Free Republic

PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Panama has ruled out hosting a U.S. military base to replace one in Ecuador which is being reclaimed by the Quito government, a senior Panamanian official said on Friday. Panama -- along with Peru and Colombia -- had been tipped as a possible site to replace the Manta air base in western Ecuador, a key strategic asset in Washington's campaign to stop Latin American cocaine from reaching the United States.

Leaders across Latin America have reacted angrily to a new EU law that could jail illegal immigrants for up to 18 months before they are deported. One president called it a hate initiative. Another said it was an attack on people's rights and lives. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans live and work in Europe, many of them without permission. Many do jobs that Europeans do not want to do, providing a vital source of income for poor families back home. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez led the reaction, threatening to cut oil exports to Europe unless the EU retracted the...

Honduran president Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales and representatives from El Salvador and Guatemala met with California farmers Saturday to hash out a plan that will train laborers from those countries to work in the Western U.S. The plan is set to start with about 300 workers from Mexico and Central America. It will operate under existing U.S. guest worker laws and take at least a year to implement, said Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League, a group that represents hundreds of agriculture businesses in California, Washington, Oregon and Arizona. Growers plan to work with Latin American countries...

Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot, by Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner, and Alvaro Vargas Llosa, translated by Michaela Lajda Ames, New York Madison Books, 218 pages, $24.95 My Costa Rican friend Celeste, ordinarily mild-mannered to a fault, was turning purple. The TV newscast said her country was about to get its first maquila, a factory where cloth would be imported duty free from the United States, cut and sewn into garments, and shipped back to the United States. An enterprising reporter discovered that the Costa Rican seamstresses--though well paid by local standards--would be making about $4 an...

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, March 22, 2005 – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld arrived here at the Argentine capital city March 21, kicking off a four-day Latin-American trip. The secretary will seek to strengthen the U.S. bilateral defense relationship with Argentina, according to senior defense officials, as well as solidify relationships with Brazil and Guatemala, which Rumsfeld is also slated to visit between now and March 24. Rumsfeld told traveling press members en route to Argentina that the United States takes a keen interest in the goings-on throughout the Western Hemisphere and has “good military-to-military relationships” with Argentina, Brazil and Guatemala....

Situated between Argentina and Brazil, the sprawling Iguazu waterfalls are among the most popular tourist destinations in South America, with nearly 2 million visitors flocking annually to witness their extravagant beauty. In recent years, however, the area surrounding the falls has also attracted a far less savory element. In the shadow of the Iguazu lies the “tri-border” region, a lawless zone which has become a magnet for Islamic terrorists. Located where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet, the area is home to roughly 20,000 Middle Eastern immigrants—mostly from Lebanon and Syria—and has long been a hotbed for terrorist fundraising, arms and...

Dot # 1: A Growing Threat in the Tri-Border Area of South America. (Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of South America. A Report Prepared under an Interagency Agreement by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, July 2003.) Since the early 1980’s, Arab terrorists have been sending thousands of their cohorts to the almost inaccessible jungle and mountain region between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay (known as the TBA, Tri-Border Area or La Triple Frontera). Terror training camps and arsenals have been established, virtually out of the reach of local law enforcement or defense forces; and...

The US is hiring mercenaries in Chile to replace its soldiers on security duty in Iraq. A Pentagon contractor has begun recruiting former commandos, other soldiers and seamen, paying them up to $4,000 (£2,193) a month to guard oil wells against attack by insurgents. Last month Blackwater USA flew a first group of about 60 former commandos, many of who had trained under the military government of Augusto Pinochet, from Santiago to a 2,400-acre (970-hectare) training camp in North Carolina. From there they will be taken to Iraq, where they are expected to stay between six months and a year,...

Between 1,500 and 2,000 Marines will deploy to Haiti as part of peacekeeping operations in that nation, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said during a Pentagon news conference today. "A couple hundred" Marines are already in and around Haiti's capital of Port- au-Prince, he noted. They are the leading elements of a multinational interim force sanctioned by the United Nations. Rumsfeld said he is not aware of any "abduction" used by U.S. forces to get President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti after his Feb. 29 resignation. The Marines will secure key sites in the capital and will stabilize the security...

According to National Review Online, "Last Wednesday, Columbia University assistant professor Nicholas DeGenova told the audience at a faculty-led antiwar teach-in that he wished 'for a million Mogadishus' to visit U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq." According to the Columbia University biography of DeGenova, his teaching focuses on "transnational urban conjunctural spaces that link the U.S. and Latin America as a standpoint of critique from which to interrogate U.S. nationalism, political economy, racialized citizenship, and immigration law." DeGenova has appeared at several open-borders conferences as a panelist and his writing has been highly critical of immigration enforcement. He is also scheduled...