Hugo's Book Club

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should seriously consider starting up a book club.

From BBC News:

A book which the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez presented to US President Barack Obama at the Americas summit has become a bestseller in just two days.

The book, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, was ranked 54,295 on the sales charts of bookseller Amazon.com.

Now, it has risen to number two.

Written by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, the book looks at the impact of foreign intervention in Latin America in the past five centuries.

It covers the continent's conquest by the Spanish nearly 500 years ago right up to the present day.

President Chavez presented his American counterpart with the book, a favourite of leftists, on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad on Saturday.

For real, Chavez could make a killing doing this for a living. Like Oprah Winfrey is for fabricated memoirs, Chavez could be the literary bellwether for books on radical politics. As you may recall from three years ago, he promoted Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, which also made the top of many bestselling lists.

Here are a couple of books I would recommend for his list, both are relative to current affairs:

Managing Mexico: Economists from Nationalism to Neoliberalism by Sarah Babb

The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World by Vijay Prashad

You all can throw in your suggestions too!

American caravan blogs Cuba trip

Description: The United States has had a contentious relationship with Cuba for nearly half a century. With the recent change of political powers from Fidel Castro to his brother, Raul, and new leadership in the White House next year, many American activists see this as an opportunity to improve relations with the communist state. A group of pro-Cuba activists are blogging about why U.S. policies towards Cuba should change as they travel to the country.

Tools Being Used: Blogs

What Are They Doing: The 19th annual US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan, comprised of 100 Pastors For Peace volunteers, have been traveling across North America for the last month, educating the public about what they say are the detrimental effects of U.S. policies on Cuban society. Specifically the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act prohibits foreign companies that trade with the U.S. from also trading with Cuba. The law also prevents travel to Cuba by American citizens and imposes limits on how many times Cubans living in America can travel to their homeland to visit family. In 1996, the U.S. government enacted a penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine for violators of the embargo.

They are using their blog as a travel journal, publishing photos and stories from their trip.

"This caravan is the true face of the US people," said Rev. Lucius Walker, Jr., executive director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace in a statement. "The immoral and ignorant policy of the US government toward Cuba represents the power of a mean-spirited minority. This caravan embodies the true inner feelings of the US majority. We will keep challenging this unjust blockade until our government rescinds this inhuman policy that causes our neighbors so much suffering."

Yesterday the caravan converged in McAllen, TX, and plans to cross the Texas border into Reynosa, Mexico early on Thursday, July 3. From there they will commit the act of civil disobedience by flying into Havana, Cuba. While there, the caravan plans to give out donated aid to the needy and interact with Cuban civil society activists on a "people to people" mission.

Lisa Valanti, founder of the U.S.-Cuba Sister Cities Association, has been traveling with the caravan every year since its inception without accepting a license from the U.S. Treasury Department.

“Most Americans favor ending this embargo,” she said in a interview the Boston-based Bay State Banner. “What kind of people are we if we don’t demand this?”

American caravan seeks to improve U.S.-Cuban relations

Caption: Lisa Valanti (left) and Maribou Latour explain US-Cuban relations.

By Talia Whyte
Originally published in The Bay State Banner

Where the United States government sees danger, some American activists see opportunity.

For nearly the last five decades, the relationship between Cuba and America has been contentious. But now that an ailing Fidel Castro has ceded power to his brother Raúl, American activists say they want to change the dynamic between the two countries, largely by denouncing what they believe to be outdated U.S. policies toward the communist-aligned nation.

Nearly 100 people plan to spend the next month traveling across the United States and Canada as part of the 19th annual U.S. Cuban Friendshipment Caravan. Last week, the caravan made a stop at a packed Spontaneous Celebrations in Jamaica Plain.

The goal of the caravan is to educate Americans about what those onboard say are the detrimental effects that U.S. policies have on Cuban society.

Leading the charge was Lisa Valanti, the founder and president of the national U.S.-Cuba Sister Cities Association and founder of the Pittsburgh Cuba Coalition. She has traveled to Cuba 20 times without applying for or accepting a license from the U.S. Treasury Department.

Valanti first traveled to Cuba in 1971 as a college student. She said she felt strongly then — as she does now — that the U.S. shouldn’t prohibit Americans from going there and seeing firsthand how U.S. policies are impacting the island.

Having grown up in a privileged, white community in the Midwest, Valanti says she became instantly radicalized after seeing Cuba’s extreme poverty and class warfare. For the first time, she said, she began to look at ways to not only bring social justice to Cubans, but also to marginalized Americans.

