Washington, DC, June 11, 2003 (PAHO)—Participants in a Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) meeting today presented alarming statistics on the impact of violence in the Americas: 120,000 people are victims of homicide each year in the Region, and 180,000 more die from suicide and traffic accidents. In countries for which data are available, 20–60 percent of women have been victims of intrafamilial violence. Among the fastest growing sources of violence are youth gangs; in El Salvador and Honduras alone, some 30,000 youths are gang members.

Dr. Alberto Concha-Eastman (left), Dr. Etienne Krug, and Dr. Marijke Velzeboer-Salcedo (clik on the photo to enlarge). [©Armando Waak/PAHO]During the conference, "Alliances for the Prevention of Violence," two recent books on these issues were presented: the World Health Organization's World Report on Violence and Health (published in October 2002) and the new PAHO publication Violence Against Women: The Health Sector Responds.

Experts emphasized that violence is preventable and that rates can be reduced through political decision-making along with measures that strengthen surveillance systems and campaigns that focus on the concrete problems faced by individual countries.

"We know the statistics on deaths by violence, but we lack data on violence that is not fatal," said Dr. Etienne Krug, head of WHO’s Injuries and Violence Prevention Department. Krug presented the World Report on Violence and Health and noted that it was the product of three years' work by 160 experts from 70 countries. It is the first report to describe in detail the global toll of violence.

Dr. Alberto Concha-Eastman, PAHO regional advisor on violence and injury prevention, presented data on homicides in the Americas. The highest annual rates are found in Colombia, with 65 homicides per 100,000 people; Honduras, with 55 per 100,000; El Salvador, with 45; Jamaica, with 44; and Venezuela, with 35 per 100,000. The lowest rates are found in Canada, which reports only 2 homicides per 100,000 people; Costa Rica, with 4 per 100,000; and in the United States, with 6.5 per 100,000.

"One high-risk social problem is youth gangs," said Concha-Eastman. "Of the thousands of kids who belong to these gangs, especially in Jamaica, Costa Rica, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua, El Salvador, the United States and Brazil, 55 percent are under 15 and only 25 percent have completed elementary school." He added that many of these youths become adults involved in organized crime.

Other participants presented successful experiences with violence prevention. Dr. Rodrigo Guerrero, of the Inter-America Coalition for Violence Prevention and former mayor of Cali, Colombia, described successful initiatives in that city and in the capital of Bogotá. "In the early 1990s, the increase in violence was alarming. For this reason, we decided to map out the violence, and we found that most homicides occurred on weekends and that 40 percent of the victims were intoxicated. Seeing that alcohol was a risk factor, we decided to restrict consumption."

This measure, combined with restrictions on discotheques’ hours, helped lower crime rates from 80 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 1992 to 28 per 100,000 in 2000. Guerrero explained that political awareness of the problem had been critical to addressing it, along with an approach that was not only penal but also cultural. "It was important that people understood that life was sacred and that you have to respect it," he said.

Dr. Marijke Velzeboer-Salcedo, head of PAHO’s Gender and Health Unit, presented the new PAHO book Violence Against Women: The Health Sector Responds, noting that it was the result of 10 years of work in 10 countries, involving more than 150 communities. "Gender violence is one of the most common forms of abuse and it is devastating. And in many cases, women are victims of their own partners," she said.

Researchers found that most women did not know their rights and that they encountered obstacles and misunderstanding when they approached the health system. For this reason, Velzeboer-Salcedo said it is important to work with health professionals and train them to detect cases of violence and begin to break the cycle of violence, "a cycle that causes physical and mental problems and even murder and suicide."

Dr. David Brandling-Bennett, deputy director of PAHO, noted that the Organization has been focusing on the problem of violence since 1993, when its Directing Council— which consists of the ministries of health of the Americas—defined violence as a public health problem and encouraged governments to develop national plans to prevent it.

PAHO was established in 1902 and is the world’s oldest ongoing health organization. PAHO works with all the countries of the Americas to improve health and improve the quality of life of its inhabitants. It serves as the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 By: David Coleman

Executive Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel has denounced a falsified document circulating in the Venezuelan print & broadcast media as black bag disinformation aimed at causing maximum possible damage to President Hugo Chavez Frias' reform government ... the document has all the appearances of having come from his office at Miraflores and appears to set an agenda for top-level meetings with the opposition.

