Thu May 22, 2003 02:03 AM ET By Missy Ryan

LIMA, Peru (<a href=reuters.com>Reuters) - More than a dozen Latin American presidents will look for ways to rein in social unrest and strengthen challenged democracies in a summit starting on Friday in the Peruvian city of Cusco.

Presidents are due to arrive in the mountain city, once capital to the vast Inca empire, on Thursday for the annual summit of the 19-member Rio Group, which includes democracies from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego.

The meeting will focus on making governance more effective in a region emerging from economic crisis but facing rampant poverty and political instability.

"First, how do we take care of social demands from people in our countries? Also (the summit will address) the erosion of these countries' democratic institutions, which makes governing difficult," Peruvian Foreign Minister Allan Wagner told CPN radio.

According to the U.N.'s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the region is recovering from a crippling economic crisis that has included a default and devaluation in Argentina and strikes in Venezuela. Its economy should grow close to 2 percent this year.

But that projected growth -- a welcome change from last year's 0.6 percent contraction -- will not be enough to slash widespread poverty in Latin America, the commission says.

Nor is it likely to quell the political and social unrest Latin America has seen recently -- like that which helped topple Argentine ex-President Fernando de la Rua in December 2001, a short-lived coup against Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez in 2002 and ongoing strikes in Peru.

Some analysts say unrest is rooted in widespread disappointment in democratic leaders who Latin Americans believe have failed to ease poverty following authoritarian regimes of the 1970s and 1980s.

In Peru, for example, President Alejandro Toledo, who hailed a return to democracy after ex-President Alberto Fujimori's tarnished decade-long regime, has an approval rating of 14 percent as people complain he has not fulfilled promises of jobs and prosperity.

"When they say we've got to make countries governable, what are they really asking? They are asking, 'How do we govern a country whose people are unhappy?"' said analyst Mirko Lauer.

The two-day summit, which begins on Friday, will also seek to firm up plans for a regional investment authority as well as a credit guarantee fund, Wagner told newspaper El Comercio.

Feeling Nostalgia for the Future

Posted by click at 3:11 PM in Venezuela dictator

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: There is a wonderful story by Ray Bradbury about a man who travels to the future in some kind of time machine. He goes there and he finds a world without poverty, without war, without hunger, where everybody enjoys a reasonable amount of wellbeing. He travels back to the present with these excellent news and the people, now knowing the bright future that awaits humanity, simply start working to realize it. Since there is no doubt that they will get there, all hesitations and uncertainties are removed from the minds of humans. The traveler, however, eventually feels the pangs of remorse and confesses to a reporter that he did not really travel to the future, that he made up the story and delivers to him a document to that effect. Once the reporter is alone, he briefly thinks about his alternatives and decides to ... burn the document.

It is a nice story. It simply means that if we are sure that we can attain our ideal world we can work effectively to fulfill the prophecy. Sometime ago, a young and bright Venezuelan economist, Ricardo Haussman, now self-exiled at Harvard (not a bad place to be an exile) expressed a similar concept. He said that "Venezuela" was " condemned to success." It was a great phrase but sometimes we wonder...

In my case, I will borrow the poetic license of Jorge Luis Borges, who used to say that we do not really know in what direction time flows, in order to feel nostalgic about the future of Venezuela.

There is a Venezuela that, either because we have already seen her in the future, from where Borges said we might come from, or because we have dreamt so much about her, we already take for real.

We are certain that there is such a Venezuela ... one that contains the material and spiritual ingredients that we desire to see in our country. Knowing that she exists, we yearn for her, suspecting, however, that it might be located in a bend of the river of time which we might not get to visit.

In short, the Venezuela of the future will look a lot like the Venezuela we have already had in the past. The Synagogue and the Mosque already exist and our Jews and Muslims have been able to coexist peacefully for years and to complement their economic activities.

Gallegos, the teacher and novelist was our President, until the military overthrew him. General Medina was our President and was the most civilian of civilians, revered by all, until he was overthrown by the military in combination with a political party. The Land reform of the 1960s gave land to more than 320,000 families without arbitrary land takeovers.

Venezuela was an example of relative prosperity for the region.

Venezuela surely can be that good and better in the future ... provided that our political leadership, by whatever name, opts for the promotion of an integral national effort based on respect for dissidents and civilized manners ... provided that our resources are developed with common sense and a modicum of administrative tidiness ... provided that democracy prevails over totalitarian ideologies.

