The shadows of South America are under new scrutiny from the media and the government. Could al-Qaeda be operating from a secret base in Brazil? Timothy Pratt investigates

  IT is a notion that has gripped the US media: Middle Eastern extremist groups, including al-Qaeda, are reported to be creating a new terror base in the jungles of South America.

And despite a US State Department spokesman telling the Sunday Herald that 'the US has no information that al-Qaeda is present anywhere in Latin America', he admitted that investigating terrorism was 'a major component' of a recent visit by a department official to the so-called triple-frontier region where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet.

Deputy director for counter- terrorism Brigadier General Jonathan Cofer met with officials from the three countries on December 18, and the State Department offered the governments $1 million to strengthen their intelligence-gathering and abilities. 'Future visits are absolutely planned,' added the source.

Terrorism experts agree that the area has all the ingredients of a global hotspot. 'The concept of having international terrorist groups in Latin America is consistent with the region,' says Timothy C Brown, chair of international studies for the Sierra Nevada College in Nevada and a former US diplomat in several Latin American countries during three decades. Brown says he has heard reports in the region of groups including Hizbollah, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Hamas, as well as Spain's ETA, 'since at least the 1960s and 1970s'.

Brown, who acted as a liaison between presidents Reagan and Carter and the anti-communist Contras of Nicaragua, has written extensively on guerrilla movements in Latin America. He recalls an incident in Managua, Nicaragua, during the early 1990s in which a bomb exploded at what he described as a safe house for terrorist groups. He says that, in the investigation that followed, documents linked to the PLO, ETA and the IRA were found.

The region currently under American scrutiny has long been a centre for Arabic expatriates: up to 15,000 are understood to live there . Myles Frechette, a 35-year American foreign service veteran who enjoyed a stint as consul in S‹o Paulo, Brazil, recalls being in the state of Parana when Iranian Shi'ite leader Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989. 'I was in a small town in Brazil, and I remember being surprised to find three mosques full of Muslim Arabs mourning the death of Khomeini,' he says.

The area is also widely known for its leaky borders. 'This is of great concern, because we know there have been people from a variety of Middle Eastern countries coming through for a long time,' says Frechette. 'Most of the Middle Eastern people in the area are peaceful and industrious, but terrorists may be hiding among them.'

Douglas Unger, the author of several books on the region and of a forthcoming article on the guerrilla movements that combated Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner across the three borders from the 1960s to the 1980s, echoes the former consul's description of the area. 'The region is full of pirates and smugglers, and is sort of a catch-all for immigrants, many of whom are shady,' he claims.

Unger, a Pulitzer Prize-nominee whose last novel, Voices From Silence, was based on the thousands who disappeared under Argentina's dictatorships in the 1970s, also says the region would be an easy place to hide terrorist training facilities. Such camps are rumoured to exist north of Brazil's Igua?u Falls .

'It's possible to be a fringe group here and not be noticed,' he says. 'If you go back to the ongoing history of guerrilla activities, it's always been going on -- so why would it be a surprise that a group of Arabs is training when you have 50 years of this kind of thing?'

It has been suggested that left-leaning governments in Venezuela and Brazil will help create a safer haven for anti-US groups such as al-Qaeda -- but neither diplomat agrees.

Brown believes Latin governments have too much to lose by not at least giving the appearance of cracking down on terrorism: 'There may be sympathies among the left for anti-American ideals, but they understand which side their bread is buttered on.'

Frechette adds: 'President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has been accused of sympathies to the FARC [a Colombian guerrilla army] and he's done some foolish things, but I don't think he has sympathies for Middle Eastern groups. Brazilian President-elect Lula is left of centre, but he is also nationalist and interested in helping Brazilians, and is trying to confront the problem of violence tied to drugs in his country. I have no reason to believe he is in the least bit sympathetic to Arabic terrorists.

'And in today's post-September 11 atmosphere, if there was anything serious going on there, the US would be johnny-on-the-spot.'

But the challenge, of course, will be finding out about something serious before it happens. As State Department official Francis Taylor said in a speech to leaders from Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina only three months after the September 11 attacks of 2001: 'We are worried ... not by the things we see, but by the things we do not see.'

