call a trend toward strongman rule by Chavez, 45, a former Army lieutenant colonel and paratrooper whose bloody uprising in 1992 left dozens dead. Just before he was elected, the Caracas press published unsubstantiated reports that Chavez planned to have critical journalists and opposition leaders shot if he lost the election.<br /><br />"History indicates as people accumulate power they are less tolerant of dissenting voices," said Marylene Smeets, Americas program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based organization that works to protect press freedoms. "The possibility exists there could be clamping down on the press. That's why the situation calls for monitoring."<br /><br />In the closing monologue of the hit satire, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">which has been attended by members of Chavez's cabinet, congress members, and state governors, the show's host recalls General Carlos Soublette, a 19th-century president.<br /><br />When that president learned of a satirical play in which he was lampooned, Soublette said all was well in Venezuela so long as "the people are able to mock their president."<br /><br />The country would be in trouble, he goes on, "when the president makes a mockery of the people."<br /><br />David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.<br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117598780137758012005-05-31T20:50:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:21:22.582-08:00How close to a 51st star on the flag?<a href="https://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-111.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-111.jpg" height="400" width="274" /></a><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Puerto Ricans Vote on Political Status</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel | The Christian Science Monitor | 12/11/1998</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><strong>SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO</strong> -- Americans are not famous for their knowledge of other lands.<br /><br />So it may come as a surprise to many that a small island in the Caribbean, more than 1,000 miles southeast of Miami, will vote Sunday on whether to become the 51st US state.<br /><br />More than 2 million people in Puerto Rico, a strategically important gateway to the Caribbean seized by the United States 100 years ago during the Spanish-American War, will seek for the third time an end to their lingering national limbo.<br /><br />For decades this quasi-colony has existed as a US "commonwealth" - a sort of halfway house of Americanness devised in 1952. But this year, for the first time, it appears the faction intent on adding another star to the US flag will win most of the votes.<br /><br />While the plebiscite can be ignored by Congress - which in the end decides whether Puerto Rico should be allowed into the Union - a victory for pro-statehood Puerto Ricans would add weight to their long call for Washington's full embrace.<br /><br />"There's little question that Puerto Rico is moving in the direction of statehood," says Robert Pastor, a political scientist from Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., who specializes in Caribbean studies. "But it's very simple. As a nation, the United States' people have not thought about this issue. Congress hasn't even thought about this issue - other than less than a dozen congressmen and senators."<br /><br />Indeed, many Americans, asked what they think of Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state, respond with a nonplussed shrug followed by an admission of ignorance about the issue.<br /><br />There are few shrugs of ignorance or apathy here, though. The island's political parties have spent more than $2 million in bombarding Puerto Rican voters with their messages. And some 73 percent of the island's 2.2 million registered voters are expected to vote Sunday.<br /><br />When residents go to the polls, they have five options:<br /><br />* Continue as a commonwealth.<br /><br />* Become a US state.<br /><br />* Independence.<br /><br />* "Free association," essentially independence with treaty ties to the United States similar to former US territories such as the Marshall Islands and Palau.<br /><br />* None of the above.<br /><br />A poll published on Dec. 9 by The San Juan Star, a leading local daily newspaper, indicated 49 percent of the electorate will vote for statehood and 45 percent will choose the "none of the above" option. In protest of what they consider unfair wording of the ballot, the traditional advocates of commonwealth are boycotting the plebiscite and telling their supporters to vote "none of the above."<br /><br />Independence has never been a real issue for most Puerto Ricans, who have little interest in giving up their much-coveted US citizenship. Residents have carried US passports since 1917, but they can't vote for president or Congress - unless they are one of nearly 3 million Puerto Ricans living on the US mainland.<br /><br />Under commonwealth status Puerto Rico has blended the trappings of sovereignty with the airs of statehood. While the United States provides up to $10 billion a year in federal aid to Puerto Rico and tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans have fought in wars for the US, islanders don't pay federal taxes and keep symbols of autonomy such as an Olympic team.<br /><br />Anti-statehood advocates have drawn on symbols like these in an effort to sway the vote. The pro-commonwealth faction aired an ad implying statehood would mean the end of Puerto Rico's separate Olympic team. During the spot, an anonymous hand rips the Puerto Rico logo off a basketball player's jersey.<br /><br />Yet statehood proponents note that US investments have boosted annual per capita income here to $8,500 - one- third the US average but five times higher than in nearby Dominican Republic, and the highest in Latin America. Still, 59 percent of residents on this island of 3.8 million people live below the US poverty line, according to the 1990 census.<br /><br />And that's something that makes US policymakers less than exuberant about making Puerto Rico the next state. Another flash point is the issue of language. Some have warned that Puerto Rico - where fewer than one-third of the people speak English well and leaders insist statehood doesn't mean English would replace Spanish as the island's dominant language - could become the Quebec of the United States, referring to the restive French-speaking Canadian province.<br /><br />"At some point folks in the US might wake up and say, 'Who are these peo-ple?' " says Ramon Daubon, a specialist on Puerto Rico for the Caribbean studies group at Georgetown University in Washington. "Puerto Rico is a poor state, the people are not white and not English-speaking. They also want a greater degree of self-government than most states."<br /><br />Still, Mr. Daubon and others who have studied the issue believe Puerto Rico will eventually become a state, even if it takes a few decades. Islandwide votes on the issue have shown a slackening in appeal for commonwealth. In a 1952 vote on the island's Constitution, some 80 percent supported commonwealth. In the most recent plebiscite - in 1993 - commonwealth got only 49 percent.<br /><br />In the end, even if statehood carries the day, the vote must be convincing to make people seriously consider the issue. A mere plurality is unlikely to impress Congress. Many members have said they would like to see at least a solid majority, if not two-thirds, voting in support of statehood before they take action.<br /><br />"It's obvious, from many factors, that there will be a plurality for statehood," says Juan Garcia Passalacqua, a political analyst in Puerto Rico. "The real question now is what is Congress going to do. Do they want to admit a Hispanic state as the 51st state?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Christian Science Monitor<br /><br /><br /><strong>Follow:</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>Puerto Rico's future as state remains fuzzy</strong><br /><br />David Abel</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Christian Science Monitor<br />12/14/1998</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO -- The wording may have been jumbled, but the message was clear: Puerto Rico remains an island divided.<br /><br />In a plebiscite marred by controversy over how the options were stated, a slim majority of voters favored the option backed by advocates of the status quo when they went to the polls Sunday.<br /><br />The result is that Puerto Rico has probably pushed back the time when - if ever - it will become the 51st star on the American flag. Many members of Congress - who have the ultimate say in whether the island becomes a state - have been reluctant to consider admitting Puerto Rico to the Union until a strong majority of residents vote for it.<br /><br />But this weekend's vote is the second time in five years that Puerto Rico has rejected the move to statehood. And the fact that the pro-commonwealth choice actually gained ground this time - up slightly to 50.2 percent - will lead to a bitter argument here over what the real message from the people is.<br /><br />"To me, the message is clear: The island is still split down the middle," says Juan Garcia Passalacqua, a political analyst in Puerto Rico. "There hasn't been a major change from 1993. The island has been divided for years, and will likely remain so."<br /><br />Most saw the vote here as an endorsement of Puerto Ricans' strong sense of identity, and their desire to keep their existing relationship with the United States. Currently, Puerto Ricans are American citizens, though they cannot vote for president or elect a voting member of Congress.<br /><br />Despite the fact that a majority of voters supported the pro-commonwealth position, Gov. Pedro Rossello - who favors statehood - declared victory. After all, statehood won significantly more than any of the other specified options on the ballot, he argued.<br /><br />But others said that interpretation of the results is ridiculous.<br /><br />In protest of the wording of the referendum, the majority voted for "none of the above" - the choice backed by pro-commonwealth parties.<br /><br />One voter here in San Juan put it this way. "I believe in the system we have now," said Teresita Fernandez, a medical aide, after dropping a "none of the above" slip in one of the thousands of cardboard ballot boxes used across the island. "I lived in Brooklyn for 13 years and I know it isn't going to get any better being a state. Now, we have the best of both worlds."</span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b> FAJARDO, Puerto Rico </b>-- Hundreds of small fishing boats trail wakes across the turquoise bay off this tropical port town, but scores of them carry a catch that's more than a little fishy.<br /><br />In the employ of Colombian cocaine cartels, these boats are one of the latest drug-trafficking challenges to confront US law-enforcement officials - a challenge that has only intensified with the chaos wreaked last month by hurricane Georges.<br /><br />"There was a snowstorm after the hurricane," says Michael Vigil, head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration in Puerto Rico, referring to the latest flurry of cocaine shipments through the island. "It gave them a window of opportunity, and they're taking advantage of it."<br /><br />The recent upsurge in Caribbean drug trafficking is a response, in part, to smugglers' search for points of entry other than the US-Mexico border. Moreover, say officials in this American commonwealth, Puerto Rico is not equipped to respond with a crackdown.<br /><br />"We are now in a vulnerable position because a lot of our assets have been transferred to the Southwest border to fight trafficking there," says Jim Weber, FBI special agent in charge in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. "Most of our Coast Guard cutters, naval cruisers, and airplanes went to other regions. We're limited to a few US Customs planes, and the machinery is not designed for this type of surveillance."<br /><br />Fajardo, cited as the entry point of 75 percent of all drugs in Puerto Rico by a 1997 Justice Department report, draws smugglers because it's home to the daily traffic of hundreds of small, wooden fishing boats, called yolas, and is the closest port to an arc of nearby, border-porous islands.<br /><br />It's also home to thousands of migrants from the Dominican Republic. US authorities say Dominican gangs ferry most of the cocaine and other illicit drugs across the 77-mile Mona Passage to Puerto Rico. The Colombian cartels use Dominican smugglers because they often charge 30 percent less than their Mexican counterparts do to fulfill the role of smuggler, according to DEA reports.<br /><br />In and around Puerto Rico, the DEA this year has confiscated more than 8,250 kilos of cocaine, 5,400 kilos of marijuana, and 27 kilos of heroin, the DEA's Mr. Vigil says. Officials in Washington say that represents an increase in seizures over 1997.<br /><br />And the street price of cocaine in the US has plummeted from $ 28,000 per kilo in March 1997 to about $ 14,500 in October, indicating a sharp increase in supply. Officials set a record in the Caribbean last year, when they found 6,700 pounds of cocaine in a tractor-trailer.<br />Smugglers often sneak their cargo into Puerto Rico aboard small fishing boats, or they dump the drugs in prearranged spots after speeding across the Caribbean on low-slung "fast" boats, which can reach Puerto Rico in as few as 18 hours from Colombia. Lately, the most effective means of smuggling are small planes, which make airdrops after flying near the ocean to evade radar, says the FBI's Mr. Weber.<br /><br />He attributes the recent upsurge in Caribbean trafficking to "the balloon effect." If you push on a balloon in one place, the bulge goes elsewhere, he says.<br /><br />That effect has also produced a steady rise in drug-related crime in Puerto Rico. While the number of annual homicides has fallen off since a peak of 992 in 1994, other crimes exceed the rates in the rest of the United States. Authorities say 70 percent of the homicides are drug-related.<br /><br />The alluring profits of the drug trade have also enticed the island's law-enforcement officials. In September, eight local police officers were arrested on charges of using their police boat to shuttle cocaine from the small island of Vieques, just off the northeast coast near the Fajardo harbor.<br /><br />Another measure of the increase in drug activity in Puerto Rico is the number of seized shipments found bound for the United States on cargo ships and the number of "mules" caught clandestinely smuggling drugs inside their bodies. Most of the drugs are destined for New York, New Jersey, and Florida, officials say.<br /><br />"In the last 10 months,... there has been a substantial increase in the number of internal body carriers at airports and international cargo operations," says Ken Cates, associate special agent in charge of the island's US Customs office.<br /><br />Puerto Rico, a century-old US territory that voted to become a commonwealth in 1952, has long been an attractive port of entry for drug traffickers. The 35-mile-wide island is the closest US territory to Colombia and has more than 300 miles of coastline, often desolate mangrove swamps suitable for stashing illicit goods. Moreover, there are no US Customs checks on shipments to the mainland.<br /><br />In Fajardo, which was still reeling in late October with blown-out traffic lights, gnarled trees, and windswept hovels, scores of established smugglers were managing to glide across the bay unnoticed.<br /><br />"These people know when there's an opportunity," Vigil says. "They don't play games."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Christian Science Monitor</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117424435449454692005-05-29T20:36:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:23:02.390-08:00Bringing Columbus Back to P.R.<a href="https://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-1311.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-1311.jpg" height="443" width="640" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | The Boston Globe | 11/17/1998</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><strong>CATANO, Puerto Rico</strong> - This small seaside city, known locally as much for potholed streets as for a crumbling sewer system, may soon find recognition as host to one of the most grandiose monuments in the Americas.<br /><br />The edifice, a 353-foot-high bronze statue of Christopher Columbus, is the pet project of Catano's mayor, Edwin Rivera Sierra, who stood on the edge of a dock and wept for joy late last month as workers unloaded the first pieces of the sculpture.<br /><br />"I feel like a child receiving a gift from Santa Claus," Rivera Sierra told reporters while wiping away tears.<br /><br />All the 2,000 pieces of this sculpture, nearly twice the size of the Statue of Liberty and three times the size of Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer, have crossed the Atlantic from the artist's workshop in Russia and are stored near its prospective perch in Catano. Still, Rivera Sierra must overcome several obstacles before assembling the statue.<br /><br />The first is criticism that the huge Columbus will be, at best, an eyesore. The statue features Columbus rising out of a relatively small sloop, which is propped up by a Greek-columned base. One of Columbus's hands grips an angled helm, while the other waves in front of a sail-draped mast.