"This document is an utter falsification," Rangel told reporters.  "This week some newspapers published details from it as though it was my official agenda for the week, including meetings with the opposition.  However, I can unequivocally say that it is a forgery since no such document exists ... my agenda is kept under lock and key and, anyway, the meetings alluded to in the forgery do not exist ... perhaps it is just wishful thinking on the part of some!"

False government documents are surfacing at a rate of knots in Venezuela and abroad in what is clearly an opposition campaign to discredit President Chavez Frias and his government ministers.  Bogus emails claiming to have been sent by a variety of Venezuela embassies around the world have been sent out to millions of internauts and more confidence tricks are obviously in store as US-backed propagandists step up their information war against the democratically-elected government.

Vice President Rangel, a former top level journalist in his own right. says "I have no problem at all with meeting anyone ... it is just such meetings that are part and parcel of democracy as we know it ... but if I am to meet someone, it will be preconditioned to a form of practical civility as a fundamental mechanism to resolve all and any differences, and to give reasoned responses in civilized discourse."

"With or without an agenda, I will give priority to dialogue and have even called on my colleagues to calm their spirits and speak in peace instead of using violent means."

"It rather worries me that there has been a primitive reaction by some supposed intermediaries to author a ghost agenda like this ... what they have done reveals more of their demented intolerance like a group of neighbors in El Cafetal last week who went completely crazy ... and those who have strung up straw-filled effigies with red berets on the lamp-posts ... that sort of action displays more the existence of a dangerous and criminal divergence from civilized behavior ... it is complete irrational and totally unacceptable ... it is wholly against the spirit and meaning of the recently-signed OAS agreement which the opposition has signed to preserve the peace and stop violence."

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 By: David Coleman

The Comptroller's Commission of Venezuela's National Assembly (AN) has just approved a final and definitive report in favor of the exclusive Las Cristinas operator's contract between the Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG) and Toronto headquartered Crystallex International Corporation (KRY)

The late Wednesday afternoon ruling was in a vote of 8 for the motion and only 2 against ... effectively rejecting a draft proposal by AN deputy Edgar Mora, the Commission approved an alternative majority draft, by AN deputy Luis Velasquez Alvaray, which 100% backs the original CVG decision last year to award Las Cristinas to Crystallex.

"It was the best option the CVG had to renew the project and to reactivate the local economy ... the Commission did not find any of the irregularities which had been denounced by deputy Mora and therefore rejected them ... it confirms the conclusions already reached by four previous investigations by different commissions of the National Assembly ... this report concludes all and any further investigations in the Las Cristinas case."

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 By: Jose Gabriel Angarita

VenAmCham economist Jose Gabriel Angarita writes: Since January 21, the date on which restrictions were placed on Venezuela's foreign exchange market, it has been impossible to perform overseas credit card transactions. But CADIVI President Edgar Hernandez Behrens announced that the lifting of that restriction is under consideration: "we are doing studies and analysis of proposals, which are quite far along;" "now only a few important details remain."

This action by the foreign exchange regulatory body could imply a relaxation of the exchange control system in the near future ... though it would retain its current form and there would be no legal parallel market to satisfy the massive repressed demand.

Discussions in VenAmCham's economic department indicate that access to foreign exchange will increase after June has passed, but there is no clear indication as to whether the current system will be modified or kept in place as is, only with a lower level of discretionality.

Most sectors of the national economy are aware of the distortions to which a managed economy is subject. Proof of that is the statement by Central Bank Director Domingo Maza Zavala, who explained that "every surplus dollar in the foreign reserves represents the amount being withdrawn from economic activity, and that does not help the productive sectors to revive."

In the absence of a rapid relaxation of the restrictions on the foreign exchange market so that resources can be allocated to the different sectors of the national economy, the political punishment interpretation of the controls will continue gaining strength.

The upshot, however, will not only be harm to a particular economic sector or group, but to all the participants in the economic system, and especially the consumers, due to rising unemployment and product shortages.

