U.S. urges better share in progress for the poor - Will not do business with a tyrant

Taking up the standard for the region's poor, the White House's chief envoy to Latin America said leaders must take steps to allow more people to participate in democracy and economic progress.

''This is a continent where the peasants and laborers work from dawn to dusk and end their lives in misery, and not for the lack of natural resources,'' said Otto J. Reich as he addressed The Herald's 2003 Americas Conference on Tuesday in Coral Gables.

``There is too much false nationalism and a lack of firm commitment to real development. The creative forces of all the population must be allowed to flourish.''

Reich said the formula for progress in the region was democratic governments, ''sound, pro-growth economic policies,'' and investments in health and education.

He also boosted the Bush administration's trade initiative, the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. ''The FTAA is the best route toward the goal of lifting people out of poverty,'' he said.

Reich singled out corruption, inefficiency and marginalization -- particularly for indigenous peoples -- as problems impeding progress in the hemisphere.

''Seldom have we faced as many challenges and opportunities in the hemisphere as we do today,'' he said. ``There is far too much corruption.''

In a region marked by periodic social unrest that has forced presidents in Argentina, Ecuador and most recently Bolivia out of office, Reich questioned the leaders of the opposition in Bolivia.

Earlier this month, Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada resigned after days of violent protests over the plan to allow a foreign-owned consortium to export natural gas to Mexico and the United States. Bolivians were also unhappy with building a gas pipeline through Chile, which gained territory in a 19th century war that left Bolivia landlocked.

Speaking of the problems in the poorest South American country, Reich railed against political leaders who recommended leaving natural resources in the ground rather than using them to pay for development.

''There are people in Bolivia who don't believe in democracy and we cannot allow them to take power,'' Reich said. Still, he insisted that he was not telling Bolivians what to do.

Reich said he was in Bolivia a week before the protests and then traveled to Paris to attend a conference to discuss international donations to Bolivia. The White House envoy criticized European allies for failing to step forward with money, noting that Spain was the only exception.

He noted that the United States was the largest buyer of Latin American exports and also was the single largest source of remittances sent by workers back to their families. Remittances make up one-fifth of the economies of Honduras and Nicaragua, while Mexico expects to receive $12 billion in remittances this year, larger than the country's tourism earnings.

Reich, who was born in Cuba, repeated the Bush administration's position that it would not lift or ease the trade and travel embargo with Cuba. In reference to the Senate-approved measure forbidding the Treasury Department from using resources to prosecute Americans who break the travel ban to Cuba, Reich said tourism would not bring about the fall of Fidel Castro.

Fidel Castro - Cuba

Hugo Chavez - Venezuela

Chavez foes slam land grants - 'Agrarian Reform' and "Land Redistribution' in Venezuela***Under the law, the land distributed to the peasants is still owned by the state, and the government must encourage the formation of peasant cooperatives and collective farms, where the state is to provide housing, health care and education. The law also gives the government power to dictate how private land can be used, based on soil conditions and the country's food-security needs.

Critics argue that the law violates the right to private property and is a throwback to state-planned communist economies.

"The model of the collective farm doesn't respond to our reality," said Roque Carmona, founder of Campesino Alliance, a nonprofit organization that helps small-scale farmers. "It looks good on paper, nothing more."

Government officials maintain that the ban on giving up ownership of state property is an attempt to avoid the failures of past land reforms in Venezuela and elsewhere, in which small farmers who lacked credit or government support eventually had to sell their plots to large landowners.

They also argue that forming peasant cooperatives is the only way campesinos can compete with large agribusinesses.

Mr. Chavez has defended the law in terms of social justice and by appealing to the need for "food security," mandated by the constitution passed in 1999 during his first year as president.***

____________________________________________________________

War of Images Illustrates Colliding Views of Chavez ***CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 21 -- Pedro Leon Zapata and Regulo Perez are lifelong friends and artistic rivals. Each has enjoyed a perch on the editorial pages of the nation's leading newspapers where, for decades, they have published political caricatures skewering the powerful.

They are also leading lights in Venezuela's modern art movement, one of the most important in Latin America. Zapata, in particular, has captured the public imagination with his fanciful murals and canvases that have recently taken on a distinctly anti-government shade.

Today, while still friends, Zapata and Perez are also antagonists in the political drama that is moving toward a climax.

Squinting behind thick, oval glasses, Zapata, 74, said the intense political debate compelled him to express his opposition to President Hugo Chavez in his painting, and he now uses the Venezuelan flag as "an emblem of opposition."

Perez, 73, running his fingers through a shock of gray hair, said he has tried to defend the president by using the flag as a "fascist symbol" in a series of paintings portraying the opposition movement as elitist and mercenary.

In art, as in life here, Chavez has become a challenge.

Once faithfully leftist and mostly detached from political life, Venezuela's modern art community is now deeply divided over Chavez and his populist program to lift up the country's poor. Not since the years after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, when the artistic left fractured over Venezuela's own short-lived guerrilla movement, has the insular art world here been so shaken. ***

Political prisoners hunger for justice - How long could you live in a cage?***Meanwhile, I've heard from José Daniel Ferrer, who is at the Pinar del Rio prison known as Kilometer 5 ½. He tells me about the prisoners' suffering and constant hunger. His brother Luis Enrique -- who challenged the judges to sign the Varela Project and thus was handed the longest sentence, 28 years -- is now in a punishment cell. When normal conditions are torture, imagine what a punishment cell must be like.

What's remarkable, what history will record as the truth, is the love of Cuba's political prisoners for their people and for freedom. It's the kind of unlimited courage that confuses their jailers. It's the fortitude of their spirit while at total disadvantage, their inner peace in the face of those who have only power, tyrannical power, and compensate for the strength of the powerless ones by inflicting pain upon them.

The prisoners of the Cuba spring and all other political prisoners in Cuba are sustained by their faith and the prayers and solidarity of all sensitive people inside and outside our island. But this should not be a spectacle for Cubans. Every drop in the torrent of pain that flows from these prisoners and their relatives is shed by every Cuban -- every elderly person and poor child, every disheartened youth who plunges into the sea, every family that suffers anguish and oppression and even by those who talk and only talk, complain or dwell on the subject but give no support.

Each drop of that suffering is shed by you. Don't pity the prisoners, because if they suffer hunger and thirst, they are blessed because they hunger and thirst for justice. There are no blessings, however, for those who show no solidarity because they don't want to get in trouble.***

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.