<br /><br />Zurab Tsereteli, a sculptor from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, has faced criticism for other monuments of his. Tsereteli's 310-foot-high Peter the Great in Moscow was the subject of a removal referendum.<br /><br />The Columbus statue was intended as a token of goodwill from the newly democratic Russia to the United States. But before Catano was offered the monument, New York, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Columbus, Ohio; and, most recently, Baltimore, rejected it.<br /><br />"I was there and I told them you have a pretty bay in Baltimore," said Ivan Kazansky, director of Moscow's Union of Sculptors, who advised Baltimore officials against accepting the statue. "I really don't want Mr. Tsereteli to ruin it."<br /><br />Rivera Sierra says the US commonwealth of Puerto Rico was the natural site for the statue because it is the only place now under the American flag where Columbus had actually set foot.<br /><br />Then, of course, there is the issue of spending about $30 million on about 600 tons of bronze, so soon after Hurricane Georges destroyed thousands of homes and wreaked billions of dollars in damage on the island.<br /><br />"In Puerto Rico, our city ranks No. 1 in drug use, No. 1 in violent deaths, No. 1 in high school dropouts, and our city's sewer system is obsolete," said Rosa Hilda Ramos, who heads a local group called Communities United Against Pollution. "In principle, we don't oppose the statue; it's just that our mayor invests so much money, time and effort into things that won't immediately solve our city's problems."<br /><br />Another woman, Carmen Calderon, 63, waiting for a bus under a dilapidated shelter off Catano's main square, was among those who questioned the mayor's judgment. "The symbol isn't bad; Columbus discovered America," she said. "But how could he think of investing this kind of money when there's sewer water in the streets?"<br /><br />For his part, Rivera Sierra defended the 31-story statue. He argued that it is an investment in the city's future. Private donors will mostly pay for the project, and the city should begin seeing annual profits of up to $5 million in five years, he says. The mayor also says the statue will create 500 jobs.<br /><br />With an assortment of fast-food restaurants, souvenir shops, a museum in the base and a lookout tower at the top, Rivera Sierra hopes "The Birth of a New World," the statue's sobriquet, will become as much a symbol of Puerto Rico as the Eiffel Tower is of France.<br /><br />"Catano will become one of the most important cities of the world, with a huge tourist attraction that will boost the economy of our city for the benefit of all of Puerto Rico," he said of his city, which has a population of about 32,000, an annual budget less than the statue's cost, and such narrow roads that they barely accommodate traffic.<br /><br />The mayor does not stand alone in support of the statue.<br /><br />"This is a fabulous idea," said Luis Vega, 50, while tending a used clothing shop across the street from the mayor's office. "It will give us an international spotlight and will bring tourism."<br /><br />A final hurdle is obtaining the permits. That is no simple matter as questions have been raised on issues including how the statue will affect the local ecosystem and whether it will clog the flow of air traffic into the island's capital, San Juan, which is just across the bay from Catano.<br /><br />Yet the 49-year-old mayor expects all the permits to be approved by December. He said construction is planned to start in January and finish within 20 months, so the statue will be ready to open on Oct. 12, 2000, Columbus Day.<br /><br />Gazing through the windows of his cluttered office overlooking San Juan's harbor, Rivera Sierra points to the Isle of Hope, where he expects millions of people will soon see the statue of Columbus as they fly into the capital or sail in on one of the cruise ships plying these turquoise waters.<br /><br />"Many thought this was a joke, but it's becoming a reality," he said. "It's something our children will always have."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>CARACAS, Venezuela</strong> --When members of Congress last week resisted an order by a constitutional assembly to strip the legislature of its powers, the president sent hundreds of soldiers in red berets to block legislators from entering the parliament building.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Two days earlier, using tanks and helicopters, dozens of crack special-operations troops launched a blitzkrieg assault before dawn to take back a Caracas prison from rioting inmates.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, units from the National Guard have begun patrolling the capital's streets to clamp down on crime.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The increasing presence of the armed forces is part of a plan by President Hugo Chavez to integrate the military into civilian society and take advantage of what he calls "a political resource of the state."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But Chavez's critics argue that by mixing the nation's military with its politics, the president is jeopardizing one of Latin America's oldest democracies and is pushing the country toward a military dictatorship.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The military wields an annual budget in excess of $ 1 billion and has amassed resources over the years for two principal missions: to ensure the security of the nation's oil fields and guard against a spill-over of Colombia's long guerrilla war. But Chavez and his supporters say the military can do more.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The president has ordered about 70,000 soldiers to do everything from repair roads to raise chickens for subsidized sales to the poor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Chavez himself has deep roots in the military. As an army lieutenant colonel and paratrooper, Chavez led an unsuccessful coup in 1992, for which he served two years in prison.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite his background, voters overwhelmingly elected him in December, then returned to the polls in July to elect a Chavez-inspired assembly whose ostensible task is to rewrite the constitution. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Packed with the president's supporters, including his wife, brother and five former ministers, Chavez has 121 of the assembly's 131 votes. As many have feared, the assembly has gone beyond its mandate. Two weeks ago, it assumed many of the powers of the Supreme Court.Last week, assembly members stripped the opposition-controlled Congress of almost all its powers, and this week snatched the one power that remained -- control of the budget.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Assembly members have said they would like to turn their attention to the authority of state governors and city mayors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Jorge OlavarrBia is one of the 10 members of the opposition that won a seat in the constitutional assembly. "This new constitution is a constitution made for the military," he said. "It has one goal: The concentration of power in the hands of one person," OlavarrBia said.Among its provisions, Chavez's draft constitution would return the right to vote to members of the military.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That right was stripped in the 1961 constitution, the one Chavez claims is the foundation for government corruption, to prevent the return of Venezuela's military dictatorships.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even before the constitutional changes, Chavez blurred the line between the government and the military.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In July, the 45-year-old president promoted 34 military officers who took part in his bloody 1992 uprising, defying a warning by the Senate that the promotions were unconstitutional. The Senate took its case to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule.Chavez, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, also named about 50 military officers to government jobs, despite a law banning military personnel from holding public office. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Among them was Gen. Lucas Rincon, whom Chavez named chief of staff. Within months, Rincon left that job after Chavez fired the commander of the army and named Rincon as the replacement. Some say the reshuffling increased the president's control over the military.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Not all the military supported Chavez's candidacy--but there was a price to pay. The five generals who criticized Chavez during the presidential campaign were forced into retirement this year.The president is also contemplating action against the police in Caracas, a stronghold of the opposition. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We can intervene in any police force in any municipality, because we are not going to permit any tumult or uproar," he said Sunday during his weekly radio program. "Order has arrived in Venezuela," he said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, a leader of the opposition Democatic Action Party, finds Chavez's threat outrageous.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The armed forces have specific tasks and none of them have anything to do with maintaining public order," Ledezma said. "To use solders for what the president wants is wrong. The soldier is trained to kill. Not to maintain public order. Any other use is illegal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Chavez's supporters, however, say the president is not violating the law as much as he's trying to change the country. Because Chavez thinks the military is beyond reproach, he views its increased role in government and society as a means to cleanse the country of years of corruption. Despite the country's vast oil reserves, which are greater than any nation outside the Middle East, about 80 percent of the people live in poverty."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The president has many new ideas, and we are lucky to have such brilliant people in the military," said Alexis Aponte, the vice minister of the Interior Relations Ministry. "We should use them. We should use the National Guard as a way to assist the police in reinforcing citizens' security. The collaboration will dissuade criminal behavior."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The 120,000-member armed forces, Chavez supporters say, have long been used to carry out civilian tasks. Soldiers have done everything from regulate customs and immigration to provide security and deliver ballot boxes to the National Election Council during elections.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Undoubtedly there exists a process that a lot of people fear," says retired Gen. Italo del Valle Alliegro, a former minister of defense under President Jaime Lusinchi in the late 1980s. "But I think there is an exaggeration of the problems. Chavez isn't the cause of the problem; he is the consequence. And people overwhelmingly voted for him, knowing what he would do."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Miguel Rodriguez came out of retirement to hawk one of Chavez's favorite books, The Oracle of the Guerrilla, outside the gates of parliament. To Rodriguez, Chavez is Venezuela's long-awaited savior.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Wearing the president's signature red beret as he blasted jibes at Congress through a bullhorn, the 58-year-old said he doesn't worry about the president flouting the authority of Congress or the Supreme Court. He echoes Chavez, saying those institutions "have for too long been corrupt and are now moribund."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Like Chavez, Venezuela's first president to have served in the military in 40 years, Rodriguez says it's time for decisive action.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The military is there to guarantee the rights of the people," he says. "Yes, we have a history of leaders using the military for their own purposes. But Chavez won't do that. He's taking power for the people."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Sun-Sentinel</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117423400921713982005-05-29T20:06:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:26:04.672-08:00Venezuela Bars US Drug Overflights<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | The Boston Globe | 9/13/1999</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><strong>CARACAS</strong> -- For years, the long, mountainous border separating Colombia and Venezuela has offered drug traffickers ample opportunity to ferry their cargo.<br /><br />And smugglers have taken advantage of the easy route to Venezuela's porous ports. Last year, more than 110 tons of Colombian heroin and cocaine passed through Venezuela before it was shipped to the United States and Europe, representing nearly one-sixth of all illegal drugs produced in Latin America, US officials said.<br /><br />But now traffickers have a faster and more secure route, which before carried the risk of interception by US military jets: air.<br /><br />At the end of May, President Hugo Chavez announced that US military jets could no longer enter his country's airspace. To do so, he said, would violate Venezuela's sovereignty.<br /><br />The rejection drew pleas from the United States, which has been increasingly challenged in fighting the flow of drugs from South America since May, when Howard Air Force Base, Panama, shut down to comply with the Panama Canal Treaties.<br /><br />Chavez, a leader of a failed coup who was denied a US visa before he was elected by a sweeping majority in December, has hampered US interdiction efforts at a critical time. The denial of Venezuelan airspace considerably reduces the effectiveness of the new US antidrug bases in the Dutch islands of Aruba and Curacao, which lie about 50 miles off Venezuela's coast.<br /><br />"Our challenge is to absolutely defer to Venezuelan sovereignty while doing everything we can to support their ability to cover their airspace," said retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, the US drug policy adviser. "We don't expect a change in Venezuela's position. But we give them the facts. And we hope they reconsider."<br /><br />These are McCaffrey's points, as described to Chavez in a 90-minute meeting in July: From January to July 20, 29 suspect flights flying from Colombia to Venezuela were tracked by US radar and jets. Since May 28, Chavez's government denied all nine requests by the United States to chase likely drug flights in hot pursuit. And it now takes US planes an additional hour and a half to circumvent Venezuelan airspace, precious time during interdiction missions.<br /><br />"As traffickers become aware that Venezuelan air space is not being monitored, they're going to be attracted to the weak link," said Brad Hittle, an aide to McCaffrey at the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. "You are just opening the window wider to the bad guys."<br /><br />Chavez's government disagrees. Venezuelan officials say they are more than capable of guarding the nation's airspace. And they say they have a strong record of fighting drugs, seizing more than 2,600 kilograms of cocaine and heroin in the first six months of this year, twice the quantity confiscated in 1998.<br /><br />"With adequate coordination, Venezuela can handle this," said Alfredo Toro Hardy, Venezuela's ambassador to the United States. Hardy taught Chavez political science at the University of Simon Bolivar in Caracas. "We have plenty of F-16s capable of taking a handoff from US planes. It's just like what happens between police forces when a criminal crosses a state in the United States."<br /><br />But US officials cast doubt on Venezuela's ability to monitor effectively and pursue traffickers sneaking through its airspace. Since Chavez's reversal of Venezuela's policy in May, his air force has only intercepted one of at least 11 suspect planes, Hittle said.<br /><br />And many US officials are increasingly wary of Chavez, who, his critics said, is moving to impose a military dictatorship in one of Latin America's oldest democracies.<br /><br />"It's very unfortunate that the Venezuelan government has taken these recent decisions," said Otto Reich, a former US ambassador to Venezuela in the late 1980s. "The denial of overflights is a significant negative development. Both nations stand to lose."<br /><br />The anger has reached Congress, where officials have warned that if Chavez's position does not change, the United States may respond by refusing to certify that Venezuela is collaborating fully in the drug war. That would deprive the country of vital trade and aid. The $12 million in antidrug money the United States now gives Venezuela, however, would not be affected.<br /><br />"Of course, Venezuela's decision should be factored into the president's certification decision process," said Lester Munson, spokesman for the House International Relations Committee. "The United States right now is at its lowest ebb at covering the drug-transiting region. The lack of overflights is part of the problem."<br /><br />During his recent visit to Venezuela, McCaffrey, the drug policy leader, said he had tried to impress upon Chavez that more than US planes flying over Venezuelan airspace, drug traffickers were violating his country's sovereignty.