<a href=www.lapress.org>LatinAmerican press In brief

According to the Association of Families of the Disappeared and Detained in Colombia (ASFADDES), 5,372 people were detained or disappeared between 1977 and 2002.

In the last four years Venezuela has lost more than US$33 billion, the most costly flight of capital in the history of the country. Businesspeople blame the stampede on the policies of the government of President Hugo Chávez (LP, Jan. 15, 2003).

In Peru last year, there were 46,654 complaints of family violence, on average 148 a day. The figure was announced by the general prosecutor, Nelly Calderón during a visit by Diane Stuart, director of the US Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women. Stuart said the Peruvian model, dedicating 154 prosecutors to the investigation of the abuse of women, adolescents and children, has been closely followed in the United States.

In 2002 alone, 25,000 undocumented people disappeared on the journey between Mexico and the United States. Of them, 10,000 were Salvadorian, according to an investigation by the daily La Jornada into the abuses inflicted on emigrants by the Mexican authorities.

Five wetlands in Cuba were incorporated into the Ramsar Convention, which guarantees the conservation and rational use of these ecosystems (LP, Sept. 24, 2001). The wetlands in question are Buena Vista, Ciénaga de Lanier and the southern part of the Isla de la Juventud, Gran Humedal de Ciego de Ávila, Delta del Cauto and Río Máximo. Ciénaga de Zapata was incorporated in 2001.

Charles Chaplin in Modern Times  Andrés Gaudin.  Apr 29, 2003

International Labor Day is marked by high unemployment, low union membership and a steady erosion of workers’ rights.

More than a century after the "Haymarket massacre" of May 1, 1886, in the US city of Chicago, which gave rise to International Labor Day and marked a milestone in the struggle for the labor rights gained in the 20th century, Latin American workers have fallen on hard times, with high unemployment and low union membership rates.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), 17 million urban workers in the region were unemployed last year. The situation could be even worse in rural areas, where no specific records are kept.

The fifth consecutive year of recession, exacerbated by a decade of free-market reforms, left the region with an average unemployment rate of 9.2 percent, the highest in the past 22 years. The workers who did have jobs received wages that were below the average for the previous five years, according to the ILO, while working conditions deteriorated. The average work day is now 10 hours or more.

Rubén Manusovich of the Federation of Chambers and Centers of Commerce of Argentina, a business organization, attributed the precariousness of the labor situation to increased tax pressure from governments seeking to finance budget deficits, as well as high public service fees, a lack of credit and high interest rates.

The greatest increase in urban unemployment between 2001 and last year was registered in Argentina, where it rose from 16.4 percent to 23 percent. This was followed by a 1.9-percent increase in Venezuela, to 15.8 percent; a 1.1-percent increase in Brazil, to 7.3 percent; and a 1.1-percent increase in Uruguay, to 16.5 percent. In the past, some of these countries had registered the region’s lowest unemployment rates.

At the other end of the scale were Ecuador, where unemployment decreased by 2.1 percent, and El Salvador, where the rate dropped by 0.8 percent. In Colombia and Chile, the jobless rates held steady at 16.8 percent and 9.3 percent, respectively. Those figures, however, disguise other social problems.

"Ecuador showed a drop in unemployment because of emigration and the large number of people who withdrew from the labor market. The same is true in Colombia," said Ricardo Cano, head of the ILO’s technical teams (LP, March 26, 2003).

The situation is different in Chile, where "measures have been applied that have stimulated the creation of jobs, particularly the use of contracted labor," according to an ILO report. In those cases, because the employee is not on the payroll, the employer avoids paying benefits such as insurance and social security, lowering labor costs (LP, Nov. 8, 1999).

Employers in Argentina and Uruguay are trying to adopt the same measures, which violate workers’ rights, according to Víctor de Genaro, leader of the Argentine Workers Organization (CTA). "It represents an enormous transfer of income to wealthy sectors, similar to what we have already seen with wage reductions and the privatization of the retirement system," he said.

Agustín Muñoz, regional ILO director, warned that the trend could have negative consequences.