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01/05/2003

WELCOME, GILBERTO GIL, Brazil's new minister of culture. You've won enthusiastic acclaim as a pop singer-guitarist whose urbane music leaves one's hearing intact. (Your Grammy-winning album Quanta plays as I type.) You are far less appreciated in your current gig as a cabinet member under the new Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Most of the criticisms against you are, to me, fine qualifications for the job. If you ever get tired of fighting entrenched political and cultural interests in Brazil, please come to the United States and take over the National Endowment for the Arts.

Now why are members of Brazil's establishment sitting on their hands as you samba by? The political extremes don't like you because you have promoted sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. The right disapproves of the sex and drugs, and the left scorns the rock 'n' roll (too American).

Members of the left-leaning Workers' Party don't like you because you're not one of them. You belong to Brazil's small Green Party. In the past, you've endorsed candidates running against your new boss. Party loyalists can't figure out why da Silva named you as culture minister.

You irritated a number of people by complaining that you cannot live on the $2,500-a-month salary given Brazilian cabinet members. You vow to continue performing with your band on weekends to augment the family's income.

Your fellow countrymen don't say this out loud, but some undoubtedly disapprove of you for being black and from Bahia. A northeastern Brazilian province, Bahia is the land of the long siesta and not known for 24/7 ambition.

There are even those who don't like your dress. You are seen wearing all white, the emblem of peace in the Afro-Brazilian religion. You keep your hair in dreadlocks and avoid ties. To ease such concerns, you wore a dark suit to da Silva's inauguration.

You say, "I am a tolerant person and not easily offended." Thank goodness for that.

Finally, you have expressed dangerously original ideas on what a ministry of culture ought to do. You almost seem to think Brazil doesn't need one. "We have to free ourselves a bit from the idea that the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture is to produce culture," you said. In your view, a culture ministry should have two simple missions: 1) Create the conditions in which culture can be made. 2) Help bring the people who make culture and audiences together.

Gilberto Gil, you're so right. Why on earth would Brazil need a government bureaucracy to push its culture? It's music and dance conquered the world long ago. Brazil's great cultural offerings sprang from the soil and the soul -- not committees reading grant proposals in Brasilia office buildings. If I have it right, then, you'd want to enhance the overall environment for the arts, rather than pick and choose among art works deserving taxpayer subsidies.

President da Silva deserves applause for appointing a politically hard-to-herd artist who probably didn't even vote for him. And not every leftist would promote a minister of culture who thrives in the commercial world and takes inspiration from American pop music -- regarded on much of the planet as a weapon of U.S. imperialism.

How the ideologues or the grant applicants will take to you, Gilberto Gil, I don't know. All I know is that you would make a great chairman of our own National Endowment for the Arts.

Congressional conservatives took an ax to the NEA budget after the endowment stupidly subsidized such controversial works as Andres Serrano's photo of a crucifix soaking in urine. The biggest complaints nowadays come from liberals who say that the endowment only supports "art that is safe."

American culture, high and low, dominates the globe, so it's sometimes hard to understand why we even need an NEA. The United States produces mountains of art, music, drama and movies. There's always a public for things people want to see and hear. And if an artist can't find an appreciative audience to pay the rent, well, that's what day jobs are for.

Gilberto Gil, you could have a great future shrinking ministries of culture. Meanwhile, good luck in your new position. You'll do fine work building Brazil's wealth of creative expression, especially on weekends, when you're away from the ministry, playing with your band.

Froma Harrop is a Journal editorial writer and syndicated columnist. She may be reached by e-mail at: fharrop@projo.com.

By Kenneth Rapoza, Globe Correspondent, 1/5/2003

IO DE JANEIRO - Maria do Carmo Brito says she owes her life to leftist militants who kidnapped the German ambassador here in June 1970. They would only release him in exchange for her freedom.

Brito, then a 25-year-old leader of an antigovernment militia, had been caught smuggling a gun to a prisoner and was thrown in jail with 43 others labeled terrorists during the most brutal years of Brazil's 21-year dictatorship. She said she was tortured daily for two months.

''If the ambassador wasn't kidnapped in exchange for our freedom, I would have been killed,'' she said recently. ''These aren't good memories.''

Deported after her release, she returned to Brazil only after the government provided amnesty to former political prisoners in 1979.

Former militants like Brito are having their say in a new series of five best-selling books by newspaper columnist Elio Gaspari. His collection, titled ''Armed Illusions,'' is among a number of recent books that chronicle the dictatorship era.