<br /><br />This nation of more than 23 million people, moreover, has increasingly become the victim of drug trafficking and use. A surging crime rate between 1986 and this past June claimed 45,009 recorded homicides, which peaked at 4,961 in 1996 and may top that number this year.<br /><br />Most of the crime results from an economy that has left more than 80 percent of the people living in poverty, police said. In the same time, police said, there were 415,000 violent drug-related crimes.<br /><br />While McCaffrey and his staff hope Chavez will change his mind, they are not optimistic. And they predict data will soon show drug traffickers are exploiting their new freedom to fly through Venezuelan airspace unimpeded by US jets.<br /><br />"The jury is still out on how much of a difference this will make," Hittle said. "But the general number of transits are going in the wrong direction. And the simple fact is it will now be easier for traffickers to carry drugs by air."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117422376281610282005-05-29T20:01:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:27:08.064-08:00Chavez Accused of Clearing Way to Dictatorship<a href="https://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-141.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-141.jpg" height="400" width="272" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | The Sun-Sentinel | 8/28/1999<br /><br /><strong>CARACAS, Venezuela</strong> --The sting of tear gas and the force of water cannons sent thousands of protestors gasping for air near the Capitol on Friday, much as they thought democracy was gasping its last in Venezuela.<br /><br />The unemployed and the well-employed </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">took to the streets to protest a decree issued on Wednesday that stripped Congress of nearly all the power that could help it serve as a balance to the office of the president.<br /><br />But when defiant legislators called an emergency meeting in a last-ditch effort to salvage their powers, they were stopped by the National Guard, a legion of red-bereted soldiers dressed for battle called out by their charismatic, controversial commander-in-chief, President Hugo Chavez.<br /><br />"This finally shows the truth: Chavez wants to take all the power for himself and rid the nation of its checks and balances," said Godofredo Marin, a congressman from the Evangelical Party, which opposed Chavez and his reforms. "This was the first violent action of the dictatorship. This is the way it starts. The same thing happened in Cuba."<br /><br />Friday's unrest capped a week in which the constitutional assembly, a body proposed by Chavez and ostensibly elected to revise the Constitution, limited the powers of the Supreme Court and banned the opposition-controlled Congress from passing laws and curtailed its powers to oversee the budget.Chavez supporters, including his wife, brother and five former ministers, control 121 of 131 seats in the constitutional assembly.<br /><br />"The Congress has to survive; what the assembly is doing has no legitimacy," said Felix FariDnas, a congressman from the Copei Party, one of several opposition parties, in an interview before surmounting the spiked gate. "The people have elected us. And we will not stay here and watch the destruction of democracy and the institution of the Congress."<br /><br />But the people elected Chavez, as well, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">and by an overwhelming majority. Thousands of the president's supporters also took to the streets on Friday, gathering on the opposite side of the Capitol from his critics.<br /><br />Many in the crowd donned the signature red beret often worn by Chavez, a former army lieutenant colonel and paratrooper who attempted a coup in the early 1990s. They, however, were spared the tear gas and water cannons.<br /><br />Chavez's supporters said they didn't fear the president's concentration of power. And they believed a strong leader was necessary to do away with years of corruption in a country where 80 percent of the people live in poverty, despite Venezuela's having more oil than any nation outside the Middle East.<br /><br />"We are here to make sure they don't violate our authority," said William Lara, a Chavez supporter and member of the constitutional assembly, before soldiers allowed him to pass through the Capitol's gates. "We are the ones doing away with the dictators who have ruled for 40 years and stolen everything from the people."<br /><br />Friday afternoon, Chavez took to the nation's airwaves, assuring viewers in an hourlong speech that the country was at peace and promising the constitutional assembly would continue reforming the country's laws.<br /><br />He was flanked by the new president of the Supreme Court, the president and vice president of Congress, and the nation's Interior Minister.<br /><br /></span><br />
<img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-151.jpg" height="400" width="278" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We have to say from Caracas to the world at large that Venezuela is not moving to authoritarianism," Chavez said."The assembly was elected to reconstruct the state. It was authorized by the majority of the state. This is as clear as water."<br /><br />Still, many protesters and congressmen said they feared that the decision of the soldiers to obey the constitutional assembly instead of the Congress represented the first forceful action in the emergence of a dictator.<br /><br />Although senior congressmen and leaders of the constitutional assembly said they agreed to reach a peaceful solution to the standoff after a session mediated by Venezuela's Catholic Church, legislators said they would not stand by and watch their powers disappear.<br /><br />Marin and Henrique Capriles, the president of the lower house of Congress, said they intend to protest the constitutional assembly's decree to the Organization of American States and to the United Nations.<br /><br />They argued the assembly violated a Supreme Court ruling in April that declared its sole mission is to write a new constitution.<br /><br />"This is a direct violation of the laws that currently govern the nation," Capriles said. "The assembly has no right to make its own decisions. They need to be respectful of our institution. That's the basis for democracy."<br /><br />Copyright, The Sun-Sentinel</span>
<!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fphotos1.blogger.com%2Fimg%2F187%2F4451%2F250%2Fimage0-141.jpg&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-141.jpg" -->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117422049127430172005-05-29T19:56:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:27:53.378-08:00Crime Spikes in Venezuela<a href="https://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-14.jpg" height="441" width="640" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | The Boston Globe | 9/2/1999<br /><br /><strong>CARACAS</strong> -- Ramon Meza's killers would later say the 30-year-old ex-convict had it coming.<br /><br />After Meza burst into a shack west of the capital in August, brandished a pistol, and shot a man who was mourning for three friends murdered days before, irate neighbors chased Meza to his house and torched it, killing him, police said.<br /><br />Meza is one of a growing number of victims of vigilante justice and other serious crimes in Venezuela.<br /><br />Crime has jumped by more than 30 percent nationwide since a new US-style judicial system was enacted in July, ending a corrupt system known for judges on the take, police arrests on flimsy evidence, and closed trials.<br /><br />More than 3,000 inmates have been freed since the new system took effect. And another 10,000 could soon follow, many of them accused of murder, rape, armed robbery, and other serious crimes.<br /><br />"We have had many years of corruption, and this takes a while to change," said Alexis Aponte, vice minister of the Interior Relations Ministry.<br /><br />Although many blame the new judicial system for the skyrocketing crime, which in the first weekend of August left 118 corpses in this South American nation of 23 million people, the rash stems from problems ranging from rising unemployment to increasing drug trafficking and use.<br /><br />And the economic malaise has gotten worse since President Hugo Chavez, a failed coup leader who won a sweeping election victory, took power in February. About the same time Chavez was elected, a 12-year low in the price of oil, Venezuela's main export, squeezed the country's poor, estimated at more than 80 percent of the population.<br /><br />Despite a rebound in oil prices, however, the economy has sunk further into the doldrums. And crime has festered. Analysts blame an underpaid and under-equipped police force, poor education and swelling slums, and the slowness of officials to adapt to the changing judicial system.<br /><br />"The data on crime have been horrendous," said Richard Hillman, a specialist on Venezuela at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y, who was robbed twice and once held hostage in Caracas. "Venezuela has been listed as one of the worst offenders of human rights - way before Chavez. The Chavez policies are attempts to deal with an out-of-control situation."<br /><br />Yet Chavez's critics say he has avoided the problem by casting blame on the nation's 38-year-old constitution and distorting the influence of the new judicial system, approved by the previous administration. "The problem only gets worse when the president says it's OK to rob if you are hungry or have a sick child," said Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, an opposition leader.<br /><br />Ledezma acknowledged that police resistance to the new judicial system has played its share in the rising homicide toll. In Caracas, reports of lynchings or revenge attacks against suspected criminals who were released soon after being detained have become a weekly occurrence, he said.<br /><br />Outside the capital, some officials have gone so far as to tell the police not to intervene to protect suspects or criminals released from jail. Orlando Fernandez, governor of the central state of Lara, told his police they shouldn't waste their time shielding "any crook, rapist, assailant, or murderer."<br /><br />"It's ridiculous to use the police to protect delinquents," he said in August. "I have to look after honest and decent people. . . . I'm too busy to be protecting criminals."<br /><br />The new judicial system replaces one largely based on Spanish and Napoleonic codes, where the burden of proving innocence falls on the accused.<br /><br />The past system often provided little if no representation for the nation's vast number of indigents and had filled prisons with thousands of accused but untried suspects. Of some 27,000 prisoners locked away in Venezuela's notoriously inhumane prisons, about 9,700 have been convicted.<br /><br />The new code was created to sweep away questionable jailings and curtail corruption allegations against nearly half of the nation's 4,700 judges. Now, police must read suspects their rights, allow them to call a lawyer or relative, and provide evidence to prosecutors soon after the arrest.<br /><br />While for the most part supporting the changes, Chavez has directed a constitutional assembly to amend certain provisions, such as allowing police more latitude in making arrests and digging up evidence.<br /><br />The president, a former army lieutenant colonel and paratrooper who spent two years in jail after his bloody 1992 uprising, recently sent special units of the National Guard to patrol the violent streets of Caracas.<br /><br />He has heightened fears that he would not only bolster police with the armed forces but would replace police with soldiers. "We can intervene in any police force in any municipality, because we are not going to permit any tumult or uproar," he told a weekly radio program. "Order has arrived in Venezuela."<br /><br />David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.<br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>
<!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fphotos1.blogger.com%2Fimg%2F187%2F4451%2F250%2Fimage0-14.jpg&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-14.jpg" -->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117421581927583102005-05-29T19:49:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:30:30.758-08:00Backlash Against Haitians<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-273.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" border="0" height="400" src=" http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-273.jpg" width="270" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | The San Francisco Chronicle | 12/7/1999<br /><br /><strong>LA VEGA, Dominican Republic</strong> - An orphan without any education and with little to eat, 12-year-old Lucksene Mezililen followed some friends across the Haitian border some months ago and now scrapes by in this central Dominican city illegally selling candy.<br /><br />Josephine Losette, 26, recently gave birth to a dimple-faced boy at a maternity hospital in Santo Domingo. Without papers, she worries whether her son will be allowed to go to school in her adopted country. Taking a break from moving earth and pulverizing cement, Aldonis Celesten, 40, supports eight children home in Haiti on the $8 he earns each day under the table helping to build a highway overpass in Santo Domingo.<br /><br />At least half a million Haitians live illegally in the Dominican Republic. And like Mezililen, Losette, and Celesten, few of them speak Spanish, most live in dire poverty, few have Dominican friends, and many are harassed and arbitrarily deported by Dominican police, who regard them as an unwanted underclass.<br /><br />"They treat us like we are strangers, like we are animals, that we shouldn't be trusted," Mezililen said after putting down a bin of the sugary Mani candy he had balanced on his head. "It's not easy to live here. But there is nothing in Haiti."<br /><br />The poor treatment of Haitians living across </span><img align="left" height="310" src=" http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-272.jpg" width="210" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">the frontier in the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola - the lush Caribbean island that some 8 million Creole-speaking Haitians share with about 8 million Spanish-speaking Dominicans - has long been a subject of controversy.<br /><br />But the issue began dominating the airwaves and newspapers in both countries after a report in October by the Organization of American States accused the Dominican government of carrying out mass deportations, and recommended that it grant Haitians legal rights.<br /><br />The report rebuked Dominican officials for not adopting measures such as issuing undocumented Haitian workers residency cards or legalizing the status of their children born in the Dominican Republic. Despite a provision in the Dominican constitution granting citizenship to anyone born on Dominican territory, as many as 280,000 undocumented Haitian children live without even identity cards, according to Haiti's embassy in Santo Domingo.<br /><br />"This is a huge injustice. Some of these children only speak Spanish, but they have no documents and they can't even go to school," said Joseph Daseme, who oversees immigration matters at the Haitian Embassy. "This is a problem of discrimination; if we were white this wouldn't be happening."<br /><br />Officials from the three major parties, however, unite in their dismissal of the OAS report.<br /><br />Different governments here have long </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">relied on another provision in the Dominican constitution that denies citizenship to those children born of parents "in transit" through the Dominican Republic. The undoc umented Haitians - even those who have lived here for decades - have long been considered in transit.<br /><br />As for the deportations, which often occur so quickly the Haitians have little or no warning to collect their possessions, immigration officials say they're part of the routine repatriation of 30,000 undocumented Haitians each year.<br /><br />"They are here illegally and it is our right to deport them," said Ivan Pena, director of Haitian migration at the Dominican Immigration Department. "We are not violating their human rights. The constitution says they are in transit. They aren't Dominicans."<br /><br />Prejudice, mistrust, and tension between Haitians and Dominicans go back to 1822, not long after Haiti became the world's first black republic. In a bid to topple slavery in the Spanish colony to the east, Haiti invaded the Dominican Republic, ruling harshly until Dominicans gained independence in 1844.<br /><br />Ever since, many Dominican officials have fanned the flames of racism by warning that Haiti has designs to take over the whole island. The worst conflict between the two countries, however, came in 1937 when the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered about 30,000 migrant Haitians slaughtered along the Massacre River near the border.<br /><br /></span><br />