"The increase in unemployment could destabilize a great consensus of the 1990s — the emphasis on the value of democracy," he said, echoing the results of a regional survey by the Chilean polling company Latinobarómetro, which found that people’s satisfaction with democracy as a form of government is directly related to their economic well-being (LP, March 26, 2003).

The employment crisis, which worsened throughout the 1990s, has also had an effect on labor organizing.

"Because they were afraid of losing their jobs or suffering other reprisals from their employers, many workers dropped their union membership, abandoning the organizations that defend their rights," Argentine labor leader Héctor Recalde said.

Between 1995 and 2000, union membership in the region fell from 21.1 percent to 19 percent, according to the ILO. The decrease was even greater in Central America, with the largest drop in El Salvador, where membership fell from 27 percent to 5.2 percent (LP, Oct. 9, 2000).

The increasingly precarious labor situation is also reflected in the growth of the informal sector, where workers have neither set working hours nor benefits. According to the ILO, the informal sector represents 51 percent of the Latin American economy, putting the region ahead of other parts of the world, including northern Africa, where the informal sector accounts for 48 percent of economic activity.

Although experts predicted that Peru would have the largest informal sector in Latin America, an ILO study of the past decade, which includes figures through 2000, placed Bolivia in first place, with 63 percent of the work force in the informal sector. This was followed by Brazil, with 60 percent; Honduras, with 58 percent; El Salvador, with 57 percent; Guatemala, with 56 percent; and Mexico, with 55 percent.

Peru does rank first in the informal sector’s contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP), at 49 percent, followed by Colombia, at 25 percent, and Mexico, where the informal sector represents 13 percent of GDP. The ILO study did not include agriculture, domestic labor or clandestine work connected with organized crime, such as the sex trade.

Child labor also contributes to the region’s grim outlook for workers at the start of the third millennium (LP, June 3, 2002). The ILO estimated that about 20 million children between ages 5 and 14 were working in the region at the end of last year. The largest number — at least 7 million — is in Brazil, according to the ILO.

There has been a dramatic increase in Uruguay, where child labor had been limited mainly to rural areas. In March, UNICEF announced that in the poorest 40 percent of the country’s households, children contributed 18 percent of their families’ income.

In urban areas of Ecuador and Colombia, 20 percent of girls between ages 10 and 14 are involved in domestic labor, according to Eduardo Araujo, who heads the ILO’s regional program. The problem has "the potential for growth" in all the region’s countries, especially in the increasingly impoverished Caribbean nations, he said.

Besides agriculture and domestic work, where child labor is traditionally concentrated, about 65,000 Latin American children are involved in small-scale traditional gold mining in Peru and Bolivia (LP, Nov. 19, 2001) and "many others are in worse situations, such as sex tourism, mainly in Brazil and Caribbean countries," according to the ILO (LP, Dec. 30, 2002).

Reuters, 04.29.03, 12:02 PM ET

WASHINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) - A top United States oil executive on Tuesday urged Mexico, Brazil and other Latin American nations to ditch "unstable fiscal and regulatory systems" that discourage more oil investments in an energy-rich region that supplies one-third of U.S. oil imports.

Even though progress has been made, David O'Reilly, the chairman of ChevronTexaco Corp. (nyse: CVX - news - people), said "many countries in the region still have unstable fiscal and regulatory systems from our perspective, and for our investors. This raises risk and reduces confidence."

O'Reilly spoke before the annual Council of the Americas conference on Latin America, which brings together top business and political leaders to discuss prospects for the region. Council members usually back lower trade barriers with Latin America, which is slowly emerging from economic hard times.

The ChevronTexaco executive said Latin America's "future challenges" range from export taxes in Argentina to foreign ownership limits in Venezuela. These regulations, O'Reilly said, discourage "the very large and long-term investments that are industry's mainstay."

O'Reilly, whose company has invested around $4 billion in the region, said he is "closely watching" Argentina's export tax -- a key source of government revenue for that country -- and how "Brazil handles the local content issue."

"Some countries have deliberately erected barriers to foreign investment, at least in our business," the executive said, noting Mexico's ban on foreign oil investments and Venezuela's 49 percent cap on foreign ownership of new oil investments.