Everything will depend on the changes that CADIVI may make in its mode of operation, to improve current conditions. If it makes no changes, the economic consequence may be a further intensification of the unprecedented contraction we have seen in recent months.

from the June 12, 2003 edition

By Patrick Michael Rucker | Special to The Christian Science Monitor

HAVANA – When Secretary of State Colin Powell appealed to Latin America's leaders earlier this week to help hasten the end of Fidel Castro's rule in Cuba, his message fell largely on deaf ears.

Calling Mr. Castro's government "our hemisphere's only dictatorship," Mr. Powell used an address to the annual meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Santiago, Chile, Monday to remind members that "the people of Cuba increasingly look to the OAS for help in defending their fundamental freedoms."

But during Tuesday's closing statements, even as regional leaders vowed to fight poverty, corruption, and respect for human rights, Cuba didn't even come up.

The on-again, off-again relationship between the US and its southern neighbors is reflected in the current debate - or lack thereof - over Cuba. Left-leaning populists now reside in the presidential palaces of some of South America's most influential nations, with a pro-Castro symbiosis that is now increasingly at odds with US regional policy.

Feeling neglected by the US since Sept. 11, 2001, South America's leaders are now asserting their independence over Cuba in what some analysts say could be a signal of waning US influence in the Americas.

"The Castro issue allows some to remain true to a fabled South American solidarity," says Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. "But it also exposes a region being divvied up between the United States, a superpower, and Brazil, a major regional power."

While many OAS members had registered their disapproval over a recent political crackdown that ended in the imprisonment of over 75 Cuban dissidents, the organization failed to pass a measure condemning Castro's government, despite Powell's appeal.

"Latin America seems to know better than the United States that Castro will be Castro whether one brandishes a stick or a carrot," says Bill Leogrande, dean of the school of public affairs at American University in Washington, and an expert in Cuban affairs. "If they felt that there was a plausible strategy to democratize Cuba, they would probably be supportive. But US policy has not been effective in the past, and Powell does not seem to be proposing anything new."

Some experts see the divergence between the US and much of South America as a sign of emerging divisions over the future of free trade.

Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, a strong critic of Washington's Cuba policy, has emerged as a leading skeptic of US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) - a plan to expand components of the North American Free Trade Agreement to all other countries in the region, excluding Cuba.

While many South American governments were once enthusiastic proponents of FTAA, the global economic slowdown has countries like Argentina contemplating trade protection as the only way to stabilize their economies. In his address to the OAS, Powell repeated 2005 as the target date for ratifying the FTAA, but chances of reaching an agreement by then look remote with many governments in the region still expressing deep misgivings.

"An emerging entente among Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela is raising the fundamental questions about whether neoliberal economic policy is even right for the region," Mr. Birns says. "In many ways, Castro has been asking those same questions. Many respect him for that, as they respect him for standing up to Uncle Sam for more than 40 years."

Mr. da Silva may have gained an ally in Nestor Kirchner, Argentina's newly elected, populist president. Mr. Kirchner came to office in what many here see as a backlash against the previous government and its close economic ties with the US. Kirchner has expressed misgivings about US-led economic reform, though he hosted Powell in Buenos Aires on Tuesday for a brief meeting on the last leg of the secretary of State's trip through the region.

The Cuba issue strained US-Argentine relations last year when Argentina abstained from siding with the US in condemning Cuba over human rights violations. Kirchner has been reluctant to criticize Castro as the Cuban president remains a popular revolutionary figure in Argentina. At Kirchner's inauguration two weeks ago, Castro was heralded as a hero during an impromptu address to thousands on the streets of Buenos Aires.

But if Castro is heartened by the respect he still engenders around South America, that attitude has dismayed Cuba's internal critics.

"Castro has been able to create this romantic image of the liberator who overthrew colonialism and defied the United States," acknowledges Oswaldo Payá, a leading Cuban dissident. "But anyone who looks at Cuba now should see that there are over 11 million people who want their rights. That is more important than an intellectual hypothesis or an ideology of the right or left. We appeal to them. It is right that they should show their solidarity with the cause of freedom."