<img align="left" height="310" src=" http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-282.jpg" width="240" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dominican officials have often attributed problems such as high unemployment and depressed wages to the glut of undocumented Haitians, many of whom have been welcomed across the border to work in low-paying jobs harvesting sugar cane or building roads.<br /><br />Those complaints have increased in recent years, as the Dominican Republic boasts one of the highest growth rates in the Western Hemisphere, about 7 percent, while Haiti remains the region's poorest country.<br /><br />Despite the tensions, the past few years have seen unprecedented improvements in relations. For the first time in six decades, the Dominican and Haitian presidents last year reciprocated visits. That followed steps the two governments took in 1996 to strengthen diplomatic, legal, and commercial ties, paving the way last year for the countries to begin direct mail service and to stop routing their letters through Miami.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117749906708811112005-05-29T19:45:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:31:19.772-08:00The Smugglers<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel in the Dominican Republic </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">and Juan Forero in New Jersey</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Star-Ledger</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><strong>MICHES, Dominican Republic</strong> - For 10 years, a fisherman named Lolo has loaded small boats with hundreds of illegal immigrants and crossed the treacherous 70 miles separating this seaside village from Puerto Rico, the last major hurdle for immigrants desperate to begin a new life in the United States.<br /><br />Charging $350 a head, Lolo and his accomplices make two or three jarring trips a year across the Mona Passage, ferrying some 30 or more people each time - Dominicans, Haitians, Cubans and illegal Asian immigrants, often Chinese and Indians.<br /><br />"When you're a fisherman and you have the amount of kids that Lolo has, this is what you do," said Cezar, Lolo's 32-year-old cousin and on-board assistant. "Just a few trips a year is more than he would make selling fish all year."<br /><br />Boat pilots like Lolo, whose family asked that his last name not be used, are just one cog in worldwide smuggling networks that move an estimated 4 million people worldwide across national borders and net $7 billion annually.<br /><br />But on a recent afternoon, Lolo was on the run, trying to evade government soldiers who had searched for him at his small, burgundy-colored house. "I don't know when I'll see him again," said his wife, who would not give her name. "He could go to jail for a long time."<br /><br />Increasingly, smugglers like Lolo - small-time entrepreneurs who operate with little overhead or connections - are being phased out by larger, better organized and sometimes more ruthless human smuggling rings that are better equipped to dodge enforcement efforts. Officials believe such organized rings were responsible for taking 23 Chinese immigrants on a tortuous, months-long journey earlier this year from Fukian province to Surinam in South America and on to New Jersey, where they were captured in May.<br /><br />"What is increasingly clear is the little mom-and-pop operations are now working as subcontractors for the big ones," said Robert Paiva, observer to the United Nations for the International Organization for Migration, which tracks international people smuggling and works immigration officials in various countries. "The little ones are being bought out and serving as branches for the big firms."<br /><br />The new trend has come since 1993, when a ship named the Golden Venture ran aground off New York with 300 illegal Chinese immigrants, setting off alarm bells among U.S. officials.<br /><br />The government responded by increasing Coast Guard patrols and embarking on world-wide efforts to train thousands of airport inspections agents and airline personnel to better detect fraudulent travel documents.<br /><br />Last summer, the Immigration and Naturalization Service also initiated its "Global Reach" program, which included adding 13 field offices to the 24 already operating, putting agents in such key transit countries as Guatemala City, Beijing in China and Copenhagen, Denmark.<br /><br />U.S. officials and international migration experts said the new efforts have thwarted smuggling vessels bound directly for U.S. waters and the airborne arrival of migrants with false documents.<br /><br />Yet, there were concerns about the emergence of more organized smuggling, as outlined in a 1995 interagency report submitted to President Clinton warning that "as enforcement efforts become more effective...we can expect the smugglers to become more sophisticated and hard-core criminal groups to become involved in this extremely lucrative trade."<br /><br />To be sure, smuggling organizations to a great degree remain a loose amalgamation of people - forgers, guides, safe house operators, coyotes, enforcers.<br /><br />But in the Americas, law enforcement officials and Asian smuggling experts say centrally organized, politically connected criminal networks are handling much of a $3.5 billion-a-year enterprise.<br /><br />"Unlike occasional traffickers or small rings such as the 'coyotes' operating in the border areas, those crime syndicates are capable of moving large groups of migrants in a single venture," said as assessment paper submitted by the International Organization for Migration at a seminar on human smuggling held this year in Nicaragua. "This is becoming a vicious circle: The more migrants the networks smuggle, the more profit they reap; the stronger they are financially, the more sophisticated they can become in order to move even more persons."<br /><br />Willard Myers, head of the Philadelphia-based Center for the Study of Asian Organized Crime, said one of the largest organizations - serving Chinese bound mostly for the New York area - is based in Guatemala. "It is a Taiwanese organization, which has gotten larger and larger and larger," said Myers, considered a top expert on Asian smuggling gangs.<br /><br />Myers said the Guatemala operation "runs all the routes through Central America." He said that though the ring primarily deals with Chinese, the largest non-Latin group smuggled into the United States, "anyone who wants to move through these networks has to have at least some connection" to the Taiwanese.<br /><br />Another large organization that moves people through Central America was initially based in La Paz, Bolivia, but has in recent years relocated to Sao Paolo, Brazil. It is run by a Peruvian-born businessman of Fujianese descent, Lin Tao Bao, who is considered an architect of organized Chinese smuggling.<br /><br />These organizations and other groups that focus on transporting Chinese sidestep enforcement measures by transversing any number of countries.<br /><br />"I don't think there's any country that's immune right now," said Jim Puleo, a senior INS policy advisor assigned to smuggling cases with the State Department's bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. "There are some who are picked up in Guatemala. Some go through Mexico, some through Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Guyana...They've tried every one of them."<br /><br />Guatemala has become an important area of operation, with its large, poorly patrolled Pacific coastline and isolated, unprotected frontier with Mexico. Smuggling experts also say Guatemala, like many developing countries, has had serious corruption problems among its immigration service officials.<br /><br />Mexican immigration officials, who have stepped up their interdiction efforts on the Guatemalan border, say they have nevertheless continued to see an increase in illegal immigration. Though most migrants are Central Americans, Asians, Africans and Europeans are not uncommon, Mexican authorities said.<br /><br />"We've seen Hindus (Indians), Chinese, Angolans, also Russians," said Esteban Vega Franco, delegate of the National Institute for Immigration in the Mexican state of Tabasco, which borders Guatemala. "The Chinese, the Hindu, his cost...to the United States can run as high as $25,000."<br /><br />In a phone interview, Vega Franco said most of the crossings take place along the frontier between Tecun Uman, a dusty border town that straddles the Pacific in Guatemala, and the Mexican State of Chiapas.<br /><br />The migrants are often loaded in trucks with ventilated secret compartments and given hygienic bags, water and food, Vega Franco said. Then, they're ferried north to U.S. border, with bribes greasing the way if the smugglers encounter trouble.<br /><br />"It's a business of many millions of dollars," said Vega Franco. "Bring in 50 Chinese and you're talking about a million dollars."<br /><br />For would-be Chinese migrants, the journey to America most often begins in Fukian province in southern China. From there, migrants are taken by land or sea to Thailand, where they wait for travel documents. The next stop is often Moscow, which they can enter easily and where U.S. officials estimate as many 200,000 illegal immigrants bound for other countries are warehoused.<br /><br />From there, they might fly into Western Europe and then on to countries such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Surinam, all with active Chinese communities.<br /><br />The migrants are kept in safe-houses and ferried from one location to another under cover of darkness, mostly by locals. While the guides and safe-house operators usually do not speak an Asian migrant's language, they often learn enough to communicate with their human cargo.<br /><br />"They don't have to be involved in long conversations. All they have to say is, 'Stop, run, be quiet, don't move,'" said Ko-lin Chin, a Rutgers University expert on smuggling who has interviewed 300 Chinese migrants who've settled in the New York area.<br /><br />The Dominican Republic has also seen widespread smuggling operations, increasingly migrants from outside Latin America.<br /><br />"It's more than Chinese crossing from non-Latin American countries. There are Polish people and Turks from Germany," said Fausto Peña, spokesman for the Director General of Immigration in Santo Domingo.<br /><br />Dominican government records underscore the international nature of the smuggling: Between Jan. 1 and July 23 of this year, 145 foreign national were deported, among them 20 Indians, six Koreans, five Sri Lankans, two Nigerians and four Pakistanis.<br /><br />Smugglers, though, usually succeed in moving their cargo.<br /><br />In Miches, the seaside village where the smuggler Lolo lives, would-be migrants are rounded up on cloudy, moon-less nights and taken across steep mountains and dense foliage to secret embarkation points. Before the first wisps of light brighten the sky, they board rickety boats, nicknamed yolas. To get through the 24-hour voyage to Puerto Rico, they bring salami, cheese, crackers, water and rum.<br /><br />"Sometimes the waves can be higher than a telephone pole and sharks circle the boat," said Cezar, Lolo's cousin.<br /><br />Lately, another problem has arisen. The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy have stepped up patrols in the Mona Passage, part of "Operation Frontier Lands." And Frank Polanco, an immigration official in the U.S. embassy in Santo Domingo, said there has been a "dramatic" reduction in illegal migration.<br />Many of the people in this area, though, believe that smuggling will continue because it's too lucrative a calling.<br /><br />"As long as there are clients, there will be captains," said Lolo's wife, even as her husband continued to elude authorities. "The money beats fishing."<br /><br />Copyright 1996, 1997, 1998, The Star-Ledger</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117421764684393202005-05-29T19:40:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:31:57.091-08:00A Roadblock to the Presidency<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-281.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" border="0" height="400" src=" http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-281.jpg" width="266" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Correspondent | 11/26/1999</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><strong>SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic</strong> - Mario Read Vittini wants to be this country's next president. The 73-year-old author and former ambassador </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">to the United States, however, knows his chances of winning his party's nomination are next to nil.<br /><br />That's because his old boss and the longtime ruler of this poor Caribbean nation will not relinquish the reins of their conservative Social Christian Reform Party. Even though Joaquin Balaguer is blind, ailing, and will turn 94 before May's presidential election, the man who mustered seven terms as president still calls his party's shots, three years after leaving office.<br /><br />Balaguer has also begun plastering billboards and banners around the country with slogans proclaiming: "One more time for necessity," and "A president for two centuries."<br /><br />Read Vittini hasn't given up hope. Balaguer is yet to officially declare his candidacy. And although Vittini is aware of his old boss's influence, he said he may be able to persuade friends in the party to give him a fair chance before the Reform Party nominates a candidate in January.<br /><br />"I don't deny Balaguer the right to run," Read Vittini said from his home. "But he's robbing the ranks of what our party has to offer. By taking the nomination without a process, without a primary, he's committing another fraud to secure his candidacy."<br /><br />Through his 22 years in power, Balaguer's rule was marked by corruption, coup attempts, lavish public works projects, dubious elections, and repression of leftists. Balaguer first took office briefly in 1960, when he was tapped by his mentor and the Dominican Republic's previous longtime leader, Rafael Trujillo.<br /><br />More recently, Balaguer was forced to step down after he was accused of stealing the 1994 election. The corruption was deemed so outrageous the Congress passed a constitutional amendment to prevent him from seeking the presidency in 1996. The law barred the chief executive from serving a second consecutive term.<br /><br />Nevertheless, the ex-president, who has long been supported by the poor for his public works projects, played the role of kingmaker in 1996, throwing his weight behind the country's current leader, Leonel Fernandez. Three years later, however, Balaguer looms as a presidential candidate. The law that prevented Balaguer from running in 1996 blocks Fernandez from reelection.<br /><br />Ensconced in a large home guarded by soldiers with automatic weapons, Balaguer remains a potential candidate, still only teasing voters from behind the gates he seldom leaves. Although he declined an interview, his close advisers said they expect him to run. And while they acknowledge he may not win, few doubt Balaguer will play a decisive role in crowning the victor.<br /><br />"To whichever side Balaguer leans is likely to win," said Jorge Suncar, a commentator for "Hola," a morning TV show. "About 25 percent of the population is not affiliated to a specific party, and many of those may vote for Balaguer, on top of his traditional base."<br /><br />To be elected president, a candidate must gain a majority. Otherwise, a runoff between the top two candidates is held.<br /><br />Members of the governing Liberation Party </span><img align="left" height="310" src=" http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-283.jpg" width="220" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">said they expect Balaguer's standing to rise in the polls. "We hope that Balaguer runs," said Roberto Sanchez, a party organizer. "It looks like we won't win in the first round, and we think he will give us his support."<br /><br />Read Vittini said he has had enough of living under Balaguer's shadow. He served for decades as one of the former president's confidants. But that ended with Read Vittini's firing in 1994, after his star got too bright. He said he was told he took too much credit for renegotiating the Dominican Republic's debt to the United States.<br /><br />But, like Balaguer, he hasn't lost the flame to run his country's affairs and he vows to fight his old boss.<br /><br />"Balaguer doesn't like to be challenged, but I am challenging him," he said. "He wants to be the chief politician for the rest of his life. He wants to die being president."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117421283775992012005-05-29T19:27:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:32:40.878-08:00Dominican Jews Adapt<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-291.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-291.jpg" height="400" width="282" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Boston Globe | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">12/19/1999</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><strong>SOSUA, Dominican Republic</strong> - Midway through the Shabbat service, after belting out Judaism's most sacred prayer, Benny Katz uttered several words that most Jews would say qualify him as Christian.<br /><br />With his son shaking a scratchy-sounding noisemaker, his niece jamming on a keyboard and other relatives on a tambourine and on drums, Katz, accompanied by a bouncy merengue beat, blew into a ram's horn and asked his small congregation to repeat after him: "Glorious is Jesus. He is our God!" he chanted, dancing among 15 answering congregants along rows of assembled lawn chairs on an open-air patio next to his home. "Hallelujah, Jesus. We are following your path."