To know that the future of Venezuela can be bright we do not really need a time machine, like the character in Ray Bradbury's story. All we need is to look back to our better years of democracy, the years of Medina, of Gallegos, of Betancourt, of Leoni and of the first Caldera, refine the good experiences we had then, exercise more social solidarity, educate our people to empower them to create wealth and elect capable political leaders, not leaders who pretend to know all, but leaders who surround themselves with the best and the brightest ... not leaders who sow hate but leaders who inspire people to realize their potential ... not a leadership based on terror, but a leadership based on example.

I feel very nostalgic about that Venezuela ... about the Venezuela we once had and of the Venezuela we could have again ... their positive aspects reinforced, their negative aspects minimized ... all in an environment of decency, respect and dignity.

A Venezuela where physical and spiritual garbage do not exist.

A Venezuela we can feel justifiably proud of.....

Some claim that the future is no longer what it used to be...

I am sure that it can be, if we apply our best efforts as a society to make it happen.

Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela ("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983.  In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort.  You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email gustavo@vheadline.com

Concern over the effects of the controls imposed on the Venezuelan economy
Posted by click at 7:19 AM in ve economy

<a href=www.vheadline.com>venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 By: Jose Gregorio Pineda & Jose Gabriel Angarita

VenAmCham's Jose Gregorio Pineda (chief economist) and Jose Gabriel Angarita (economist) write: The price controls imposed on our economy comprise a mechanism by which the government regulates the prices at which a set of goods and services can be sold. In other words, the government sets mandatory prices for the sale of certain goods or services to the consumers.

One of the arguments for price controls is that the State will not allow corporations (large monopolies or oligopolies) to set the prices of goods and services at their discretion, and that on the contrary, it is the State which should administer and regulate those prices t prevent the corporations from speculating. However, apart from the "good intentions" policy makers may have, there is an enormous difference between the desired effects, in terms of benefits for the general population, and the effects actually provoked by controls. And it is also necessary to consider that there is a regulatory agency (Procompetencia) which ought to be the party responsible for keeping companies from engaging in monopolistic and oligopolistic practices; price controls can only achieve the same goal in a highly inefficient way.

Under the current circumstances in the Venezuelan economy, price regulation is not yielding the results anticipated by the authorities. Proof of that is the fact that the Central Bank's inflation statistics show a 1.7% increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for April, chiefly reflecting increases for products subject to control.

Venezuelans still remember what happened in 1996 when inflation surged to 103.2% after the price control system was dismantled. Estimates for this year point to an inflation rate on the order of 50%, and it is important to recall that production costs have been rising for a number of reasons, and once the price controls are lifted, businessmen will seek to pass those cost increases along to the prices of their final goods. An indication that this is already happening is the disproportionate growth of the producer price index, which will sooner or later have to be reflected in consumer price increases as well.

At the UN: Concentric circles grow--Proposal to link north, south Native nations and populations
Posted by click at 7:18 AM Story Archive (Page 129 of 637)
Adamant: Hardest metal

by L.A. Shively INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., May 21 — The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples concluded its activities this week with a flurry of reports and announcements. By all accounts it was an exhilarating second annual session.     ‘If we can stimulate our products, the other problems, such as health and education, will improve as well. It follows that those problems will be solved if we are stronger economically. It follows.’ — JEREMY ATKINSON Arawak delegate from Guayana region of Venezuela TO THE INTERNATIONAL indigenous delegates: best of wishes for the journey home. Congratulations on a wonderful 12 days of dialogue and activities - focused on the theme of creating a positive future for indigenous peoples.

       Words are important. Self-representation is crucial. At the United Nations, for all its beleaguered status, representatives of many governments took notice and heard serious reports on the global condition of the Native peoples. Noeli Pocaterra, Wayuu elder and parliamentary leader from Venezuela, reminded us of words from Ingrid Washinawatok, when she quoted: “The silence must be broken.”

