By Dario Montero
SAN DIEGO, California, Dec 7 2010 (IPS)

Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay and even Brazil are close to being able to provide a universal basic income to all citizens, which is the way to make cash transfers an effective tool in fighting inequality, according to Martín Hopenhayn.

Martín Hopenhayn Credit: Milton Bellintani/ECLAC

But in order to sustain such payments, in-depth reforms of tax systems in the region are needed, Hopenhayn told IPS in an interview during a late November seminar organised by ECLAC in San Diego, California to disseminate and highlight the results of its five-year Experiences in Social Innovation contest.

The conditions that would make it possible to provide a basic income to citizens appear to be coming together in some countries of the region, as poverty has declined in nearly all countries despite the international economic crisis that is still plaguing much of the world economy, according to the Social Panorama of Latin America 2010 report released by ECLAC in November.

Q: How would you evaluate the social situation in the region after a five-year boom, which was interrupted by the global crisis of 2008? A: Compared to the 1980s and 1990s, social indicators have clearly improved. Since 2002, the poverty rate has fallen from 44 percent of the population in the region to 32 percent. The creation of jobs and increase in family incomes, by means of wages or social programmes, has broken with decades of stagnation or decline.

Although it seems incredible in view of the tremendous crisis we have suffered, there has also been a general decline in poverty and indigence, albeit small, in 2009 and this year. Unlike in the past, governments have adopted countercyclical measures in the face of the crisis: they have spent money to protect the jobs and incomes of the poorest households.

The other positive aspect in this time of change is that for the first time in many years, there has been an improvement in the distribution of wealth, although Latin America is still the world’s most unequal region. But the GINI index (which measures inequality) has improved in nearly every country, especially Brazil and Venezuela.

Q: Why has inequality been the hardest nut to crack, despite the election of leftist governments that specifically include the fight against inequality in their government programmes? A: The biggest problem is that it is very difficult to reduce wage gaps, partly because of the weight of the informal sector of the economy where, despite advances made, half of the urban population still works.

Furthermore, much of the productive apparatus is still backwards, lacking access to markets and with a low level of specialisation.

Q: Growth is also based on raw materials, which do not generate much employment… A: That presents a major dilemma. The significant rise in the international prices of farm exports and natural resources has been a big ally in the growth of many countries, such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, but the problem is that these are areas of the economy that generate few jobs and tend to concentrate wealth.

The big challenge for the region is to diversify the production of wealth.

Q: In addition, the rise in farm prices leads to a similar effect in the domestic market. A: That is a big problem. In the period we’re talking about, extreme poverty would have been reduced even more if not for the inflation in food prices, because the extreme poor spend nearly all their income on food.

There are exceptional cases, like Argentina, where the government took measures to keep domestic prices from being pulled up by international prices for what is a basic part of the diet in that country, beef.

Q: But that policy (a ban on beef exports, and later export quotas) drew a great deal of criticism both within and outside of Argentina. A: It is a dilemma. But I must say that Argentina did not suffer much of a negative impact on its exports as a result of that measure, which did on the other hand improve things on the domestic market.

A: What does ECLAC recommend governments do to combat inequality, now that a new boom period is predicted?

Q: The first recommendation is what we call the fiscal pact. Latin America has an average tax burden of around 17 percent of GDP, which is very low. In Mexico, for example, it is only 12 percent. Worse yet, the structure of the taxes — which, unlike in Europe, are indirect — is very unfair, because everyone pays the same, rich and poor. They are taxes on consumption. Meanwhile, income taxes and taxes on business profits are very low, and there are many exemptions as well.

So a reform of the tax system is essential. The combination of economic growth and a heavier, more redistributive tax burden translates into an increase in resources for social policies. To make serious cash transfers, for social purposes.

Q: You’re talking about an increase in social spending? A: Currently transfers to the poor, through plans like Brazil’s Bolsa Familia (family grant) system or Mexico’s Oportunidades, amount to just 0.5 or 0.6 percent of GDP. That is still very low, although efforts have been made.

What would happen if we could transfer resources to all families with some degree of social vulnerability, in order to push them above the poverty line? That would make healthy child development possible and would improve educational performance and reduce malnutrition.

In other words, it would put countries on a path towards breaking down the intergenerational reproduction of poverty, exclusion and inequality.

Q: The alternative would be a basic income for families without the conditions required today (such as school attendance, vaccination and regular health checkups)? A: There is major debate in the region with respect to whether or not we will make the shift from conditional cash transfer programmes to a citizen income. So far the programmes have set conditions, and the transfers have involved very small amounts.

There is a certain logic to setting conditions. You kill two birds with one stone: the families have more income and, in exchange, the children stay in school. However, the example of Brazil once again shows us that while the Bolsa Familia programme has boosted incomes, it has not had much of an impact on school enrolment and attendance, since primary school coverage is already nearly universal.

We have to see which economies in this region are in a position to move towards a guaranteed basic income. The premise is that citizens, as such, are entitled to a minimum level of subsistence.

Q: Which countries would be in a position to do so? A: At least four variables have to come together: per capita income based on a country’s productive capacity, the tax burden, social security coverage, and the average educational level. In that regard, the countries that would appear to be closest are Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Costa Rica, although Brazil is not far off.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
LA JOLLA, California, Nov 21 2010 (IPS)

“Now it’s just a matter of showing the projects to the governments so they can transform them into public policies,” said Martín Hopenhayn, director of social development for the Latin American and Caribbean economic agency ECLAC, at the close of a conference here that showcased thousands of community-based development initiatives.

Francisco Tancredo: "Our initial idea was to publicly recognise the region's social innovators." Credit: Milton Bellintani/ECLAC

The projects range from cooperatives and other types of associations for generating income, to support services for at-risk youth, to the affirmation of rights to health and education, to the promotion of volunteering and community participation, according to the contest’s four thematic areas.

The ECLAC expert said he was confident that these community programmes would change the ways that government leaders appraise the work that emerges from the communities themselves, and would better mobilise the community resources.

“Despite the important advances achieved in recent years in reducing poverty and indigence, the region remains the most unequal in the world,” Hopenhayn told IPS. In this context, it is essential to incorporate into our public policies “this great social wealth we have, and to deepen it.”

It has already been proved that civil society’s creativity can “buffer the serious problems that affected large segments of the population in the absence of government during the neoliberal fervour of the 1990s,” he stated at the end of the conference last week at the Institute of the Americas, in the southern California city of La Jolla, neighbouring San Diego.

The Experiences in Social Innovation contest, organised with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, involved 4,800 participants over five years, with a wide array of activities and proposals that emerged and developed from the grassroots — and were largely unknown to anyone beyond the communities themselves.

After being narrowed down to 3,000 applicants, 25 winners were chosen: “Success Stories in Latin America and the Caribbean,” which is also the title of the book presented at the forum, recording the profiles and achievements of the innovative social projects developed in 13 countries in the region.

Among the winners are initiatives for rural development in Bolivia and Haiti, support for at-risk youth in Argentina, an anti-corruption observatory in Brazil, community programmes against domestic violence in Peru, health services in the Amazon jungle, and even football as a means for protecting the environment in Belize.

“The contest itself was innovative in that it created a useful database of information for decision-makers across Latin America and the Caribbean,” said Brazilian Francisco Tancredo, member of the selection community and one of the project’s promoters since it began when he was still director of the Kellogg Foundation.

“Our initial idea was to publicly recognise the social innovators who exist throughout the region and who often are only known in the communities where they work, and to give them visibility,” he told IPS.

It was of great importance to Tancredo to organise the information so that the experiences could be replicated in other places. He also believed that, in addition to the book, it was essential that the project’s protagonists themselves gathered to share their experiences.

“Everything is condensed into those pages, which are now available to national and local governments,” said Tancredo, who alongside Colombian economist Norah Rey de Marulanda, also a member of the panel of judges, edited and published the book presented at the La Jolla conference.

The overarching goal of becoming public policy is already a reality for the Projeto Saude e Alegria (Health and Happiness Project) in the Brazilian Amazon city of Santarém, which will be expanded to the national arena as a government policy in December.

However, some of the other social innovation projects have run into government indifference or bureaucratic obstacles.

Tancredo and Rey de Marulanda stress in their book that successful projects like the prizewinners should be widely replicated. They say it is imperative to “create a dialogue between their leaders and the governments” so that their initiatives are incorporated into government policy.

After five years, ECLAC has accumulated fundamental knowledge through the projects presented, with great innovation and potential, said Tancredo, noting, “They are illustrative examples of social and community capabilities.”

“We have tried to put a ‘stamp’ on these social innovation initiatives so that the prize might help open more doors for them,” he said, and in itself serve to promote social development.

The award carries with it the credibility of ECLAC, and according to Tancredo, “may help break down barriers that governments often create for incorporating into their public policies the successful programmes that have emerged from community initiative.”

“We know that the latter is difficult to achieve, because it implies bringing local initiatives to the national scale, but ‘you create your path as you walk’,” he said, quoting a well-known 1912 poem by Spain’s Antonio Machado.

Many of the winners over the five years have confirmed that after going through the contest procedures and winning the ECLAC stamp, doors have indeed opened to government officials — who are often reluctant because they tend to seek short-term results — and to private resources.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
LA JOLLA, California, Nov 19 2010 (IPS)

“On Dec. 15, we will make the great leap ahead when we present our health programme, our hospital boat, to the country,” Caetano Scannavino announced in the name of a community project that has achieved one of its aims: to be included in the Brazilian government’s social policies.

"The Amazon jungle communities little by little took over the initiative," Scannavino told IPS. Credit: Courtesy of Milton Bellintani/ECLAC

The project has a mobile hospital — a boat equipped to provide medical care — and helps train local community health agents.

Projeto Saude and Alegria is one of the 25 winners that were selected from 4,800 community projects presented between 2005 and 2009 in the Experiences in Social Innovation contest organised by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), with support from the U.S.-based W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

The contest, which identifies innovative social development initiatives in order to learn from them, has brought to light a broad range of projects, ranging from plans that provide assistance to remote communities in Brazil’s Amazon jungle, to programmes targeting young slum dwellers and novel local development efforts in the Andean highlands or Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere.

At this week’s International Seminar on Social innovations in Latin America and the Caribbean, in La Jolla, California, ECLAC presented the 25 most innovative, low-cost, participatory initiatives aimed at overcoming poverty and inequality in the region.

Through the contest, the people involved in the projects are able to showcase their cost-efficient, replicable results.

The 25 projects won first through fifth prize in the five years since the contest got underway: 30,000 dollars for first prize, 20,000 for second, 15,000 for third, 10,000 for fourth and 5,000 dollars for fifth prize, in addition to technical advice.

But while the projects celebrate when their initiatives take off, as a result of being incorporated into public policies, they question the lack of interest on the part of the authorities when they are ignored, participants in the Nov. 17-19 seminar at the Institute of the Americas in La Jolla, next to San Diego, told IPS.

There is a constant effort throughout the region to discover successful community-based initiatives, in order to transform them into institutional social policies, Francisco Tancredi of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation told IPS.

Scannavino’s description of the vicissitudes that his project has had to overcome in the Amazon jungle contrasted sharply with the surroundings during the interview: the modern facilities of the University of California San Diego.

The Projeto Saude and Alegria faced serious challenges when it first emerged in 1987, “because of political-electoral reasons,” Scannavino said.

“We suffered the neoliberal policies of the early 1990s under the government of Fernando Collor de Mello, which demolished social plans…and although we continued for a while, we finally had to stop,” said the former photo-journalist, who one day picked up and left his home city of Sao Paulo to follow in the footsteps of his brother, a medical doctor, in the Amazon jungle.

“But the seed had been planted, and the Amazon jungle communities little by little took over the initiative, which brought them a fundamental service that the state did not provide at the time,” he told IPS.

“With health monitors, a cholera epidemic was successfully fought in the Amazon in the 1990s, which was a test for us,” he added.

As a result of the social pressure from local communities, “we finally managed to take up the task again in 1994. But that frustration showed us that the way to do things was for the community to take over the project.”

By 2005, the number of communities the project worked with had grown from 30 to 150, “which allowed us to determine the most effective aspects of our health prevention efforts, which initially drew the interest of the municipal governments and now have become part of the national (health) system, based on a law passed on Aug. 3.”

The project currently serves a territory of 600,000 hectares in the Tapajós River basin, providing healthcare to 170 riverbank communities that are home to some 30,000 people of mixed-race and indigenous descent. Many of them live a nomadic lifestyle, subsisting on fishing, the cultivation of manioc and gathering fruits, nuts and other products from the rainforest — and for the first time, they are receiving medical care.

The project’s tasks expanded from primary healthcare, training of local health facilitators, the hospital-boat, an amphibious ambulance, and an education and communication programme including video-making, telecentres, community radio stations and newspapers, to water purification mechanisms and basic sanitation like community-built septic tanks.

Besides bringing healthcare and vaccination to remote, inaccessible communities, the project’s facilitators use traditional medicine and know-how.

“By 2005, our work had achieved a larger scale and we expanded our activities,” Scannavino said. “That was the year we won the ECLAC prize, which gave us a major boost, enabling us to equip our boat, and we started training local health agents in the communities themselves, which was taken up by the municipalities.”

When the federal law was passed, “we became part of Brazil’s Health Ministry, and the entire Amazon jungle and the Pantanal wetlands will now be covered, before the project is replicated in other regions distant from the large cities.”

In Scannavino’s view, “The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has managed to mix market-oriented policies with a strong social focus,” which has made it possible for initiatives like the Projeto Saude and Alegria to be incorporated in public policies.

But the “Support System for Juveniles in Legal Custody”, a local government programme in the eastern Argentine province of Buenos Aires, has had a harder time winning the attention of the central government.

“When we presented our successful experience to the national government, we met with indifference and ran up against short-term political interests,” according to Verónica Lucía Canale, who took part in the event in the Institute of the Americas, representing the programme in the office of the provincial prosecutor’s office.

“I have presented the project seven times, in order for it to be replicated in other parts of the country, but when I explain what it is, they never call me again,” she told IPS. “There are problems of red tape, and political fears of encroachment.”

The plan provides assistance to at-risk children and adolescents who were victims of abuse or have a criminal record, “to help them achieve social inclusion themselves.”

The idea is to avoid incarceration of juvenile offenders and prevent adolescents who leave protected legal custody from becoming repeat offenders.

“We work on educational and labour inclusion, and on the creation of social networks, which are fundamental because they will help sustain them the rest of their lives,” she said.

Canale said the programme offers a stipend making it possible for the youngsters to live independently until they find a job. It also assigns them a mentor to provide psychological, social and legal support.

The plan, which today is public policy at the provincial level, was created in 1989 after a study in the province’s prisons found that 75 percent of the inmates interviewed had gone through the juvenile justice system, whether because they were delinquents or victims of abuse.

The relationship with the state is always complex, the participants in the local social development initiatives agreed.

But the idea is to complement rather than replace the authorities in their obligations, the organisers of the contest stressed.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Feb 26 2010 (IPS)

Brazil is lobbying hard to get the rest of Latin America to adopt the Brazilian version of the Japanese digital television standard, as Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela have already done.

Hélio Costa Credit: Fabricio Fernandes/Ascom/Brazilian Ministry of Communications

During a brief visit to Montevideo, the capital of this country of 3.4 million people wedged between South American giants Brazil and Argentina, Brazilian Communications Minister Helio Costa pressed the advantages offered by the ISDB-Tb (Japanese standard – Brazilian version) in meetings with representatives of the incumbent government of Tabaré Vázquez and the incoming administration of José Mujica, both of whom belong to the left-wing Broad Front coalition.

The Brazilian government’s aim is to persuade Mujica, who takes office Mar. 1, to reconsider the 2007 agreement reached by the Vázquez administration with the EU and adopt the ISDB-Tb standard, Costa said in this interview with IPS at the end of his meeting with Uruguayan officials.

Costa and several of his advisers met with a delegation headed by Uruguay’s Minister of Industry Raúl Sendic and Senator Eduardo Bonomi, president-elect Mujica’s right-hand man.

“Brazil is offering Uruguay 600,000 dollars today to use in the field of interactivity and the production of content for digital TV” and, “if it says yes, more than 40 million dollars” to invest in the construction of equipment and the development of technology, said the minister, who was not hesitant to criticise the European DVB system.

Q: What results did you obtain in this first meeting with the Uruguayan government? A: It went really well. We came to propose joint participation in the development of digital TV in Mercosur (the Southern Common Market trade bloc, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay).

Brazil adopted the ISDB-T system and perfected it with a series of innovations of our own, that will benefit, for example, public health, security, education and culture programmes.

From the original Japanese standard, Brazilian experts developed a more modern system that has a wider reach.

Q: What is Brazil offering Uruguay? A: Joint action, to transfer to Uruguay the technology that we have received from Japan, as we have done in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela, which have already adopted the system. And we are still negotiating with other countries as well.

Q: But Uruguay already chose the European system. Do you think the Mujica administration will reconsider Vázquez’s decision? A: That happened in Argentina. The government of Carlos Menem (1989-1999) had signed an agreement to adopt the U.S. ATSC system. But after carrying out a thorough study, the administration of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) concluded that the best technology was Japan’s.

The thing is, the European system that was offered to Uruguay has been surpassed; it’s already old.

For example, the video compressor used in the European and U.S. systems is not even made anymore. It’s so old that Germany, one of the main producers of inputs for the DVB system, is considering shifting to the Japanese standard.

What we want is the sharpest high definition digital television, with broad coverage in terms of kilometres and free mobile broadcasting, none of which are possible with the DVB system because it is dependent on the telephone line. Nor are royalties paid for this technology.

Q: Why did Brazil adopt a system on its own, and later negotiate with its neighbours, to persuade them to follow suit? Wasn’t it possible to reach a previous Mercosur, or broader regional, agreement? A: Maybe that was a mistake. We could have done things better. But in Brazil we felt that we were far behind the rest of the world with respect to digital television, and that we couldn’t wait. If we had decided to seek a joint approach in the region, it would have delayed things for us by two or three years.

So we reached the decision at the time that best addressed the geographic situation of our country and of South America, and afterwards we realised that it was virtually an obligation to expand our positive experience to our Mercosur partners.

Q: What does the offer consist of? A: If Uruguay were to decide tomorrow to start working with the Japanese-Brazilian system, it would get a head start on the process, because there is already a kind of script on how to do everything; the standards with Japan have been set. Everything’s simpler now.

And principally, just as the Japanese have transferred their technology to us, we are willing to transfer it to Uruguay.

Q: One of the criticisms triggered by the choice of the ISDB-T system was that although it allowed Brazil to develop technology, there would be no external market for that technology – with the exception of Japan, of course. A: If you look at the global map of digital television today, you’ll see how much progress has been made in less than two years. Besides Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela, the ISDB-T system is about to be adopted by Ecuador and Costa Rica, and we are also working on South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana and other parts of Africa.

Brazil’s goal is not to sell digital television equipment; our aim is for the region to receive the technology that we have so that, for example, the equipment could be built here in Uruguay. We want Brazilian and local companies to develop in the region.

Q: Is there any example of this kind of arrangement? A: A Brazilian company is setting up shop right now in Montevideo to produce digital broadcast converter boxes.

Q: Can Brazil’s proposal compete with the EU’s offer to Uruguay, such as that huge market for the production of local software? A: The only concrete thing the EU has actually done in the case of Uruguay, so far, was to make a 700,000 dollar donation available for its digital TV project.

Brazil, on the other hand, is offering 600,000 dollars, available today, to use in the field of interactivity and the production of content for digital TV.

In addition, we have offered the Uruguayan government more than 40 million dollars, through the Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES – Brazil’s national development bank), which would also be immediately available as soon as the ISDB-Tb system is adopted, to apply towards the digital TV switchover.

That is another difference with the system offered by the Europeans, who came and held conferences, but didn’t show up again to sign a commitment.

The BNDES South America office is in Montevideo, and those funds are available here, for whatever companies in the sector need: to produce equipment, develop technology, etc.

Q: Will a similar approach be followed in Paraguay, which hasn’t decided yet? A: We’ve been working on this for a while in Paraguay. President Fernando Lugo and his government already know that all necessary conditions for adopting the Japanese-Brazilian system are at their disposal as well.

The same is true in the case of Bolivia. If we have just one single South American system, it would be very important for everyone. I come from the world of television, where I worked for years, and I remember how difficult it was for different countries to work together because of the different colour TV standards. There were serious problems when it came to broadcasting each other’s TV programmes.

Q: How do you respond to criticism that with the adoption of the Japanese system, an opportunity to democratise access to audiovisual media was lost, especially because of the negotiations of concessions to the big broadcast media outlets? A: That on the contrary to such claims, this system is the best one in terms of democratising television, because it has more channels.

It was precisely for that reason that Argentina adopted it. It gave a lot of thought to how to get as many channels as possible.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 29 2009 (IPS)

Left-wing candidate José Mujica was elected president of Uruguay with nearly 52 percent of the vote Sunday, seven to eight percentage points ahead of his rival, the right-wing Luis Alberto Lacalle, according to projections by pollsters.

Uruguayan president-elect José Mujica. Credit:

The unseasonal heavy rains of the last few weeks, which have forced more than 6,000 people out of their homes due to flooding in different provinces, hardly let up on Sunday, but voters flocked to the polls anyway in this South American country, where voting is compulsory.

The mood during Sunday’s runoff was much less jubilant than in the first round on Oct. 25, when the Broad Front garnered just over 48 percent of the vote, winning a majority in parliament for the second time in history, but falling short of an all-out victory for Mujica. By contrast, Lacalle’s National Party won 29 percent, and the Colorado Party took nearly 17 percent.

The National and Colorado Parties, which were founded in 1836, dominated the political life of the country until 2005, when the Broad Front – created in 1971 – won the national elections for the first time ever.

Observers consulted by IPS said Sunday’s calm was due to the sensation among voters on the left that the runoff was merely a formality, given the large proportion of votes won in October and the projections of the polling companies. However, Montevideo, the capital, exploded in celebrations when Mujica’s triumph was announced.

Nor will there be any surprises on Mar. 1, when Vázquez hands over the presidential sash to his successor. Despite their very different personalities, no major modifications are expected in terms of the government’s economic policy, marked by a strong emphasis on social justice, or its foreign policy, according to political scientist César Aguiar and economist Marcel Vaillant.

Despite the contrast between the blunt-talking Mujica, known for his colourful, colloquial expressions, who did not trade in his comfortable casual garb for a sports jacket until the campaign was well under way, and the soft-spoken circumspect Vázquez, an oncologist, there will be no shift in course, as the president-elect himself has repeated over and over during the campaign.

“If at any point my temperament as a fighter made me go too far in my remarks, I apologise, and tomorrow we will all walk together,” Mujica said Sunday night from the platform set up in front of the NH Columbia hotel across from Montevideo’s oceanfront drive, addressing thousands and thousands of supporters whipped by the heavy rains and the strong winds coming off the Rio de la Plata estuary.

His comments were directed towards the opposition, with which the Broad Front has proposed negotiating policies of state on certain issues above and beyond party politics, over the next five-year presidential term. “Here there are neither winners nor losers; all that has happened is that a new government has been elected,” said Mujica.

The calm was reinforced by the words of Lacalle, who greeted his rival and called on his followers to be “respectful” of the Broad Front’s victory.

The president-elect based his campaign on the achievements of the current administration, which included a reduction of the poverty rate to 20 percent from a record high of 32 percent in 2004, and a decline in extreme poverty from four to 1.5 percent of the population.

In addition, as Mujica and his running-mate Danilo Astori – Vázquez’s former economy minister – pointed out during the campaign, economic growth ranged between 12 and seven percent a year until last year, before the global economic crisis hit, and unemployment fell from 21 percent in 2002 – during the financial collapse in neighbouring Argentina and Uruguay – to just eight percent today.