<br /><br />Few statements so succinctly show the assimilation of the second- and third-generation remnants of the once-thriving Jewish community here, historically important because it was accepted in this Caribbean nation when other countries such as the United States turned their back on Jewish migrants during the Holocaust.<br /><br />Katz is the son of one of the first of 645 Jews to immigrate during World War II to the Dominican Republic's north coast. Thousands more who received Dominican visas left Europe and illegally entered countries such as the United States and Argentina.<br /><br />While Katz's father's family was never very religious, they were traditional Jews who kept the High Holy Days and believed that the messiah has yet to come. Katz, however, said he believes Jesus was and will be the messiah.<br /><br />The pattern of assimilation is common worldwide, specialists say.<br /><br />"I am not worried about there being some assimilation," said Benno Weiser Varon, a Jewish history professor at Boston University who once served at the Israeli ambassador to the Dominican Republic. "In Latin America, this is a minority. There is a strong Jewish community in South America, especially in Argentina.<br /><br />"But I would accept them as Jewish, even though some very Orthodox rabbis might not."<br /><br />Like many descendants of the pioneering Jews who in 1940 began taming this patch of raw, tropical jungle into arable land, Katz married a non-Jewish Dominican. Today, however, his wife, Alicia, wears Star of David earrings and leads Shabbat services, singing prayers in Hebrew.<br /><br />She considers herself and her children Jewish, although she has not formally converted. There are now only a few more than 70 Jews or those who consider themselves Jews living in Sosua, and nearly a quarter belong to the Jews for Jesus sect. Most of the others are secular.<br /><br />Other than posting traditional mezuzas - small cases containing a Biblical verse - on the doors of their homes, they exhibit few signs of their religion. Katz sees no contradiction between the mingling of Catholic and Jewish traditions.<br /><br />"We are just as Jewish as anyone else who believes in the Torah," said Katz, 36, a mechanic and motorcycle racer, who wears the traditional skull cap and shawl during the services his family holds each week. "We just believe Christ is our savior."<br /><br />Katz's 82-year-old father, Martin, one of only two of the </span><img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-28.jpg" height="310" width="220" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">initial Jewish refugees remaining in Sosua, is not concerned about his son's deviation from tradition. Nor is Martin Katz's friend, Arturo Kirchheiman, 91, the other pioneer still living here, who jokingly calls himself "the godfather of Sosua," because he helped develop the town and make it a tourist destination.<br /><br />Both smiled and shrugged when asked about Benny Katz's nontraditional beliefs. To the two elderly pioneers, both of whom married Catholics and at one time raised pigs to sell as pork throughout the Dominican Republic, assimilation is part of the community's natural evolution.<br /><br />"My son and his son were bar mitzvahed," said Martin Katz, who still speaks Spanish with a German accent. His son and grandson did their bar mitzvah with a rabbi visiting from elsewhere in Latin America.<br /><br />"That's enough. Our traditions will continue, even if they change some," Katz added. "But the Jewish community's future in Sosua is not bright. There are so few of us left."<br /><br />With only 63 cents in his pocket, Martin Katz arrived in Sosua on an Italian ship after fleeing his home near Frankfurt. Before departing from Genoa, Italy, in 1940, the 22-year-old clothing designer had little idea where the Dominican Republic was. He knew, however, that he was one of the lucky ones.<br /><br />Less than a year later, Kirchheiman, at age 32, sailed from Portugal on the third of nearly a dozen ships that ferried European Jews to Sosua. Months had passed since he had escaped from his Hamburg home, a time passed in hunger, imprisonment, and negotiations for his freedom with German forces in southern France.<br /><br />Katz, Kirchheiman, and thousands of other Jews mainly from Germany and Austria benefited when the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo declared his government would issue 5,000 visas to the stranded European Jews.<br /><br />Trujillo's generosity - when no other nation would welcome Jewish refugees - remains a mystery. Three years earlier, the Dominican leader had ordered 30,000 Haitians killed in an effort to halt the mainly mulatto Dominican population from becoming darker-skinned. The Jews here say he either wanted to atone for his bloodshed or to help "whiten" the Dominican Republic.<br /><br />When the Jews arrived, with help from international Jewish organizations, each settler was given 80 acres of land, 10 cows, a mule, and a horse. Although many of them had no background in farming, they learned quickly. Today, Productos Sosua, the Jewish cooperative for which Katz and Kirchheiman worked for many years, produces most of the Dominican Republic's meat and dairy products.<br /><br />Despite the success in overcoming a dense jungle and surviving multiple strains of malaria, typhoid, and other debilitating diseases, Sosua's Jewish community may not be able to surmount the more benign obstacles of assimilation and migration.<br /><br />While the community is refurbishing its little-used synagogue and a small museum preserves the early settlers' history, Sosua has evolved from a small farming town to become one of the Dominican Republic's centers of tourism. The tourists, many of whom are German, come to enjoy Sosua's beach and aquamarine bay.<br /><br />Most of the Jews who arrived here and their descendants have moved to the capital, Santo Domingo, or immigrated to Miami and New York. Only 300 Jews remain throughout the Dominican Republic.<br /><br />Benny and Alicia Katz, despite their belief in Jesus and the New Testament, say they are upholding his father's traditions, observing Shabbat on Friday nights and High Holy Days such as Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and Rosh Hashonah, the Jewish New Year.<br /><br />Benny only recently found Jesus. Driving home a few years ago on one of the Dominican Republic's perilous mountain roads, Katz said he had heard strange voices in his head telling him he would not make it back to Sosua.<br /><br />So he called on Jesus for help.<br /><br />"I said, 'Jesus, if you help me get home safely, I will serve you the rest of my life,' " Katz said. "It's what has kept our family together."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117420023576785752005-05-29T19:13:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:35:10.485-08:00Sudden Chill Catches Dominicans<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Recession, Jet Crash Rein in Hot Economy</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 11/18/2001</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>BOCA CHICA, Dominican Republic</strong> - Over the past decade, an infusion of malls, fast-food joints, and high-rises made parts of the capital look like Miami. A modern, four-lane highway replaced dangerous, potholed roads connecting the north and south. And an ever-increasing number of cranes above tourist resorts and cities led some here to joke that the country had a new national bird.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Long beset by poverty and political corruption, the Dominican Republic economy had become the fastest growing in Latin America. The average annual income here never rose above $2,400, but in the 1990s thousands of people found jobs in newly created free-trade zones, billions of dollars sent from relatives in New York and Boston helped build additions to countless numbers of homes, and inflation and unemployment levels dropped. Last year the country's economy boasted a record 8 percent growth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The party came to an abrupt end after three blows in swift succession clobbered the economy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Last winter, the onset of a global recession put brakes on the boom. The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 instantly cut the twin bulwarks of the economy, tourism and money sent from New York. And on Monday, the 8 million people of this Maine-sized nation saw hopes of an economic rebound vanish with the crash of American Airlines Flight 587.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"When the United States sneezes, the old joke here goes, the Dominican Republic catches the pneumonia," said Gary Clements, the chief economic officer at the US Embassy in Santo Domingo. "These are such unprecedented events that it's hard to know how things will turn out."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After 10 years combing the beaches here with suitcases full of amber rings and silver necklaces, 32-year-old Toni Quintero says he's looking for a new line of work. Selling trinkets to tourists just hasn't paid off in the past two months.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The drop has been massive. Business is down 70 percent," he said. "There's no one here anymore - and I blame it all on [suspected terrorist Osama] bin Laden. He's killing us, too."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Felix Incarnacin had long made the hourlong trip here from Santo Domingo to hawk his cigars and pipes at a street fair, but now he isn't sure it's worth the gas anymore. In 11 years living off tourists, the 24-year-old has never seen business dry up like this. "It's the worst it's ever been," he said as he tried to lure the few tourists here from the other vendors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The triple hit to the economy has all but gutted the country's growth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Economists here say the nation should still muster about 2 percent growth for 2001, but their forecasts range from negative to zero growth in 2002.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On an island where blackouts in cities are as common as zinc-roof huts in the countryside, the abrupt recession has had brutal consequences.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Desperately needed roads that had been planned won't be built. Officials have suspended projects to complete new airports and hydroelectric plants.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Plans to build homes and offices have stopped midway through construction. And many needed services and other plans will be cut back or abandoned throughout the country.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This is really a tragedy for such a well-performing economy," said Frederic Emam-Zade.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He served as deputy secretary of state under the last president, Leonel Fernandez, whom many credit with ushering in genuine democracy in the Dominican Republic. That move toward democracy continues under current president Hiplito Meja.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now an economist at a local think tank, Emam-Zade says he's trying to remain optimistic: "This is a shakeout. We will learn from it and be more competitive when it's over."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But others are less sanguine - especially those in the hotel industry, which is feeling the full brunt of the economic downturn. Since Sept. 11, at least 30 hotels have closed, those in the industry here say. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For those remaining open, staffs have been cut back significantly over the past two months, and two economists estimate that 30 percent of tourists who planned to visit for the holidays next month have already cancelled their reservations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In Boca Chica's largest and oldest hotel, Coral Hamaca, more than 200 of 630 rooms were unoccupied this week, a large number of vacancies for a hotel whose occupancy rate usually tops 90 percent this time of year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Last year, tourism increased 15 percent from the previous year, the average growth rate in recent years. But now, under even the best-case scenario, tourism will pump $2.8 billion into the Dominican economy for 2001, marking a 2 percent decline from last year and the first time in many years that tourism would have failed to grow.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We've become part of the global economy," said William Malamud, executive vice president of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Dominican Republic. "It has brought wealth to the DR, but when there's a dive in the global economy, we take the dive, too."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The tourists may have thinned out, but the merengue, salsa, and bachata music are still blaring. The pina coladas are flowing from the stocked bars by the white-sand beaches. And the ebullient staff at resorts here are ever present, beseeching tourists to play volleyball or watch a live show.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For more years than he can remember, Johnny Velez has been greeting tourists with a wide grin and sending them off on whitewater rafting trips in the country's mountains, on helicopter and horseback rides, and on diving tours in the aquamarine waters surrounding the lush two-thirds of the island the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are certainly fewer Germans, French, and Americans here now, but Velez says he is confident they'll be back in droves soon enough.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"They'll want to escape the cold," he said with a smile. "That's a desire immune to terrorism, I hope."</span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Previous Day's Story:</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">AGONY OF VICTIMS' FAMILIES MOVES ACROSS DOMINICAN REPUBLIC</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 11/15/2001</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">THE CRASH OF FLIGHT 587 / A DOMINICAN TOWN MOURNS</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">BANI, Dominican Republic - Most were coming down for the nine-day annual fiesta to celebrate their town's patron saint. Instead, the feasts that began Monday were abruptly canceled, the bouncy music usually blaring from every bodega was silenced, and the processions through the narrow, centuries-old streets are now to mourn the dead.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On one corner here a man wearing a tattered T-shirt with faded letters spelling "Jamaica Plain Community Center Day Camp Staff" strolled over to a sign bearing a list of names, shook his head a few times, and said he couldn't find the words to express his feelings.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The sign listed the names of the more than 200 Dominican passengers who died on flight 587 - 41 of whom officials here believe were born in this Dominican town about 40 miles west of Santo Domingo.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We were hit the hardest of anyone in this country - and it's not easy," said Bani Mayor Daniel Alvarez whose hilly town of 120,000 people is the source of more Dominicans living in Boston than any other part of the Dominican Republic. "This is a tragedy that came so quick and affected so many here that it's still hard to believe."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nearly everyone here knows a neighbor, cousin, or friend who died Monday when the American Airlines flight dropped out of the sky shortly after takeoff in New York.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Government officials say 30 families in Bani lost relatives. Few could mistake the sorrow in the streets. On Monday, Dominican President Hipolito Mejia ordered the nation to observe three days of official mourning. Here, that meant all the shops set up to sell food, toys, and party gifts to honor La Virgen de La Regla were closed and the town's plaza looked like an empty carnival.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Few here could be deaf to the sobbing that echoed over the past three days from dozens of verandas like the one at Ramona Amparo Pimentel's well-furnished home.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Her son, Viky Andrew Pimentel, was in the middle of a two-hour drive to Las Americas International Airport to meet her when a radio bulletin nearly made him drive off the potholed road. He raced to the airport and immediately called relatives in New York, who told him his mother was aboard the flight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It was absolutely terrible, terrible - it was her birthday, she turned 55 on Monday, and we had a big cake for her," he said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Another surviving child, Jitte Gool Pimental, with tears welling said, "She kept saying she didn't want to fly. It was like an omen or something."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Pimental was returning home after a two week visit to a brother in Brooklyn and a niece in Jamaica Plain. Like many Dominicans who live in the United States to earn a living, she decided to retire in the Dominican Republic. But she didn't want to lose her residency status and made sure to visit the United States several times a year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The matron of a large, far-flung family who owned a bodega in Brooklyn, Pimental often helped support her children and cousins and many of them comforted each other yesterday in her open-air living room.