A major crisis for the Bolivian president (IHT)

Bolivian farmers who support President Evo Morales fought Saturday against those who called for more autonomy from his government. (Bruno Domingos/Reuters)

LA PAZ: President Evo Morales is facing the most acute crisis of his presidency as deaths from violence in rebellious northern Bolivia increased to almost 30 over the weekend. Supporters of Morales said that the death toll could rise with dozens of people caught up in the violence and still unaccounted for.
Relative calm returned to the northern department of Pando on Sunday after Morales declared martial law there and troops dispatched from La Paz seized the airport and other facilities in Cobija, the departmental capital. But the threat of unrest persists in other parts of Bolivia, and political leaders in the tropical lowlands bordering on Brazil said they would resume protests if killings in Pando continued.
Morales said that the violence was a massacre carried out partly by "Peruvian and Brazilian mercenaries" hired by the governor of Pando, Leopoldo Fernández, who went into hiding to avoid arrest. In comments to local radio, Fernández denied that accusation, asserting that the deaths resulted from clashes between anti-government protesters and the president's supporters.
On Sunday, Juan Ramón Quintana, a top aide to Morales, told a local radio station that Fernández had been arrested, The Associated Press reported.
The violence points to renewed tension over Morales's attempts to redistribute petroleum royalties and to overhaul the constitution to speed land reform and create a separate legal system for Bolivia's indigenous majority. Most of Bolivia's natural gas and food is produced in the eastern lowlands, and those departmental governments have chafed at the president's proposals.


The polarization of the country intensified in August after Morales won 67 percent approval in a nationwide referendum over his policies, reflecting intense support for him in the rural highlands and in large cities like La Paz and Cochabamba. But governors in the eastern departments who urge greater political and economic autonomy from Morales's government were reaffirmed in their posts with similar margins.
"You have a conflict between a constitutional national power and a de facto regional power that can only be resolved by constitutional force," said Heinz Dieterich, a political analyst base din Mexico who writes widely on leftist movements in Latin America. "If Evo does not use the judiciary and the military, there is no way he can govern."


http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/15/america/bolivia.php











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Outside Colombia's peaceful cities, a country at war (IHT)

BOGOTÁ: A much-heralded renaissance is under way in Colombia's largest cities, and few places capture it better than the Parque de la 93, a verdant, tranquil island of sidewalk cafés where Bogotanos listen to jazz, sample microbrewed beer or dine on Cantabrian prawns. So you can imagine the surprise a few weeks ago when 300 people displaced by fighting in the countryside tried to occupy the park, demanding greater benefits.
The protesting refugees, including about 30 children, served as a reminder that if Colombia's capital city is looking to a bright future, much of the countryside surrounding it is not. There, in the hamlets and jungles, Colombia remains at war, as it has been for generations.
The placid ambience underscores not so much a bright future for Colombia but rather the disconnect between the nation's ascendant cities - Bogotá and Medellín in particular - and its rural areas, mired in horrors.

The cities seem to be in a different country from the rural areas that are the domain of a dizzying array of private armies, including leftist guerrillas like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and resurgent right-wing paramilitary groups with names like New Generation and Black Eagles. Colombians explain the contrast with another expression, "ausencia del estado."
"This 'absence of the state' allows for Colombia to be a country of lords - the drug lord, the warlord, the landlord," said Silvana Paternostro, who wrote "My Colombian War" about her family's urban and rural life during the conflict. "Everything rural has been looked down upon, snubbed, and what was happening was a long list of horrors. It happened out in the open, under everyone's noses, but the capital was too busy getting the new facelift."
Among large Latin American countries, Colombia may trail only Brazil in the degree of economic inequality, said Michael LaRosa, a Colombia specialist at Rhodes College in Memphis. And it is in the rural areas where poverty is most severe, helping set the stage for warlords to fight for control of the coca fields.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/08/america/colombia.php





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Rise in food prices has Bolivian coca farmers planting rice

SINAHOTA, Bolivia: Soaring food prices may yet achieve what the United States has spent millions of dollars trying to do: persuade Bolivian farmers to sow their fields with crops other than coca, cocaine's raw ingredient.
The unlikely advocate for change is the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, who as leader of a powerful coca growers' union fought U.S. crop-substitution programs for two decades. But rising grain prices and food shortages have made Morales reconsider, and he is now asking coca farmers to supplement their crops with rice and corn as a way of holding down coca production while helping to feed the poorest country in South America.
U.S. programs have often banned the planting of coca - a small, green leaf sacred to Andean peoples and the base ingredient of cocaine - as a condition for farmers to receive aid for trying new crops.
In his own twist on alternative development, Morales is willing to split the difference: Growers can maintain up to one "cato" of coca - about a tenth of a hectare, or a third of an acre - which earns them about 720 bolivianos, or $100, a month while they receive a loan to plant other products.
The cato limit - in practice since 2004 - is seen by U.S. drug officials as a questionably legal concession to drug smugglers, but it has become the linchpin of Morales's strategy to fight narcotics while supporting the leaf's traditional use as a mild stimulant with medicinal qualities.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/20/america/bolivia.php





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Import of fresh meat from South America

01/07/2008 Press release
The Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health today supported a Commission proposal to allow imports of fresh meat from the additional areas in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, which are in a position to comply with EC import requirements. Recently, the competent authorities of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay have made considerable efforts to improve the animal health situation in their respective countries, and in particular as regards foot and mouth disease (FMD). Their efforts were recognised internationally by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and confirmed by recent Commission inspections. In Argentina, a new region termed "Patagonia North B" and corresponding to parts of the provinces of Neuquén and Rio Negro has been allowed to export to the EU bone-in fresh meat from ovine, caprine, bovine and game animals following its recognition of free of FMD) without vaccination by the OIE, and favourable Commission inspections. Other regions of Argentina continue to be authorised for export to the EU of de-boned fresh meat from bovine animals and other farmed ruminants. In Brazil, the States of Paraná and São Paulo have been authorised for export to the EU of de-boned and matured beef, following their recognition as free of FMD with vaccination by the OIE. In 2005, those States were excluded from the list of the Brazilian territories allowed to export beef to the EU following outbreaks of FMD. The special import requirements for Brazilian beef established with Decision 2008/61/EC limiting exports to meat obtained from animals from holdings approved by the Brazilian authorities will also apply to Paraná and São Paulo. Paraguay has been authorised for export to the EU of de-boned and matured bovine meat, following its recognition as free of FMD with vaccination by the OIE and favourable Commission inspections.




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Yes, we will have no bananas

OPINION
FIRST OIL, NOW BANANASYes, we will have no bananas
Dan Koeppel is the author of "Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World."

Once you become accustomed to gas at $4 a gallon, brace yourself for the next shocking retail threshold: bananas reaching $1 a pound. At that price, Americans may stop thinking of bananas as a cheap staple, and then a strategy that has served the big banana companies for more than a century - enabling them to turn an exotic, tropical fruit into an everyday favorite - will begin to unravel.The immediate reasons for the price increase are the rising cost of oil and reduced supply caused by floods in Ecuador, the world's biggest banana exporter. But something larger is going on that will affect prices for years to come.That bananas have long been the cheapest fruit at the grocery store is astonishing. They're grown thousands of miles away, they must be transported in cooled containers and even then they survive no more than two weeks after they're cut off the tree. Apples, in contrast, are typically grown within a few hundred miles of the store and keep for months in a basket out in the garage. Yet apples traditionally have cost at least twice as much per pound as bananas.Americans eat as many bananas as apples and oranges combined, which is especially amazing when you consider that not so long ago, bananas were virtually unknown here.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/18/opinion/edkoeppel.php











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