Another major accomplishment was the Plan Ceibal, which made Uruguay the first country in the world to provide a laptop, with internet connection, to every primary schoolchild in the public education system – a programme that will now be expanded to secondary school.

In addition, the government carried out a major tax reform aimed at redistributing income by increasing the burden on the middle and upper income sectors.

“To judge by the campaign, the changes with respect to the current government will be minimal,” university professor César Aguiar, a sociologist who heads the Equipos MORI polling firm, told IPS.

While Aguiar said that although the president-elect’s personality could usher in certain modifications, he added that there will be no radical changes, and that the next five years “will be calm.”

That view, which coincides with those of other experts who spoke to IPS, contrasts sharply with Mujica’s past as a young urban guerrilla fighter in the 1960s and 1970s – an aspect that figures prominently in news coverage from outside of the country.

“It is important to highlight that although Mujica in the past was one of the leaders of the Tupamaro National Liberation Movement (MLN-T), that was four decades ago, after which he spent 13 years in prison (during the 1973-1985 military dictatorship) and now has been involved in normal civic life for a full 25 years, during most of which he was a parliamentarian,” Aguiar underlined.

Since he was released from prison when democracy was restored in Uruguay, Mujica has dedicated himself to building a strong political faction within the Broad Front and to cultivating flowers on his small farm on the outskirts of the capital, where he will continue to live as president, and plans to build a farming school with his presidential salary.

Furthermore, “personality-based politics in Uruguay are neutralised by an institutionalised system of political parties with strong traditions that are very hard to break.

“Things are different in Uruguay than in other countries of Latin America, where politics are more unstable because large proportions of the population are young people or rural migrants to the cities, or the indigenous population is increasingly being incorporated into civic life – in other words, major social changes are taking place,” he said.

“The only significant change we have here is that every year we get a year older,” he joked, referring to the ageing of the population.

For Aguiar, “not even the left’s arrival to the government for the first time, in 2005, was a radical change. It was not a rupture, but merely a long-announced change that took place in a very smooth, calm manner.”

Mujica has friendly ties with left-leaning Argentine President Cristina Fernández and her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), and with the leftist Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia. But he has also clearly marked his differences with them, and has repeatedly stated that his model is Brazil’s moderate leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“With regard to the country’s economic policy and foreign relations, there will be a sense of continuity with the Vázquez administration, above and beyond a new aesthetic and some gestures that could make (the new president) look more like Chávez or Morales,” said Vaillant, a professor of international trade at the University of the Republic.

But he noted that Mujica has stated many times that he is aligned with Lula’s approach, “which points to continuity,” he said, adding that the president-elect will also take “the middle way” in regional relations.

“It would be illogical for the new government to shift direction when, for example, the current policies have brought high economic growth and high levels of foreign direct investment, which has boosted growth and has helped the country weather the global crisis without damages.”

Vaillant, an expert in regional integration, said “foreign investment has set truly historic new records during this government.”

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
GUATEMALA CITY, Nov 19 2009 (IPS)

Thanks to effective social policies and measures that have strengthened the economy, most of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have managed to weather the impact of the global recession, although poverty has risen slightly for the first time since 2002.

Martín Hopenhayn Credit: Darío Montero/IPS

ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) reports that the poverty rate in the region dropped from 44 percent in 2002 to 33 percent by the end of 2007 – a significant drop, although 182 million people are still poor, while 71 million live in abject poverty, the United Nations agency notes.

Hopenhayn, a Chilean expert on policies on youth, cultural aspects of development, social integration and citizenship who advocates a universal income “targeted to a certain extent” to avoid “wasting resources,” spoke with IPS during a break at the Fifth Social Innovation Fair, organised by ECLAC and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Nov. 11-13 in Guatemala City.

The countries that have managed to make a major dent in the poverty rate include Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela, which have combined improvements in employment with proactive social policies that have led to more equal distribution of wealth.

By contrast, the gap between rich and poor grew significantly in the Dominican Republic and Guatemala, Hopenhayn added, ahead of the presentation of ECLAC’s annual report on poverty and social spending in the region, released Thursday in Santiago.

The Social Panorama of Latin America 2009 report gauges the impact on the region of the global economic crisis that broke out last year in the United States.

IPS: Is the international economic and financial crisis in its final stretch, as some experts say? MARTÍN HOPENHAYN: In Latin America, some see the glass half full and others see it as half empty. One worrisome question is whether the U.S. government is willing to continue injecting money into the economy in order to shore up employment, which has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years. Another thing to keep in mind is that this policy weakens the dollar, damaging the competitiveness of the economies of the (developing) South.

Now, from the point of view of investor confidence and access to credit, the situation is more or less stabilised.

IPS: What is the social situation in the region after the initial blow from the crisis? MH: Although the impact was much less severe than what we have seen in the past, it was more serious than people thought it would be at first, when we believed we were safe, and we thought it was just a problem of the (industrialised) North. Unemployment has grown in general in the region. Not much, but it has increased.

Mexico was hit the hardest, because it’s so closely tied to the U.S. market, and because, like the countries of Central America, it is suffering the effects of the drop in remittances sent home by migrants abroad.

The annual ECLAC report is being launched on Thursday. But I want to point out that due to this drop in employment, both poverty and extreme poverty are going to increase slightly, although we also have to take into account that the report is based on data from 2008.

Furthermore, even once the crisis has been overcome, it’s going to take some time for international trade to recover, which will have a negative effect on Latin America, an exporter par excellence.

IPS: Even in the area of food products? MH: In that area, the growth of China and India should protect us somewhat, because their import levels remain high.

On the other hand, little attention is paid to another aspect that is important in overcoming the crisis: increasing the productivity of the economically active population, which has remained stagnant this decade, when GDP grew between four and 4.5 percent.

Access to new markets was achieved, and progress was made in other areas as well. But we still need to add value to our products, in order to make them sustainable in the long term.

Technical training is not improving, and there is a low level of public spending on innovation, and an extremely low level of investment in innovation by the private sector.

IPS: No country has made progress in that area, not even Brazil? MH: Yes, Brazil is the only country in the region to have done so. But even Chile, which is so widely praised, has seen a drop in productivity with respect to 2008, according to a recent report.

IPS: Why has this crisis had less of an impact on the region than previous ones? MH: First of all, there is the fact that we didn’t do anything to trigger this crisis, it was extraneous to the region.

IPS: But Latin America had nothing to do with the crisis that broke out in 1997 in Southeast Asia either. MH: That’s true. But we were at the centre of the crises in Mexico and Brazil (in the 1990s) and the foreign debt crisis (of the 1980s).

First of all, the macroeconomic balance in most Latin American countries meant they were strong. And secondly, this crisis occurred at a time when many countries in the region had a fiscal surplus and a current accounts surplus, a lower level of indebtedness than in the past, inflation under control and declining unemployment.

Then there is the way the crisis was confronted this time. Instead of fiscal adjustments, the traditional orthodox policy until the late 1990s, the opposite occurred: public spending was increased.

IPS: Did that have to do with the fact that most of Latin America is now governed by leftist and centre-left governments, which have not followed the neoliberal policies in vogue in the 1990s? MH: Yes, of course it has to do with the change in the Latin American political map, the shift towards the left, towards progressive policies.

IPS: Can we say that it has to do with the fact that governments have put more of an emphasis on social policies? MH: I would say that description is more precise than dividing things in terms of left and right, definitions that are more difficult to pin down these days. There has been a clear shift towards governments that put a greater priority and heavier emphasis on social policies.

You have to keep in mind that from 1990 to 2007, average social spending in Latin America increased from 10 to 16 percent of GDP, while it shrank significantly in the 1980s.

IPS: What other aspects have eased the impact of the crisis? MH: The large growth in GDP over the last five or six years, and the increase in social spending, not just in proportional, but in absolute, terms.

IPS: Elections lie ahead in countries like Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, and later, Argentina. Could the possibility of a return to governments that cut social spending make the region more vulnerable? MH: I think it would be very difficult today for any new government to reduce social spending. Not only because it would be unpopular, but because in many countries, some social policies have been enshrined in law over the last few years, like in the case of the reform of the pension system in Chile.

That is a big help, because it keeps social protections safe from ideological and political shifts. In addition, the idea of a stronger, more active state has gained wide popular support.

IPS: Has inequality been reduced in Latin America? MH: Yes, in nearly all countries.

IPS: But we’re still the most unequal region in the world. MH: Yes, the world champions in that respect.

IPS: Is there hope that the gap will continue to be reduced? MH: You would think that because this is a crisis without inflation, it shouldn’t tend to concentrate income like on previous occasions, when hyperinflation fueled that tendency.

IPS: What led to the decline in inequality? MH: An important component was the increase in social spending, with a heavier transfer of resources to the poor. Another was the demographic transition, with a drop in the number of children in poor households – Uruguay being an exception to that trend. A third element is the improvement in the labour situation among the poor.

IPS: With regard to these social policies that you mention, are some more sustainable than others? MH: Conditional cash transfer programmes are in fashion in the region, with broad coverage in some countries, almost like a minimum universal income. That’s the case of Uruguay, with the Emergency Plan first, and now the Equity Plan, Argentina, with its Unemployed Heads of Household plan, and now the Family Allowance programme, and especially Brazil, with its Family Grants programme, and Mexico with Opportunities.

There is a big debate on whether these are welfare-style programmes that do not generate strength or independence, that don’t encourage people to look for work, etc. But there’s an important element in all of this: something that used to be taboo in Latin America, the idea of a universal minimum income or citizen’s income, is now being discussed.

IPS: Universal? MH: “Universal” doesn’t mean the rich would also receive it. It has to be targeted to a certain extent, because otherwise it would be a waste of resources. There has to be a middle-ground between targeted and universal.

IPS: Is this a possibility in the near future? MH: I don’t know about a citizen’s income, because that’s a term that draws strong reactions. But yes, it’s possible that we’ll see increases in coverage by the direct cash transfer programmes, until reaching universal coverage among the poor, combined with expanded health care and reforms of the social security system, based on solidarity.

That would tend to even things out a bit more, and reduce inequality.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
GUATEMALA CITY, Nov 16 2009 (IPS)

Community control of public funds will no longer be just an effective local idea, put into practice by social activists and community leaders in a town in southern Brazil. Now that it has won first prize in ECLAC’s fifth Social Innovation Contest, it is likely to spread throughout Latin America.

“The prize will help us carry out our central goal, which is to replicate our project, sharing the experience we have accumulated so as to benefit other groups in Brazil and the rest of the countries in the region,” Fernando Otero, coordinator of the Social Observatory of Maringá, in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná, told IPS with enthusiasm.

The geographical leap envisaged by the pioneers of this initiative, which ensures transparency in managing local assets, already has a precedent, in that similar observatories have been set up in another 35 Brazilian cities.

“Our methods can be applied anywhere in the world, with some local adaptations, obviously,” said Otero after accepting the award alongside other activists at the close of the Fifth Social Innovation Fair, held Nov. 11-13 at the state University of San Carlos in Guatemala City.

“The Ethically Responsible Society Observatory mobilises the community to monitor government purchases, preventing fraud, corruption and the waste of public resources, which are a common scourge throughout Latin America,” said Norah Rey de Marulanda, spokesperson for the Committee of Notables in charge of selecting the prize-winners.

The aim of the Observatory, according to its organisers, “is to stimulate the exercise of citizenship, mobilise volunteers to get involved in socially responsible activities, educate people about taxes, the environment, civic rights and duties and culture, as well as develop activities to encourage ethical behaviour among the people of Maringá.”

They recognise, on the one hand, the importance of paying taxes, as it is “the only sustainable source of funds to bring about social justice,” and on the other hand, the need to “monitor proper and transparent public spending.”

They are convinced that if these two conditions are met, any municipality can meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000, which include the primary objectives of halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, from 1990 levels.

The other MDGs include universal primary education; promotion of gender equality; reductions in child and maternal mortality; combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and creating a North-South global partnership for development.

Amid the exultation when their programme was chosen out of the 13 finalists selected from dozens of innovative social development proposals, Otero announced that the next step would be to coordinate immediate action with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), to reach other communities in the region.

Replicating the innovative social projects is one of the outcomes sought by the contest organised by ECLAC, with the support of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which awards 30,000 dollars for first prize, 20,000 for second, 15,000 for third, 10,000 for fourth and 5,000 dollars for fifth prize, in addition to technical advice.

In order to provide closer follow-up for the approximately 4,800 innovative community programmes presented over the last five years, ECLAC has decided not to hold the Fair next year, Colombian economist María Luisa Bernal, the head of the Social Innovation Project, told IPS.

“We will devote our efforts to recommending that governments incorporate these initiatives, created, designed and managed by the communities, into public policies,” Bernal said. The projects address social development, production, education, citizenship building, literacy, advice on issues of domestic violence, and others, she said.

From Oaxaca to Chaco

With quiet dignity, Catalina Sánchez of Mexico expressed appreciation for the second prize in the Social Innovation Contest, and highlighted the contribution it will make to the development of the organisation of 150 peasant women that she leads.

“I think it is a recognition that is of value to all the producers in my area, because our organisation is a fundamental part of a programme that is trying to link up with others of its kind,” Sánchez, head of MENA (Mujeres Envasadoras de Nopal de Ayoquezco), a women-run food cooperative, and of a processing plant (Procesadora de Alimentos Nostálgicos de Oaxaca) producing traditional Mexican foods, told IPS.

“We still need more resources to expand our work,” she said, referring to the women of Ayoquezco de Aldama, a community of 5,200 people in the southern state of Oaxaca, who grow and sell nopal, or prickly pear cactus.

Sánchez said she expects that the ECLAC prize will help them “get credits and support from institutions, and from local and national governments, which have done little or nothing so far.”

Emigrants from the Ayoquezco area living in the United States are sending remittances to be invested in the women’s food cooperative. Sánchez, herself a one-time migrant, and the other women use the money to produce traditional Mexican food products, for which there is a ready export market among nostalgic immigrants in the United States.

Now the group produces nopal on some 16 hectares, selling part of it fresh for local consumption, and preparing the rest for export in the processing plant, at the rate of two tonnes a month.

The women have succeeded in adding value to a traditional crop, attracting investment from local people who moved abroad, and selling their products directly, without intermediaries.

Another group of women, who live far to the south, in the northeastern Argentine province of Chaco, were surprised and delighted to be awarded the fifth prize in the contest for their work promoting reading among children, as a cultural practice and for transmitting educational values.

They take part in the Storytelling Grandmothers programme, launched by the Mempo Giardinelli Foundation with the money from the 1993 international Rómulo Gallegos Prize for novels, won by its founder Giardinelli, a distinguished writer and journalist.

After eight years of existence, the project involves some 60 schools, as well as orphanages, children’s hospitals, soup kitchens, homes for the elderly and for the blind and prisons, where grandmothers trained in the art of reading captivate a total audience of about 16,000 children.

The project already has a dozen prizes to its name, from bodies such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the Organisation of Ibero-American States, and now ECLAC.

This inter-generational experiment has spread to nearly all of Argentina, with almost 2,000 volunteers, and has crossed borders into Chile and Colombia.

“We hope to continue, and to see the initiative taken up in other countries, because the project is easy to replicate,” one of its representatives at the Fair, who introduced herself as Grandma Maritza, told IPS.

The other prizes at the fifth Social Innovation Contest were awarded to a project providing integral health care for a highly mobile population of indigenous migrant workers in Costa Rica, which took third place, and an initiative giving disabled people in rural areas work opportunities recycling waste materials, in Chile, which won fourth prize.

Excerpt:

The streets of the Uruguayan capital are a blur of white, red and blue in the final stretch to Sunday’s elections, which the governing left-wing Broad Front coalition stands a good chance of winning.

Election rally in Montevideo. Credit: Frente Amplio

The white colour of the centre-right National Party – which provides its alternative name, Blanco (“white” in Spanish) – and red, the colour of the rightist Colorado (Red) Party merge with the red, white and blue of the Broad Front (FA).

The National and Colorado Parties, which were founded in 1836, dominated the political life of the country until 2005, when the FA won the national elections for the first time ever.

The big question now is whether the FA, which was born in 1971 from the political unrest of the 1960s, will win outright on Sunday, or will have to go to a runoff in November.

Opinion polls indicate that the left-wing coalition’s candidate, former guerrilla fighter José Mujica, will not take the 50 percent plus one vote needed on Sunday to avoid a second round.

His main rival, former president Luis Alberto Lacalle (1990-1995) of the National Party, is staking all his bets on a runoff, in which he would hope to draw the votes of the supporters of the Colorados and two minor parties, to put him over the top.

It is highly like that the FA won’t win on Sunday, but it “shouldn’t have any problem” winning in the second round, on Nov. 29, said Daniel Bouquet, research coordinator at the Political Science Institute of the public University of the Republic.

“If the left garners at least 47 percent of the vote on Sunday – the most pessimistic scenario according to the polls – Mujica basically can’t lose in the second round,” said Bouquet.

Colorado Party candidate Pedro Bordaberry – the son of Juan María Bordaberry, who was president when the armed forces staged the 1973 coup that ushered in a 12-year dictatorship (over which he continued to rule for three: 1973-1976) – comes in a distant third, with poll ratings of 12 percent.

The Colorado Party, which ruled for most of the country’s history as an independent nation, laid the foundations of modern-day Uruguay under statesman and two time president José Batlle y Ordóñez (1856-1929). But it has still not recovered from the debacle it suffered in the 2004 elections.

There are also two minor presidential candidates: Pablo Mieres of the centrist Independent Party, who has between one and three percent support in the polls, and Raúl Rodríguez of Asamblea Popular, a radical leftist breakaway of the FA, who has around one percent backing.

According to Bouquet, the forecast of a second-round triumph by the left is also based on the fact that Mujica’s chief adversary, Lacalle, “is a weak candidate, because he faces a great deal of voter resistance.”

Sociologist César Aguiar, however, was more cautious with regard to the FA’s chances in a runoff. “The left will not have everything on its side, because the National Party has carried out a strong campaign in the last few days” which would put it in a position to fight on an equal footing in November, he told IPS.

With respect to Sunday’s elections, “no result can be ruled out at this time, although the most likely outcome is that the FA will win a majority in parliament,” but will fall just short of an outright victory, said Aguiar, president of Equipos MORI, one of the country’s leading polling companies.

The possibility of a government whose party has a majority in Congress does not worry Aguiar. “Unlike many of my colleagues, I believe it’s preferable to have a president, from whatever party, who has a Congress aligned in his favour,” as in the case of current President Tabaré Vázquez, he said.

While he admitted that the experiences of some other Latin American countries could give rise to worry and mistrust, he said “there is a very important element in Uruguay: public opinion is much more homogeneous than its political leadership, it’s much more towards the centre, and it is much more prone to moderation, whether on the left or the right.”

Both Mujica and Lacalle are more towards the extremes of the ideological spectrum than their voters, he pointed out. “I’m convinced that both of them have left their potential voters unsatisfied, probably because they have been forced to play on terrain that isn’t of their choosing,” he said.

Mujica, whose image and background differ drastically from those of Vázquez, has based his campaign on the achievements of the outgoing government, boosted by his choice of running-mate, Danilo Astori, who was economy minister during almost the entire administration.

That was, according to observers, the only way to draw support from the more moderate sectors of the FA while at the same time ironing out problems, including public tiffs with Vázquez, who led the left to government – as mayor of Montevideo in 1990 and as president in 2005 – for the first time, and is today the undisputed leader of the left-wing coalition.

The FA candidate’s strong cards include impressive indicators, such as 35.4 percent cumulative GDP growth since 2005; a record drop in unemployment, from 13 to seven percent, with the creation of 200,000 jobs; and a drop in the poverty rate from 32 to 20 percent and a reduction of extreme poverty from four to 1.5 percent in this South American country of 3.3 million people sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil.

In addition, the administration forecasts 1.2 percent GDP growth this year, despite the global economic crisis, which has caused negative growth overall in Latin America.

The government also began implementing a reform of the health system, making significant progress towards universal coverage.

But the Vázquez administration’s “jewel in the crown” is the Plan Ceibal, which made Uruguay the first country in the world to provide a laptop, with Internet connection, to every primary schoolchild in the public education system.

From guns to (cut) flowers

While Vázquez is a quiet-spoken oncologist who became politically prominent in the Socialist Party when he was elected mayor of the capital in 1989, the candidate to succeed him is a blunt-talking former leader of the Tupamaros (MLN-T) urban guerrilla movement which was active in the 1960s and became a political party after the 1973-1985 military dictatorship.

Mujica, a former senator and agriculture minister known for his colourful, colloquial expressions, traded in his comfortable casual clothes for the occasional sports jacket or suit after his advisers insisted.

The 74-year-old candidate, who now grows flowers on his farm, is a far cry from the young guerrilla fighter of the 1960s, who spent more than 12 years in prison in the extreme conditions reserved for the eight insurgent leaders held as “hostages” to prevent the MLN-T from taking up arms again after the group was defeated by the military in 1972.

Neoliberal policies – a thing of the past?

His rival, the 68-year-old Lacalle, who has campaigned on a tough anti-crime platform, promises more of the neoliberal policies that he implemented as president in the first half of the 1990s, at a time when the Washington Consensus package of liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation policies was in vogue in Latin America.

But Lacalle was unable to push through one of the main aims of his administration – the privatisation of public utilities and other enterprises, which was blocked by voters in a 1992 plebiscite that overthrew the law which paved the way for the sales of the companies.

However, the grandson of the National Party’s historical leader, Luis Alberto de Herrera (1873-1959), has somewhat toned down his neoliberal agenda, perhaps due to the growing rejection of that school of thought as a result of the global financial crisis, or because of the influence of his running-mate, the more social democratic-oriented Jorge Larrañaga.

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Apr 2 2009 (IPS)

With an incisive report in hand about what awaits Latin America and the Caribbean in the future if action is not taken to fight climate change, economist John Nash defends the role of the World Bank and underscores the need to expand the so-called "clean development mechanism".

Economist John Nash Credit: Patricia da Cámara, Courtesy of the World Bank

A new treaty is the goal of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a 10-day event to take place in December in Copenhagen.

The clean development mechanism (CDM), as laid out in the Kyoto Protocol, must be expanded, including a programme for reducing carbon emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) that extends the trade of carbon credits, says Nash.

The CDM allows governments and companies from the industrialised North to surpass their greenhouse gas emissions limits in exchange for investing in "clean" projects in the developing South.

In the negotiations "we are going to take indigenous rights into full account," Nash told Tierramérica in an interview in Montevideo, where he presented the report he co-authored, "Low Carbon, High Growth: Latin American Responses to Climate Change".

As a result of climate change, farming in the region could collapse, with a 12 to 50 percent reduction in South America by 2100, says the report. The Andean glaciers could disappear in the next 20 years due to rising temperatures, and the area covered by tropical forests could shrink by 20 to 80 percent.

TIERRAMÉRICA: How did governments respond to this report? JOHN NASH: In general, satisfactorily. The most important doubt that some brought up was about the message that the developing world should participate in efforts to reduce emissions when "it's a problem created by the rich countries."

We understand that point of view very well. But many steps can be taken that are not incompatible with growth and plans to fight poverty.

TIERRAMÉRICA: What is your assessment of the carbon market? JN: Nobody expected those markets to be a total solution to the problem. The intent was to establish a series of pilot programmes. The plan has been more or less successful, but the reductions resulting from those markets are not on a scale that can affect the agreed goals.

The Clean Development Mechanism must be expanded, including actions to prevent deforestation and to promote sector-based programmes and policies that can achieve the scale of emissions reductions that we need.