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A similar misery filled the home a few blocks away of Altagracia and Mercide Sanchez. The couple lost two of their four children. Jose, 36, and Elvis, 34, both worked at an uncle's bodega in Washington Heights and both were married with children.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nearly a dozen neighbors and friends sat on rented chairs in the Sanchez living room and grieved with the retired couple, who had also worked for many years in New York. The two said American Airlines is flying them to New York today so they can help identify the bodies of their sons and bring them home.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I was cooking for them when I heard the news - and I haven't had any peace since," Altagracia said. "They always loved to be down here this time of the year and they would always go out and dance and see old friends. It's hard to believe they won't be here anymore, too hard."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Two blocks away, Juan Antonio Brito couldn't stand the constant crying in his house so he went to his outdoor, dirt-floor autoshop and worked at repairing an old engine rather than mourning the loss of his 53-year-old sister, Margarita Reina.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This town doesn't deserve this," he said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117419109887588212005-05-29T18:59:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:37:53.649-08:00D.R. Reels from Crash of Flight 587<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 11/14/2001</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">THE CRASH OF FLIGHT 587 / THE VICTIMS</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic</strong> - Hurricanes have walloped this small, lush country; buses sometimes plunge off rickety mountain roads; and political conflict once regularly erupted in bloodshed, but Dulce Mateo has never seen a tragedy here of this magnitude before.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Not in such an instant, without any warning, and with so many dead," said Mateo, who lost her 53-year-old sister-in-law, Virginia Mateo, and her 6-year-old nephew, Steven Lora, in the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 minutes after liftoff Monday morning from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This is a small island," said Mateo, the owner of a small jewelry shop outside the capital. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Nearly everyone knows someone who was on that flight."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Dominican Republic has not been immune to airplane crashes, but in the past, many of those who died in such crashes here were tourists.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">American Airlines officials say 175 of the 256 passengers on board Flight 587 carried Dominican passports. Yet the vast majority of the others who died, officials here say, were Dominicans who moved to the United States and became US citizens.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This is a grand tragedy without precedent for us - in human, social, economic, and political terms," said Luis Gonzales, spokesman for President Hipolito Mejia, who on Monday declared that the nation would observe three days of official mourning. "It is especially hard after Sept. 11."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Among the thousands who died in the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center were 41 Dominicans. And one of those who survived the collapse of the Twin Towers, a 26-year-old Au Bon Pain clerk named Hilda Yolanda Mayor, died aboard Flight 587. Among the others whose lives were lost were Rafael Ravelo, a candidate for mayor in a town outside of the capital, and Cucu Balou, one of the nation's most famous meringue musicians.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The impact of Monday's tragedy, officials here say, is not confined to the families who lost loved ones.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Millions of dollars here have been lost since Sept. 11 as tourism dropped off by as much 10 percent nationally and by 30 percent at some of the nation's top resorts. Tourism from Europe, Canada, and the United States had started picking up again in the past few weeks, but in the past two days many travelers have canceled their plans. Officials here now believe that fear of flying may cut into the Dominican Republic's busiest tourist season: Thanksgiving week and the Christmas holidays.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Others are concerned about the financial health of an already reeling American Airlines, the largest US air service with regular flights to the Dominican Republic. Dominicans are concerned that if the airline decided to cut flights here as a cost-saving measure, they would feel isolated. On an island about 1,000 miles southeast of Miami, airplanes are the only practical way for most people to travel outside the country.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We have many concerns now because this is without doubt the largest tragedy of modern times for this country," said Bernardo Vega, who served as Dominican ambassador to the United States until two years ago and is now editor of one of the country's largest newspapers, El Caribe. "We have now been double punched and we are hoping to be able to get back up. This one hit very close to home." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The last major air crash here occurred in 1996, when shortly after takeoff a Turkish charter flight fell into the ocean near the northern city of Puerto Plata, killing 189 mostly German passengers. In 1992, 34 passengers on a Cuban plane died on their way to Havana when their flight slammed into a mountain. The only previous large air crash occurred in 1970 when a Dominicana Airlines plane crashed on its way to Puerto Rico, killing 44 Dominicans.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dulce Mateo has no interest in comparing tragedies. Like many of the victims' families here, she has been too busy fighting tears over the past two days.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The 45-year-old, who lives near the resort town of Boca Chica, has spent hours at Santo Domingo's Las Americas International Airport seeking information from American Airlines. She has been to a nearby hotel where American has brought in scores of psychologists and crisis managers from Miami and San Juan. And she is planning a visit to the US Embassy, where scores of Dominicans have provided DNA samples to identify family members and have sought visas to fly to New York.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For now, Mateo is just waiting for the bodies of her sister-in-law and nephew.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Nobody should have to go through this," she said as she left a meeting with psychologists yesterday.</span><br />
<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></strong>
<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Initial Crash Story:</span></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">SHOCK AND UNCERTAINTY COEXIST WITH A YEARNING FOR MIRACLES</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">11/13/2001 </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - By the time Cecilia Vega arrived in the cavernous terminal of the capital's Las Americas International Airport, there was little doubt about what had happened yesterday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The crying and screaming and hugging had been going on here all day, as relatives of the victims on American Airlines Flight 587 trickled into the seaside airport.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was nearly 9 p.m. when she finally made it here from her modest home in the southern province of San Cristobal, and she wasn't quite sure what to do. Her 40-year-old sister, Zeneida Vega, was on the flight. As she spoke, her eyes welled with tears.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"She has four children, four children," she said shaking her head. "It can't be."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">No one survived the crash. American Airlines officials here said that about 90 percent of the passengers - or 221 people - were Dominicans.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But they wouldn't release a list of names last night and airline officials sent family members to a private room in the airport. Later, many of the family members were taken to a private hotel about 20 minutes away from the airport, where Dominican officials set up a bereavement center. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In a statement broadcast on TV, Dominican President Hipolito Mejia expressed his "deep sorrow." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The island's biggest baseball sports hero, Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa, was home yesterday and released a statement on Major League Baseball's Web site. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"My country is devastated," he said. "Today is my birthday - now I will associate tragedy with my birthday. So many Dominicans as well as Americans lost their lives today." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dominicans here said they believed a group of popular merengue singers were on the flight and many said this was a double whammy, after many of their countrymen perished during the attacks on the World Trade Center. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Why us?" said Danny Plata, a 54-year-old taxi driver who spent the day at the airport watching family members of those killed walk in and collapse in tears. "We have hurricanes and poverty. Do we need more?" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For Cecilia Vega, the day was a long, bumpy drive from her home, which she said had been spruced up with gifts from her sister. Zeneida had lived in Manhattan the past 12 years and frequently visited her family here. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She was the lifeline for Cecilia, sending her and her relatives hundreds of much-needed dollars every year. Now, as the holidays approach, Cecilia said she wasn't sure how the family would get by and how she would break the news to her children and her sister's children. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Maybe there was a miracle," she said. "I believe in miracles."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117418364918624292005-05-29T18:51:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:38:38.341-08:00AIDS Linked to Infidelity in D.R.<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Globe Correspondent | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">12/28/1999</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>JARABACOA, Dominican Republic</strong> - The gushy ballad lilting from the radio as the compact car cruises slowly down the street does not attract the women as much as William's whistling does.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Two girls in skin-tight clothes, idling beside a wooden shack, smile back at him. And William, a recently married 30-year-old whose wife is expecting a child in February, explains why a married man is entitled to a few girlfriends. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"A man needs more than one woman," says William, a sales clerk who would be identified only by his first name. "The women understand. We have our needs."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If some women turn a blind eye, health officials do not. Infidelity, they said, is one of the leading reasons for the spread of AIDS in this poor Caribbean nation, which has one of Latin America's highest percentages of people carrying HIV. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In private, some married men compare their mistresses to branch offices, while their wives are the main office. If he has the means, a man here might provide his "sucursal" - in Spanish, literally, a "branch office" - with a home, an allowance, and even children.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although the practice is widespread, and women are well aware of it, many wives are in the dark about their husbands' lovers. And for health officials trying to control sexually transmitted diseases, the prevalence of surreptitious affairs makes it even harder to fight diseases such as AIDS. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The main victims, and the fastest-growing class of AIDS victims, are married women," said Martha Butler, director of the National Program of Control of AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases. "The problem is that they think they have nothing to worry about. Married couples don't use condoms."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although Dominican Health Ministry studies have found that more than 50 percent of men have extramarital affairs, Butler said, the surveys may understate the reality. A similar study in 1996 by the University of Chicago found that 22 percent of men in the United States admit having affairs. But people tend to lie when asked if they have had sex outside of marriage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Few Dominicans receive sexual education. And according to a study released in October by the Health Ministry, 44 percent of boys and 36 percent of girls have had sexual intercourse by age 14. So few used condoms, the survey found, that at least 78 percent of the girls became pregnant, most of them in isolated rural towns such as Jarabacoa.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But what troubles health officials most is that 84 percent of teenagers surveyed said they believed they could not catch AIDS. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"People are just not conscious about the disease; they think they are invulnerable," said Carmen Capell, director of a health clinic in Santo Domingo that treats AIDS patients. "The guilt lies with the state. We have to educate people more, and that starts in the schools. But it's something taboo. People here are just embarrassed to talk about it."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Since 1986, more than 4,750 Dominicans have reported being infected with HIV, and hospitals across the country have recorded more than 4,890 AIDS patients, according to the Health Ministry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Today, more than 100,000 people, 2.8 percent of the 8 million Dominicans, carry HIV. By 2005, the number is expected to climb to at least 3.3 percent of the population, and an increasing number of them will be married women. The Dominican figures compare to a worldwide adult HIV-infection rate of 1 percent for adults and 0.76 percent in the United States.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Furthermore, international agencies believe the AIDS problem is much worse than the Health Ministry reports."We are sure there are many people going around with AIDS and they don't know it," said a United Nations AIDS official in the Dominican Republic who asked not to be named. "We feel underreporting is as high as 60 percent."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The incidence of AIDS in the Caribbean is second only to that in sub-Saharan Africa, where the virus has been reported in about 8 percent of the region's population, according to a recently released UN report. Nearly 2 percent of the Caribbean region's population is HIV-positive; Southeast Asia, with less than a 0.7 percent HIV-positive rate, has the next-highest percentage of carriers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the Dominican Republic, where nearly as many women as men are now HIV-positive, infidelity, ignorance, and the church's opposition to condoms are among the main reasons for the climbing AIDS rate, health officials here said.Prostitution is another. The Health Ministry estimated more than 200,000 women and men work as prostitutes. They mainly operate off the nation's booming tourism industry, which grew nearly 10 percent in the first eight months of 1999, according to government statistics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Officials, however, said prostitution is only a small part of the problem, as most of the prostitutes have been educated to use condoms. The real danger, they say, is for those who think they have nothing to risk.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Most Dominicans have extramarital affairs, that's a big problem for AIDS here," said Francisco Ferreira, director of education for COIN, a private group that counsels prostitutes on the dangers of AIDS. "This is part of the machismo culture, and it's something very difficult to change."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Cruising through Jarabacoa, William points out where the local prostitutes meet their men. But he laughs when asked if he has sought their services.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I've got the magic; I don't need prostitutes," he says. "Girls love me. If I get bored, I'll find another."