“As someone from the First World, it was unfathomable to see the poverty in Cuba,” Valanti said. “When I came back from Cuba, I realized that I lived in my own little world. I didn’t think about these issues before. I began to see class inequities and racism in a different light.”

In 1992, Valanti went back to Cuba, this time with Pastors for Peace, a ministry of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization and the organizers of the caravan. The objective of the trip was the same then as it is today: to help communities caught up in the crossfire of world politics.

Valanti contends that current U.S. trade policies victimize both those Cubans living on the island and those in America.

As evidence, she cites the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act, which prohibits foreign companies that trade with the U.S. from also trading with Cuba. The law also prevents travel to Cuba by American citizens and imposes limits on how many times Cubans living in America can travel to their homeland to visit family. In 1996, the U.S. enacted a penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine for violators of the embargo.

As Valanti sees it, such restrictions are too harsh.

“Americans don’t realize how egregious this Cuba law is,” she said. “When the U.S. government tells you when you can visit your family, how free is our country?”

After their North American tour, the caravan will head to McAllen, Texas, which is located five miles from the U.S.-Mexican border, and then drive to the coastal town of Tampico, Mexico. There, the caravan will meet up with a Mexican union group that will help them load a ship with donated aid and supplies for delivery to Cuba. The group will then fly into Havana.

Maribou Latour, a Cuban American living in Leverett, will be joining the caravan for the first time on this trip. Word of her trip would likely dismay her parents — both of whom back U.S. trade restrictions against Cuba. She hasn’t yet told them that she is going.

Latour said she is joining the caravan because she wants to know what is really going on in her family’s homeland.

“I need to see Cuba for myself,” she said. “I have been told a lot of things about it by my parents that now I am realizing are not true. I need to see it for myself and tell my family what I saw.”

Valanti said that the hallmark of the trip is the “people to people” exchange between the caravan members and the Cuban civil society activists working to improve life on the island.

“The Cubans love this project,” she said. “They warmly welcome us, and genuinely want to learn more about us.”

Valanti said that the Cubans she meets are particularly concerned about the plight of African Americans. The rebuilding of post-Katrina New Orleans and the possibility that Barack Obama will be elected the first African American U.S. president are regular topics of discussion all over the island, she said.

As far as the future of U.S.-Cuban relations is concerned, Valanti said there is a slight chance that an Obama administration would eliminate the Cuban Democracy Act. There is no such chance if presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is elected, she said, because he has stated before that he will not negotiate with the communist state.

However, Valanti thinks that the American people, not politicians, are the ones who can really be agents of change.

“Most Americans favor ending this embargo,” she said. “What kind of people are we if we don’t demand this?”

Uribe wacks paramilitary, maybe

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe took an "ambitious" step last week by extraditing to the United States of 14 of Colombia's most dangerous paramilitary warlords on drug-trafficking charges. This is in hope that Washington Democrats who hesitate passing the trade pact due to the numerous murders of trade unionists and human rights activists will now be at ease.

But, not too fast...

From The Economist:

...Mr Uribe's move could backfire. Human-rights groups fear that it will rob the victims of the compensation that they are entitled to from their tormentors, and could also remove the evidence needed for a successful investigation into why Colombia's paramilitaries and their political accomplices have hitherto enjoyed impunity. More than 60 congressmen, most allies of Mr Uribe, are either already in prison or under investigation in Colombia for alleged links to paramilitaries. Last month, Mario Uribe, the president's cousin and close political ally, was arrested.

“The good news is that these paramilitary bosses could now face serious jail time,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch, a lobbying group. (In the United States, cocaine dealers can get 30 years or more.) “The bad news is they may no longer have any reason to collaborate with Colombian prosecutors investigating their atrocities...Just as local prosecutors were beginning to unravel the web of paramilitary ties to prominent politicians, the government has shipped the men with the most information out of the country,” he lamented...

Wanted: Chiquita's Murderous Executives

US news program 60 Minutes had a great piece last night on how poor trade policies plus human rights abuses can equal detrimental effects. Chiquita Brands International, the largest distributor of bananas in the United States, was fined $25 million as part of a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department for having ties to Colombian paramilitary groups.

From 60 Minutes:

But since the 1980's, the business of bananas there has been punctuated with gunfire. First, the area was taken over by Marxist guerillas called the "FARC," whose ruthlessness at killing and kidnapping was exceeded only by the private paramilitary army that rose up to fight them. Chiquita found itself trying to grow bananas in the middle of a war, in which the Colombian government and its army were of no help.

"These lands were lands where there was no law. It was impossible for the government to protect employees," says Fernando Aguirre, who became Chiquita's CEO long after all this happened.