TIERRAMÉRICA: How do you respond to criticisms that the carbon market has favoured corporations more than developing countries? JN: They are right. The green credits can satisfy the companies' requirements without reducing their emissions in their countries of origin, which is why the wealthy nations must take action. It must be established that they take on their own reduction commitments, particularly the United States.

TIERRAMÉRICA: One proposal for expansion is the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). What is the World Bank's position? JN: We recognise the importance of that proposal and so we have established this mechanism, which has two parts. One is support for governments, for which 20 developing countries have been chosen, 10 of them in Latin America and the Caribbean. The World Bank will provide technical assistance for pilot programmes to prepare for the post-Kyoto regime.

But each country has its own strategy as well. We support the right of each state to follow its own path. As such we will have a variety of experiences, which will probably help in the selection of which are the best.

The other part is a mechanism to finance concrete anti-deforestation development projects.

TIERRAMÉRICA: Among the criticisms is the lack of participation of indigenous peoples, the native inhabitants of the affected areas. JN: The World Bank has safeguard policies, which should be followed in preparing each project, and one is to protect indigenous peoples. In this process of post-Kyoto preparation, we are going to take the rights of those communities into full account. I believe there won't be inconsistencies. In many cases, the most effective way to protect forests is to create a system of land possession for the communities who live in those areas.

TIERRAMÉRICA: Precisely, one of the criticisms is the lack of land titles in those areas… JN: Yes, to date one of the things fuelling deforestation is that nobody has ownership of the land and so companies come to exploit the resources. I hope that in the future an ownership system is created for those communities, as a mechanism for protecting the forests. In that way we will put an end to that problem.

TIERRAMÉRICA: In the REDD framework there can be programmes for investing in forestry for industrial purposes, such as plantations for producing paper. Does the World Bank see this as a risk? JN: The Bank finances these projects in the private sector, it's true. But, although it's not my area, I know that there are safeguard policies as well, and they are very careful about the possible negative environmental and social effects of the plans they finance.

TIERRAMÉRICA: Do you think a new climate agreement will finally be reached in Copenhagen? JN: I think so… if not there won't be a next meeting.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Excerpt:

It is true that the carbon market has favored corporations more than developing countries, admits John Nash, the World Bank's lead economist for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Economist John Nash. - Patricia da Cámara, Courtesy of the World Bank

Nash, the World Bank's lead economist for the region, set out a dramatic scenario for what will come about if there is no agreement reached to replace the Kyoto Protocol on climate change — a treaty that has been in force since 2005 and expires in 2012.

A new treaty is the goal of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a 10-day event to take place in December in Copenhagen.

The clean development mechanism (CDM), as laid out in the Kyoto Protocol, must be expanded, including a program for reducing carbon emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) that extends the trade of carbon credits, said Nash.

The CDM allows governments and companies from the industrialized North to surpass their greenhouse gas emissions limits in exchange for investing in “clean” projects in the developing South.

In the negotiations “we are going to take indigenous rights into full account,” Nash told Tierramérica in an interview in Montevideo, where he presented the report he co-authored, “Low Carbon, High Growth: Latin American Responses to Climate Change.”

As a result of climate change, farming in the region could collapse, with a reduction of 12 to 50 percent in South America by 2100, says the report. The Andean glaciers could disappear in the next 20 years due to rising temperatures, and the area covered by tropical forests could shrink 20 to 80 percent.

TIERRAMÉRICA: How did governments respond to this report?

JOHN NASH: In general, satisfactorily. The most important doubt that some proposed was about the message that the developing world should participate in efforts to reduce emissions when “it's a problem created by the rich countries.”

We understand that point of view very well. But many steps can be taken that are not incompatible with growth and plans to fight poverty.

TIERRAMÉRICA: What is your assessment of the carbon market?

JN: Nobody expected that those markets would be the total solution to the problem. The intent was to establish a series of pilot programs. The plan has been more or less successful, but the reductions resulting from those markets are not on a scale that can affect the agreed goals.

The Clean Development Mechanism must be expanded, including actions to prevent deforestation and to promote sector-based programs and policies that can achieve the scale of emissions reductions that we need.

TIERRAMÉRICA: How do you respond to criticisms that the carbon market has favored corporations more than developing countries?

JN: They are right. The green credits can satisfy the companies' requirements without reducing their emissions in their countries of origin, which is why the wealthy nations must take action. It must be established that they take on their own reduction commitments, particularly the United States.

TIERRAMÉRICA: One proposal for expansion is the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). What is the World Bank's position?

JN: We recognize the importance of that proposal and so we have established this mechanism, which has two parts. One is support for governments, for which 20 developing countries have been chosen, 10 of them in Latin America and the Caribbean. The World Bank will provide technical assistance for pilot programs to prepare for the post-Kyoto regime.

But each country has its own strategy as well. We support the right of each State to follow its own path. As such we will have a variety of experiences, which will probably help in the selection of which are the best.

The other part is a mechanism to finance concrete anti-deforestation development projects.

TIERRAMÉRICA: Among the criticisms is the lack of participation of indigenous peoples, the native inhabitants of the affected areas.

JN: The World Bank has safeguard policies, which should be followed in preparing each project, and one is to protect the indigenous peoples. In this process of post-Kyoto preparation, we are going to take the rights of those communities into full account.

I believe there won't be inconsistencies. In many cases, the most effective way to protect forests is to create a system of land possession for the communities who live in those areas.

TIERRAMÉRICA: Precisely, one of the criticisms is the lack of ownership titles in those areas…

JN: Yes, to date one of the things fueling deforestation is that nobody has ownership of the land and so companies come to exploit the resources. I hope that in the future an ownership system is created for those communities, as a mechanism for protecting the forests. In that way we will put an end to that problem.

TIERRAMÉRICA: In the REDD framework there can be programs for investing in forestry for industrial purposes, such as plantations for producing paper. Does the World Bank see this as a risk?

JN: The Bank finances those projects in the private sector, it's true. But, although it's not my area, I know that there are safeguard policies as well, and they are very careful about the possible negative environmental and social effects of the plans they finance.

TIERRAMÉRICA: Do you think a new climate agreement will finally be reached in Copenhagen?

JN: I think so… if not there won't be a next meeting.

By Dario Montero
MEDELLÍN, Colombia, Dec 1 2008 (IPS)

Football in Belize does not aim for international achievements, but that does not matter to the environmental group that uses the sport to recruit children and young people to fight for the protection of local biodiversity under threat.

Now the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) is promoting it to the major leagues.

The uniqueness, effectiveness and simplicity of the Freshwater Cup Environmental Football League were the key to its being awarded first prize on Nov. 28 in the Fourth Experiences in Social Innovation contest, organised by ECLAC, in the northwestern Colombian city of Medellín, at the end of the long annual selection process among nearly 900 community projects.

“We use the power of football to involve the community in environmental work in an area where biodiversity is as rich as it is fragile, and we already have 10 adult teams and six teams of teenagers,” Celia Mahung, one of those responsible for the project, told IPS.

“This 30,000 dollar prize will allow us to include women’s football,” she said.

A football league to commit players, their families and the community to protecting the environment, like the one set up by the non-governmental Toledo Institute for Development and Environment in Belize, is an example of a sustainable social project which is “low-cost and easily reproducible,” said economist Norah Rey de Marulanda, spokeswoman for the evaluation committee.

The final exhibition of the contest, organised since 2004 by ECLAC with the support of the U.S.-based W. K. Kellogg Foundation, is an opportunity for communities with diverse characteristics, concerns and places of origin in Latin America and the Caribbean to make themselves known and, at the same time, to demonstrate that the best solutions among and from society’s most excluded members emerge from solidarity-based joint action among the people themselves.

Holding the fair this year in the central square of the University of Antioquía “confirmed that the best location for a fair of this kind is an academic environment,” María Elisa Bernal, the head of the Experiences in Social Innovation project at ECLAC, told IPS.

The Nov. 26-28 exhibition was visited by a steady flow of students, professors and researchers, she said.

At the closing ceremony, the fifth Contest for 2009 was also launched. “Although the economic and financial crisis is expected to be at its worst, the contest will not be affected, because the Kellogg Foundation has already assigned resources to it, and ECLAC provides technical and follow-up support,” she said.

On the contrary, the importance of encouraging community initiatives is greater than ever, she added.

“These projects ought to be an inspiration for governments, because without the least hesitation we can tell them that these are ways of getting results in health care, education or productive development that are more efficient and less costly than traditional methods,” Bernal said.

She described, for example, the initiative that took second prize in 2007, which was a family-style student hostel. “It costs seven time less than the traditional model of boarding facilities, and so offers a convincing solution in the midst of the crisis,” she said.

Another positive lesson from this fourth fair, in Bernal’s view, was the joint activities with the local government of the department (province) of Antioquía, the municipal authorities in Medellín, which is the provincial capital, the federation of non-governmental organisations, and the university itself.

“This enabled us to organise thematic forums for target audiences, which were attended by representatives of the local governments, academics and the social organisations that are, or will be, working on the themes of each project,” she said.

Clearly enthused, Bernal said she was confident that they would be able to motivate local authorities from other parts of Latin America to get involved in future social innovation fairs.

Over its four-year lifespan, the Experiences in Social Innovation contest has assessed 4,400 projects, of which 70 have been selected as finalists and 21 as award winners. Rey de Marulanda emphasised that the high number of applicants is due to ECLAC’s presence in the region, and demonstrates that society is active from below, seeking intelligent solutions for its pressing problems.

“When I was invited to take part in this project four years ago, and I was told that around 1,000 applications were expected, I thought it was an exaggeration, but to my surprise, every year that extraordinary level of participation is repeated,” the Colombian economist told IPS.

“We eliminate from the word go any project that doesn’t really involve community participation,” she said.

The evaluation committee is looking for new ways in which people are trying to solve old problems, a premise which was the original basis of the Kellogg Foundation-ECLAC project.

In order for proposals to receive backing from ECLAC, those responsible must calculate the costs of the project, even if not a single cent changes hands: for instance, the value of voluntary work, not because it is paid but in order to know how much that work is worth.

“The value of inputs used must also be known, even if many are donations. It’s a key component of sustainability,” the expert said.

All these elements contributed to the choice of the second prize for 2008, of 20,000 dollars. It went to the “Hermes school conflict management programme,” which teaches people how to overcome confrontations and create a culture of peace, through mediation, and reaches children, parents and teachers in 225 schools, in 19 districts in Bogotá and 10 municipalities in the neighbouring province of Cundinamarca.

The third prize, of 15,000 dollars, was awarded to a programme from Ecuador called “Strengthening popular finances in Azuay and Cañar: consolidation of a local development proposal in the context of a high level of international migration,” which provides banking and loan services to low-income sectors, using funds from remittances sent home by Ecuadoreans living abroad.

“A Roof for Chile: from ‘campamento’ (shanty town) to neighbourhood. Implementing participative work groups of residents and volunteers in the ‘campamentos’ of the Metropolitan Region,” won the 10,000 dollar fourth prize.

The fifth prize, of 5,000 dollars, went to a school in the northwestern Argentine province of Jujuy, for its systematic education method “Nuestras huellas” (Our Footprints) which strengthens the skills of indigenous children, recovering the history of their communities.

Chilean student Pablo Carvacho said that in proposals like “A Roof for Chile,” in which he participates, “we try to to make the projects as cooperative as possible.” This is a guiding principle in all the experiences submitted to the contest.

Carvacho said that in the case of the Chilean project, “the contribution is provided by the professionals who work with us for less than the going rate of pay.”

Active in 13 of the region’s countries, the goal of “A Roof for Chile” is to remove families from their social exclusion and connect them to the formal state networks of health care, education, access to justice, and all the things that are there for them but they do not know about.

That is why, at the same time as they start the process that will lead to building houses, they hold training workshops covering different areas, he told IPS.

They have set themselves an ambitious target, but are convinced that it is viable: they want to eliminate “campamentos” or slums in Chile by 2010. Problems just seem to be grist to the mill of a well-organised community and a good cause.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MEDELLÍN, Colombia, Nov 28 2008 (IPS)

The global financial crisis has not demoralised those involved in community projects throughout Latin America and the Caribbean who took part in ECLAC’s fourth social innovation fair, which ended Friday in this city in northwest Colombia.

Social Innovation Fair Credit: Marco Ortega

Nevertheless, Rey de Marulanda, a member of the Committee of Notables that selected the finalists in the Experiences in Social Innovation contest organised by ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, says "the global crisis will affect the region, without a doubt."

"Private philanthropy funds will be reduced, because companies will cut back on their funding as the profit margins of their investments shrink," she said at the three-day fair in Medellín.

"However, I believe the same thing will not happen in the case of non-governmental organisations that through different channels receive funding from governments, from Europe for example, because governments have budgets and obligations that they have to live up to," she said.

In a conversation with IPS during the fair, Rey de Marulanda, a former Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) manager of integration and regional programmes, expressed her conviction that the governments of Latin America will be much more cautious now when it comes to cutting social spending, even if they do limit it somewhat.

"A lesson was learned from the crisis of the 1980s," when public spending was drastically reduced, she said. "Unlike at that time, there are democratic governments in all of Latin America today, and this is a question of governability.

"If poverty rates rise, there will be protests," and the social pressure will function as an antidote, "because it has been seen that governments can fall if that kind of problem is not addressed," she said.

"That is one of the big advantages of democracy," Rey de Marulanda added.

"Problems could occur, however, in countries in the region which already have very low levels of social spending, in some cases as low as 50 dollars a year per person. That is insufficient to start with, and if it is cut by 10 dollars, it’s almost as if it disappeared completely," said the expert.

Concurring with that view, ECLAC recommends keeping social spending levels steady, because "otherwise poverty will grow substantially once again, and in five or 10 years, social problems will become acute, and governance will be affected."

The first line of defence against a crisis like the current one, which originated in the United States, is often communities themselves, because of their potential to organise people and come up with creative solutions, no matter how isolated and plagued with problems they are.

As ECLAC Commission Secretary Laura López said, economists must not forget that solutions to problems can come from communities themselves.

And that is the point of the Experiences in Social Innovation contest that the U.N. regional agency and the U.S.-based W. K. Kellogg Foundation have held every year since 2004.

The response has been fruitful for the 12 finalists of the 2007-2008 edition, as well as for the steady flow of visitors Wednesday through Friday to the installations set up in the central square of the University of Antioquia, which was selected to host the fair.

The finalists chosen from 874 applicants are 12 projects from eight countries in Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador and St. Lucia.

The initiatives come from a wide variety of communities, including a slum neighbourhood in Chile, the Cuban countryside, and indigenous communities in Colombia and Ecuador. They represent innovative ways of improving education, health, environmental conservation, nutrition, income-generating capacity and gender equity, and include youth and social responsibility programmes.

According to ECLAC, "All of these initiatives have contributed effectively to the social development of communities and to reducing poverty and exclusion. They all have in common their creativity, active citizen participation and reasonable costs."

The five prize-winners will receive, in descending order, 30,000, 20,000, 15,000, 10,000 and 5,000 dollars from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, as well as technical and institutional support from ECLAC, which will monitor the projects and provide backing in their relations with governments and public bodies.

"The important thing here is not the funds, which of course are a help, but the backing received and the credibility gained from a positive evaluation by the regional U.N. agency," one of the heads of the "A Roof for Chile" project, which works in a slum neighbourhood in Santiago, told IPS.

"We are seeking a sponsor who will understand how professional we are, in order to combat erroneous beliefs that those who work with the poor are allowed to build mediocre housing," he said.

That is what the applicants are seeking: visibility, to show that solutions to problems, no matter how serious, are more sustainable and substantial if they arise from and include the communities themselves.

The finalists say their projects are sustainable, despite the crisis.

Cuban Professor Nelson Valdez is a delegate, along with farmer Agustín Pimentel, of a project that contributes to ecological balance on small farms in the Cuban province of Pinar del Río.

"We are carrying out a number of ecological and productive measures to restore production levels in degraded ecosystems, and to recover biological, agricultural and forest biodiversity and improve the living standards of farmers," Valdez, an agricultural researcher, explained to IPS.

The Cuban innovative community development experience "began over two years ago and has been replicated in other rural parts of the country, with very good involvement and guidance by the state.

"But we have practically funded the project out of our own pockets, those of the researchers and the farmers themselves," said Valdez, who added that the prize money, as well as the support from ECLAC, would be very welcome.

He said "this initiative breaks with the scheme, given the case of Cuba, of a vertical state where everything is done according to guidelines based on a preconceived, planned concept of development.

"Represented in this project are the national forest ranger corps, the central coordinator board of the mountain plan, a unit of the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment, and local farmers, who have created a participative atmosphere in which everyone wins," he said.

The idea of the participating university researchers is that the farmers will eventually run the project on their own.

Pimentel admitted that the project got off to a rocky start. He said it was originally conceived of for just 10 families, but today involves around 2,400.

"At first, there was little comprehension of what the project was about, and it was hard going," said the farmer. "But now we are respected and accepted, as indicated by the fact that we are here with authorisation from the state."

All 12 finalists have already won, just by making it to Medellín, where they have been able to draw attention to their innovative social initiatives with active community involvement – thus showing that communities from vastly distant and different places can come together to contribute solutions.

Excerpt:

More people need to begin sustainable lifestyle practices in order to confront climate change, says Mirta Roses, director of the Pan-American Health Organization, in an exclusive Tierramérica interview.

Mirta Roses, director of PAHO - PAHO

Authorities and communities must “take on whatever responsibility that they can in order to contribute to a more stable environment,” reduce the vulnerability of populations in high-risk zones and in poverty, such as indigenous communities, said the Argentine surgeon, an expert in infectious diseases, in a telephone conversation with Tierramérica from Washington DC.

TIERRAMERICA: What are the principal health threats that climate change brings to Latin America?

MIRTA ROSES: One of the most well known, by changing the usual patterns of temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, etc., occurs in the distribution of diseases, as well as vectors, which generally are insects. These also modify, for example, the seasonal cycles that had prevented the dissemination of diseases. So new ones appear or others expand, such as respiratory illnesses, yellow fever, malaria or dengue, which now extends across the continent. Climate change gives way to a higher frequency of phenomena like hurricanes and periods of drought followed by excessive rains, which especially affect the most vulnerable, the communities that live in high-risk zones and in poverty.

TA: What concrete measures is PAHO taking?

MR: We are trying to promote individual and community measures against aggravating the factors that contribute to climate change. Health is a sector of high energy consumption, through hospitals and other services, which is why we have to help with a better management of the means, techniques and patterns of consumption. We are also working on the disposal of dangerous sanitary waste.

TA: How are these recommendations turned into practice? MR: To lead by example, we are developing a plan that we call “Green PAHO”, to learn starting from habit and institutional culture, and from the organization's workers. But our usual work is with the health ministries, and that is how we expand the circle of awareness and practitioners of a more sustainable way of life and behavior. We already have experience with the smoking habit: we began at home, declaring PAHO a smoke-free space, and then we convinced the governments.

We are taking action on managing health services and, of course, with areas closely linked like water management, sanitation and waste treatment. We are cooperating with countries on early warning systems and contingency plans, not only to confront the effects of climate change and the increase in natural disasters, but also related to availability of potable water and food.

TA: How is PAHO taking up the usually neglected problem of sanitation?

MR: In the Americas there are about 150 million people who don't have access to safe water and some 130 million without basic sanitation. In this International Year of Sanitation we are highlighting the excluded population. The region experienced this in a very painful way in 1991 when cholera was reintroduced, and it had an impact on people and on economic development, because the water-borne diseases led to many health barriers in trade.

TA: What influence does PAHO have in obtaining financing for extending the sanitation network?

MR: It has been important to demonstrate the evidence. We have had to become experts in order to produce economic impact statements, show how these are related with nutrition, infant and maternal mortality, and development. We have come up with many instruments for analysis, sectoral studies to identify need, and investment plans, and thus win attention from development banks to assist with costly infrastructure projects. On the other hand, a lot of work has been done to improve management of public enterprises for water and sanitation and in training human resources.

TA: What is the response to such actions in the municipalities and the communities?

MR: For nearly 20 years we have been carrying out the Healthy Municipality plan, which encompasses health promotion and disease reduction with an eye to local development and reinforcing the authorities and inter-sectoral action focused on political leaders, neighborhood councils, etc. In most cases it begins precisely with the demands for access to water and sanitation. Also with great sensitivity to the development of simplified technology appropriate for the local culture. We have had a great deal of support from and work with indigenous populations, who have their own conceptions about the harmonious relationship with nature and the search for natural resource.

TA: Tell us about one of those experiences.

MR: We work continuously with indigenous peoples in the Andes and in Paraguay, with the recovery and strengthening of simple technology and investment in community systems for prospecting for water and for disinfecting water for household use. This has helped control cholera, which in 10 years was once again eliminated in the region. Traditional practices have been renewed, like water councils for administration and for maintaining a balance between domestic and agricultural use.

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Dec 18 2007 (IPS)

Thanks to a 2006 law on forced disappearance, retired General Gregorio Álvarez, who played a key role in Uruguay’s June 1973 coup d’etat and ruled the country during the last stretch of the dictatorship, which ended in 1985, is now under arrest.

Slightly over a year after the first dictator of that period, Juan María Bordaberry, was imprisoned for crimes against humanity, Álvarez was arrested Monday in connection with the disappearance of 39 Uruguayans.

The case involves the forced disappearance of Uruguayan political prisoners seized in Argentina and secretly taken to neighbouring Uruguay on different occasions in 1978 by plane or boat, prosecutor Mirtha Guianze told IPS.

The investigation has not yet confirmed that all of the 39 leftists, who were held in different torture centres operated by Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship, like the notorious Automotores Orletti, actually reached Uruguay, with the exception of Carlos Cabezudo and Célica Gómez Rosano, who were seen by survivors in the clandestine prison in La Tablada, on the outskirts of Montevideo, Guianze added.

The rest may have been transferred to Uruguay in smaller groups and killed, or thrown alive from military planes into the Río de la Plata estuary that separates the two countries – a technique used by the Argentine Navy to "disappear" thousands of political prisoners.

The transfers of political prisoners occurred in the context of Operation Condor, a secret plan by the military regimes ruling South America in the 1970s to cooperate in the elimination of dissidents.

Also arrested in this case is retired Navy officer Juan Larcebeau, and an international arrest warrant has been issued for retired Navy Captain Jorge Tróccoli, who admitted in a book he wrote a few years ago that he had tortured political prisoners. The retired officer is reportedly embarked somewhere on a ship.

Álvarez was taken Monday to a special prison where he is being held with around 10 other former officers also facing prosecution for human rights crimes.

His lawyer Juan Curbelo attempted to block his arrest by resigning under the argument that due process of law was absent. A public defender will now have to be named.

The 82-year-old Álvarez has five working days to appeal. The charges he is facing carry a sentence of 25 years in prison.

Guianze said it is likely that the retired general will spend the holidays behind bars, and that there will be no new developments until February, because of the (southern hemisphere) summer legal recess.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Álvarez played a leading role in the fight against the Tupamaro urban guerrillas and in planning the 1973 coup.

When democratically elected president Bordaberry dissolved parliament and banned the country’s political parties and social organisations, Álvarez became the most influential of the generals from his post as permanent secretary of the recently established National Security Council.

Wielding power over the lives and assets of hundreds of thousands of Uruguayans, Álvarez signed "memorandum 7777" in July 1978 in which he assumed responsibility for eventual human rights violations committed in the "fight against subversion."

That document is one of the key pieces of evidence in the cases involving the disappearance of some 200 Uruguayans, most of whom were "disappeared" in Argentina.

