www.vheadline.com Posted: Friday, February 28, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

According to Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim the Friends of Venezuela group made up of Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and the United States is set to hold its next meeting on March 10, most probably in Brazil.

However, the Minister ruled out any chance of the group visiting Caracas to assess the situation as had been requested by opposition negotiator Timoteo Zambrano.

Regarding the recent arrest of Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Fedecamaras) president Carlos Fernandez and the issuing of arrest warrants for several other strike leaders, Amorim said the Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva found the issue difficult to understand, but assumed the warrants had been issued on judicial rather than political grounds.

www.washingtonpost.com By Jon Jeter Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, February 28, 2003; Page A14

Police took positions this week during an operation in a Rio slum where gangs burned buses and tossed bombs at cars and buildings. (Wilton Junior -- AP)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb. 27 -- Flavia Carvalho recalls unlocking the door to her computer software store here Tuesday when she noticed how utterly alone she was on a commercial block that is usually bustling by 10 a.m. Everything was closed: the shoe boutique, the art gallery, the colossal supermarket on the corner.

Then, with a tap on the shoulder, a young man appeared, seemingly from nowhere, with a message all the more chilling for its casual delivery: Shut down your shop for the day, or else.

"I thought: Oh, no, not again," Carvalho said. "Another day without business. But what could I do? He told me that anyone who opened would be shot or burned."

As this colorful coastal city prepares for thousands of international visitors and the anything-goes, five-day binge known as Carnaval that begins Friday, the government is battling an eruption of random bombings, shootings and vandalism that has disrupted vast swaths of Rio.

At the center of the violence is the feared criminal gang, Red Command, and its leader, a convicted arms dealer and drug kingpin known as "Seaside Freddy." The Brazilian government said it moved the gang leader out of Rio de Janeiro for 30 days on suspicion he was behind the violence. Police officials in Rio told reporters they suspected the gang leader was orchestrating the crime spree via a cell phone from jail.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ordered the deployment of 3,000 army troops to the city today to supplement 30,000 state and local police officers who are often outgunned by the Red Command and its well-armed, gun-running, and drug-trafficking rivals.

The president took that step, said Justice Minister Marcio Thomaz Bastos, "because organized crime is seriously threatening public safety.

"In addition, we have transferred the gang leader, Luiz Fernando da Costa, also known as Fernandinho Beira-Mar [Seaside Freddy in Portuguese] to a maximum security prison" in Sao Paulo state, south of here. News reports said the prison is able to jam cell phone calls. Prison officials assigned round the clock security for da Costa and 20 other jailed gang members.

Some law-enforcement officials here say that da Costa ordered the attacks in retaliation for the kidnapping of a cousin. But others say that a recent police crackdown in the sprawling hillside shantytowns controlled by gang members was the reason for the violence.

Rio de Janeiro has experienced violence before, but marauding attacks have rarely spread so indiscriminately outside the borders of the shantytowns -- known as favelas -- and into chic neighborhoods like Ipanema where surfers, bohemian artists and well-to-do vacationers rub elbows and shop.

Nearly 30,000 businesses have been forced to shut down since Monday. More than a dozen people have been injured and more than 30 buses have been set afire. Gang members tossed homemade bombs at cars and buildings, and police have made more than 36 arrests. A police raid Wednesday on a suspected Red Command weapons cache resulted in the shooting deaths of two suspected gang members.

Nearly 400,000 tourists began pouring into Rio this week for Carnaval, mostly oblivious to the violence. The U.S. Embassy has not issued travel alerts for the area, and tourism officials and travel agents say that the mayhem has not resulted in notable cancellations.

"I had no idea," said Todd Fredrikkson, 33, a liquor wholesaler from Sweden who arrived for Carnaval this week. "I've been wanting to come to Carnaval my whole life, so nothing short of a lost limb is going to make me miss this."

But police officers, government officials and citizens of this sprawling city of opulent wealth and crushing poverty are acutely aware of the crime spree and fear that it will harden the city's reputation as home to guns, gangs, drugs and violence.

Government officials said that they were focusing their patrols on entry points to the city's 600 favelas during the Carnaval pageantry, which culminates with all-night parades, samba extravaganzas and balls on Ash Wednesday.

