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03/22/2006:

"Ecuador clamps down on protests"

A state of emergency has been declared in five of Ecuador's provinces as indigenous groups continue protests against free trade talks with the US.
Peasants have been blocking roads in highland areas since last week in an action which has cost millions of dollars in lost trade.

Protesters fear the trade deal to be negotiated in Washington this week will damage their way of life.

The state of emergency bans public meetings and imposes a curfew.

It was declared by President Alfredo Palacio in the highland provinces of Cotopaxi, Canar, Chimborazo and Imbabura, as well as parts of Pichincha, where the capital Quito is located.

"The president took this decision after exhausting all other options for dialogue," said Interior Minister Felipe Vega.

A final round of talks about the free trade deal is scheduled to begin in Washington on 23 March, with a deal expected to be concluded in early April.

Ecuador's neighbours Colombia and Peru have already signed deals with the US.
bbc.co.uk


U.S. Meddling in Peruvian Presidential Race?
Something smells funny about the recent denunciation of maverick Peruvian presidential candidate Ollanta Humala for alleged human rights violations. Before the accusations, Humala was riding high as the leading candidate in Peru's presidential elections. Investigations illustrate that Humala's accusers are subsidized by the US Government funded Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Washington may be interfering in this election to protect its own interests.

The former army officer heads a nationalist and anti- neoliberal coalition between his new Peruvian Nationalist Party and the ten-year-old center-left Union for Peru party. Humala, a mestizo, was never part of Lima's white ruling elite which has traditionally run the major institutions of the country. He is often derided for being an upstart "cholo" (indigenous), which sheds light on the colonial racism still inherent within Peruvian society. So much of Humala's support comes from the impoverished non-white majority who has suffered from the "neoliberal reforms" of the unpopular sitting president Alejandro Toledo.


Erasing Indigenous Peru
Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the most famous intellectuals in Latin America. His name ranks with those of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende, and Miguel Angel Asturias as one of the top writers of the legendary Latin American “boom” of the sixties and seventies. His novels are probing, philosophical, and often hilarious page-turners. In the first decade of his career, Vargas Llosa retooled the structure of the novel with the confidence and mastery of a seasoned expert, or, in his case, a genius. Many times he has left my jaw on the floor and my mind reeling.

Mario Vargas Llosa is also a Peruvian. He was born and raised in Peru, and his first novels took place in Peru and explored Peruvian history and life. His masterpiece, Conversation in the Cathedral, is widely considered to be The Great Peruvian Novel, and a contender for The Great Latin American Novel. I am a particular fan, having read the novel twice in the original Spanish. Even while I was punch drunk with the power of the story, however, I knew that something was terribly wrong.

There are no indigenous people in Conversation in the Cathedral. The novel, which mostly takes place in Lima, probes many class and race issues between European descendants, mestizos and African descendants. The millions of indigenous people living in the Andes, the Amazon basin, and cities throughout the country, however, are missing.

This largely explains why Vargas Llosa lost the presidential race against Alberto Fujimori in 1990. A commentator at the time noted that Vargas Llosa ran his campaign throughout the Peruvian countryside as if he were running for office in Switzerland. Fujimori, an unknown professor at a Lima-based agricultural university, slaughtered him. Fujimori then ripped off Vargas Llosa's neoliberal economic program, became an iron-fisted dictator, and, eventually, a self-exiled criminal protected from extradition by the Japanese government. Vargas Llosa moved to Europe and returned to novels, most of which stepped out of Peruvian reality.

Now Vargas Llosa is back, kind of. In an article published in the national Mexican newspaper, La Reforma, on 12 March 2006, Vargas Llosa lamented the poll results showing that the retired army commander, Ollanta Humala, is number two in the race, with a third of the decided voters. Vargas Llosa's attack against Humala and his defense of the Christian Democrat candidate, Lourdes Flores, are of little interest compared to his description of who Humala's supporters are, and why they support him. This, in turn, puts forth Vargas Llosa's views on who is poor and why in Peru. His answer is stunning and worth quoting in full:

“At least a third of the population lives trapped in conditions that shut them out of all the benefits derived from Peru's good macroeconomic statistics.

“Rural peasants, marginalized urban sectors, migrants who cannot fit themselves into the cities, unemployed, and retired people who cannot plug the gap with their thin pensions, etcetera.”

Who is missing? One of the largest and most diverse indigenous populations on the planet. Unless they are supposed to be captured in Vargas Llosa's “etcetera,” they simply do not exist for him. They are not there. The word “indigenous” does not appear anywhere in his article.