Álvarez was army chief in 1978 and 1979, the period in which the crimes in question were committed. He also led the regime from September 1981 to February 1985, when democratically elected president Julio María Sanguinetti took office.

Under Álvarez’s rule, tens of thousands of political prisoners were tortured, and thousands of people fled into exile.

His arrest completes the prosecution and imprisonment of the top commanders of the dictatorship who are still alive and of the leading torturers who acted under their orders.

Bordaberry, who headed the regime until 1976, is under house arrest due to health reasons while awaiting sentencing in connection with 14 "especially aggravated" homicides. The man who served as his foreign minister, Juan Carlos Blanco, is in prison facing charges for four murders and the disappearance of schoolteacher Elena Quinteros.

A novel aspect of the prosecution of Álvarez is the application of a new law on forced disappearance, which last year brought Uruguayan legislation in line with international human rights conventions ratified by this South American country.

Lawyer Óscar López Goldaracena, who sponsored the law at the request of the leftist Broad Front government when it became the governing party in 2005, told IPS that its application is a sign that "the culture of impunity will no longer be accepted by Uruguayan society."

"This is a historic day for the country," he said, although he added that Álvarez’s arrest and the new law must spur continued investigations into the fate of the victims of forced disappearance, and that the armed forces must be required to hand over all of the information in their power with regard to the crimes of the dictatorship.

"The families of the victims cannot complete their mourning process until they know what happened" to their loved ones, he said.

The concept of crimes against humanity was not frozen in the Nuremberg Statute, but has continued to evolve, to be perfected, and has taken on autonomy, while its essential characteristics have been defined (that no statute of limitations applies, that these crimes cannot be subject to an amnesty or pardon, and that their perpetrators cannot claim political asylum), said Judge Luis Charles in his ruling.

He added that under international law, there is a "universal imperative" to punish those guilty of crimes against humanity.

Even though an amnesty law approved by Uruguayan voters in a 1989 referendum is still standing, the arrival of the Broad Front – which was brutally repressed by the dictatorship – to the government and the legal changes introduced to bring national legislation into line with international treaties have led to a more active approach by the justice system towards pending human rights cases.

Although the amnesty law kept military human rights violators out of the courts for years, it also contains a clause that allows the executive branch to launch investigations into the fate of the disappeared, and does not block prosecution of the dictatorship’s top commanders, nor of those accused of economic crimes or of stealing the babies of political prisoners.

When he took office in 2005, socialist President Tabaré Vázquez promised to comply with the law.

The amnesty law left it up to the executive branch to determine which cases could go to court, and the rightist and centre-right governments that ruled the country from 1985 to 2005 slammed the door shut on all judicial action.

Vázquez, on the other hand, referred all of the cases presented to him to the courts, and for that reason and others basically all of the dictatorship’s leaders are now in prison or under house arrest.

Because the president swore to respect the amnesty law, he is not throwing his political weight behind a proposal to revoke it, although the Broad Front party congress held on Sunday applauded a popular initiative to collect signatures to hold a referendum, in which voters could overturn the law.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Dec 10 2007 (IPS)

They work in the deep heartland of Brazil, or in urban slums. They all seek social inclusion, and their starting point is the bottom of the social ladder, with people who have a wide experience of life, contrasting with their short years.

One of these programmes, “The Four-Leaf Clover”, aims to reduce maternal, perinatal and infant morbidity and mortality in Sobral, a city of 183,000 people in the impoverished northeastern state of Ceará.

This project was awarded the first prize, worth 30,000 dollars, at the Social Innovation Fair in Porto Alegre organised by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

The jury made the selection from 12 finalists out of 900 projects that had entered the competition, and said that the programme, carried out by the Secretariat of Health and Social Action in Sobral, was “technically well-designed to make the most of the community’s social energy and intervene in this important problem of infant mortality.”

“The strategy was adopted in 2001 under a different government, and was appropriated by the community to such an extent that changes in the elected authorities, of whatever political persuasion, are incapable of thwarting it, even if they wanted to,” the project’s first coordinator, nurse Julia Santos, told IPS.

So strongly held is her conviction that Santos, who is today just another member of “The Four-Leafed Clover”, has no interest in who is actually governing, and was unable to tell IPS what party or coalition is in charge of the local government in this city, where 36 percent of the residents are poor.

“Not only has this project influenced the public agenda, it is sustainable and its impact can be measured. It also conveys an essential message about social organisation, and shows that concrete results are achievable,” said Nohra Rey de Marulanda, former manager of the Department of Integration and Regional Programmes at the Inter-American Development Bank.

Rey, the spokeswoman for the jury of the Experiences of Social Innovation contest, announced the results on Friday at the Fair organised by ECLAC in a central square of Porto Alegre, the capital of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Among the achievements of the group is caring for 1,148 families last year, at a cost of 175 dollars each. Furthermore, since the project started in 2001, prenatal care indicators have improved, and the infant mortality rate has fallen from 29.7 per 1,000 live births to 16.5 per 1,000.

Santos said the contribution of civil society through the participation of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), private corporations and volunteers managed to overcome one of the main hurdles, which was funding. When the project first got under way, the city government funded the entire budget, whereas now it contributes 74 percent.

But there was more than one winner. Four other projects left Porto Alegre with cash prizes of 20,000, 15,000, 10,000 and 5,000 dollars, but all 12 finalists have earned the backing of ECLAC, which enhances their credibility and calls on national and local governments to pay more attention to these social innovation projects and the public policies they propose.

The members of “Education with Street Children” (EDNICA), awarded a Special Mention at last week’s meeting, are particularly looking forward to this prestige. They work in Colonia Morelos, in the historic centre of Mexico City, and in a slum on the southside of the city.

Their work even goes beyond their own title, because they look after youngsters ranging in age from a few months to 25.

As a civil society organisation, EDNICA is independent of state bodies or political parties. “This independence has meant that we can work with whatever government is in office, whether it is rightwing, like the federal (national) government, or leftwing, as in the capital city,” Rocío Morales, a young lawyer, told IPS.

But recently, the hardline policy against crime adopted by Mexican President Felipe Calderón has caused the project to “be treated with suspicion” and it is under pressure from police officers who surround their centres, Morales said.

“Street kids suffer social stigma. They are all viewed as drug dealers, and that’s not the case. Drug consumption has increased all over the country because of the sealing of the border with the United States, and street children have become the first victims in this fight against drug trafficking.”

The centres are staffed with social services personnel, volunteers, and especially people from the local community.

The Morelos centre works with 80 children and young people who live on the streets, and another 150 who come in on a daily basis and receive specific support for their formal education studies, and efforts are made to convince their parents to take them out of the labour market, in return for a grant to compensate them for lost income.

Meanwhile, the Children’s Education Centre in Colonia Ajusco, in the south of the city, only looks after working children, of whom there are already 230.

EDNICA is part of the Child Rights Network, which is made up of 53 Mexican NGOs that had a good rapport with the government of former President Vicente Fox (2000-2006). But now, according to Morales, Calderón has sidelined them. On the other hand, cooperation with agencies of the local government of Mexico City continues to be positive, the activist said.

“But even within the Mexico City government, proposals are being made to ‘clean up’ the historic centre and remove the street kids from the area, because it’s a tourist attraction and it should look nice,” she complained. Such policies are often expressions of “social cleansing”, and violate the children’s human rights, she said.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Dec 7 2007 (IPS)

This is no ordinary contest. The participants are from the most vulnerable areas of Latin America, and they are already winners because they have been selected out of 900 projects applying for the Social Innovation Fair organised by ECLAC in this southern Brazilian city.

Programmes to care for street children, plans for literacy campaigns, experiences in incorporating disabled youngsters in mainstream education, and novel proposals from indigenous communities to combine environmental protection and economic development have met in Porto Alegre under the auspices of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the U.S. W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

Among them is a project for managing and treating sewage by the town council of San Rafael de la Laguna, about 200 kilometres from the capital of Ecuador and at an altitude of 2,000 metres above sea level.

“The most important aspect is the backing and recognition we have already received, just by coming to the fair, although the prize money would come in very handy,” Juan Aguilar, the manager of an indigenous community of craftspeople in Totora Sisa, told IPS.

Since 2000, they have worked on protecting a nearby lagoon, which has resulted in controlling the growth of nuisance aquatic plants like duckweed and water lilies, and optimising the availability of totora reed, fibres from which are used to make a wide range of items for domestic use and decorative purposes.

José Luis Machinea, executive secretary of ECLAC, said the fair is an excellent experience of public bodies and a private foundation working together, at a time when it has become clear that the market cannot automatically solve everything, as was claimed in the 1990s, nor can the state manage everything, as it once did.

In a large fairground erected in the central Alfandega Plaza and the adjacent Santander Cultural Centre, people undertaking hard work in the Andean mountains and valleys of Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, volunteers and experts caring for street children in Mexico, Brazilian literacy workers and Peruvian women activists fighting domestic violence have all been mingling and meeting, from Tuesday to Friday.

Five projects emerged as winners of cash prizes from the Kellogg Foundation and technical support and follow-up from ECLAC, which will provide them with backing and credibility in the eyes of other international bodies and the local and national governments of each country, in an attempt to widen their participation and influence, according to the head of the ECLAC project on Social Innovation Experiences, María Elisa Bernal.

“In our view, the contest is useful insofar as it allows us to identify successful projects, on the basis of which we can promote their creative replication, using the technical skills we have,” Bernal told IPS with enthusiasm and conviction, pleased with the results of the fair, which is the third annual event of its kind.

Over the past three years, 3,600 community initiatives of all sorts and characteristics, from community organisation efforts to those with social purposes, have been scrutinised by ECLAC, and during that period a total of 48 finalists have been selected.

The selection process itself was one of the objects of the exercise for the regional U.N. agency, because it allowed it to gain in-depth knowledge of 3,600 projects which arose from the local communities who are the projects’ beneficiaries themselves, without having been imposed from outside, which might have resulted in failure.

Machinea said that ECLAC embarked on these contests, which are atypical in that they are not limited to the traditional functions attributed to these events, because one of its concerns is to discover best practices to combat poverty, promote decentralisation, and other social challenges.

These contests, in fact, have the virtue of tracking initiatives that have emerged from the local community itself, in a region where the community is increasingly important in the fight against marginalisation and violence. They are a means of supporting local projects and of trying to multiply them, he said.

Innovation is the key feature that the selectors are looking for, because the main goal pursued by ECLAC is to use its influence to achieve multiplication of the projects in the rest of Latin America.

“That’s why the idea is not so much to increase resources and widen the field of projects coming forward, but to fight for the initiative to continue over time,” Machinea told IPS.

The notion arose from the Kellogg Foundation’s desire to do something different to mark its 75th anniversary, apart from the traditional social assistance that it has funded in Latin America.

The Foundation was created in 1930 by breakfast cereals pioneer Will Keith Kellogg, with the aim of “helping people to help themselves.”

“That’s why they decided to award a prize for social innovators, and they approached ECLAC, in the knowledge that we cover the whole region, which ensures impartiality and provides analytical capability,” said Bernal.

We asked ourselves at the time what we could learn in general from these social experiences, what a community can do to fight poverty, domestic violence, etc. I think this helps us spread information, which is precisely one of ECLAC’s tasks, said Machinea.

In terms of anti-poverty programmes, Latin America is an example to turn to, while we have a lot to learn from Asia’s experiences in the field of science and technology, he said.

He recalled that Latin America has been very innovative in terms of plans to overcome poverty and foment social inclusion, and there are many projects going on today, some more successful than others, he said, without naming any particular examples.

Bernal added that “the number of finalists has not been the same every year. It’s shrinking, because as knowledge about innovations spreads, it becomes harder to find new projects.”

Winners will receive from the Kellogg Foundation amounts ranging from 30,000 dollars for first prize to 5,000 dollars for fifth prize, and ECLAC will provide technical and institutional support. “But the most important thing for these projects is the credibility they will gain in their own countries as a result of our backing,” she said.

For example, Community Ombudswomen were established as a response to domestic violence in the Peruvian department (province) of Cusco, and after receiving a prize at the Social Innovation Fair last year, they were regarded as valid spokeswomen by the justice system.

“Now the justice system comes to them for practical advice. And the system has spread to other communities in Peru,” said Bernal.

“We keep in touch and follow up their victories and their difficulties, and we create a kind of network between the projects, in which we are constantly together. This is a support mechanism in itself, beyond what we can offer on the technical side,” she said.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 9 2007 (IPS)

Everything was in place for the beginning of the end of the long-running conflict: a friendlier face about to be sworn in as president in Argentina, a tiny bit of flexibility on the part of Uruguay, a few points of agreement, and a Spanish mediator appointed by the King.

But things fell apart in Chile and the paper pulp mill’s smokestack began to cloud relations between Uruguay and Argentina as never before.

Both sides dug their heels in once again, and Spanish Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Moratinos’ mediation efforts came to naught.

Nearly at the same time that Uruguayan president Tabaré Vázquez and his Argentine counterpart Néstor Kirchner embraced each other at the Ibero-American summit in Chile, it was announced that the Finnish firm Botnia had been given the green light for its new wood pulp factory to begin operating on the Uruguayan side of a border river between the two countries.

Hopes that a solution would finally be forthcoming, as insinuated earlier by both sides, as a result of Spanish King Juan Carlos’s efforts to broker an agreement were dashed during the 17th Ibero-American Summit, taking place in Santiago from Thursday to Saturday.

The two-year-old dispute over the pulp mill on the eastern side of the Uruguay river has marred the fraternal relations between Argentina and its much smaller neighbour Uruguay, which share a common history and culture. The conflict is seen as the worst row between the two countries in half a century.

Instead of signing an agreement that had been drawn up by negotiators over the last two months, the Argentine government once again demanded that Botnia’s Orion plant be moved away from the Uruguay river, and the Uruguayan government reiterated, for the umpteenth time, that it would not negotiate as long as traffic along the bridges linking the two countries continues to be blocked.

For the past three summers, protesters in the Argentine town of Gualeguaychú, 22 km from the plant, have been staging roadblocks across the bridges, causing significant damages to the Uruguayan tourism industry, which depends largely on Argentine visitors to the country’s beaches.

Although the number of protesters has dwindled over the years, they continue to mount periodic roadblocks on the main bridge joining the two countries over the Uruguay river, arguing that the plant will pollute its waters.

Botnia, which will convert eucalyptus trees grown in Uruguay into wood pulp, the raw material for paper, says it will use the most advanced technologies in order to minimise the risks of pollution. The 1.2 billion dollar plant is the largest foreign investment initiative in the history of Uruguay, a country of 3.3 million people.

This is the worst moment of a conflict “that everyone knew would be long-drawn-out because of the number of actors and interests involved and because the public tends to get drawn into disputes between countries, which are taken up as local political issues, and patriotism and national pride rear their heads,” Uruguayan expert on international relations Romeo Pérez commented to IPS.

Pérez, director of the Latin American Centre on Human Economy, a private college, said the two countries have failed to “de-escalate” the conflict, and that he did not believe that the inauguration of a new president in Argentina on Dec. 10 would bring about any easing of tensions. (Kirchner’s wife Cristina Fernández was elected as his successor on Oct. 28.)

Not only did the tensions flare up again, but the Spanish government also expressed its consternation over the Vázquez administration’s decision to allow the Botnia plant to begin operating, and pulled out of the negotiations.

Foreign Minister Moratinos told journalists Friday that Spain is always open to helping “two sister countries, which are also neighbours, like Uruguay and Argentina, and therefore we express our surprise to a certain extent over this decision.”

Kirchner had already freed King Juan Carlos of the burden that he had assumed a year ago, at the 16th Ibero-American Summit in the Uruguayan capital. “Your majesty, I want to apologise because I asked you to facilitate” in this conflict, “a task that you assumed without worrying about” the potential political costs.

Vázquez struck the same tone of contrite gratitude towards Spain. “I completely agree with the words of (Mr. Kirchner), in that the route to solving our problems, our discrepancies, is dialogue; there is no other way.”

Before he also apologised to his fellow Ibero-American leaders for having put the bilateral conflict on the summit’s agenda, Vázquez expressed his confidence that an agreement would be reached, “because if we in the government fail to find the road to a solution, the people will do so, given that Uruguayans and Argentines are much more than neighbours; they are brothers and sisters.”

But all roads seem to lead only to The Hague, where the International Court of Justice is considering the lawsuit brought by Buenos Aires accusing Montevideo of violating a bilateral agreement on the joint administration of the Uruguay river, on the argument that the Uruguayan government failed to consult Argentina before giving Botnia permission to build a factory on the border river.

The only slight hope still alive is that although she is the current president’s wife and belongs to the same party, Argentine president-elect Fernández may bring a new approach to the conflict.

Fernández, a senator, has sent out signals favourable to a solution, such as accepting the presence of the factory on the banks of the border river as a fait accompli.

But that was prior to the frustration in Santiago.

A few days before she takes office, Fernández plans to visit Montevideo to participate in a summit of leaders of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc, which links Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. (Venezuela is in the process of joining).

That tiny sliver of hope was encouraged by Argentine cabinet chief Alberto Fernández, who will apparently remain in his post under the new president. “When the Botnia plant begins to operate, we will verify how much it affects the environment in the region,” he told an Argentine radio station.

“We will not be carrying out theoretical studies, but will be verifying real data,” said the cabinet chief, marking his distance from the near-fanatic opposition to the factory maintained by the Environmental Assembly of Gualeguaychú, a town that is located on a tributary of the Uruguay river. The activists argue that the factory will affect its tourism industry (the town’s most picturesque beach resort, Ñandubaysal, is located on the Uruguay river).

“The outcome of our legal action will differ, depending on whether or not pollution is found,” said Fernández, who clarified, however, that the lawsuit is based on an accusation that Uruguay violated the river treaty.

The cabinet chief reminded the Environmental Assembly that “the protests on the bridge are not an alternative to the civilised step of taking legal action in The Hague.”

But Hugo Domato, one of the activists from Gualeguaychú who travelled to Santiago, told IPS that they would keep up their struggle “no matter what the cost,” and that the movement is still strong because it cannot be beheaded, since it has no leaders and is “horizontal” in nature.

Another member of the Environmental Assembly, Cira Muñoz, expressed her anger in a telephone conversation with IPS from Gualeguaychú. “We knew that this would happen, but not this way; it caught us off guard.” She added that Vázquez’s decision to give Botnia the go-ahead “was a slap in the face to the king of Spain.”

Kirchner, who was in touch with members of the Environmental Assembly in Santiago, “should always have stayed close to us,” and the president-elect “should come to Gualeguaychú” to inform herself of the situation, said the activist, responding to a remark by Senator Fernández who said that if the plant does not pollute, Argentina will have to accept it.

But Pérez does not believe that the president-elect “has the historical, statesman-like vision” needed to solve the conflict. Besides, if she reached a solution, where her husband failed, it would be like a snub to him.

In the political scientist’s view, resolving the dispute must be left to “professional diplomats,” not politicians – or television cameras.

* With additional reporting by Marcela Valente in Buenos Aires and Daniel Estrada in Santiago.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Oct 16 2007 (IPS)

Hunger continues to be a problem in South America, barely contained by the safety nets created by government programmes and networks of civil society groups, as deep-rooted inequality nourishes the ranks of the poor despite economic growth and an abundance of food.

One example is Brazil, the world’s top exporter of beef and one of the world’s biggest food producers, which nonetheless has failed to satisfy the hunger of 14 million of its 188 million inhabitants, while another 72 million do not have regular access to meals, according to a 2006 study by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

Hunger in this region today is not a problem of a lack of food, but of inadequate purchasing power among the poor.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that Brazil has enough food to provide up to 2,960 kilocalories a day per person, above the recommended 1,900 kilocalories.

The same is true of Argentina, once known as the world’s breadbasket, and Uruguay next door, which exports a large part of the meat and dairy products and nearly all of the rice it produces, while domestic prices of those products are currently high for workers.

On the other hand, “poverty and extreme poverty take on a culture of their own, and it takes years, and specific policies, to fix those problems,” Luis Álvarez, with Uruguay’s National Food Institute (INDA), told IPS.

“What we have to tackle is the transformation of the culture, that has generated the crisis and structural inequality,” he argued.

To narrow the gap between rich and poor, which has long existed in South American countries like Brazil and Venezuela but was widened by Argentina’s late 2001 economic collapse and the severe crisis it triggered in small neighbouring Uruguay, leftist and centre-left governments in the region began to adopt emergency plans to fight extreme poverty and hunger.

Thus emerged Brazil’s Zero Hunger plan, Argentina’s National Food Security Programme, Uruguay’s Emergency Plan, Chile’s National Food Programmes, and Venezuela’s broad network of soup kitchens and state-owned Mercal grocery stores where generic products are sold at prices 25 to 50 percent lower, on average, than in private supermarket chains.

The Zero Hunger plan launched by the government of leftwing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva when he first took office in 2003 in Brazil is aimed at social inclusion of the poor and marginalised, says Mauro de Miranda Siqueiro, an official involved in the programme.

The programme coordinates the implementation of policies, programmes and actions by different government ministries under four main objectives: improving access to food, generation of income and rural employment, the strengthening of family agriculture, and engaging civil society and active participation by society as a whole, combined with citizen oversight.

In the view of Miranda Siqueiro, it is the fourth aspect that distinguishes the Zero Hunger programme from other efforts, because it not only ensures access to food but also promotes “the expansion of food production and consumption, the generation of income and work, and an improvement in school enrolment, health coverage and water supplies, all of which are seen as citizen rights.”

The programme brings together national, state, municipal and civil society initiatives.

One example are the “popular restaurants” in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where anyone can have a nutritious meal for just one real (55 cents of a dollar), and which are especially frequented by labourers and other workers at lunch time.

Celia de Souza, 53, isn’t complaining. A domestic worker all her life, she is a regular in one of these restaurants offering subsidised meals. “The food is good, and at a price that the poor can afford,” she told IPS.

Celia’s grandchildren, meanwhile, eat lunch for free in the Rio de Janeiro schools they attend – another Zero Hunger initiative.

Argentina, which fell into its worst crisis in history in late 2001 that plunged nearly 60 percent of the population of 37 million into poverty, also unified its various food programmes in the Ministry of Social Development, which also coordinates efforts with municipal and provincial governments as well as social organisations.

The National Food Security Programme provides direct assistance through public and community-run soup kitchens, school lunches, and community and family gardens. Top priority is given to children under 14, pregnant women, the elderly, the malnourished, the disabled, and people with celiac disease (who can’t eat gluten).

Another aspect of the programme is the promotion of food production by means of the distribution of tools, seeds, and machinery.

Most initiatives that fall under the programme’s umbrella involve the transfer of resources to provide people with the means of acquiring food, through plastic magnetic cards, for example, rather than directly distributing food products. They also include mechanisms to ensure that the beneficiaries have regular health checkups and are tested for malnutrition.

But in the case of the homeless and extremely poor, food is still directly distributed.

Although Argentina has enjoyed strong economic growth for the past few years, and the poverty rate has fallen to under 27 percent, with 8.7 percent living in extreme poverty, there are still areas in the northeast of the country, for example, where malnutrition remains a problem.

In these pockets, the authorities are handing out food aid, but activists complain that it falls short.

The situation has improved, however, considering that some 150,000 boxes of food were distributed in Buenos Aires at one point, compared to 30,000 to 40,000 today, said a government social worker.

Mónica Carranza, the founder of a famous Buenos Aires community soup kitchen, “Carasucias”, told IPS she was satisfied with the assistance that the centre-left government of Néstor Kirchner is providing.