The Venezuelan regulations deny the country access to "a new effective form of private investment, and that is project financing," he said. "Governments must weigh the consequences of actions such as these and their impact on trade and foreign investment."

Reuters, 04.29.03, 11:54 AM ET By Marguerita Choy

PARIS, April 29 (Reuters) - The International Energy Agency, the West's energy watchdog, said on Tuesday industrialised countries should build emergency oil stocks further to protect against supply disruptions, even though these reserves have not been used in over a decade.

The agency, set up in 1974 to protect oil importers after the 1973 Arab embargo, requires its 26 members to hold government-controlled stocks to cover at least 90 days of demand.

"Growing oil demand in IEA Member and non-member countries, particularly in transport, requires greater effort by importing countries to build and hold appropriate emergency stocks," the agency said in a communique after two days of talks.

The call to top up these reserves, which already amount to 1.3 billion barrels in the OECD, comes after three major oil supply disruptions over the past six months -- none of which has required a stock release.

An opposition strike in Venezuela shut off some three million barrels per day (bpd) of oil supply from the world's 78 million bpd market in December.

Just as Venezuelan output recovered, Nigeria saw its exports hit by almost a million bpd in March due to ethnic clashes. Then at the end of March, Iraq's 2.5 million bpd production was halted by the U.S. led attack on Baghdad.

Relying on big volumes of spare production capacity in other OPEC nations, the IEA decided against releasing oil from its emergency stocks.

Thanks partly to a growing cooperation between OPEC and the IEA, the West's emergency stocks have not been tapped since 1991, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Nevertheless, British Energy Minister Brian Wilson said it was perverse to question the deterrent value of the reserves.

"The stocks are part of a framework that gives stability and things have worked reasonably well. We should strengthen the framework rather than dismantle it and hope for the best," Wilson told a news conference after a two-day IEA meeting in Paris.

IEA ministers strongly affirmed their readiness to combat a disruption of oil supply, including use of emergency stocks and demand restraint.

Claude Mandil, IEA executive director, added that while the agency worked with producer cartel OPEC to stabilise the market ahead of the Iraq war when oil prices soared to a 12-year high near $40 per barrel, it had been fully prepared to release strategic reserves.

"We were not willing to intervene in the market by releasing stocks if it was not necessary but we totally prepared to do so if it was," Mandil said.

"I would make the comparison with a safety net. If you're using the flying trapeze, you expect not to use but are happy to have it in case you have to use it," he said.

Tuesday, April 29, 2003 11:00 AM ET  

WASHINGTON, D.C. -(<a href=www.quicken.com>Quicken.com-Dow Jones)- The chairman of ChevronTexaco Corp. (CVX, news) said Tuesday the company is optimistic about future investment prospects in Latin America, but warned that key conditions must be addressed to enhance the possibility of further investments.

Speaking at a Council Of the Americas-sponsored conference at the U.S. State Department, David O'Reilly said that Latin America has 125 billion barrels of estimated oil reserves; and not only do new discoveries await, but also, thanks to technology, heavy oil can also be developed. But certain conditions must prevail before companies such as ChevronTexaco, which has $4 billion invested in the region, increase their investments.

Nationally and internationally recognized legal structures must be in place, economic structures must provide for a return on risk, and social structures must provide for the assurance of security to company employees and the broader society, O'Reilly said.

On specific countries, O'Reilly said, "if Argentina is to maintain investor confidence, it must not raise artificial barriers to trade and investments." It should rethink raising taxes on oil and other commodities exports, he said.

In Brazil, he said, local-contents requirements "must not endanger investments." He noted that ChevronTexaco's partners in many countries are local in any event and said that for one job created in the petroleum industry, an additional five jobs are generated in ancillary industries.

Turning to Venezuela, O'Reilly said that the new hydrocarbons law requiring the national oil company to take a 51% stake in new upstream oil projects denies the country access to new forms of financing.

Mexico's constitutional ban on foreign investment in the upstream industry severely limits Mexico's ability to offset declines in reserves, he said.

Given that the investments of the oil industry are long-term in nature and may take 20 to 30 years to mature, "we must have confidence in the long-term stability and growth in the region."