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117425866016657492005-05-28T21:01:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:39:34.569-08:00Overcoming Peru's Plague<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">11/10/2004</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>LIMA</strong> – At the southern edge of this enormous city, atop a cliff jutting over the Pacific, an old, dilapidated mansion holds evidence of the often indiscriminate violence that plagued Peru for 20 years and left some 70,000 people dead.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The evidence comes in the form of hundreds of harrowing photos documenting the assassinations, torture, and bombings, among other crimes, that rent Peru between 1980 and 2000 as state security forces battled Maoist rebel groups.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The large, mainly black-and-white photos, which cover the pockmarked walls of 27 rooms, range from discreet to gory. Together, reflected in the eyes of campesinos, soldiers, and rebels, they tell the story of how this Andean nation unraveled.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As moving as it is, what’s most impressive about the museum is that it exists. Unlike other Latin American nations torn by violence over much of the same period, Peru is the only with such an exhibit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The year-old exhibition – commissioned by the government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and called “Yuyanapaq,” or “To Remember,” in the Quechua language of much of Peru’s indigenous population – starts in the back of the house, where curators left the old walls in disrepair.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“The house speaks to us – its walls and structure tell a story of destruction that allows us to make an analogy between it and Peruvian society,” the curators wrote of Casa Riva Aguero, the mansion now owned by the Catholic University in Lima.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first rooms take visitors to the 1970s, where large photos show how leftist groups such as the Shining Path and, later, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement tramped across the nation’s rural highlands, torching ballot boxes and hanging dogs from lampposts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a timeline and video of the conflict, the exhibit unfolds chronologically, with photos of the distraught widows of murdered policemen; one woman in traditional garb wailing over the body of a dead relative; two chapped, soiled hands holding a tiny black-and-white picture of a lost farmer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some rooms focus on specific fronts of the conflict – the polarization of the universities, the bombs in the cities, the massacres in mountain villages. One room features the voices of survivors telling their stories. Another has a wall covered with a massive picture of a city building destroyed and a man rolling up the picture of the nation’s president after a Shining Path attack.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On a Web site accompanying the Truth Commission’s 5,000-page report about the conflict, Salomón Lerner Febres, the commission’s president, wrote that many of the photos could carry the following caption:“Let the horror be gone forever, the painful memories converted to hope. Let life in Peru go on with solidarity and justice.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117250594790376532005-05-27T20:10:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:41:11.901-08:00In Venezuela, A Coup or Uprising?<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 5/05/2002</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />It was an ominous, if all-too-familiar image for Latin America: Flanked by a row of stern-faced military men, their golden epaulets and brass medals shimmering in television lights, the newly installed "transitional leader" lauded the arrest of the nation's democratically elected president and decreed the dissolution of its legislature, supreme court, and constitution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the same time last month, and as familiar and ominous for many throughout this coup-plagued region as the scene playing out in the presidential palace, another US government was making friendly overtures to the latest group of generals and civilian elites to grab power in Latin America. Earlier on that chaotic day in Venezuela, the US State Department issued a statement praising the military and blaming the bloody turn of events on the nation's ousted president, Hugo Chavez.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Almost immediately, from Havana to Mexico City to Buenos Aires, headlines decried US imperialism. Reports of meetings between US officials and opposition leaders led to rumors of CIA involvement and shadowy US military attaches calling the shots from local military bases.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With memories of US complicity in the toppling of elected governments in Chile, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, politicians throughout Latin America had good reason to question the depth of Washington's support of democracy. Critics around the world blasted the Bush administration for hypocrisy. If Chavez wasn't an outspoken leftist who had befriended Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein, among other snubs to Washington, they asked, would the administration have welcomed his overthrow?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The criticism hit the mark, especially after a counter-uprising returned a triumphant Chavez to the presidential palace within 48 hours. The Bush administration denied any role in engineering his ouster and withdrew support for the transitional regime.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But was the administration right from the beginning? After all, the military chiefs refused to fire on their own people. Television images from the mass demonstrations on April 11 showed Chavez supporters firing on unarmed marchers, killing at least 17 and wounding more than a hundred. And with his radical policies and growing disregard for democratic checks and balances, few argue that Chavez didn't, as the State Department said, "provoke" the crisis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Moreover, Chavez, a former paratrooper jailed after leading a bloody coup attempt in 1992, had already dismantled much of the democracy that brought him to power.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A mestizo promising to help the poor, Chavez won a landslide victory at the polls three years ago. Riding a wave of popularity, the charismatic leader oversaw the writing of a new constitution, which allowed him to stay in power more than twice as long as under the previous one. He forcefully dissolved the congress and replaced it with a new national assembly stacked with friends, fired all the supreme court justices and appointed his allies, politicized the military and armed groups of urban supporters.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Given the events that led to Chavez's fall from power before dawn on April 12, including rallies of hundreds of thousands of people, was what occurred a coup or a popular uprising?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"There was no secret plot, as was the case when Chavez led a military assault against the government in 1992," says Ricardo Hausmann, the former chief economist of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington and a former government minister in Venezuela who now teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "These were mass demonstrations."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Unlike a traditional coup in which civil liberties are taken away, Hausmann and others argue, the opposition rose up to defend and promote them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Like Fujimori in Peru, this was a neo-authoritarian regime - elected and using democratic means to take over all public power," says Carlos Blanco, a columnist for the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal and another former government minister now at Harvard. "What happened . . . was an uprising against authoritarianism."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Both Hausmann and Blanco, however, argue the uprising was "hijacked" when Pedro Carmona, the head of Venezuela's top business association appointed by generals as the nation's transitional leader, dissolved the national assembly and supreme court - rash, unpopular decisions that helped speed Chavez's return to power.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet with his support in polls below 30 percent and a restive population thronging around the presidential palace, they and others justify the pressure on Chavez and his Cabinet to resign.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To others, such overt military pressure on a fairly elected president represents the difference between a coup and a legitimate overthrow of an authoritarian regime. Instead of asking Chavez to resign with a gun pointed to his head, they argue, the opposition should have followed the constitution and acted against the president in the congress or the supreme court.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This was absolutely a coup," says Arturo Valenzuela, director of Western Hemisphere affairs in the Clinton administration who now oversees the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University. "They didn't resort at all to constitutional order. If Chavez resigned, power should have gone to the vice president."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although they acknowledge Chavez's bent toward authoritarianism, Valenzuela and others criticize the Bush administration for applauding a coup.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"If Chavez did order his supporters to shoot protesters, as the opposition contends, then the military had justification to arrest him," says Jennifer McCoy, a Venezuela specialist and director of the Americas Program at the Atlanta-based Carter Center. "But does that justify overthrowing the whole government? Absolutely not."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Those who support the Bush administration's response to Chavez's brief ouster, however, argue that at the time it appeared as though Chavez had been swept from power in a fashion similar to the toppling of elected autocrats like Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia or Peru's Alberto Fujimori.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The military's intervention came at a time of chaos, they argue, after the president ordered troops and tanks to confront the thousands of protesters nearing the presidential palace, after men wearing Chavez's trademark red berets were seen on live television spraying bullets at the opposition, and after General Lucas Rincon, chief of the armed forces and one of the president's most trusted allies, publicly confirmed Chavez's resignation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"There's no question this popular uprising looked like a coup - and that it eventually became one because of stupid, illegitimate decisions that led the new regime to collapse," says Hausmann. "But what happened was a mess of Chavez's own creation. The armed forces behaved professionally in refusing his orders and the Bush administration was right from the beginning: Chavez provoked the crisis and he lost control of it."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span><br /> Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1117250058486079852005-05-27T20:05:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:44:38.993-08:00The Pope's Pilgrimage<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 7/30/2002</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>GUATEMALA CITY</strong> - Pope John Paul II arrived yesterday in this volcano-ringed capital and declared himself "a pilgrim of love and hope" in a nation where the Catholic Church is revered by some and reviled by others for its role during a 36-year civil war.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The ailing 82-year-old pontiff, who had been able to walk up the stairs to his plane in Toronto, used a hydraulic lift to descend from the plane and then a motorized cart to go the few feet to a podium. Using a cane and the arms of two bishops, he eased himself onto a throne, shut his eyes, and clasped his head in what appeared to be complete exhaustion.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then, under a warm afternoon sun at the start of a 6-mile carpet of flowers leading from the airport to the city center, he addressed a welcoming party of presidents, cardinals, and dignitaries from all of Central America.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I come here as a pilgrim of love and hope," he said in Spanish. He said he hoped his visit would be "a true moment of grace and renewal for Guatemala" and help the country search for "peace, solidarity, and justice."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The pope's two-day visit, his third to Guatemala, comes at a tense time for the nation's Catholic Church.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although the civil war ended six years ago with a peace treaty, officials in the church have received an increasing number of death threats in recent months as they have sought to expose atrocities allegedly committed by the nation's military during the conflict.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The tension here is also religious. More than a third of this impoverished country's 13 million people - a greater proportion than anywhere in Latin America - are now Protestant, and some have voiced complaints in recent weeks that the government has spent millions of dollars on the pope's visit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still, a crowd estimated at 1 million lined the route from the airport yesterday, waving yellow and white Vatican flags, blowing kisses, and screaming with elation "Juan Pablo, Juan Pablo" as the pope slowly passed, waving from his glass-encased popemobile.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"For too long, there has been confrontation and division in our country," said the Rev. Juan Carlos Cordova, a spokesman for the Guatemala City Archdiocese. "The pope is bringing a message of peace - that the conflict has to stop and solutions must be found to prevent any resumption of war."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The pope's first visited Guatemala in 1983, at the height of the civil war, when entire villages were being wiped out in the fighting. Many here credit the pope's second visit, six years ago, with helping push the guerrillas, paramilitaries, and government to make peace. But the peace hasn't stopped all the intimidation and killing after the region's bloodiest war, which claimed more than 200,000 lives from 1960 to 1996.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even after the peace accord, the church has been targeted. In 1998, Juan Gerardi Conedera, a senior bishop, was murdered shortly after publishing a report that pinned nearly all the blame of war crimes on the nation's military and pro government paramilitary groups.<br /><br />In recent weeks, death threats have been leveled against a bishop, six priests, and officials in the church human rights office. In February, a Catholic church that contained records and equipment to analyze the remains of massacre victims was burned to the ground. And last week, after a spate of vandalism at churches and human rights offices, shots were fired at the courthouses where three military officers were appealing their convictions in Gerardi Conedera's death.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sparking fears that the civil war could re-ignite, paramilitary members in June took over all the roads in a northern province to demand back pay for their wartime service. The ruling party, led by some of the men who ruled during the most bloody phases of the civil war, promised to consider a new national tax to raise $2,500 per paramilitary member.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The heart of the pope's visit is the creation today of Central America's first saint, Pedro de San Jose Betancur, a 17th-century Franciscan friar who was beatified two decades ago for establishing a hospital in Guatemala's old capital that treated poor Mayan Indians, prisoners, abandoned children, and the handicapped.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">All around the capital, posters of the pope and "Hermano Pedro" - who the Vatican says cured people of terminal diseases - hung from lampposts, homes, and stores shuttered for the duration of John Paul's visit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I'm sure the pope is aware of the state of the country and wants to keep the government on the road to peace, but the prime motive of his trip is evangelical," said Stephen Pope, chairman of the theology department at Boston College. "He's trying to spread the faith in a country where more and more people are leaving for Protestantism."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To some Protestants, however, the canonization is a thinly veiled effort at blunting their gains.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"There's no doubt he's trying to convert people, and we see this whole visit as a sad situation," said David Munguia, president of the Evangelical Alliance of Guatemala. "I'm worried his visit will just divide the people."