When the crisis broke out at the end of 2001, “we fed the community in shifts of 250 people at a time, and we had to continue serving meal after meal into the wee hours of the morning as thousands of people showed up. Even with that system, we didn’t have enough space for everyone, and we had to give people their rations to go, so they could sit and eat them in a city square or park,” she recalled.

But things have gotten better. “I don’t have a political commitment to anyone, but these (the current administration) are the people who have helped me the most. I call them when I’m running out of some food item and they tell me ‘don’t worry, we’ll send it over’ and they do,” she said.

Nor did Uruguay, which like Argentina has traditionally had a large middle class, escape hunger. Since the leftwing government of President Tabaré Vázquez took office, the Emergency Plan, which has now been transformed into the Equality Plan, and a well-oiled network of 715 civil society organisations have filled hungry mouths.

INDA coordinates the programmes and implements the government’s food policy.

“We have been able to streamline things in terms of the volume of assistance provided, and we have achieved savings that have allowed us to focus on improving quality. So baskets of food aid that previously contained soybean oil now have sunflower oil, and instead of broken rice, we now hand out whole kernels,” said Álvarez.

In addition, iron-fortified wheat and fortified milk are handed out, to fight anemia and vitamin deficiencies in children.

The proportion of people living in extreme poverty has fallen 50 percent in the last two years, said the Uruguayan official.

Buoyed up by oil revenues, the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez set up a network of Casas de Alimentación or soup kitchens, which prepare two meals a day, five or six days a week, for pregnant women, children and the elderly. The beneficiaries are selected by community organisations, and the food is provided by the government stores that sell subsidised groceries.

The menus are drawn up based on National Nutrition Institute guidelines, and include beef, beans, rice, plantain, rice with chicken, vegetables and fruit, “as well as oatmeal, rice pudding and fruit juice,” Coromoto Álvarez, head of the Casa de Alimentación in Escalera al Ávila, a poor neighbourhood on the east side of Caracas, told IPS.

The Food Ministry reports that there are 6,000 Casas de Alimentación that serve hot meals to 900,000 people, or 3.2 percent of the Venezuelan population, 33.9 percent of which lives in poverty and 10.6 percent in extreme poverty, according to official figures from 2006.

There are also private initiatives, such as the Fundación Polar, established by Empresas Polar, the country’s largest business group.

Chile, which has the best social and economic indicators in South America but among the poorest distribution of wealth, also has National Food Programmes that target pregnant women, children, the elderly and several specific high-risk groups, for a total of 300,000 people out of a population of 16 million.

To that are added school lunch programmes, which provide free meals to 1.6 million children. In 2002, the World Food Programme recognised Chile’s school feeding programme as one of the five best in the world.

* With additional reporting by Marcela Valente in Argentina, Verónica Rivas in Brazil, Daniela Estrada in Chile and Humberto Márquez in Venezuela.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
GENEVA, Jun 29 2007 (IPS)

Aid to the developing world is effective when it empowers the community and the government of the recipient country, and they have learned to design a strong development strategy. Otherwise the effort is in vain, and hunger and exclusion only become more deeply rooted, say activists at a development forum under way here.

That is the key to making the most of resources from donor countries in regions like Latin America, where aid should have a positive influence on the fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the head of food security for Intervida World Alliance (INWA), Francisco Martínez Frutos of Spain, told IPS.

Hopes for reducing hunger and extreme poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, the region with the greatest socioeconomic inequality in the world, are partially dependent on the effective use of aid funds, which have fallen off partly because more resources are being sent to Africa.

The eight MDGs were adopted by the United Nations in 2000; the first is to halve the proportion of people living in hunger and extreme poverty by 2015, from 1990 levels.

Latin America was notable chiefly for its absence among the diagnoses, assessments and examples presented by speakers at the 2007 Development Forum at the Conference of Non-Governmental Organisations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CONGO), meeting from Thursday to Saturday in Geneva.

This was the view taken by Latin American civil society delegates and experts consulted by IPS. The region is nevertheless a cause for concern, they said.

Knowing the effectiveness and impact of aid is important, which means measurement instruments must be maintained in place after aid projects have come to an end. This applies not only to growth, but also to the pursuit of equity, according to researcher Gonzalo de Castro.

Poverty and equity are not independent variables. The arithmetic is simple: if the rich cannot be taxed, there will be fewer financial resources available for redistribution to the poor, De Castro said, citing Chilean economist Víctor Tokman, labour adviser to the Ricardo Lagos government (2000-2006) and former regional director of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

De Castro further quoted Tokman as saying, “while some people are travelling on a high-speed train, others are being hauled along by old-style steam engines; we have a two-track society,” and the current differences are passed on from one generation to the next, he said.

Based on the accumulated experience of ongoing aid projects in Central America and the South American Andean region, Martínez Frutos warned of a sort of “social action privatisation” which is getting in the way of effectiveness.

Rich donor countries are providing funds to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for each one to do with as it thinks best. “These are private associations and they behave like companies, even though they are not-for-profit,” said the expert from the Spain-based INWA.

Instead, aid policies should be adopted by donor governments with concrete lines of action, and their own programmes should be well-defined, in consultation with their aid agency, and subsequently coordinated and implemented in partnership with the recipient countries, he said.

Aid funding will rise, as part of the powerful countries’ fight against immigration from poor countries, particularly sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, he said. “They can’t build any more fences or barriers, and one of their policies is to hand out aid in order to stop the flood of people pouring in,” Martínez Frutos said.

“That’s why we’re trying to reach agreement with the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) and other UN agencies, so that they ‘get in with’ the governments, in order to get them to design a common strategy for aid programmes,” he said.

“FAO, for example, works directly with the governments of the countries we donate to – Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala and so on – on their planning, designing and monitoring, so we could achieve a consistent line of effective aid work,” Martínez Frutos said.

In this regard South America is more fertile ground than the rest of the world, because of the regional tradition of the welfare state, in spite of the ravages caused by free-market policies in the 1990s, delegates from the region said. Those were times of low-intensity democracy.

Plans like Zero Hunger in Brazil, and those proposed by the Evo Morales administration in Bolivia, are aimed at empowering the communities receiving aid to design, develop, manage and control it. This is necessary in order to avoid strengthening the traditional elites that hold economic and political power.

If NGOs do not adopt this way of working, “their only option will be to go directly to the communities and ask them ‘What do you need?’ and straight away we can provide the resources or set up an NGO on the spot. What we can’t do is train the authorities, for example, those in charge of building the irrigation channel that a farmer needs, who must provide long-lasting infrastructure that will allow the aid to be sustainable over time, and not just temporary assistance,” Martínez Frutos said.

In this way, “we as an NGO make an investment, when it would be more effective for the money to come from Spain, to give a well-known example, directly to the government of the recipient country. Then the government, aware of the needs of its population and in the context of concrete national plans, would use that aid appropriately,” he said.

In accordance with these principles, INWA works in the field with communities to build a community organisation, or to train ministry officials or personnel belonging to specialised government offices who will continue the work in the area – “when they allow us to,” he said.

Bolivia has designed an ideal strategy, according to Martínez Frutos, because it hands over decision-making power to peasant and indigenous communities. “The problem is how this can be accomplished, and that’s where we see the flaws, because it can’t be done by force, but only by persuasion,” he said.

A link with governments is needed, and it will gradually be built. Meetings of civil society organisations add to their strength, as has been proved at the CONGO forum here, the Spanish expert and Latin American activists recognised.

“Meanwhile, we are working in the field with farmers so that in a reasonable time – five years, say – they will have set up their own small business, which will have an impact and will be sustainable,” Martínez Frutos said.

A voice is also needed in the international arena, where civil society recommendations must be heard by multilateral organisations.

“Only four UN representatives were present at the first day of this Development Forum, and then they left,” without waiting to hear the discussions and conclusions of the NGOs, complained Kumi Naidoo, a South African and the secretary general of CIVICUS – World Alliance for Citizen Participation.

“NGO forums should have access to spokespeople from governments,” said Martínez Frutos. A useful example was a meeting this month in Rome on organic agriculture and food security, “where it was possible to make concrete recommendations that were passed on to the Committee on World Food Security (of the FAO) which met the following week,” he said.

“We had direct contact and a specific topic to discuss, and it was possible to put pressure on government decision-makers,” he said.

“We were right there with the FAO director general (Jacques Diouf) the whole time, as he was moderating the session. It’s the first time that the FAO has opened its doors to civil society so that it could have a voice within the Committee on World Food Security,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Marcela Valente and Dario Montero
BUENOS AIRES, Apr 17 2007 (IPS)

The governments of Argentina and Uruguay are tight-lipped ahead of a meeting Wednesday in Madrid, brokered by Spain with a view to paving the way to a solution for the ongoing conflict between the two South American countries over the installation of a paper pulp mill on a border river.

In public, the stances taken by Montevideo and Buenos Aires remain intransigent. The Argentine government continues to insist that it will demand that the plant, which will be completed in October by the Finnish company Botnia, be moved away from the Uruguay River, which forms part of the border between the two countries.

The Uruguayan delegation, meanwhile, remains adamant that the pulp mill will not be relocated, and that the government will not negotiate while protesters in Argentina continue blocking traffic along the international bridges linking the two countries.

For the past three summers, protesters in the town of Gualeguaychú, 25 km from the plant, have been staging roadblocks across the bridges, causing significant damages to the Uruguayan tourism industry, which depends largely on Argentine visitors to the country’s beaches.

But the points that the two delegations may discuss in Madrid include modifications of the treaty for the joint administration of the Uruguay River, to incorporate environmental protection clauses which were not taken into consideration when the agreement was negotiated in the 1970s; a ceiling on the factory’s output; and the construction of a drainpipe that would discharge the plant’s effluents farther downstream.

The initiative to bring together representatives of the two countries, who broke off talks 14 months ago, arose from the efforts made since November by Spain’s ambassador to the United Nations, Antonio Yáñez, who was designated by Spain’s King Juan Carlos to help broker a solution.

Uruguayan government officials have said over and over that they are pessimistic. They also repeat that Uruguay will not negotiate until the roadblocks on the bridges are definitively lifted, and add that Argentina’s demand that the plant be relocated is impossible.

However, IPS was told that one of the formulas that could be discussed by Montevideo, in case negotiations are kickstarted, is the construction of a drainpipe that would carry the plant’s waste several kilometres downriver, in exchange for agreeing to a reworking of the Uruguay River treaty, which dates back to 1975.

The drainpipe, which would carry the pulp mill’s effluents nearly to where the Uruguay River runs into the Río de la Plata, would be a kind of environmental insurance that would be activated in case of pollution, and would be paid for jointly by Uruguay and Argentina, said the anonymous Uruguayan source.

The government of Tabaré Vázquez will continue offering Argentina the possibility of joint environmental oversight of the factory’s operations, “to demonstrate Uruguay’s goodwill in its determination to overcome the dispute,” the head of the delegation, Foreign Minister Reinaldo Gargano, said Monday.

Uruguay is inviting “our neighbour, who shares the administration of the Uruguay River with us, to take part in the construction and management of a plant in Uruguayan territory, where the government exercises sovereignty and where plants must be built according to national laws,” said the minister.

Argentina’s demand that the plant be relocated, as well as Uruguay’s offer for joint environmental monitoring, were already on the negotiating agenda of the binational high-level committee that worked for a year before its efforts failed in early 2006.

The Uruguayan delegation is made up of Gargano, presidential chief of staff Gonzalo Fernández, the director general of the Foreign Ministry, José Luis Cancela, and environment director Alicia Torres.

Newspaper reports have suggested that Argentina will back down on its request that the plant be moved away from the Uruguay River, and instead will ask for a ceiling on production. The press has also reported that the government of Néstor Kirchner could also accept the Uruguayan proposal for the joint monitoring of water quality.

But these reports were denied by Kirchner’s cabinet chief, Alberto Fernández. “We aren’t planning on suggesting any such thing,” he said in allusion to a possible appendix to the Uruguay River treaty that would limit the Botnia plant’s output.

A Foreign Ministry source told the Argentine daily Clarín that the Kirchner administration “has never had the intention of renegotiating the treaty.”

“To do that would be in open contradiction to one of the key elements of our position with regard to the conflict: that Uruguay has repeatedly violated the treaty,” the source said.

But Buenos Aires decided not to publicly respond to a five-point letter presented Monday by the Gualeguaychú citizen environmental assembly.

In a two-hour meeting with Alberto Fernández Monday night, the activists from the northeastern Argentine town urged the government not to budge in its position in the meeting held in Madrid.

A source with the Argentine government told IPS that there would be no public response to the activists, and that the Argentine delegates were heading to Spain mainly to hear what Madrid proposes.

According to the activists, Fernández assured them that the delegation would uphold the demand for the relocation of the plant, but he asked them to discontinue the roadblocks on the bridges to Uruguay, which have intermittently blocked traffic for a total of several months since late 2005.

The activists left the meeting in a positive mood. “We want the new location of the pulp mill to be outside the Uruguay River basin, and if possible, outside of South America,” José Pouler, a member of the Gualeguaychú assembly which mobilised 200 activists to travel to Buenos Aires to seek a meeting with the government, told IPS.

The Argentine delegation will include Fernández, Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana, legal counsel for the Foreign Ministry Susana Ruiz Cerutti, Secretary of the Environment Romina Picolotti, and Sergio Urribarri, the governor-elect of Entre Ríos, the province where Gualeguaychú is located.

The delegations will be received by Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos, after which an open agenda of issues will be discussed at several meetings, presumably until Friday.

Buenos Aires took the conflict to the International Court of Justice in The Hague last year, claiming that the Uruguayan government had violated the Uruguay River treaty by authorising the installation of two pulp mills, Botnia’s and another belonging to the Spanish firm ENCE, which later chose to move to another location.

The last time Vázquez and Kirchner met to discuss a possible solution was on Mar. 11, 2006, in Chile. They agreed that construction work should be suspended for 90 days in order to carry out environmental impact studies. However, Botnia refused to interrupt construction, and the agreement collapsed.

The conflict broke out in 2003, when Uruguayan and Argentine environmental activists began to protest the installation of the pulp mills because of the potential threats to tourism and agriculture on both sides of the Uruguay River.

The protests grew to large proportions on the Argentine side. Buenos Aires turned from partially accepting Montevideo’s proposals to rejecting them outright, in line with the growing and increasingly hard-line campaign by Gualeguaychú residents.

The fundamental issue presented in The Hague was the interpretation of the consultation procedures stipulated in the treaty for establishing projects that could affect the river. While Montevideo maintains that neither country has the right to veto initiatives in the other country’s sovereign territory, Buenos Aires claims otherwise.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Jan 24 2007 (IPS)

In the wake of an International Court of Justice (ICJ) verdict that was unexpectedly favourable to Argentina in its pulp mill dispute with Uruguay, the two countries are now reworking their strategies, pinning their hopes on the Spanish facilitator who arrives in the region Friday.

After three international rulings against it, Argentina finally scored its first victory in the conflict over the pulp mill being built by the Finnish company Botnia on the Uruguayan side of a border river between the two countries.

The ICJ, based in The Hague, ruled Tuesday by 14-1 to turn down a request by Uruguay to force Argentina to put an end to the blockades of bridges connecting the two countries.

The main border bridge has been blocked since December by activists from the city of Gualeguaychú, located 25 km away from the nearly completed plant. Another of the three bridges joining the two countries over the Uruguay River has also been intermittently blocked.

The Court, to which Buenos Aires had earlier turned with a complaint that Montevideo had violated a bilateral treaty governing the border river – for which a decision is not expected for months, or perhaps years – ruled that the roadblocks posed no imminent, irreparable risk to Uruguay’s rights.

The ruling was a blow to the leftist government of President Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay, which had triumphed in three earlier decisions.

These were handed down by the ICJ itself, when it turned down an Argentine request in July to order an immediate halt to construction until the final decision on the river treaty is delivered; by the Mercosur trade bloc’s dispute settlement body, which condemned the roadblocks; and by the World Bank, which approved a 170-million dollar loan for Botnia despite the opposition from Argentina.

“There is basically no other international body to turn to,” Uruguayan Tourism Minister Héctor Lescano told IPS. He said, however, that Spanish facilitator Juan Antonio Yáñez could bring fresh ideas when he reaches Montevideo Friday, and added that Uruguay will not refuse to consider the proposals set forth by the diplomat, who was appointed facilitator by Spanish King Juan Carlos.

There are several initiatives being discussed on the technical level. But Lescano stressed that Uruguay will not negotiate until the roadblocks are lifted, as the government has stated since the protests were resumed in December.

Residents of Gualeguaychú opposed to the factory because of fears of pollution first began to block traffic on the international bridges in late 2005, at the start of the southern hemisphere summer.

“Just as we responded before without celebrations and with great restraint when the Court in The Hague found that Uruguay was in the right, we are not going to tear our hair out this time because of the adverse ruling,” said the minister.

With similar moderation, Argentina’s centre-left President Néstor Kirchner said Tuesday that his “arms are open to our Uruguayan brothers and sisters.”

“Our people and our governments have the capacity to overcome these problems,” he added in a speech given in the seat of government. “We are not intransigent, we believe in constant ongoing conversation” to work things out, he added.

He also expressed his gratitude for “the support and efforts by the king” of Spain to help resolve the conflict by offering the services of a facilitator, but said he hoped that “with imagination and creativity, and respecting the Uruguay River Treaty, we and our Uruguayan brothers and sisters can find a solution.”

The ICJ verdict was welcomed by authorities in Argentina and celebrated by the protesters from Gualeguaychú, which is located on the river of the same name, a tributary of the Uruguay River.

Some 100 activists from Gualeguaychú who have been blocking traffic began to cheer wildly Tuesday when they heard the news of the ICJ ruling by radio and the Internet.

Estela Vence, a Uruguayan who has lived for several years in Gualeguaychú and one of the pioneers of the blockade, told IPS that the activists had welcomed the decision “with rejoicing” because they had had “low expectations.”

On Tuesday, more activists gathered at the roadblock. “Lots of people have come, and that encourages us to carry on the struggle. Every little bit counts after so many defeats,” Vence said.

“We’re all overjoyed and surprised. People are very happy,” said Jorge Fritzler, a representative of the Gualeguaychú Environmental Assembly, who proposed building a shelter to house the activists participating in the roadblock “until Botnia leaves.”

In Colón, the Argentine city located at the second bridge over the Uruguay River which links it with the Uruguayan city of Paysandú, Poli Echeverría is a leader of the assembly that organises intermittent seven-hour roadblocks in solidarity with Gualeguaychú.

“We weren’t expecting a decision of this sort; we expected the verdict to go against us,” she told IPS.

“In any event, we were prepared to support Gualeguaychú” if the decision was unfavourable, “but this changes the outlook and we have greater peace of mind about our periodic roadblocks” over the international General Artigas bridge.

The people of the province of Entre Ríos, where Gualeguaychú and Colón are located, were surprised by the ICJ ruling because the decision was awaited with wariness in Argentina and with confidence in Uruguay.

The roadblocks have prevented vehicle and goods traffic between the two countries, and to and from other countries in the region. But during the southern hemisphere summer they mainly affect tourism in Uruguay, where tens of thousands of Argentines spend their holidays, traditionally accounting for 80 percent of Uruguay’s summer visitors.

Lescano told IPS that the roadblocks were responsible for a fall of 116,800 in the number of Argentines who came to Uruguay last summer, compared to the previous summer season. This represented a loss of between 70 and 90 million dollars. This season the number of Argentine tourists is expected to drop by a further 20 percent.

Meanwhile Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said that the decision puts a stop to excuses not to address “the real problem.” He was referring to Argentina’s demand that the plant be relocated.

“The great thing about the ruling is that it signals the end of the smokescreen set up by Uruguay as an excuse to refuse to dialogue,” he stressed, after expressing confidence in Spanish facilitator Yañez’s diplomatic efforts.

In the meantime, Uruguayan Foreign Ministry official José Luis Cancela pointed out that the ICJ decision does not in any way legitimise the Argentine roadblocks, and emphasised that the judges in The Hague urged Argentina to refrain from taking action that may exacerbate the dispute and put hurdles in the way of the proper administration of justice.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 22 2006 (IPS)

The Uruguayan Tourism Ministry is exploring ways of mitigating the effects of traffic blockades across an international bridge linking the country with neighbouring Argentina, which were renewed this week as a result of a World Bank decision to help finance a controversial pulp mill.

The multilateral lender’s decision Tuesday to grant a loan to the Finnish company Metsa-Botnia, which is building a paper pulp factory in Uruguay on a border river, prompted Argentine environmentalists opposed to the plant to once again block traffic between the two countries over the Uruguay River.

The demonstrators, who live in the Argentine town of Gualeguaychú, located 20 km from the Metsa-Botnia pulp mill, argue that the plant will pollute the environment and hurt tourism and fishing along the river. The town of 80,000 is located on the Gualeguaychú River, which runs into the Uruguay River.

Gustavo Rivollier, the coordinator of the Citizens’ Environmental Assembly of Gualeguaychú, said “People are worried, and unless a better idea is found, I think we’re going to spend our (southern hemisphere) summer on the highway,” alluding to the roadblocks, a protest measure they have used intermittently for the past year.

Besides the 170 million dollars that will come from the bank’s private-sector lender International Finance Corporation (IFC), the bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) agreed to a 350 million dollar insurance policy for possible risks, all of which opens up the door to other private sector credit lines for the Metsa-Botnia plant.

Uruguay received the news with a sense of relief, but also with “great restraint,” Tourism Minister Héctor Lescano told IPS. He said it was not a time for celebrating, but for avoiding putting new hurdles in the way of the difficult negotiations that mediators recently sent by the King of Spain are attempting to kickstart.

Montevideo’s hopes of finding a solution to the dispute with Buenos Aires are also focused on a possible meeting between President Tabaré Vázquez and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Dec. 8 during the South American Community of Nations summit in Bolivia, said Lescano.

The Argentine government admitted that the special lobbying effort by Environment Minister Romina Picolotti to block the World Bank loan had been fruitless.

But there is also opposition to the factory on the Uruguayan side of the border river. “For the environmental movement, this credit goes beyond the construction of a specific cellulose factory, because unfortunately it throws great weight behind the imposed plantation forestry model, which is seriously damaging the much-touted ‘natural’ Uruguay,” activist María Selva Ortiz told IPS.

“Besides, the approval of the loan reveals that participation by the local residents near the plant, which the World Bank has put so much emphasis on, did not actually occur, because none of the well-founded observations we presented against the plant and the forestry plantations were taken into account,” said Ortiz, a member of REDES-Friends of the Earth (FoE) Uruguay.

REDES-FoE Uruguay filed a complaint against Metsa-Botnia with the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, which held hearings in May in Vienna “to denounce human rights violations and cases of economic and environmental injustice committed by the 30 biggest European corporations in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean.”

The Tribunal ruled that “there is clear evidence that moving forward with this project will violate the right of access to basic utilities, the right to land, food sovereignty and safety, labour rights, environmental rights and political and civil rights.”

Rivollier agreed with that view. But he went even further, saying the World Bank had approved a “death loan,” which he described as an “affront” to Argentina.

Construction of the plant near the Uruguayan town of Fray Bentos is over 70 percent complete.

Both the Uruguayan and Argentine governments lobbied the World Bank hard. Argentina sent Picolotti, who has a direct line to the Gualeguaychú activists, while the Uruguayan government sent Economy Minister Danilo Astori as well as President Tabaré Vázquez’s spokesman Gonzalo Fernández.

The World Bank explained in a communiqué that the loan was granted after the two studies it had commissioned concluded that the plant would generate significant economic benefits for Uruguay without causing environmental damages, because it would operate in accordance with the highest environmental standards.

It also said that independent studies offered conclusive proof that the surrounding area, including the Argentine town of Gualeguaychú, would not suffer adverse environmental consequences.