"The gangs have become a second force," said Pablo Neto, a street vendor who lives in a favela. "They attack when they feel someone -- even the police -- is threatening their authority."

In September, police say, da Costa and several other members of the Red Command seized control of a wing of the Bangu maximum security prison and tortured members from a rival gang before executing them and hanging a red flag from the prison watchtower to signal victory before surrendering.

At that time, gang members also used the threat of violence to force thousands of shop owners across Rio to close their doors. Police say that da Costa ordered the campaign to protest prison conditions.

Researcher Phyllis Huber contributed to this report.

www.falkland-malvinas.com

With the support of the Armed Forces, Brazilian Police have launched a huge security operation to protect the carnival in Rio de Janeiro which has been threatened by spiralling violence between drugs gangs.

Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil Up to 28,000 policemen will be in the streets to protect Carnival celebrations that begin this Friday and are also an important income source for the country. Drug gangs have burned and machine gunned buses, attacked police stations and set off small bombs in the beachfront with hotels packed with tourists.

"They've chosen the worst moment," said Jose Eduardo Guinle, Director of Rio’s Tourism Agency, insisting that Carnival will be celebrated since this “is our big chance to recover the image of the city abroad."

Rio authorities blame the city's largest drug gang, the Red Command, for the current surge in violence, saying the orders were given by its leader, Fernandinho Beira-Mar - known as Seaside Freddy - who is currently in jail. The gang is apparently reacting to tough police action threatening their control of many shanty towns. But the latest violence has hit high income areas of the city usually immune from gang-related incidents and in the middle of the city’s main celebration when traditionally enemies put down their weapons.

Some crime experts believe the gangs might also be trying to distract police from big drug or arms shipments, or showing their strength in order to demand better conditions for some of their bosses in prison. In a recent raid the police seized mortars and automatic weapons.

"Criminals have acquired social control through the dissemination of fear," said Walter Maierovitch, head of Brazilian Institute for Crime Research.

However, the president Lula da Silva administration decision to send the Army as a back up force to fight drug related crime in Rio do Janerio is controversial. Previous experiences even when the country was under military rule did not prove effective. Not so many years ago a hard-line no-nonsense general was named head of the Police force in Rio with the purpose of putting an end to the gang warfare and drugs trade. In a daring demonstration of power the gangs had the general’s luggage stolen from him when he arrived in Rio airport.

Besides, a recent report aired in the Brazilian Congress indicates that the majority of the gang’s heavy equipment and most deadly weapons belonged to the Brazilian military. They were either stolen or smuggled out of the barracks or sold by the same soldiers to the gangsters.

www.centredaily.com Posted on Thu, Feb. 27, 2003 STAN LEHMAN Associated Press

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil's most notorious drug lord was moved Thursday to a prison far from his home turf of Rio de Janeiro, days after gang members - allegedly on his orders - terrorized the city ahead of the yearly Carnival.

Officials also announced that 3,000 soldiers will be sent to Rio to help keep peace during Carnival, which officially begins Friday.

In a military-style operation, Luiz Fernando da Costa was taken from Rio's Bangu I penitentiary Thursday morning and placed on a Brazilian Air Force plane to Sao Paulo state, then driven in a convoy of 12 police cars to the Presidente Bernardes prison, which is considered Brazil's most secure.

Authorities said da Costa - better known as Fernandinho Beira-Mar, which means Seaside Freddy in Portuguese - would only be held for 30 days at the remote prison in a rural agricultural region, 330 miles west of Sao Paulo, South America's biggest city. They did not say where he would be held afterward.

Justice Minister Marcio Thomaz Bastos told reporters after a meeting in the capital, Brasilia, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that five new maximum security prisons would be built to hold the country's most dangerous prisoners.

The Presidente Bernardes prison has a special system that blocks cell phone signals, considered crucial to silencing da Costa's contacts with gang members.

Da Costa continued to run his drug operations from the Rio prison with smuggled cell phones. He was taped conducting phone conversations instructing gang members how to execute a rival and negotiating the purchase of a Stinger anti-aircraft missile.

On Monday, gang members in Rio burned more than 20 buses, tossed gasoline bombs at apartment buildings and fired on police posts and supermarkets. At least six people were injured in the mayhem, which police said was orchestrated by da Costa from prison.