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"What I want to know," said Ingrid Pirir, 24, a teacher at the Evangelical Church of New Jerusalem in Guatamala City, "is this: Where's the government getting the money to spend millions of dollars on one man when so many are suffering in this country?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Not all Protestants, however, view the pope with hostility. As long as he talks about peace and respects their faiths, they say they don't mind his visits.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Yes, we are different and we don't take our cues from the Vatican, but we don't feel any bad feelings toward the pope," said Julio Cesar Paz, pastor of La Iglegia Evengelica Central, which 120 years ago became the first Presbyterian church to open in Guatemala. "We think he's a good man and can help this country."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Along the route to the city yesterday, the throngs had wanted simply to get a glimpse of the pope. As vendors sold key chains, balloons, and T-shirts emblazoned with the pope's image, more than 1 million people jostled for front-row spots to see the ailing man in the white mozzetta.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sprinkling water to mat down a section of the elegant carpet of pine needles, chrysanthemums, geraniums, and colored sawdust, Patricia de Morales was beaming.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This is so beautiful for us, that he chose to visit us again in the last years of his life," said Morales, 39, who arrived like countless others before dawn to arrange the carpet. "This is just really huge for all of Guatemala."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The pope, who is on an 11-day tour of the Americas, flies to Mexico today following Mass.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.<br /><br /><br /><strong>POPE INSPIRES GUATEMALA,</strong><strong> NAMES FIRST SAINT IN CENTRAL AMERICA</strong> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Globe Staff | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">7/31/2002</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>GUATEMALA CITY</strong> - Pope John Paul II, nearly overcome by weariness, canonized a 17th century Spanish missionary as Central America's first saint yesterday during a Mass before half a million jubilant Roman Catholics.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When he spoke, the pontiff's Spanish was slurred and he took long pauses. The pauses were met with near silence.<br /><br />But when John Paul, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, arthritis, and knee and hip ailments, finished canonizing Pedro de San Jose Betancur, the crowd at the old racetrack erupted. The Guatemalans waved flags, sent balloons aloft, and chanted their love for the pope.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The new saint represents an urgent appeal to practice mercy in modern society, especially when so many are hoping for a helping hand," the 82-year-old pontiff told followers who skipped sleep Monday night to secure a spot in the stadium. "I am convinced of the present day importance of his message. He was truly a brother to all who lived in misfortune."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The pope's elevation of Betancur was his 463d of his nearly 24-year papacy. "Father Pedro" ministered to prisoners, Indians, orphans, and the poor. He also founded the world's first hospital for convalescents, and established the House of Our Lady of Bethlehem, which grew into the Bethlemite religious order.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We can't find the adequate words to say what this miracle of love and happiness means for Guatemala," said Guatemala's archbishop, Rodolfo Quezada.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The pope, who left Guatemala for Mexico yesterday after only 25 hours in this smoggy, volcano-ringed capital, rode around the stadium in his popemobile. Then he used a motorized cart and the help of several bishops to take his seat on an ornate throne in front of a flower-draped altar for the Mass.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Also at the Mass, Quezada pronounced Juan Jose Gerardi a martyr. Gerardi, a Guatemalan bishop, was bludgeoned to death in 1998 after blaming the military for the majority of war crimes during the nation's 36-year civil war.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The majority of the 200,000 who died during the civil war were indigenous Guatemalans. The Indians appeared to be the majority at yesterday's Mass, and the applause was loudest when John Paul told them: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The pope does not forget you and, admiring the values of your cultures, encourages you to overcome with hope the sometimes difficult situations you experience. . . . You deserve all the respect and have the right to fulfill yourselves completely, in justice, integral development, and peace."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The message resonated with Delores Jochola Patzun, 39, who with 12 family members arrived at the stadium Monday afternoon from a small town along the Pacific coast. None of the family had slept, but they watched every expression of the pontiff and they only had praise for him. "We're very lucky to have him visiting Guatemala for the third time," she said. "And we thank him very much for giving us this saint."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although they don't doubt his benevolence, some question the value of making Betancur a saint in 21st century Guatemala. "Guatemalans today could use a saint more in tune with their own times," said Catherine M. Mooney, a Guatemala specialist who teaches at the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some among this nation's growing number of Protestants say that the canonization was a thinly veiled attempt to blunt their evangelical efforts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Regardless, the ceremony yesterday brought much of this nation of 13 million to a standstill. Stores across the capital were shuttered. Schools and offices closed around the country. And local television stations broadcast the pope's words live.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a gesture of good will on behalf of a request by the pope, Guatemala's president, Alfonso Portillo, sent a proposal to Congress on Monday to eliminate the country's death penalty. There are 36 people on death row.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For some, the pontiff's visit was tinged with sadness as they worried that they may never again see him. "We love him - he has been very good to Guatemala," said Juventina de Batreiz, 40, noting the pope's help in pushing the country toward peace in 1996.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Just as the pontiff was finishing his remarks - saying, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Guatemala, I carry you in my heart" - there came a sign that many in the crowd took as a devine signal. Appearing like a halo, a rainbow made a complete circle around the noontime sun.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's a miracle," Maria Escobar, 42, said as she left the stadium with her husband. "What else more could we ask for?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.<br /><br /><br /><strong>MILLIONS IN MEXICO CITY STRIVE TO GLIMPSE POPE</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Globe Staff | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">8/01/2002</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>MEXICO CITY</strong> - They hung from trees, crowded onto rooftops and balconies, and some scuffled for front-row views along the boulevards of this massive city.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Walking, hitching rides, and flying in from all over this staunchly Catholic country, more than 4 million people thronged into the streets to glimpse Pope John Paul II, bringing much of this smoggy, car-choked capital to a standstill. The pontiff waved wearily to onlookers as his motorcade brought him to and from the Basilica of Guadalupe, where he canonized the Americas' first indigenous saint.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Maria Morales spent hours crammed into a small truck traveling from a northern state. Though she arrived a day before and hoped to attend the Mass yesterday, the 35-year-old robed nun wasn't one of the 22,000 able to enter the sprawling basilica.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Instead, with millions of others, she took a yellow and white Vatican flag and settled for a spot along the 10-mile path the pope took from the basilica to the capital's apostolic nunciature.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It was quick, but it was definitely worth the trip," said Morales, after the popemobile passed her, moving more quickly than it had on other visits, she and others said. "Just to see him - that's all I wanted."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The city organized more than 200,000 volunteers and some 35,000 police officers to keep the streets clear as the pope made his way around Mexico City, police officials said. Government workers planted flowers, spruced up battered streets with fresh paint, and erected large screens at closed-off intersections around the city to let people watch the pope's Mass.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At one intersection along Paseo de la Reforma, the city's principal thoroughfare, about 5,000 people wept, sang, and chanted: "Juan Pablo Segundo, te quiere todo el mundo," telling the pope: "The whole world loves you."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Both before and after the pope drove past, the crowd was jubilant, as if in the midst of a fiesta. People danced, listened to mariachi bands, and they sold everything from tamales and peanuts to CDs, posters, and T-shirts with the pope's image.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This visit - probably his last visit to Mexico, unless God sends him back - gives us all a lot of happiness," said Heriberto Castaneda, 48, who has seen the pope each of the five times he has visited this nation since his first trip here in 1979.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Most onlookers just wanted to get a look at the pope during his 42-hour visit on the third and final leg of an 11-day journey that also took him to Canada and Guatemala, where he canonized Central America's first saint on Tuesday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some Catholics have criticized the Vatican's decision to canonize Juan Diego, a 16th century Aztec Indian who is said to have seen the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint, in 1531. Skeptics complain that Juan Diego's vision was an invention of the Catholic Church to help it proselytize among natives after the Spanish conquest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still, pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe hang in nearly every home and from the rear-view mirrors of many cars, a symbol of the role the image has played in securing Catholicism's hold on Mexico.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For Ophelia Retez, the canonization of Juan Diego was a statement that surpassed everything the pope has said and done. The 52-year-old, most of whose family is indigenous, said the pope was recognizing a population that has long suffered from discrimination in Mexico.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This is really huge for us," she said after blowing kisses as the pope zipped by yesterday. "He has touched this country very deeply, and especially the Indians. We will never forget him." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.<br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13116473.post-1118258980901327602005-05-26T12:27:00.000-07:002014-02-02T18:45:13.504-08:00Witness to a 'Revolution' in Venezuela<img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/320/image0-151.jpg" height="400" width="285" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Defense Week | 9/9/1999<br /><br /><strong>CARACAS</strong> - I sniffed news the moment I emerged from the shabby subway stop in front of the Capitol. But it didn't require a journalist to smell what would make headlines around the world. The dispersing cloud of tear gas was a telling sign.<br /><br />What was underway here in one of Latin America's oldest democracies that August morning was nothing less than a revolution, or as it's less euphemistically known, a coup d'etat.<br /><br />I knew that not because an array of police and soldiers were driving armored trucks shooting water cannons and hurling tear-gas grenades just outside the Capitol. Nor because thousands of opponents and supporters of the new president, a failed leader of a bloody coup in 1992, were exchanging insults and burning each other's icons. Neither was it the gas masks donned by TV cameramen or the 40 people pummeled by the frenzied crowds.<br /><br />It was from a few simple questions I asked one of several hundred soldiers in red berets and battle gear who was guarding the spiked-gate entrance surrounding the congressional compound.<br /><br />"Who's allowed to enter?" I asked the initially reticent guard. He looked at another soldier who appeared to be his superior.<br /><br />Then he responded: "Only members of the national assembly."<br /><br />"Does that mean members of Congress can't enter?" I prodded.<br /><br />He repeated himself, unequivocally and ominously for Venezuela's 38 years of uninterrupted, if woefully corrupt, democracy: "Only members of the National Assembly."<br /><br />What this and other soldiers' statements meant was, in effect, equivalent to the president of the United States telling senators and congressmen they couldn't enter the Capitol without the executive's permission.<br /><br />Here's why: After weeks of simmering tension between Venezuela's newly elected populist President Hugo Chavez and the opposition-controlled Congress, and shortly after his supporters snatched much of the powers of the nation's Supreme Court, the former Army lieutenant colonel and paratrooper made good on his warning to dissolve the disobedient Congress.<br /><br />But Chavez learned from his previous attempted coup, which left dozens dead and el comandante in jail for two years. While both this power grab and the last one enjoyed the support of most of the nation's 23 million people, whom have long lived in dire straits despite Venezuela's vast oil wealth, this putsch has been much neater.<br /><br />A few months after being elected with a sweeping majority, Chavez called for a national referendum on whether Venezuelans should rewrite their 1961 constitution, based roughly on the U.S. Constitution. Calling it "moribund" and a tool used by corrupt politicians to keep the people down, the fiery-tongued president used his access to national airwaves to sway the masses in his favor. Gaining the majority’s blessings was not difficult, given their increasing desperation and disillusionment with the status quo, not unlike the Germans during Hitler's democratic rise to power.<br /><br />Now, 121 of 131 elected members of the constitutional assembly are the president's supporters, including his wife, brother and five former ministers. Chavez has so far let the assembly do his dirty work and ignored a Supreme Court ruling that says the assembly's only legal function is to rewrite the nation's constitution.<br /><br />His supporters then proclaimed themselves Venezuela's "supreme" decision-making body. They gathered in the Capitol during Congress's summer recess and have since acted as if the body was omnipotent. For example, one of the constitutional assembly's first decrees was a "judicial emergency," enabling Chavez’s supporters to sack hundreds of lower court judges and oust Supreme Court justices they deemed corrupt.<br /><br />Their second significant decision was what provoked the melee at the Capitol late last month.<br /><br />The constitutional assembly declared a "legislative emergency," stripping Congress of all its powers, except budget oversight. But that authority too was removed this week after disgruntled lawmakers sought to use their remaining powers to prevent Chavez from traveling abroad. The assembly simply assumed the additional powers. Now, assembly leaders say they will issue a decree to strip state governors and big-city mayors of most of their powers.<br /><br />The coup de grace occurred last week when Chavez </span><img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/250/image0-141.jpg" height="400" width="274" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">mobilized the National Guard to block congressmen from convening in the Capitol. Members of Congress ended their summer recess early and called an emergency session to protest the assembly's action. But the National Guard wouldn’t let them enter. When several congressmen challenged the soldiers by climbing the gates, they were beaten and doused with pepper spray.<br /><br />"This finally shows the truth: Chavez wants to take all the power for himself and rid the nation of its checks and balances," Godofredo Marin, a congressman from the opposition Evangelical Party, told me after he was denied access to the Capitol. "This was the first violent action of the dictatorship. This is the way it starts. The same thing happened in Cuba."<br /><br />Copyright, Defense Week</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com