Metsa-Botnia’s 1.2 billion dollar factory is the single biggest foreign investment in the history of Uruguay. The plant will produce at least one million tons of paper pulp a year, while creating 2,500 direct and indirect jobs and accounting for the equivalent of two percent of this small South American country’s gross domestic product, according to the World Bank.

Like the Argentine government of Néstor Kirchner and the Gualeguaychú activists, REDES-FoE and the Uruguayan non-governmental National Commission in Defence of Water and Life sent a letter urging the World Bank not to approve the loan.

In their letter, they argued that plantation forestry and the production of cellulose had a negative impact on water resources and thus violated the Uruguayan constitution, which since a 2004 amendment stipulates that water is a public good, and that the top priority must be human consumption.

But while Uruguayan environmentalists agree on the need to safeguard the environment and human health, they are opposed to the roadblocks staged by the Gualeguaychú activists.

The traffic blockades on the international bridge “remove the debate from its orbit,” because it is not only a question of the installation of pulp mills, but of the development model that is being imposed, which merely uses raw materials with little added value, replacing pastureland with fast-growing plantation trees that use enormous quantities of water, and thus threatening the beef industry, said Ortiz.

The activist also said the recent decision by Spain’s ENCE company to relocate its own projected plant away from Fray Bentos was an achievement.

The Gualeguaychú protesters blocked traffic for almost the entire summer of 2006, when the tension between Montevideo and Buenos Aires peaked.

The Uruguayan government complained at the time that the blockades caused the country around 500 million dollars in losses due to the drop in the number of Argentine visitors to Uruguay’s beaches.

Tourists from Argentina represent around 80 percent of foreign visitors to Uruguay during the summer high season (January and February), and most Argentine visitors arrive by land. Hundreds of Uruguayans who live in Argentina and drive back in the summer to visit their families are also affected by the roadblocks.

Tourism and beef are the top sources of foreign exchange in this country of 3.3 million.

Tourism Minister Lescano is thus considering alternatives, such as offering incentives to Argentine visitors and launching a campaign to draw tourists from southern Brazil, since it appears inevitable that the Gualeguaychú protesters will continue their demonstrations throughout the summer of 2007.

Uruguayan Foreign Minister Reinaldo Gargano reiterated, in a message sent to the Argentine government Monday, that the traffic blockades violate agreements of the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc, which the two countries form part of along with Brazil, Paraguay and Venezuela; a ruling by the Mercosur dispute settlement body; and a verdict handed down by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Gargano will attempt to put the question of “the obstacles to the free cross-border circulation of goods, services and people” on the agenda of the Dec. 15 meeting of Mercosur foreign ministers in Brazil.

But Alfredo Chiaradía, the Argentine Foreign Ministry’s secretary of international trade and economic relations, has already warned that his country will keep the issue off the agenda.

Argentine Ambassador to Uruguay Hernán Patiño Meyer acknowledged that the roadblocks “do not help establish dialogue,” which his country is seeking through the mediation of King Juan Carlos, whose envoy, Juan Antonio Yáñez, was received by Kirchner himself last weekend.

In Montevideo, he met with Gargano, who made it clear to him that “Uruguay will not negotiate under pressure.”

The dispute has marred the fraternal relations between Argentina and Uruguay, which share a common history and are culturally very close. The tension has even given rise to expressions of intolerance and hostility between Argentines and Uruguayans – something that would have been unthinkable in the past.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 17 2006 (IPS)

Juan María Bordaberry, who staged the 1973 coup that ushered in a 12-year military dictatorship in Uruguay, is now in prison in connection with the 1976 assassination of two legislators who were living in exile in Argentina. His foreign minister, Juan Carlos Blanco, is also under arrest.

“Emotion overcame reason” after so many years seeking justice, lawyer Hebe Martínez Burlé told IPS.

Martínez Burlé represents the family of Senator Zelmar Michelini, a leader of the leftist Broad Front, who was killed along with Deputy Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz of the traditional National Party, the speaker of the lower house until Congress was dissolved by the military in 1973.

Bordaberry and Blanco are also charged with the murders of William Whitelaw and Rosario Barredo, former members of the Tupamaros guerrillas, who were killed in the same operation.

Michelini and Gutiérrez Ruiz, whose bodies were found bearing signs of torture on May 21, 1976, two days after they were abducted from their homes in Buenos Aires, led the opposition to the Uruguayan dictatorship abroad along with leftist leaders, trade unionists and National Party politician Wilson Ferreira, who escaped with his life because he was warned just in time.

Late Thursday, Judge Roberto Timbal ordered the arrest of Blanco and Bordaberry – who turned himself in on Friday after his whereabouts were unknown for several hours – on charges of “extremely aggravated” homicide.

That charge was requested by prosecutor Mirtha Guianze, to avoid the statute of limitations, Martínez Burlé pointed out. The two men face a minimum sentence of 10 years.

The judge has classified the murders as crimes against humanity, which are subject to no statute of limitations.

In his ruling, Judge Timbal referred to abundant evidence that implicates the accused in the murders, “which were committed in the framework of an accord or coordination between the de facto regimes in power in Uruguay and Argentina – known as Plan Condor, which involved the dictatorships of the Southern Cone” of the Americas.

The judge added that the existence of Operation Condor was confirmed in September 2001 when documents were declassified in the United States, proving that Washington was familiar with the strategy of secret coordination of repression of dissidents among a number of South American countries.

Blanco was already facing prosecution in the case of the 1976 forced disappearance of schoolteacher and leftist activist Elena Quinteros, who was dragged out of the grounds of the Venezuelan Embassy by members of the Uruguayan security forces. Quinteros’ case was the first human rights case to go to trial in Uruguay.

Documents discovered by historian Oscar Destouet of the Human Rights Office played a key role in the prosecution of Bordaberry and Blanco. The documents had remained concealed in the Foreign Ministry until the Broad Front reached the government on Mar. 1, 2005.

Destouet told IPS that he had submitted to Timbal official documents signed by Blanco or his subordinates and telegrams referring to the four murders. One document was an order that each Uruguayan Embassy was to act as an intelligence agency, to monitor and combat opposition to the dictatorship abroad.

The embassy in Buenos Aires, in particular, was instructed to keep a tight check on the large community of Uruguayans who fled to Argentina after the Jun. 27, 1973 coup. Argentina’s coup was not staged until March 1976.

The documents also contain records of shipments of rifles and automatic weapons from Montevideo to the embassy in Argentina.

Among the most compelling evidence pointing to the direct responsibility of Bordaberry and Blanco in the murders is a written order to withdraw the official passports of legislators Michelini, Gutiérrez Ruiz and Ferreira, as well as the refusal to issue them common passports – moves clearly aimed at preventing them from leaving Argentina.

Destouet also handed the judge the official agenda of a meeting between Blanco and then Argentine foreign minister César Guzzetti, which took place just a few days before the murders. The operation was coordinated during that meeting, which provides further proof of the existence of Operation Condor.

With Bordaberry’s arrest, the courts finally decided to prosecute the first of the four dictators who ruled Uruguay from 1973 to 1985. Only one other is still alive.

When it comes to bringing human rights abusers to trial, the courts in Uruguay are well behind Chile, and especially Argentina, which struck down the amnesty laws that had let the military off the hook for the human rights crimes committed during that country’s bloody seven-year dictatorship.

An amnesty law, approved by Uruguayan voters in a 1989 referendum, kept human rights abusers out of court for two decades.

Bordaberry is also facing prosecution in another case, in which he is charged with deprivation of liberty, homicide and forced disappearance, as well as violating the constitution by carrying out a coup in conjunction with the military three years after he was elected president.

A judge had already ordered that the borders be closed to Bordaberry in connection with that case.

The 78-year-old former president-turned-dictator could face a combined total of up to 30 years in prison.

The other surviving former dictator, who could also end up behind bars, is Gregorio Álvarez. He is implicated in the forced disappearance of 200 Uruguayans, most of whom were “disappeared” in Argentina, the torture of thousands of political prisoners, and extrajudicial executions.

Retired general Álvarez was the real strongman of the regime. Today he is being investigated by prosecuting Judge Luis Charles, especially in connection with the transfer to Uruguay in a military plane of 22 people who were abducted in Argentina and tortured in the notorious Automotores Orletti torture centre in Buenos Aires.

The prisoners were killed in Uruguay and their remains have never been found.

One of those brought to Uruguay in that clandestine flight in 1976 was Adalberto Soba. Six retired military officers and two former police officers were arrested on Sept. 11 and charged with torture, deprivation of liberty and association to commit a crime, in connection with Soba’s murder. Another army officer fled to Brazil and yet another committed suicide when he was about to be arrested.

The existence of that flight was confirmed 30 years later, when the leftist government of President Tabaré Vázquez ordered the military to provide information on the whereabouts of the remains of some 30 political prisoners who died under torture.

Up to that point, there was only information on one illegal flight carrying political prisoners.

But new testimony indicates that there were many more clandestine flights transporting political prisoners between Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, and perhaps other countries. The Uruguayan weekly Brecha reported Friday that there were at least nine flights.

Another obstacle in the process of bringing human rights violators to trial is the challenge of dealing with the boxes and boxes of records and documents dating back to the dictatorship, which Destouet unearthed in the Foreign Ministry.

“In Uruguay there is no law on the classification of documents, which means you cannot say that documents are being ‘declassified’ now,” said the historian.

“Written materials are one of the pillars that make it possible to see that justice is done,” he said.

Under conservative president Jorge Batlle (2000-2005), the Foreign Ministry roundly denied the existence of the documents, in response to requests from the courts, parliament and the government’s own Peace Commission.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 5 2006 (IPS)

Immigrants have a right to send remittances to their families in their countries of origin, and this fast-growing flow of funds must not be seen as a replacement for foreign development aid, according to the final declaration signed by the leaders meeting this weekend in the Ibero-American summit in Uruguay.

The presidents’ statement thus indicates that the need for solid growth policies in developing countries is not reduced by the existence of large flows of remittances, which have become the second largest source of external funding for developing countries after foreign direct investment (FDI), and which now surpass official development assistance from the rich world.

In 2005, global remittances amounted to 167 billion dollars, although unregistered remittances could represent an additional 50 percent, according to the World Bank. The region that receives the largest share of global flows is Latin America and the Caribbean, which took in 48.3 billion dollars in 2005.

Article 12 of the final statement signed by the heads of state and government meeting Saturday and Sunday in Montevideo states that remittances must not be classified as official development aid (ODA), since they are private financial flows based on “family solidarity” and the right of every human being to attend to the support and welfare of others.

The declaration, dubbed the “Montevideo Commitment”, says this right must be recognised and safeguarded, like the right of recipients to receive such funds.

The theme of this weekend’s summit was migration and development – a pertinent issue given that the Ibero-American countries include Spain, the second-biggest recipient of Latin American migrants after the United States, and the source of 4.85 billion dollars in expatriate remittances last year, according to Spain’s Central Bank.

The 22 Ibero-American countries are Andorra, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela.

In their final declaration, the leaders also agreed not to enact coercive legislation or administrative measures that would undermine the right of migrants to send money home to their families.

Morocco, which receives the greatest flow of migrant remittances from Spain, is followed by Ecuador, one of the Latin American countries most heavily dependent on such funds. Last year, Ecuador received a record 2.26 billion dollars, nearly 40 percent of which was sent home by immigrants living in Spain.

But the world’s top recipient of remittances is Mexico, with nearly 22 billion dollars a year, reports the World Bank, which places Colombia in ninth place, with 3.8 billion dollars, and Brazil in 11th place, with 3.5 billion dollars.

Another leading recipient of remittances in Latin America is the Dominican Republic, with 2.7 billion dollars last year, 59 percent of which was sent home from the United States and 30 percent from Spain. Studies show that 38 percent of people in the Dominican Republic receive money from family members abroad.

The Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador reported that remittances, which mainly come from the United States, totaled 2.8 billion dollars in 2005 and are expected to climb to 3.3 billion this year.

A new World Bank report, ‘Close to Home: The Development Impact of Remittances in Latin America’, says that total represented 15 percent of El Salvador’s gross domestic product (GDP), while local authorities report that it is equivalent to nearly 80 percent of the national budget.

The World Bank pointed to the heavy dependence of Central America and the Caribbean on remittances, noting that such funds represent 53 percent of GDP in Haiti, 17 percent in Jamaica, and 16 percent in Honduras.

In Chile, migrant remittances amounted to 1.7 billion dollars last year, equivalent to 1.5 percent of GDP.

Uruguay, meanwhile, received 106 million dollars last year, nearly one percent of GDP, from the 440,000 Uruguayans living abroad (nearly 14 percent of the population), the director of consular affairs, Álvaro Portillo, told IPS.

But according to World Bank senior economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, Humberto López, who co-authored the lending institution’s recent report: “Although positive, the impact of remittances on poverty and growth in the region is in most cases quite modest.”

The Uruguay-based NGO Social Watch stated in its 2006 report, presented in late October ahead of the Ibero-American summit, that the amount sent home by Latin American migrants is similar to what they would have earned in their countries of origin if they had stayed.

Immigrants send between 10 and 20 percent of their income to their families back home, and the rest remains in the industrialised countries where they live and work, says the report. At the same time, countries in this region bear the costs of losing a significant portion of their young people of working-age, as well as the cost of brain drain, especially in the Southern Cone countries of Latin America.

The World Bank’s López said: “Remittances are clearly an engine for development. But they have to be seen more as a complement than as a substitute for good economic policies.”

Social Watch expressed a similar view, stating that while remittances can temporarily alleviate poverty, they cannot replace policies that foment production, employment and economic growth, and that combat exclusion and inequality.

The Uruguayan NGO said that migrant remittances are mainly used by families to cover basic expenses like food, rent, clothing and healthcare, while a mere five percent goes into productive endeavours.

Social Watch suggests following the example of Mexico, with its 3 X 1 Citizen Initiative programme, a co-financing mechanism in which every dollar that “hometown” associations of migrants channel into development projects is matched by a dollar from each level of government: federal, state and municipal.

The Ibero-American leaders echoed that demand, stating in the “Montevideo Commitment” that they will foment the use of remittances in productive and investment activities that benefit migrants’ home communities.

The summit also underscored the high cost of sending remittances through money transfer companies – an issue that has been discussed for years, but that no government has specifically tackled so far. “Commissions currently range from five to seven percent,” said Portillo.

The Montevideo Commitment says it is necessary to facilitate the transfer of remittances, reducing their cost and guaranteeing access to banking services.

The Uruguayan government has announced a new policy on the transfer of remittances. Portillo reported that the Banco de la Republica (the largest state-owned bank) would adopt a system that would offer significantly lower costs than those charged by the international companies that carry out such transfers.

Spain appears to be moving in the same direction, encouraging the banking system to provide low-cost money wire services, in order to allow migrants to avoid private money transfer agencies.

Ibero-American Secretary-General Enrique Iglesias said all of these initiatives should translate into “concrete actions,” in order to keep summit meetings like the one in Montevideo from being mere “social gatherings” of presidents.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Jul 17 2006 (IPS)

The dispute has been bitter at times, but the atmosphere was almost cordial Thursday when the International Court of Justice at The Hague rejected Argentina’s lawsuit demanding a halt to construction of two paper pulp mills on the Uruguayan banks of a shared river.

The Argentine government had filed proceedings against Uruguay on May 4, alleging violations of bilateral agreements regarding joint administration of the border Uruguay River. It had also requested that the Court order a provisional suspension of work on both plants, one being built by the Finnish Botnia company and the other by Spain’s ENCE.

In Uruguay, the Tabaré Vázquez administration, while satisfied with the ICJ verdict, was low-key about the victory. Government spokespersons strongly discouraged likening the outcome to a sports event in which Uruguay “scored on Argentina,” as some quick-off-the-mark local analysts and media have done.

Montevideo has assured that the mills’ environmental impact will be minimal, using the latest available technologies. Domestic support for the mills lies mostly in the hope that they will create much-needed jobs in a country still recovering from the 2002 economic crisis.

Vice-President Rodolfo Nin Novoa said now was the time to “reopen dialogue with Argentina to draft an agreement establishing joint control over the environmental impacts the plants will have,” as Montevideo originally intended.

The ICJ decision “indicates that our country has greater environmental obligations,” he explained. He agreed with Foreign Minister Reinaldo Gargano’s observation that “the Court at The Hague has left the door open for Argentina; if necessary, it will be able to demand new studies” of the pulp mills’ environmental impacts, to prevent the damage it fears.

Amongst Uruguayan environmentalists critical of the paper mill projects, there was also a sense of relief at the ruling, but for different reasons than the government’s.

“We did not expect the Court’s ruling on the precautionary measures to result in any major resolutions,” María Selva Ortiz, of the environmental organisation REDES, the Uruguayan affiliate of the worldwide coalition Friends of the Earth, told IPS. But the result does clear the way for the real environmental issues to be properly addressed, she said.

Argentina’s request to halt plant construction work “only diverted debate, which actually focuses on the ramifications of developing of this kind of polluting industry and consolidating a harmful forestry model in the country,” explained Ortiz.

The International Court of Justice found, by 14 votes to one, “nothing in the record to demonstrate that the very decision by Uruguay to authorise the construction of the mills poses an imminent threat of irreparable damage to the aquatic environment of the River Uruguay or to the economic and social interests of the… inhabitants on the Argentine side…”

The court also stated that “Argentina has not persuaded it that the work presents irreparable damage to the environment or that the mere suspension of the work, pending final judgment, would be capable of reversing or repairing the economic and social consequences attributed by Argentina to it.”

But the Court’s ruling, read by its president, Rosalyn Higgins, went even further.

“In respect of the commissioning of the mills, Argentina has not provided evidence at present that suggests that any resulting pollution would be of a character to cause irreparable damage to the river,” read the decision. The Court added that, “in any event, the threat of any such pollution is not imminent as the mills are not expected to be operational before August 2007 in one case and June 2008 in the other.”

However, the judges reminded Uruguay that it “necessarily bears all risks relating to any finding on the merits that the Court might later make” and that “the construction of the mills at the current site cannot be deemed to create a fait accompli.”

The court made it clear that its ruling corresponded to this particular construction phase and leaves unaffected Argentina’s right to future claims “based on new facts.”

The Court also rejected the second part of Buenos Aires’s request: “an order requiring Uruguay to cooperate in good faith with Argentina and to ensure that the dispute is not aggravated.” The judges stated that Montevideo’s representatives had already demonstrated their good faith in May’s hearings.

The lawsuit brought by the Néstor Kirchner government is based on Montevideo’s alleged non-compliance with the Uruguay River Statute, which, according to Buenos Aires’ interpretation, requires a process of notification and consultation amongst the parties involved for authorisation of construction along the river the two countries administer together.

One of the articles in the statute signed in 1975 establishes that the International Court of Justice has jurisdiction to decide any related disputes.

The Court could take several years to rule on the key question, and could even declare that it lacks jurisdiction to consider the merits of the case, as it underlined in the Thursday ruling.

“Uruguay will surely lose” that case, because it can be proved that it did not seek authorisaton from Argentina to give the green light to the companies to begin construction or to conduct the environmental impact studies, said REDES-Friends of the Earth spokeswoman Ortiz.

The efforts by environmental groups has already halted bank loans for the Botnia mill and for ENCE, which in the end “will not be built,” Ortiz says.

Thursday, Uruguay’s Foreign Minister Gargano and Minister of Housing and Environment Mariano Arana urged the Kirchner government to return to the table for dialogue in order to create a binational team to monitor the two paper pulp mills as construction continues on the Uruguayan side of the Uruguay River, near the city of Fray Bentos.

“The path is one of tolerance and of extending a hand for dialogue, and not for resting on false triumphalism,” said Gargano, who did not rule out the possibility of progress on the matter at the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) Summit, next week, in the central Argentina city of Córdoba, which Vázquez and Kirchner both plan to attend.

The estimated investment for the two pulp mills is 1.8 billion dollars, the largest sum in Uruguay’s history, and their combined output would be 1.5 million tonnes of paper pulp annually.

Argentina’s Environment Secretary Romina Picolotti noted, as Ortiz did, that the campaign against the mills consists of keeping up the pressure in order to block their international financing.

“The ruling is of great importance both for our legal strategy and for targeting the financing. I hope the banks understand that the ruling does not mean the pulp mills are a safe investment,” she said.

“It only means that the Court has not found sufficient proof to halt construction, but it might in the future. This is not a definitive decision and is seems to me an important message for investors,” the minister added, addressing a rally of residents of Gualeguaychú, the Argentine city located across the river some 30 km upstream from Uruguay’s Fray Bentos.

Gualeguaychú has been the site of numerous protests against the Botnia and ENCE mill construction across the river in Uruguay, including a 43-day blockade of the bridges connecting the two countries.

As for the ICJ ruling, “We knew it was going to be difficult and we didn’t have much hope. We are disappointed, but even so, we don’t want to make any hasty decisions. This is a battle that is just getting started, Gustavo Ribollier, member of the Gualeguyachú Citizens’ Environmental Assembly, told IPS Thursday.

“It’s not the end of the world,” said Minister Picolotti, who was part of the delegation that presented Argentina’s petition to the ICJ in May.

The ICJ also left in the hands of the binational Uruguay River administrative committee the duty to monitor construction work and potential environmental impacts in the area.

In that regard, Vice-President Nin Novoa understands the ruling as containing a recommendation to Uruguay indicating something like “make sure this doesn’t pollute… We’re on it,” he said.

(*With reporting by Marcela Valente in Argentina.)

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Jun 19 2006 (IPS)

Quickly and decisively, Matilde, a hyperactive 12-year-old girl with Down syndrome, seems to bond with a horse at the equine therapy ranch run by Uruguayan physiatrist Néstor Nieves.

The interaction with the horse acts as a source of stimulation for Matilde in a number of areas. Guiding her is an expert in psychomotricity, one of the seven children of Nieves and his wife, educator Ana María Reyes. This calming human-equine experience takes place at a rented ranch, just 30 minutes by car from bustling downtown Montevideo.

Therapeutic riding “is based on taking advantage of the horse’s natural qualities to work towards integral rehabilitation of an individual with one or more disabilities, to harmonically integrate health, education and equitation,” states a brochure written by the late Carlos Barboza, a doctor and co-founder with Nieves of the venture through the non-governmental National Association of Equestrian Rehabilitation (ANRE).

“There are very few pathologies that do not benefit from the interaction with horses. The relationship with this animal creates links with a multidisciplinary team, and acts as a stimulator on multiple fronts, in motor and three-dimensional and repetitive movements,” Barboza wrote.

Nieves explained to Tierramérica the progress achieved with equine therapy in people with a broad range of physical, psychological or social disabilities and problems, as he receives his first patients on a Sunday morning, bathed in the southern hemisphere autumn sun.

The horseback ride lasts up to an hour, and includes incursions into a neighbouring farm that grows organic produce. The time spent with the horse also involves other contact, such as brushing the animal and preparing the bridle and saddle.

“We work with three basic themes: education, health and social emergence,” Nieves explains, while his wife begins working with Matilde.

The girl’s mother and younger brother join in, helping ease moments of tension and participating in Matilde’s obvious progress.

The therapy is multidisciplinary, involving medical doctors, physiatrists, educators, psychologists, occupational therapists and pediatricians.

The patients include amputees and people with muscular dystrophy, brain damage, blindness, deafness, autism, Down syndrome, emotional disturbances, addictions and a long list of other problems.

There are also young people who have been expelled from the school system, and youths left jobless by Uruguay’s severe 2002-2003 economic crisis, says Nieves.