       Noeli was among the many wonderful Native leaders from around the world who gathered in New York. Quechua and Aymara from Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Mapuche from Chile, Amazonian peoples from several countries, Arawak from Venezuela, Massai from Kenya, Sami from Norway, Dene from Canada and many others among the core of the indigenous representatives and intellectuals active on matters of international law and international development attended.         SEEING LOST RELATIVES

       It was refreshing to see long lost relatives - among the South American Arawak and the Caribbean Taino, for instance - meet and greet each other, embrace and begin longed-for conversations. It was good to see veteran battlers like the Mapuche activist, Nilo Cayuqueo, who was there at the very beginning of the international struggle. Cayuqueo described the economic collapse in his native Argentina, where even the upper middle class is looting food stores as evidence of severe desperation, so, he said, “imagine the misery and desperation of the Indian people.” Nilo is a Native universalist spirit who traveled the hemisphere in the late 1960s, as the nascent Indian movement began its cross-country outreach. He is perhaps among four others of the 1,500 in attendance who participated in the seminal event of the international movement, the Geneva Indigenous Peoples Conference of 1977.

•  Indian Country Today front        Twenty-five years later, in the long, cold halls of the UN, Nilo introduced us to several tribal people from Colombia, focusing our editorial eye once again on the major heartbreak of that country’s gut-tearing, horrifically bloody “violencia” that has become social habit and entrenched mechanism - war without end. One story to pass on: the Embera Indian leadership in Colombia is being assassinated with impunity. FARC, the spirit-dead revolutionary movement, stands denounced; so does the widespread right-wing para-military violence, very often linked with the military. The silence was broken many times at the UN gathering. Important stories and viewpoints were told.

       Indian Country Today prepared a special edition for the event. One of our themes proposed stronger and more profound cultural and economic linkages between northern and southern Native nations and populations. We concur with the words of Jeremy Atkinson, a young Arawak delegate from the Guayana region of Venezuela, who put it this way: “We have resources, we have our people. From our lands and waters and from our own hands, we can improve our economics, grow our business practice. If we can stimulate our products, the other problems, such as health and education, will improve as well. It follows that those problems will be solved if we are stronger economically. It follows.”         ECONOMIC OPTION

       As with the strengthening of human rights initiatives, Native peoples need to explore economic options wherever they can find them. This is a current that does not please everyone, but it is the nugget of the fundamental solution to most of our peoples’ problems. Self-generated economies, wherever they can be stimulated, will provide the rotors of future self-determined Native peoples.

       The Indian unity which is sought has always been elusive. Native nations are just as good at competing with each other as they are in confronting the state and federal entities and the occasional ugly head of white supremacy that surrounds them. Furthermore, each is unique, facing very localized as well as national challenges. International development efforts, whether through foundations, the World Bank or now through Native nation-to-nation trade and commerce, is best served by great attention to local dynamics and conditions.

	       In the language employed to codify the rights of the indigenous peoples of the world, the broad-brush stroke is the genial half. But for answering questions of developmental impact - how a community betters itself economically and culturally and socially, how income is generated so families, tribal businesses and communities are able to expand themselves - understanding and incorporating the locally specific is key. Canada is not Venezuela and the Caribbean is not the Andes and even the U.S. situation of Indians varies greatly between Montana and the Southwest or the East Coast from South Dakota and California.

       Unity in diversity is a good indigenous definition. From small to big - being part of something larger that gathers one’s concerns and issues is as important as ever. Exertion of power beyond the small group, reaching beyond one community, to the regional and the national, to the international, this is important.         BUILDING BONDS

       The Native world could well benefit from a substantial initiative of cooperative and sustained relations across the hemispheres. All Native students, all Native children, should know that they are part of something substantially large. All Native youth should have the chance to know the intimate intents of the ancient and contemporary ideas of their peoples. They should know that they are part of something that is hemispherically, even globally, strong.

       There is an indigenous base of culture that values the kinship community. Families are large, extended, and as they overlap, the linkages of origin, from both matriarchs and patriarchs, reveal themselves. The core indigenous peoples’ experience of community life revolves around this principle and extends out from it - when it is strong and true - to the ever-larger concentric circles of relationships that form the families, clans, nations and populations of the Native world. In today’s world these overlap with the myriad federations and confederations, national organizations, international organizations, governmental coalitions, national and international cultural pilgrimages, circles and journeys, via ceremonial life, pow wows, business, legal cases and the many other ways that indigenous peoples coalesce with each other.

       The Native leadership of any community today that would utilize its best resources to ensure the future survival of its people should seriously generate cultural and economic and political relations with other Native peoples. The cohesive and common experience is crucial to building toward the future and the search for strength in common is more important than ever.

You are not logged in