Free trade accords, O'Reilly noted, help to encourage investment and growth, which in turn raise the standard of living and lessen social inequality in countries. "That's why we support free trade agreements," as they accelerate economic reforms, he said.

-By Charles Roth, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2226; charles.roth@dowjones.com

Dow Jones Newswires 04-29-03 1100ET

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 By: VHeadline.com Reporters

London's Observer newspaper says the April 11 coup d'etat against the democratically-elected government of President Hugo Chavez Frias has been linked to US President George W. Bush's team: "Specialists in the 'dirty wars' of the 80s encouraged the plotters who tried to topple President Chavez, writes Observer WorldView correspondent Ed Vulliamy from New York.

"The Observer has established that the failed coup in Venezuela was closely tied to senior officials in the US government ... they have long histories in the 'dirty wars' of the 1980s, and links to death squads working in Central America at that time."

Washington's involvement in the turbulent events that briefly removed left-wing leader Hugo Chavez from power resurrects fears about US ambitions in the hemisphere ... it also deepens doubts about policy in the region being made by appointees to the Bush administration, all of whom owe their careers to serving in the dirty wars under President Reagan.

The Observer: One of them, Elliot Abrams, who gave a nod to the attempted Venezuelan coup, has a conviction for misleading Congress over the infamous Iran-Contra affair.

The Bush administration has tried to distance itself from the coup ... it immediately endorsed the new government under businessman Pedro Carmona ... but the coup was sent dramatically into reverse after 48 hours.

Now officials at the Organization of American States (OAS) and other diplomatic sources assert that the US administration was not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it ... presuming it to be destined for success.

The visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself, began several months before the coup and continued until weeks before the putsch ... the visitors were received at the White House by the man President George W. Bush tasked to be his key policy-maker for Latin America, Otto Reich.

Reich is a right-wing Cuban-American who, under Reagan, ran the Office for Public Diplomacy. It reported, in theory, to the State Department, but Reich was shown by congressional investigations to report directly to Reagan's National Security Aide, Colonel Oliver North, in the White House.

North was convicted and shamed for his role in Iran-Contra, whereby arms bought by busting US sanctions on Iran were sold to the Contra guerrillas and death squads, in revolt against the Marxist government in Nicaragua.

Reich also has close ties to Venezuela, having been made Ambassador to Caracas in 1986. His appointment was contested both by Democrats in Washington and political leaders in the Latin American country ... the objections were overridden as Venezuela sought access to the US oil market.

Reich is said by OAS sources to have had "a number of meetings with Carmona and other leaders of the coup" over several months ... the coup was discussed in some detail, right down to its timing and chances of success, which were deemed to be excellent.

On the day Carmona claimed power, Reich summoned ambassadors from Latin America and the Caribbean to his office ... he said the removal of Chavez was not a rupture of democratic rule, as he had resigned, and was "responsible for his fate." He said the US would support the Carmona government.

But the crucial figure around the coup was Abrams, who operates in the White House as senior director of the National Security Council for "democracy, human rights and international operations" ... he was a leading theoretician of the school known as "Hemispherism," which put a priority on combating Marxism in the Americas.

It led to the coup in Chile in 1973, and the sponsorship of regimes and death squads that followed it in Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and elsewhere. During the Contras' rampage in Nicaragua, he worked directly to North.

Congressional investigations found Abrams had harvested illegal funding for the rebellion. Convicted for withholding information from the inquiry, he was pardoned by George Bush senior.

A third member of the Latin American triangle in US policy-making is John Negroponte, now Ambassador to the United Nations ... he was Reagan's Ambassador to Honduras 1981-1985 when a US-trained death squad, Battalion 3-16, tortured and murdered scores of activists. A diplomatic source said Negroponte had been "informed that there might be some movement in Venezuela on Chavez' at the beginning of the year (2002)."

More than 100 people died in events before and after the coup. Chavez's chief ideologue -- Guillermo Garcia Ponce, director of the Revolutionary Political Command -- says dissident generals, local media and anti-Chavez groups in the US had plotted the President's removal: "The most reactionary sectors in the United States were also implicated