The physiatrist says he is always learning, and he keeps in close contact with the experts leading long-term interdisciplinary therapies in Cuba, and equine therapy efforts in countries like Brazil, France and Spain, as well as exchanges involving Chileans, Peruvians and Mexicans.

The origins of therapeutic riding date back centuries, but 70 years ago it saw a rebirth in northern Europe, while the pioneers in the Americas have been the Brazilians, who have some 200 centres for equine therapy.

Nieves believes that a world congress in Brazil in August will help develop the system with a social focus in the country and the region.

The doctor, paradoxically, first got involved in equine therapy in the midst of a crowded housing complex of some 70,000 people in a low-income Montevideo neighbourhood.

“That environment was not appropriate, and so six years ago we moved to the country,” he explains, adding that the ranch “has magical properties.”

Both he and his wife say that working with horses has changed the whole family’s life. “It opened up for us the world of occupational therapy,” for example, says Nieves.

The final objective of the equine therapy experience is to move from the assistance-based health system, which predominates in Uruguay and throughout most of Latin America, to a more integrated, inclusive and socialising health system.

“What we’re basically talking about is the search for changing this model in order to incorporate rehabilitation,” often sidelined because it implies social reinsertion, which is only possible by providing the person with employment or education opportunities, says Nieves.

Another goal is to disseminate farm schools throughout the country that would cater to people with disabilities, unemployed youths or high school dropouts, through a project presented to the government of socialist President Tabaré Vázquez just after he took office in March 2005, which will soon begin to be implemented.

It would involve making use of some 300 rural schools that have been closed down and another 700 underused facilities to develop educational farms. “It is time to create links between these centres across the country,” says Nieves.

The starting point was the alliance between ANRE and the Cuban Association for Animal Protection, a non-governmental organisation that operates with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Cooperation. The next step is to establish country-to-country agreements, which are already in the works.

(*Darío Montero is the IPS deputy regional editor for Latin America. Originally published June 3 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)

Excerpt:

Tierramérica visited a ranch in the outskirts of the Uruguayan capital where people who suffer emotional problems, addiction, autism or Down syndrome benefit from therapeutic horseback riding.

Dr. Nieves guides an equine therapy patient -

The interaction with the large animal acts as a source of multiple simulation for Matilde. Guiding her is an expert in psychomotricity, one of the seven children of Nieves and his wife, educator Ana María Reyes. This calm human-equine experience takes place at a rented ranch, just 30 minutes by car from bustling downtown Montevideo.

Therapeutic riding “is based on taking advantage of the horse's natural qualities to work towards integral rehabilitation of the individual, who is a psycho-social carrier of one or multiple disabilities, to harmonically integrate health, education and equitation,” states a brochure written by the late Carlos Barboza, a doctor and co-founder with Nieves of the venture through the non-governmental National Assocation of Equestrian Rehabilitation (ANRE).

“There are very few pathologies that do not benefit from play with the horse. The relationship with this animal creates links with the multidisciplinary team, acts as a multiple stimulator, in motor and three-dimensional and repetitive movements,” Barboza wrote.

Nieves explained to Tierramérica the progress achieved with equine therapy in people with a broad range of physical, psychological or social pathologies, as he receives his first patients on a Sunday morning, bathed in the austral autumn sun.

The horseback ride can last an hour, and even includes incursions into the neighboring organic vegetable farm. The time spent with the horse also involves other contact, such as brushing the animal and preparing the bridle and saddle.

“We work with three basic themes: education, health and social emergence,” Nieves explains, while his wife begins working with Matilde.

The girl's mother and younger brother join in, helping break tensions and participating in what is Matilde's obvious progress.

“It is believed that an individual, in riding the horse, makes as many as 1,800 adjustments, while it also generates psychological stimuli,” says the specialist.

The therapy is multidisciplinary, involving medical doctors, physiatrists, educators, psychologists, occupational therapists and pediatricians.

The patients include people with amputations, muscular dystrophy, brain damage, blindness, deafness, autism, Down syndrome, emotional disturbances, addiction and dozens of other pathologies.

In addition are youths who have been expelled from the school system, and young people fired from jobs because of Uruguay's deep economic crisis, says Nieves.

The physiatrist says he is always learning, and he keeps in close contact with the experts leading long-term interdisciplinary therapies in Cuba, and equine therapy efforts in Brazil, France and Spain, among other countries, as well as exchanges involving Chileans, Peruvians and Mexicans.

The origins of therapeutic riding date back centuries, but 70 years ago it saw a systematic rebirth in northern Europe, while the pioneers in the Americas have been the Brazilians, who have some 200 centers for equine therapy.

Nieves trusts that a world congress in Brazil in August will help develop the system with a social focus in the country and the region.

This doctor, paradoxically, was initiated in equine therapy in the midst of a crowded housing complex of some 70,000 people in a populous Montevideo neighborhood.

“That environment was not appropriate, and so six years ago we moved to the country,” he explains, adding that the ranch “has magical properties.”

Both he and his wife say that working with horses has changed the whole family's life. “It opened up for us the whole world of occupational therapy,” for example.

The final objective of the equine therapy experience is to move from the assistance-based health system, which predominates in Uruguay and throughout most of Latin America, to a more integrated, inclusive and socializing health system.

“It is definitely the search for change of this model in order to incorporate rehabilitation,” often sidelined because it implies social reinsertion, only possible by providing the person with employment or education opportunities in the case of the youngest ones, says Nieves.

Another goal is to disseminate farm schools throughout the country that include people with disabilities, unemployed youth or high school dropouts, through a project presented to the government of President Tabaré Vázquez just after his inauguration in March 2005 and soon to be finalized.

It would involve making best use of some 300 inactive rural schools and another 700 underused facilities to develop educational farms. “It is time to unite these centers across the country,” says Nieves.

The starting point was the alliance between ANRE and the Cuban Association for Animal Protection, a non-governmental organization that operates with the go-ahead of the Ministry of Foreign Cooperation. The next step is to establish country-to-country agreements, which are already in the works.

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Feb 15 2006 (IPS)

The frequent antagonism between protecting the environment and creating new jobs is clearly evident in the construction of two pulp mills on the Uruguayan side of the river that creates the border with Argentina. In addition to threatening bilateral relations between the two countries, the projects pit environmentalists against labour unions.

The mills, being built along the Uruguay River by Spain’s ENCE and Finland’s Botnia companies, and slated to begin operations in 2007, are fueling hopes for more jobs in the area, but are also stirring up fears of future damage to natural habitat and harm to human health.

Truckers, technicians and hundreds of metal and constructions workers who stand to benefit from a new source of employment are closing ranks against environmental groups who have taken up direct action, invading the land where the pulp mills are being built in the western Uruguayan department of Río Negro.

The environmentalists are also maintaining a roadblock – in place nearly constantly since January – along Argentine access roads to the bridges that cross the border river.

“I’d rather die of pollution 20 years from now than die of hunger today from lack of work,” says a potential future employee of the mills. Investment in the projects totals 1.8 billion dollars – a record for Uruguay.

“There will be 5,000 new jobs for three years, and then there will be some 700 stable jobs directly, around 2,000 indirect jobs related to the mills, as well as service-related jobs for 3,000 more,” said Omar Díaz, representative of the federation of paper workers on the board of Uruguay’s central trade union PIT-CNT.

That is without counting the almost certain construction of paper factories, which would employ many more, he told Tierramérica, adding that wherever there are pulp mills that produce 1.5 million tonnes a year, as will these two projected mills, the industrial complement of paper production is a given.

Meanwhile, the environmentalists of Gualeguaychú, the eastern Argentine city located across the river and some 25 km downstream from the construction, fear for their health and the future of the environment, and they believe that an equal or greater number of jobs stand to be lost as a result of the pulp mills.

This notion is reaffirmed by Ricardo Carrere, of the Uruguayan environmental Guayubira Group, who told Tierramérica that “in exchange for 600 jobs, a similar or greater number of jobs could be lost in the tourism sector,” which is important in Río Negro and employs over 1,000 people. He says the mills would also affect area beekeeping, fisheries and organic farming.

The tensions between unionists and environmentalists are heating up, especially as a result of the latters’ roadblocks that are impeding border traffic between Argentina and Uruguay, two countries that continue in their struggles to overcome the economic collapse suffered just over three years ago.

Uruguayan government spokespersons confirmed for Tierramérica that already more than 200 trucks from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay carrying supplies for the mills have been halted by the local and international environmental activists manning the roadblocks. Some of the truckers are threatening force to get past the blockade.

Also tense is the situation between the workers who are building the major structures of the mills and the dozen activists from the environmental watchdog Greenpeace, who arrived in January in two motorboats at the port of one of the companies and chained themselves, albeit briefly, to pilings.

The production and bleaching of the wood pulp, the raw material for producing paper, uses great quantities of water and chemicals, including chlorine and chlorine dioxide, caustic soda, oxygen peroxide and sodium hypochloride.

These chemicals generate highly toxic organochlorides (dioxins and furans), which persist in the environment and accumulate in the tissues of animals.

Pressure from the affected populations, activists and the industry’s workers themselves led to the search for better technologies to reduce or eliminate pollution, and with it curb the risk of cancer, hormonal and neurological illnesses, infertility, diabetes and weakening of the immune system.

As a result, the totally chlorine-free (TCF) bleaching system was developed, and its predecessor, the elemental chlorine-free (ECF), the most widely utilised worldwide, will both be implmented in Uruguay by ENCE and Botnia.

“The Finnish unions in the sector assure us that the mills being built are going to be non-polluting, that is, the emissions won’t be harmful to the local population or the environment,” Díaz told Tierramérica.

The Uruguayan labour leader, who maintains contact with his Finnish counterparts, explained that more than 30 years of operations of these mills has allowed the workers to verify this, and Botnia says it will be using even newer technology here than it has in its country of origin.

“They don’t like the fact that investment in this sector is happening abroad, but because they lose jobs, with average monthly wages for skilled operators that are over 4,000 euros (4,800 dollars),” and not because of the environmental question, Díaz said..

He doesn’t believe the interests of the labour unionists and the environmentalists are contradictory, and he cites the case of the Finnish workers, who joined with the environmental activists to improve the pulp and paper production technology to reduce pollution to a minimum.

“The environmentalist position demands that investors improve the installations, and that is an interest completely shared by the workers,” he stressed.

Díaz called for “weaving an alliance between unions and environmentalists that helps monitor other factories in operation that are polluting Uruguay today,” saying it is a political mistake for the environmental groups to be so concerned about factories yet to be built and so little about the existing ones.

(*Darío Montero is assistant regional editor for IPS Latin America. Originally published Feb. 11 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)

Excerpt:

Two pulp mills being built along the Uruguay River are fueling hopes for jobs, but are also stirring up fears about environmental harm and threats to human health.

Pulp mill under construction by the Botnia company on the banks of the Uruguay River - Guillermo Robles.

The mills, being built along the Uruguay River by Spain's ENCE and Finland's Botnia companies, and slated to begin operations in 2007, are fueling hopes for more jobs in the area, but are also stirring up fears of future damage to natural habitat and harm to human health.

Truckers, technicians and hundreds of metal and constructions workers who stand to benefit from a new source of employment are closing ranks against environmental groups who have taken up direct action, invading the land where the pulp mills are being built in the western Uruguayan department of Río Negro.

The environmentalists are also maintaining a roadblock — in place nearly constantly since January — along Argentine access roads to the bridges that cross the border river.

“I'd rather die of contamination 20 years from now than die of hunger today from lack of work,” says a potential future employee of the mills. Investment in the projects totals 1.8 billion dollars — a record for Uruguay.

“There will be 5,000 new jobs for three years, and then there will be some 700 stable jobs directly, around 2,000 indirect jobs related to the mills, as well as service-related jobs for 3,000 more,” said Omar Díaz, representative of the federation of paper workers on the board of Uruguay's central union PIT-CNT.

That is without counting the almost certain construction of paper factories, which would employ many more, he told Tierramérica, adding that wherever there are pulp mills that produce 1.5 million tons a year, as will these two projected mills, the industrial complement of paper production is a given.

Meanwhile, the environmentalists of Gualeguaychú, the eastern Argentine city located across the river and some 25 km downstream from the construction, fear for their health and the future of the environment, and they believe that an equal or greater number of jobs stand to be lost as a result of the pulp mills.

This notion is reaffirmed by Ricardo Carrere, of the Uruguayan environmental Guayubira Group, who told Tierramérica that “in exchange for 600 jobs, a similar or greater number of jobs could be lost in the tourism sector,” which is important in Río Negro and employs over 1,000 people. He says the mills would also affect area beekeeping, fisheries and organic farming.

The tensions between unionists and environmentalists are heating up, especially as a result of the latters' roadblocks that are impeding border traffic between Argentina and Uruguay, two countries that continue in their struggles to overcome the economic collapse suffered just over three years ago.

Spokespersons for the Uruguayan government confirmed for Tierramérica that already more than 200 trucks from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay carrying supplies for the mills have been halted by the local and international environmental activists manning the roadblocks. Some of the truckers are threatening force to get past the blockade.

Also tense is the situation created between the workers who are building the major structures of the mills and the dozen activists from the environmental watchdog Greenpeace, who arrived in January in two motorboats at the port of one of the companies and chained themselves, albeit briefly, to pilings.

The production and bleaching of the wood pulp, the raw material for producing paper, uses great quantities of water and chemicals, including chlorine and chlorine dioxide, caustic soda, oxygen peroxide and sodium hypochloride.

These chemicals generate highly toxic organochlorides (dioxins and furans), which persist in the environment and accumulate in the tissues of animals.

Pressure from the affected populations, activists and the industry's workers themselves led to the search for better technologies to reduce or eliminate pollution, and with it curb the risk of cancer, hormonal and neurological illnesses, infertility, diabetes and debilitation of the immune system.

As a result, the totally chlorine-free (TCF) bleaching system was developed, and its predecessor, the elemental chlorine-free (ECF), the most widely utilized worldwide, will both be implmented in Uruguay by ENCE and Botnia.

“The Finnish unions in the sector assure us that the mills being built are going to be non-polluting, that is, the emissions won't be harmful to the local population or the environment,” Díaz told Tierramérica.

The Uruguayan labor leader, who maintains contact with his Finnish counterparts, explained that more than 30 years of operations of these mills has allowed the workers to verify this, and Botnia says it will be using even newer technology here than it has in its country of origin.

“They don't like the fact that investment in this sector is happening abroad, but because they lose jobs, with average monthly wages for skilled operators that are over 4,000 euros (4,800 dollars),” and not because of the environmental question, Díaz said.

He doesn't believe the interests of the labor unionists and the environmentalists are opposites, and he cites the case of the Finnish workers, who joined with the activists to improve the pulp and paper production technology to reduce pollution to a minimum.

“The environmentalist position demands that investors improve the installations, and that is an interest completely shared by the workers,” he stressed.

Díaz called for “weaving an alliance between unions and environmentalists that helps monitor other factories in operation that are polluting Uruguay today,” saying it is a political mistake for the environmental groups to be so concerned about factories yet to be built and so little about the existing ones.

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Jan 3 2006 (IPS)

Thousands of tourists saw their year-end holiday plans interrupted over the weekend by a roadblock that formed part of the escalating conflict between Uruguay and Argentina over the construction of two pulp mills on the Uruguayan side of a river that runs between the two South American countries.

Thousands of tourists saw their year-end holiday plans interrupted over the weekend by a roadblock that formed part of the escalating conflict between Uruguay and Argentina over the construction of two pulp mills on the Uruguayan side of a river that runs between the two South American countries.

Some 200 environmentalists and local residents from the eastern Argentine province of Entre Ríos blocked the main bridge spanning the Uruguay River from early Friday to early Saturday, prompting angry reactions from Argentine tourists driving to Uruguay, as well as Uruguayan residents of Argentina heading home for the holidays.

The roadblocks organised periodically by the Gualeguaychú Citizens Environmental Assembly – with the tacit support of the Entre Ríos provincial government – to protest the construction of two cellulose factories on the Uruguayan side of the Uruguay River have begun to intensify.

The citizens’ group has now decided to block traffic across the river twice a week over the next month. In addition, it is considering the possibility of eventually staging a roadblock that would last for up to 10 days.

As the conflict between the two nations, which are separated by the Uruguay River and by the murky waters of the Río de la Plata, the world’s largest estuary, has heated up, construction of the two pulp plants has been steadily moving ahead.

Uruguay, which has an important tourism industry, has begun to feel the economic losses caused by the traffic blockades.

Tourists from Argentina represent around 80 percent of foreign visitors to Uruguay during the southern hemisphere summer high season, which just started, and most Argentine visitors arrive by land.

Thousands of Argentine tourists were inconvenienced Friday and early Saturday as they attempted to enter Uruguay by the bridge connecting Puerto Unzué, located 22 km from the Argentine city of Gualeguaychú, and Fray Bentos, the capital of the western Uruguayan department (province) of Río Negro.

But hundreds of Uruguayans who live in Argentina and were driving back to their home country to visit their families were also affected by the roadblock, as traffic was backed up for kilometres.

Two bridges located further north on the Uruguay River also suffered short, surprise roadblocks.

Traffic over the San Martín bridge, between Puerto Unzué and Fray Bentos, was unusually light on Saturday and Sunday, indicating that drivers had sought alternative routes of travel.

Uruguayan Minister of Tourism Héctor Lezcano told IPS last Friday that he had failed in his attempt to get the Argentine government of Néstor Kirchner to adopt some measure to get traffic moving again.

The leftist Uruguayan government of socialist President Tabaré Vázquez warned that the protests violated agreements on the free circulation of goods and persons signed by the members of the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) free trade bloc: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The smokestacks of the cellulose factories being built by the Empresa Nacional de Celulosa de España (ENCE), a Spanish firm, and Botnia from Finland can already be seen from the other side of the river. The two plants are located 10 km apart from each other, near the town of Fray Bentos.

Local residents across the river in Argentina, environmentalists and provincial and national authorities in Argentina are worried about the risk of pollution posed by the plants and the potential impact on tourism and fishing.

They were recently angered by an environmental and social impact study by the International Finance Corporation, which coordinates the World Bank’s private sector investment programme, that is largely favourable to Uruguay’s position.

“We are worried that they are not feeding us all of the available information” on the environmental impact of the two plants on the Uruguay River and nearby towns in Argentina, complained the representative of environmental affairs in the Argentine Foreign Ministry, Raúl Estrada Oyuela.

But Uruguay’s Undersecretary of Industry, Martín Ponce de León, stated that “We have provided the Argentine government with all of the available information. Our attitude has been one of absolute transparency and total attention to all of the reports that have been coming in.”

Uruguay plans to promote the pulp industry, a new undertaking for this country, as one of the main engines of development, which means it would make no sense “to be so arrogant or careless as to say ‘I’m not listening’,” Ponce de León told IPS.

Most of the world’s paper is made from wood pulp. The species of trees most commonly used to produce pulp, or cellulose, in Latin America are fast-growing eucalyptus and pine, which are often planted in areas that once held native forests.

Eucalyptus and pine plantations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay represent 40 percent of the 10 million hectares of rapid-growth tree plantations worldwide.

The Uruguayan government and the two foreign corporations building the plants in Uruguay have repeatedly stressed that the factories will be equipped with modern technology aimed at minimising the environmental risks.

Both Botnia and ENCE are planning to use the “elemental chlorine free” (ECF) bleaching process in their plants.

Environmentalists and others opposed to the pulp mills point out that while not as harmful as older technologies, ECF bleaching still involves the use of chlorine dioxide, leading to the emission of dioxins and furans, which are not only harmful to human health, but can also spread over long distances and persist for years or even decades.

There is also a newer, cleaner bleaching process, known as totally chlorine free (TCF), which produces no dioxins whatsoever. But industry spokespersons say it is incapable of producing high-quality paper.

The factories under construction by ENCE and Botnia, which will invest a combined total of 1.8 billion dollars, will together produce 1.5 million tons a year of cellulose for the paper industry, starting in 2007.

But Argentina, which administers the Uruguay River jointly with Uruguay, is upset over the location of the plants, and the Kirchner administration is demanding independent environmental impact studies, complaining that it has not been supplied with the necessary information.

“We do not doubt Montevideo, but we believe the companies are concealing vital information,” Estrada Oyuela emphatically told IPS.

Although the conflict between Argentina and Uruguay, which are extremely close in historical and cultural terms, is the worst they have experienced in decades, sources with the centre-left Kirchner administration interviewed by IPS underlined that the presidents of the two countries are friends, and that the two governments have shared socioeconomic objectives.

A binational Argentine-Uruguayan technical committee was named by the two presidents in mid-2005 to study and negotiate the issue of the pulp mills. But the route towards a negotiated solution seems to be narrowing due to the intransigence of both sides.

Estrada Oyuela told IPS that Argentina may take its complaints to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

Buenos Aires is demanding that construction work on the plants immediately be brought to a halt, and that the factories be relocated so that they are not only farther apart but also more removed from urban areas and from the Uruguay River, said the Argentine official, who added that Argentina could provide financial assistance for these measures.

But Ponce de León flatly denied that this was possible. “We have not even considered it,” he said.

The binational committee will end its work without reaching an agreement, and with two separate reports, said a Uruguayan diplomatic source who preferred not to be named. The committee will meet next on Jan. 18 in Buenos Aires, and is scheduled to complete its work 12 days later in Montevideo.

According to the source, Argentina sees the committee as a step in the negotiations, whose failure would logically lead the government to turn to the International Court at The Hague, while Uruguay considers it a mechanism for the sharing of information aimed at easing the Argentine government’s concerns.

A decision by Argentina to turn to the International Court of Justice would be the worst possible scenario, because Montevideo would be in a bad position if Buenos Aires complains that Uruguay undertook a major industrial project on a jointly administered river without first informing the Uruguay River administrative commission.

But Argentina, for its part, would have to demonstrate that the factories would cause it damages, in a costly, complex legal process. Because of the complexities, turning to The Hague means that a decision has already been made to battle it out legally rather than negotiate, said the source.

Meanwhile, the roadblocks along the border could prompt Uruguay to file a complaint in Mercosur, in what would be a second dispute that would overlap with and further complicate possible solutions for the original complaint brought by Argentina over the pulp mills.

For Argentina, the suspension of the construction of the plants would be a necessary first step towards a negotiated solution. But Uruguay cannot take that step because it is bound by the investment protection treaty signed with Finland and ratified in 2004, which means Montevideo would have to shell out large indemnification payments if it called off construction.

Alternatives are needed to defuse the conflict. One suggestion proposed by the Uruguayan diplomatic source would be to bring in international mediators, such as neighbouring Brazil.

If the conflict continues to escalate, it could not only hurt bilateral relations but also test the very foundations of regional integration and significantly affect the functioning of Mercosur. Because of that risk, Brazil may be interested in taking a hand in the matter and attempting to get the two sides to continue working towards a negotiated solution.

Unlike court action, which can adopt precautionary measures like calling off work on the plants, mediation is much more flexible, with looser timeframes, and perhaps more suited to the problem at hand, said the source.

But it does not form part of the Uruguayan government’s plans, and the role of technical experts and advisers, who may be interested in seeking out alternatives, is very limited, he added.

Nevertheless, even though both sides have used tough-sounding rhetoric that has been amplified by the media, both governments will think twice before turning to international litigation due to the complexities, delays and costs that such a step would involve.

*With additional reporting by Diana Cariboni in Montevideo.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Jan 2 2006 (IPS)

Thousands of tourists saw their year-end holiday plans interrupted over the weekend by a roadblock that formed part of the escalating conflict between Uruguay and Argentina over the construction of two pulp mills on the Uruguayan side of a river that runs between the two South American countries.