Gaspari details how the US military was poised to support the coup plotters who toppled leftist president Joao Goulart on March 31, 1964, as well as President Nixon's subsequent financial support of the military regime.

The books are creating a stir, as former guerrillas begin serving in the administration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was sworn in Wednesday. Many are pictured handcuffed in the pages of Gaspari's books.

Jose Genoino, president of da Silva's Workers Party, was arrested in the jungles of northern Para State. Jose Dirceu, da Silva's chief of staff, fled to Cuba and returned to Brazil undercover under the name Carlos Henrique, even going so far as to undergo plastic surgery to disguise himself.

Gaspari's first book in the series, ''A Dictatorship Disgraced,'' describes the days before the coup up until the creation in 1968 of the controversial National Security Council to spy on and eliminate political subversives. Gilberto Gil, a popular musician and newly appointed minister of culture, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Brazil's former president, were among those exiled under the law in 1969.

The second, ''The Dictatorship Laid Bare,'' focuses on torture and political repression. More than 1,000 cases of torture were reported in both 1969 and 1970. Young leftist guerrillas began training in Para in reaction to the military crackdown, often engaging in armed conflict with government forces.

Gaspari cites US documents showing top-level US support for the regime and a desire to back those working to overthrow Goulart. But Lincoln Gordon, US ambassador to Brazil from 1961-1966, denies in his own book about Brazil that there was any US assistance in the coup.

Nonetheless, Gordon admits that the United States would have helped the military, if necessary. In ''Brazil's Second Chance,'' recently translated into Portuguese here, Gordon published a copy of a telegram he sent to Washington five days before Goulart was overthrown.

In the message, Gordon recommended that the United States support Humberto de Alencar Castello Branco, a general and coup leader who took power after Goulart, by preparing ''undercover weapons not of North American origin for those who support Castello Branco in Sao Paulo.'' He also called for unmarked US Navy vessels to be on standby in case of armed political and civilian resistance to the coup.

''We became concerned about the possibility of a civil war and made contingency preparations,'' Gordon, a former Harvard University professor said recently in an e-mail from his office at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where he is a guest scholar. ''No civil war occurred, and the contingency preparations were not used.''

The American publisher of Gordon's book, the Brookings Institution Press, did not include the telegram in the US version. Gordon says Brookings intends to publish the telegram in a second edition of his book this year.

Gordon, a staunchly anticommunist Democrat, said the United States feared that Goulart's advisers would press him to seek closer relations with Moscow or overthrow him. Leftist leaders in the government threatened civil war if the military deposed Goulart, but the warning proved unfounded. Goulart simply stepped down and was exiled to Uruguay.

''It was an easy coup,'' said Kenneth Maxwell, a historian of Brazil and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ''But if the US had to intervene, they would have supported the military.

Leo de Almeida Neves, a political insider in the Goulart years, said Goulart worried about his country descending into chaos. ''The coup went smoothly because he wanted to avoid bloodshed and civil war,'' said Neves, author of ''Living Historical Facts,'' an account of the dictatorship years. He said Goulart had military support ready to help him.

''Goulart was informed of the coup the day before it happened by his ex-finance minister,'' Neves said. ''He was a fervent nationalist, but he had nothing to do with communism.''

Military aggression grew under President Emilio Medici, a general who ruled from 1969 to 1974. US diplomats in Brazil became deeply divided over the regime. Some worried that the United States had turned a blind eye to torture. Others were focused on the Cold War and interested in preserving US financial interests in the region.

In 1970, Medici became the first Latin American dictator to meet with President Nixon. His fear of communism led Nixon to develop military relations with Brazil and to financially support Medici.

That same year, the United States trained 562 Brazilian military personnel. Washington sold Brazil $20 million in weapons in 1971, despite US congressional hearings on human rights abuses, Gaspari writes, citing US documents.

Gaspari's next book, to be released later this year, will focus on how the coup plotters ironically helped to dismantle the dictatorship, starting in the late 1970s.

The dictatorship book trend will continue in 2003, with Maria do Carmo Brito's life story to be published in February.

This story ran on page A21 of the Boston Globe on 1/5/2003.

2003-01-05 By Alan Clendenning Associated Press Writer

BRASILIA, Brazil -- Breakfast with Hugo Chavez, dinner with Fidel Castro.

The first day in office for Brazil's new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, projects the image of a leftist alliance in Latin America, one that Chavez, Venezuela's president, has already nicknamed the "Axis of Good."