The violence resumed Thursday. The Globo TV network reported that seven buses were set on fire in greater Rio, possibly as a protest by gang members against da Costa's transfer.

Last September, da Costa was blamed for a wave of threats that prompted stores and schools across Rio to close. He also led a rebellion at Bangu I, seizing control of the prison to torture and execute four leaders of a rival gang.

Da Costa rose from Rio's Beira-Mar shantytown to become a major international drug trafficker and leader of the powerful Red Command crime gang. In 2001, he was captured in the jungles of Colombia, where he allegedly supplied leftist rebels with weapons in return for cocaine that he sold in Brazil.

thresher.rice.edu by David Berry Thresher Staff

Although the present focus of the United States' foreign policy lies in the Middle East, the United States should continue to build strong relations with Latin America, James Derham said Tuesday at a James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy roundtable luncheon.

Derham, a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said he wants to debunk three myths about American involvement in the region.

Contrary to popular opinion, Derham argued, democracy is not faltering in Latin America.

"Every country in the region has made a commitment to free elections," he said, pointing specifically to recent election successes in Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela.

In Mexico, the election of Vicente Fox in 2000 marked the end of a 70-year dominance by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, and Derham called it the first fair election in modern Mexican history. Although recent elections in Argentina and Venezuela have not necessarily yielded candidates preferred by the United States, they have affirmed the place of democracy, Derham said.

Second, recent economic freefall in Argentina is not indicative of the economic health of Latin America, Derham said. Free-market reforms have promoted growth elsewhere in Latin America, particularly in Chile and Mexico.

Blame for Argentina's depression should not lie with international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank but with the incomplete reforms.

"This is not something that works if you do it halfway," he said.

Finally, Derham said United States-Latin America relations are not in a state of neglect, as some in the media have recently argued. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have engendered a profound reorientation in the focus of United States-Latin America relations, he said, but he denied that this reorientation has led to diminished attention to problems in the region.

The United States and Mexico have their disagreements, Derham said. For example, Mexico refused to completely support U.S. efforts to pass a second resolution on Iraq, and the United States will continue to deny Fox's request for amnesty for illegal Mexican immigrants.

However, the possibility of future cooperation on border issues is strong. The United States-Mexico bilateral relationship is among the most important in the world, Derham said.

Although Luis Inacio Lula da Silva is hardly the man the United States would have chosen to lead Brazil, the peaceful, well-conducted elections of 2002 marked yet another affirmation of democracy in the region, Derham said. Lula is the candidate of the leftist Workers' Party, but Derham said he is not as antagonistic to free markets as his background might suggest.

"We try to look not at what he said last week, or even two days ago, but at what he is actually doing," Derham said.

Venezuela is a country that is currently highly politically polarized between supporters and enemies of President Hugo Chavez, he said.

"One of the reasons that Chavez came to power is because despite a fairly strong democratic tradition, there was a feeling that the parties were somehow corrupt," Derham said.

Chavez, elected in a 1998 landslide victory, is an avowed opponent of globalization and an admirer of Fidel Castro.

Persistent strikes among workers in Venezuela's nationalized oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A, have crippled the economy. Derham said a diversified economy is the only long-term solution.

Derham did not comment on rumors in the international media that the United States supports an April 12 coup to topple Chavez and privatize the oil industries.

Derham closed by taking several questions from the audience.

Christophe Venghiattis, a French rice farmer who owns land in Nicaragua, argued that the United States' insistence that Latin America eliminate tariffs is unfair, given U.S. maintenance of high agriculture tariffs.

Derham responded that if the United States dropped subsidies but Europe continued them, European farmers could undersell both American and Latin American agriculture.

"We have been ready to lift the tariffs, but Europe isn't," he said. "You have to understand that it is a world market."

Baker College junior Chris Coffman asked how Cuba fits into Derham's portrait of a hemisphere where democracy and free markets are predominant.

Normalization of relations with Cuba will not proceed until the Cuban government complies with some of the conditions laid out by President Bush in a May 2002 speech, including democratic and market reforms, Derham said.

Hanszen College senior Garrick Malone said he found Derham's talk informative and helpful.

"I liked that he would always use examples exploring specific countries, often ones like Brazil that I know little about," he said.

The event was co-sponsored by the Baker Institute Student Forum and the Baker Institute for Public Policy.