Aguirre says the company was forced to pay taxes to the guerillas when they controlled the territory in the late 1980s and early 90s. When the paramilitaries, known as the "AUC," moved in in 1997 they demanded the same thing.

"Did the paramilitaries state, specifically to you, that if you didn't make the payments, your people would be killed?" Kroft asks.

"There was a very, very strong signal that if the company would not make payments, that things would happen. And since they had already killed at least 50 people, employees of the company, it was clear to everyone there that these guys meant business," Aguirre says.

Chiquita only had a couple of options and none of them were particularly good. It could refuse to pay the paramilitaries and run the risk that its employees could be killed or kidnapped, it could pack up and leave the country all together and abandon its most profitable enterprise, or it could stay and pay protection, and in the process, help finance the atrocities that were being committed all across the countryside.

Chiquita did have another choice. When the US government declared the paramilitary a terrorist group in 2001, the company continued to make payments for another two years. To his credit, when Aguirre became CEO, he did stop payments, sold its subsidiary in Colombia and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. But that wasn’t enough. You mean to tell me that Chiquita was totally in the dark that the paramilitary was using the payments to purchase weapons to kill innocent people?

"What did the company think this money was gonna be used for?" Kroft asks.

"Well, clearly to save lives," Aguirre says.

"The lives of your employees?" Kroft asks.

"Absolutely," Aguirre says.

Thankfully, US Rep. William Delahunt made it clear in the piece that, unfortunately, Chiquita isn’t the only U.S. company involved in shady business overseas.

Asked what he means by that, Delahunt tells Kroft, "Well, I think that there are other American companies that have conducted themselves the same way that Chiquita has, except they haven't been caught."

How many companies?

"Well, there are several," Delahunt says.

Delahunt says he doesn't want to share more information "because I want to give those companies an opportunity to come before the committee."

US still wants trade deal, amid pending war in Latin America

Today, as government officials in Columbia, Ecuador and Venezuela try to broker a deal to end the violence between the FARC and the Colombian Government, the US still wants to play free market politics.

Reuters:

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told Congress on Thursday "the time is now" to approve a free trade agreement with Colombia, rather than wait for that country to make more progress in reducing violence against trade unionists.

Schwab's comments came days after Colombia set off a major diplomatic crisis in the Andes when its troops crossed into Ecuador to kill Marxist guerrillas, prompting Venezuela and Ecuador to move their troops to their borders with Colombia.

U.S. President George W. Bush has supported Colombia, which gets billions of dollars in military aid from Washington to fight rebels and drug cartels.

"This administration will not yield in our efforts to persuade Congress to do the the right thing -- and approving the Colombia FTA is most assuredly the right thing," Schwab said in testimony prepared for the Senate Finance Committee.

Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives have insisted that Colombia make more progress in reducing murders of trade unionists and putting their killers in jail before Congress votes on the free trade deal.

Schwab said that stance ignores the "clear and compelling" progress Colombia has already made and threatens relations with a strong U.S. ally in a volatile region.

Colombia's murder rate is now at the lowest level in more than a decade and the prosecutor general's office already has stepped up efforts to resolve 187 priority cases of violence against trade unionists, she said.

"The time is now" to approve the pact, Schwab told the panel. "By delaying its consideration, or voting it down, we accomplish nothing. Or worse."

The Colombia deal is the first of three free trade agreements that the Bush administration is struggling to persuade Congress to approve this year. The others are with South Korea and Panama, and each faces its own problems.

DISPUTE OVER WORKER AID

In a tense exchange with Schwab, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said there was little hope for the pacts unless Congress and the Bush administration agree first on a bill to expand federal the trade adjustment assistance program (TAA), which provides financial aid for workers who have lost their jobs because of trade.

"Mr. Chairman, we all have priorities here and I think that it's in everyone's interest for a win-win (deal) that would include movement on trade adjustment assistance and the free trade agreements," Schwab said.

"I'm just saying TAA is number one," Baucus said. "I don't think we're going to make much progress on the free trade agreements until we get TAA done."

Although Bush has said he wants to work with Congress to revamp the trade adjustment assistance program, he has threatened to veto a bill passed by the House.

Democrats want to expand the program to include service industry workers, in addition to those in manufacturing sectors. They also want to include workers whose jobs have been moved to India, China and other countries not currently covered by the program, as well as other reforms.

The Colombia agreement is protected by trade promotion authority, which requires Congress to approve or reject trade agreements within 90 days without making changes.

The White House has hoped to persuade Democratic leaders to voluntarily schedule a vote, without forcing them to do that under trade promotion authority.

That's still the preferred option, Schwab told reporters in in response to a published report that Bush could send the Colombia agreement to Congress next week.