Such an alliance could hinder U.S. efforts to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas stretching from Alaska to the tip of Argentina by 2005.

The United States sent trade representative Robert Zoellick to the inauguration, seen by the Brazilians as something of a snub because Zoellick suggested last October that Brazil's only trading partner would be Antarctica if it did not join the hemispheric trade zone.

Silva responded by calling Zoellick "the subsecretary of a subsecretary of a subsecretary" during his election campaign.

At the breakfast meeting, Chavez asked Silva to send technical experts from Brazil's state-owned oil company to replace some of the 30,000 Venezuelan state oil workers who have joined a crippling nationwide strike. Silva said he would consider the request.

And before dining Thursday night with Silva, Castro told Associated Press Television News that Brazilian-Cuban relations will grow stronger now that Brazil has its first elected leftist president.

Castro and Chavez had front- row seats in Congress at Silva's inauguration Wednesday, where an estimated 200,000 Brazilians waved red flags.

The Cuban and Venezuelan leaders had dinner together Thursday.

But experts said Silva's efforts to accommodate Castro and Chavez in Brasilia could be carefully calculated political window dressing.

Silva angered his party's left wing by appointing fiscal moderates to key cabinet posts, but he needs their help to push programs through Congress, where he lacks a majority.

"Embracing Castro and Chavez, the symbols of anti-U.S. influence in Latin America, gets Silva political capital in Brazil," said Stephen Haber, a Latin American expert at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. "But this is a dangerous game, you go too far one way or the other and this will blow up in your face."

So far, Silva seems to be pleasing his supporters without spooking financial markets. The real, which ended down 35 percent last year, finished stronger Thursday as the market reacted positively to second-tier finance ministry appointments.

Named to the posts were a mix of left-leaning, moderate and liberal economists with strong credentials, along with officials from the administration of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Chavez coined the "Axis of Good" term after Silva was elected in October, hailing the victory and saying Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba should team up to fight poverty.

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher would not comment on the possibility of the alliance.

During his breakfast with Silva, Chavez also brought up the idea of increasing cooperation among Latin American state-owned oil industries and setting up a company called Petro-America.

"It would become a sort of Latin American OPEC," Chavez said.

by IMC Brazil • Saturday January 04, 2003 at 04:44 PM contato@midiaindependente.org

Two thousand landless families in Guarulhos, Brazil are facing the risk of eviction on Monday morning. Your international solidarity may be decisive.

Their story begins on mid July 2002 when a group of a few hundred families squatted an abandoned urban area in Osasco, near Sao Paulo, Brazil. The 50 hectares area in a fancy neighborhood used as a clandestine garbage field was soon occupied by ten thousand poor people living in simple tents. The city government and the rich neighbors immediately started a campaign accusing them of stealing land and bringing thiefs and drug dealers to the neighborhood. After a 5 months campaign, they were evicted. The owner of the area and the city government brought bulldozers protected by riot police who violently destroyed people's houses. One could see workers, women with children and the elderly crying over their destroyed houses filled with poor furniture and their personal possesions..

The homeless managed to get a deal with the state government and were transferred to a state unused area in Guarulhos - still near Sao Paulo but over 20 miles away from their former houses and jobs. But once the buses transferring them arrived, they had again to face the police. The city government of Guarulhos (controlled by the PT, the "Worker's" Party) had called the city police to prevent them from getting into the area. City government argued that the city has no structure to host the families and that their transferring violated urban legislation. After long negotiations they managed to get in.

But the city government went to the courts and a judge just decided for a new dramatic eviction, due to next Monday, January the 6th. The homeless have no option but to resist. Riot police will arrive early in the morning and people fear a massacre as families can't leave because they simply have nowhere to go. Local activists are mobilizing to join the homeless. International activists are called to put pressure on authorities.

What you can do:

You can send emails to the following authorities:

Governador do Estado de São Paulo São Paulo State Governor Mr. Geraldo Alckmin Email: saopaulo@sp.gov.br

Secretaria de Justiça e Defesa da Cidadania do Estado de São Paulo State Secretary for Justice and Citizenship Mr. Alexandre Morais Email: justica@justica.sp.gov.br

Prefeito de Guarulhos City Mayor of Guarulhos Mr. Elói Pietá Email: prefeito.guarulhos@sp.gov.br

Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) The Worker's Party Email: presnacional@pt.org.br