Some 200 environmentalists and local residents from the eastern Argentine province of Entre Ríos blocked the main bridge spanning the Uruguay River from early Friday to early Saturday, prompting angry reactions from Argentine tourists driving to Uruguay, as well as Uruguayan residents of Argentina heading home for the holidays.

The roadblocks organised periodically by the Gualeguaychú Citizens Environmental Assembly – with the tacit support of the Entre Ríos provincial government – to protest the construction of two cellulose factories on the Uruguayan side of the Uruguay River have begun to intensify.

The citizens’ group has now decided to block traffic across the river twice a week over the next month. In addition, it is considering the possibility of eventually staging a roadblock that would last for up to 10 days.

As the conflict between the two nations, which are separated by the Uruguay River and by the murky waters of the Río de la Plata, the world’s largest estuary, has heated up, construction of the two pulp plants has been steadily moving ahead.

Uruguay, which has an important tourism industry, has begun to feel the economic losses caused by the traffic blockades.

Tourists from Argentina represent around 80 percent of foreign visitors to Uruguay during the southern hemisphere summer high season, which just started, and most Argentine visitors arrive by land.

Thousands of Argentine tourists were inconvenienced Friday and early Saturday as they attempted to enter Uruguay by the bridge connecting Puerto Unzué, located 22 km from the Argentine city of Gualeguaychú, and Fray Bentos, the capital of the western Uruguayan department (province) of Río Negro.

But hundreds of Uruguayans who live in Argentina and were driving back to their home country to visit their families were also affected by the roadblock, as traffic was backed up for kilometres.

Two bridges located further north on the Uruguay River also suffered short, surprise roadblocks.

Traffic over the San Martín bridge, between Puerto Unzué and Fray Bentos, was unusually light on Saturday and Sunday, indicating that drivers had sought alternative routes of travel.

Uruguayan Minister of Tourism Héctor Lezcano told IPS last Friday that he had failed in his attempt to get the Argentine government of Néstor Kirchner to adopt some measure to get traffic moving again.

The leftist Uruguayan government of socialist President Tabaré Vázquez warned that the protests violated agreements on the free circulation of goods and persons signed by the members of the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) free trade bloc: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The smokestacks of the cellulose factories being built by the Empresa Nacional de Celulosa de España (ENCE), a Spanish firm, and Botnia from Finland can already be seen from the other side of the river. The two plants are located 10 km apart from each other, near the town of Fray Bentos.

Local residents across the river in Argentina, environmentalists and provincial and national authorities in Argentina are worried about the risk of pollution posed by the plants and the potential impact on tourism and fishing.

They were recently angered by an environmental and social impact study by the International Finance Corporation, which coordinates the World Bank’s private sector investment programme, that is largely favourable to Uruguay’s position.

“We are worried that they are not feeding us all of the available information” on the environmental impact of the two plants on the Uruguay River and nearby towns in Argentina, complained the representative of environmental affairs in the Argentine Foreign Ministry, Raúl Estrada Oyuela.

But Uruguay’s Undersecretary of Industry, Martín Ponce de León, stated that “We have provided the Argentine government with all of the available information. Our attitude has been one of absolute transparency and total attention to all of the reports that have been coming in.”

Uruguay plans to promote the pulp industry, a new undertaking for this country, as one of the main engines of development, which means it would make no sense “to be so arrogant or careless as to say ‘I’m not listening’,” Ponce de León told IPS.

Most of the world’s paper is made from wood pulp. The species of trees most commonly used to produce pulp, or cellulose, in Latin America are fast-growing eucalyptus and pine, which are often planted in areas that once held native forests.

Eucalyptus and pine plantations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay represent 40 percent of the 10 million hectares of rapid-growth tree plantations worldwide.

The Uruguayan government and the two foreign corporations building the plants in Uruguay have repeatedly stressed that the factories will be equipped with modern technology aimed at minimising the environmental risks.

Both Botnia and ENCE are planning to use the “elemental chlorine free” (ECF) bleaching process in their plants.

Environmentalists and others opposed to the pulp mills point out that while not as harmful as older technologies, ECF bleaching still involves the use of chlorine dioxide, leading to the emission of dioxins and furans, which are not only harmful to human health, but can also spread over long distances and persist for years or even decades.

There is also a newer, cleaner bleaching process, known as totally chlorine free (TCF), which produces no dioxins whatsoever. But industry spokespersons say it is incapable of producing high-quality paper.

The factories under construction by ENCE and Botnia, which will invest a combined total of 1.8 billion dollars, will together produce 1.5 million tons a year of cellulose for the paper industry, starting in 2007.

But Argentina, which administers the Uruguay River jointly with Uruguay, is upset over the location of the plants, and the Kirchner administration is demanding independent environmental impact studies, complaining that it has not been supplied with the necessary information.

“We do not doubt Montevideo, but we believe the companies are concealing vital information,” Estrada Oyuela emphatically told IPS.

Although the conflict between Argentina and Uruguay, which are extremely close in historical and cultural terms, is the worst they have experienced in decades, sources with the centre-left Kirchner administration interviewed by IPS underlined that the presidents of the two countries are friends, and that the two governments have shared socioeconomic objectives.

A binational Argentine-Uruguayan technical committee was named by the two presidents in mid-2005 to study and negotiate the issue of the pulp mills. But the route towards a negotiated solution seems to be narrowing due to the intransigence of both sides.

Estrada Oyuela told IPS that Argentina may take its complaints to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

Buenos Aires is demanding that construction work on the plants immediately be brought to a halt, and that the factories be relocated so that they are not only farther apart but also more removed from urban areas and from the Uruguay River, said the Argentine official, who added that Argentina could provide financial assistance for these measures.

But Ponce de León flatly denied that this was possible. “We have not even considered it,” he said.

The binational committee will end its work without reaching an agreement, and with two separate reports, said a Uruguayan diplomatic source who preferred not to be named. The committee will meet next on Jan. 18 in Buenos Aires, and is scheduled to complete its work 12 days later in Montevideo.

According to the source, Argentina sees the committee as a step in the negotiations, whose failure would logically lead the government to turn to the International Court at The Hague, while Uruguay considers it a mechanism for the sharing of information aimed at easing the Argentine government’s concerns.

A decision by Argentina to turn to the International Court of Justice would be the worst possible scenario, because Montevideo would be in a bad position if Buenos Aires complains that Uruguay undertook a major industrial project on a jointly administered river without first informing the Uruguay River administrative commission.

But Argentina, for its part, would have to demonstrate that the factories would cause it damages, in a costly, complex legal process. Because of the complexities, turning to The Hague means that a decision has already been made to battle it out legally rather than negotiate, said the source.

Meanwhile, the roadblocks along the border could prompt Uruguay to file a complaint in Mercosur, in what would be a second dispute that would overlap with and further complicate possible solutions for the original complaint brought by Argentina over the pulp mills.

For Argentina, the suspension of the construction of the plants would be a necessary first step towards a negotiated solution. But Uruguay cannot take that step because it is bound by the investment protection treaty signed with Finland and ratified in 2004, which means Montevideo would have to shell out large indemnification payments if it called off construction.

Alternatives are needed to defuse the conflict. One suggestion proposed by the Uruguayan diplomatic source would be to bring in international mediators, such as neighbouring Brazil.

If the conflict continues to escalate, it could not only hurt bilateral relations but also test the very foundations of regional integration and significantly affect the functioning of Mercosur. Because of that risk, Brazil may be interested in taking a hand in the matter and attempting to get the two sides to continue working towards a negotiated solution.

Unlike court action, which can adopt precautionary measures like calling off work on the plants, mediation is much more flexible, with looser timeframes, and perhaps more suited to the problem at hand, said the source.

But it does not form part of the Uruguayan government’s plans, and the role of technical experts and advisers, who may be interested in seeking out alternatives, is very limited, he added.

Nevertheless, even though both sides have used tough-sounding rhetoric that has been amplified by the media, both governments will think twice before turning to international litigation due to the complexities, delays and costs that such a step would involve. *With additional reporting by Diana Cariboni in Montevideo.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Dec 8 2005 (IPS)

Venezuela’s admission to South America’s Mercosur trade bloc – which is not as imminent as was previously announced – is backed by economic sectors keen on gaining access to oil under preferential terms.

But certain doubts are raised by questions like the harmonisation of tariffs and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s fiery anti-U.S. rhetoric.

Mercosur (Southern Common Market), made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, will formally invite Venezuela to become the fifth full member of the bloc at Friday’s summit meeting in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital, although lengthy negotiations lie ahead before the agreement is finalised.

Not even Chile, the bloc’s oldest associate member – a status it was granted in 1996, a year before Bolivia became the second associate member – has attempted to become a full partner, because to do so it would have to bring its foreign tariffs into line with those of the bloc. (Chile has a foreign tariff of six percent, compared to the Mercosur common external tariff of 35 percent).

The differences with respect to trade questions remain in place despite the ideological affinity between the centre-left Chilean government and the left-leaning administrations currently ruling Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

But firebrand Chávez came knocking on the Mercosur’s door with a suitcase full of petrodollars that looked tempting to highly indebted economies, and a generous offer to finance purchases of increasingly scarce oil and natural gas, in exchange for abundant agricultural products needed to reach his dream of food sovereignty (the primacy of people’s and community’s rights to food and food production, over trade concerns) for Venezuela.

But the road to full membership in Mercosur is long and complicated. Before Venezuela becomes the fifth partner, it will have to accept the bloc’s statutes, rules and regulations, fulfill a series of tariff requirements, and ratify Mercosur agreements – a process that is supposed to take six months to a year.

Presidents Néstor Kirchner of Argentina, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Nicanor Duarte of Paraguay and Tabaré Vázquez of Uruguay will merely be extending a “political welcome” to Chávez to join the Mercosur bloc, which was founded by the Asunción Treaty in 1991.

That will mark the start of a period of the fulfillment of requisites for Caracas to have a vote in the bloc rather than simply a voice (as an associate member), Nelson Fernández, assistant director of integration matters and Mercosur in the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry, told IPS.

He said that although it is possible that the process will take two or three years, he doubts that it will stretch out as long as some observers expect.

He added, however, that the formal acceptance of Venezuela is an important step in the integration between that country and Mercosur, which he said have complementary economies.

The first question to be dealt with at the Friday summit will be the approval of the document creating the Mercosur Parliament. After that will come the complex negotiations for Venezuela to sign the Mercosur protocols, adopt the common external tariff, assume the bloc’s agreements with third party countries, and accept the bloc’s negotiations with third parties, like the ongoing talks with the European Union.

The Treaty of Asunción states that any member of the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI) can join Mercosur if all four full partners approve the request. Venezuela formally filed its application in August.

“It is a very atypical admission process in comparison with the experiences of Latin American integration up to now,” said Uruguayan expert in international relations Romeo Pérez.

That is because the aim is to resolve questions of tariff harmonisation and trade and economic compatibility in just six months to a year between a new partner and a bloc that is already nearly 15 years old, he told IPS.

Pérez, a political science professor at the University of the Republic, also warned that by opening up its market to the Mercosur free trade zone, Venezuela will be flooded by agribusiness products from Argentina and Brazil, two of the world’s leading exporters of agricultural commodities.

He also underscored the impact that Venezuela’s admission will have on “the nature of Mercosur, which will move in the direction of becoming a political unit with little economic and commercial discipline.”

“It will become an association of those who are opposed to the United States,” especially in trade matters, said Pérez.

He pointed to what has already occurred in the negotiations for the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), particularly at the early November Summit of the Americas in Argentina, when the four Mercosur members and Venezuela joined together to oppose the renewal of the stalled FTAA talks.

But the analyst also noted, with a certain amount of pessimism, that Venezuela’s actual admission “will depend on the results achieved in a long, arduous negotiation process.”

A completely different view is held, although for different reasons, by Fernández and the director-general of the Andean Community trade bloc, Héctor Maldonado.

Venezuela’s application to join Mercosur is seen by the Andean Community – made up of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela itself – as “an extremely positive development for the construction of the South American Community of Nations,” above and beyond the fact that “we still have to analyse Venezuela’s proposal to become a full member,” said Maldonado.

The embryonic South American Community was launched at the third South American Summit in December 2004 in Lima, Peru.

“We are optimistic with respect to this process,” because Caracas’ intention of joining Mercosur will help strengthen South American unity, Maldonado told IPS by telephone from the headquarters of the Andean bloc’s General Secretariat in Lima

Although it is not yet clear exactly what the process of admission of an Andean Community member into Mercosur will look like, the Andean bloc “has been extremely flexible” when a member negotiates agreements with third countries or blocs on its own, he commented.

Maldonado recalled that in its December 2004 summit meeting in Quito, the Andean Community adopted article 598, which expressly authorises the partners to engage in free trade negotiations outside of the bloc, as Colombia, Ecuador and Peru are currently doing with the United States.

Maldonado also confirmed that Venezuela had emphatically assured its partners that it had no plans to abandon the Andean Community, the oldest trade bloc in the region (originally known as the Andean Pact).

At any rate, he said, significant trade compatibility problems must be cleared up first, like the fact that the Andean Community has a four-tier external tariff structure of five, 10, 15 and 20 percent, while Mercosur has a 35 percent tariff applicable to imports from outside of the free trade zone.

This is just one of the problems that must be resolved before Venezuela can be admitted to Mercosur, he stressed.

Pérez was referring to these and other touchy aspects when expressing his pessimism with respect to the future of the Mercosur-Venezuela partnership. “This is a full membership that is based on fuzzy legal foundations,” he said.

“It is not good for the bloc to move away from its current economic and trade profile,” undermining long-term accords, to seek an alliance with Caracas only in response to immediate needs, “like petrodollars to alleviate the public debt, in Argentina’s case, or in search of energy security, in the case of Brazil and Uruguay,” he said.

Nor is everyone in the private sector eager to see Venezuela join Mercosur. Agricultural producers in Venezuela, for example, see their powerful competitors to the south as a serious threat to farmers in Venezuela. The country’s agricultural chambers have already called for compensatory measures, but analysts assume these would fall far short.

The president of the Venezuelan livestock association, Genaro Méndez, pointed out that “it costs 18 cents of a dollar to produce a litre of milk in one of the Mercosur countries compared to 35 cents in Venezuela. At present we cannot compete.”

There are also actors behind the scenes ready to take the stage to throw new wrenches in the gears, because the proposed integration between Caracas, Brasilia and Buenos Aires has caused nervousness not only within the region but outside of it as well.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 30 2005 (IPS)

The finding of human remains on a farm near the Uruguayan capital, where an armed forces report indicated that two political prisoners who died under torture were buried during the 1973-1985 military dictatorship, could finally lead to the resolution of a case of forced disappearance for the first time in this South American country.

A team of forensic experts who have been searching for clandestine graves unearthed the skeletal remains of one person Tuesday, along with traces of quicklime, which is sometimes used to destroy organic matter, the president’s press secretary, José Luis Veiga, told IPS.

The experts, who have been searching for the remains of victims of forced disappearance on instructions from the leftist administration of socialist President Tabaré Vázquez, found the remains on the last day scheduled for excavations on a farm where two members of the Communist Party were buried, according to information provided by the military.

The two political prisoners in question were Arpino Vega and Ubagesner Chávez Sosa, who were abducted by the armed forces in 1974 and 1976, respectively. They were two of around 40 people “disappeared” by the 12-year de facto regime. A Peace Commission established last year that the two were tortured to death.

Veiga, however, cautioned that it would take several weeks to identify the remains through DNA testing.

President Vázquez planned to meet Wednesday with the heads of the forensic team to decide on the next steps to be taken in the excavations, which began in August, mainly in army garrisons.

Although some signs of possible clandestine graves have been found in one of the army garrisons, the remains found Tuesday were the first discovered so far.

Vázquez, Defence Minister Azucena Berrutti, and the president’s secretary Gonzalo Fernández visited the dig site Tuesday, expressing their confidence that the experts would find the remains of at least some of the people whose forced disappearance in Uruguay was confirmed by the Peace Commission set up by the conservative government of Jorge Batlle (2000-2005).

The Commission, composed of independent figures, also attempted to determine the fate of more than 160 Uruguayans “disappeared” by Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

In addition, it investigated clandestine transfers of political prisoners from torture camps in Argentina to Montevideo as part of Operation Condor, a covert military intelligence-sharing strategy followed by South American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s to track down and arrest or eliminate leftists and other dissidents.

The Commission also determined that nearly all of the “disappeared” were tortured to death in military garrisons or police stations, and that their bodies were buried in secret graves.

However, several sources, apparently former torturers, who anonymously spoke to the Peace Commission said many of the victims were cremated and their ashes dumped into the Rio de la Plata, the estuary that separates Uruguay and Argentina, although that version has never been confirmed.

After the leftwing Broad Front coalition – the main target of the dictatorship, since the Tupamaro urban guerrillas were already dismantled prior to the 1973 coup – assumed the country’s leadership for the first time on Mar. 1, it ordered the start of excavations in military barracks as demanded for years by the families of the victims, and instructed the armed forces to hand over documents and reports that would shed light on the fate of the “disappeared”.

The documents provided new information on the existence of clandestine graves of the “disappeared”, including María Claudia García, the daughter-in-law of Argentine writer Juan Gelman. García was 19 years old and pregnant when she was abducted in Argentina and taken to Montevideo, where she was held until she gave birth to a baby girl.

After an investigation by the local Montevideo newspaper La Republica, Gelman finally tracked down his granddaughter, who had been raised by a Uruguayan police officer and his wife.

The forensic team’s failure until Tuesday to come up with results based on the information provided by the military had prompted criticism of the armed forces commanders and pressure on the government.

Uruguay has an amnesty law that was passed in 1986 and ratified by voters in a referendum in 1989. But although it let members of the military and the police implicated in the dictatorship’s human rights crimes off the hook, it also left it up to the executive branch to decide which cases fell under the amnesty and which could be dealt with by the justice system.

It further stipulated that the executive branch was to investigate the whereabouts of the disappeared. However, few to no efforts were made in that sense by previous governments led by the two traditional political forces, the Colorado and Nacional (Blanco) parties.

The delay in coming up with results led the government to present a bill that would result in a much broader interpretation of the amnesty law and the clause stating that the executive branch must investigate the fate of the victims of forced disappearance.

If the bill is approved, it will open the door to legal action against former members of the dictatorship who up to now have been protected by the amnesty.

Vázquez told reporters that the discovery of remains gave rise to satisfaction on one hand that results had been found within the framework of the amnesty law, and enormous sadness for the country’s past on the other.

Lawyer Javier Miranda of the Association of Mothers and Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared told IPS that “if this new law helps unblock the legal investigations into the dictatorship’s crimes, it will be fantastic.”

But Miranda, whose father was “disappeared”, also pointed out that as it now stands, the amnesty law already allows judges to move forward with investigations into the fate of the disappeared, even though they have not done so.

Twenty years after Uruguay’s return to democracy, only one civilian official of the dictatorship, former foreign minister Juan Carlos Blanco, has been prosecuted in connection with the crimes against humanity committed by the de facto regime.

By contrast with Argentina, where as many as 30,000 people fell victim to forced disappearance, political prisoners in Uruguay were not systematically “disappeared”. Instead, they were held in prison for years, in many cases for over a decade, and at one point Uruguay had the highest proportion of political prisoners in the world.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Sep 16 2005 (IPS)

The so-called "archives of terror" discovered by a human rights lawyer in Paraguay over a decade ago continue to yield new information on the cooperation between the de facto regimes that ruled much of South America in the 1970s and 1980s.

Paraguayan activist and lawyer Martín Almada visited Uruguay this week to hand over documents recently found in the archives of terror, which indicate that the number of Uruguayans who were detained in Paraguay during the dictatorial regimes was much greater than human rights groups had previously realised.

In December 1992, Almada, who was held as a political prisoner and tortured in his country in the 1970s, came across a room full of official records in a police station near the Paraguayan capital.

The hundreds of thousands of documents that he basically discovered by accident pertain to the torture and forced disappearances carried out by the dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989) in Paraguay.

But the archives of terror are especially important because they contain secret documents shedding light on Operation Condor, a coordinated plan among the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, aimed at tracking down, capturing and eliminating left-wing opponents.

Thanks to legal action by Almada, the archives of terror are open to public scrutiny. They are stored on the premises of Paraguay's Supreme Court, in the Centre of Documentation and Archives for the Defence of Human Rights.

Up to now, human rights groups in Paraguay "talked about eight to 10 Uruguayans who were detained in our country, but just eight days ago we discovered a list in the archives of terror that shows that 35 Uruguayans were detained there. And five others must be added to that total, according to documents found in the Foreign Ministry," Almada told IPS.

Almada handed the records over to the Uruguayan Chamber of Deputies' Human Rights Commission Wednesday and they were given to the leftist Broad Front government Thursday.

The documents also reveal that Uruguayan military officers took part in founding Operation Condor.

In addition, they show that political prisoners were transferred by plane by the military between Paraguay and Uruguay.

The documents include statements obtained under torture from Uruguayan activist Gustavo Insaurralde, a member of the small leftist Party for the Victory of the People, and reveal that he was later flown by the armed forces to Argentina.

Insaurralde and Nelson Santana were the only Uruguayans known to have disappeared in Argentina after being seized in Paraguay and taken to that country, according to the records kept by the Association of Mothers and Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared, a Uruguayan human rights organisation.

That is why the new documents showing that 40 Uruguayans were detained in Paraguay are so important, said activists.

The names of the 40 Uruguayans seized in Paraguay in the 1970s were not revealed by Almada or by Uruguayan authorities, as they must be checked against the list of Uruguayan victims of forced disappearance to discover whether they are among the cases that human rights groups are already aware of, represent new cases, or were freed.

The documents also demonstrate that Uruguayan army Colonel Carlos Calcagno took part in the interrogation and torture of Insaurralde in Paraguay from Apr. 5-7, 1977.

"This led us…to demand that the courts in my country ask Uruguay to extradite Calcagno," said Almada. "The extradition request will arrive in Montevideo in the next few days."

He added that if the extradition goes ahead, it would set an important precedent in the investigation of Operation Condor.

The documents provided by Almada also confirm the existence of a flight by the Uruguayan air force to transfer 26-year-old Victoria Godoy Vera, a young Paraguayan woman listed among the "disappeared", from Montevideo to Asunción in 1974.

Although there is abundant information on flights carrying political prisoners between Argentina and Uruguay, until now activists did not have official records showing that such flights existed between Uruguay and Paraguay.

"I also gave the Uruguayan Congress a copy of the document that records the birth of Operation Condor (in late 1975 in Chile) and outlines the mechanisms by which it functioned, as well as a list of Uruguayan officers who belonged to the so-called Anti-Communist League in 1977, which formed the basis of that repressive plan," said Almada.

"These documents also indicate that Korean Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church had links" to Operation Condor as well, he added.

Almada said that in September 1977, after Jimmy Carter became president of the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) withdrew its support from Operation Condor.

Documents declassified in recent years in Washington, D.C. clearly demonstrate that Operation Condor was backed by the United States since its creation at the initiative of the Chilean dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

After September 1977, "ties began to appear between Moon's sect and the local and Latin American Anti-Communist League. A finance company, Urundel, was even set up in Paraguay to serve as a bank for the repressive operations in that country," said Almada.

He added that Operation Condor, which basically kept its "administrative headquarters" in Paraguay, was conceived of and led by the armed forces in the region, which often made use of the police to help with the "dirty work". Industrialists were also accomplices in the case of Paraguay, he noted.

Another new element that has emerged from the recently unearthed documents is the active intervention in these operations by local International Police (Interpol) offices, which provided data and exchanged information with the military during the de facto regimes.

And "The Condor is still flying, but in new trappings," Almada added.

He based that contention on a recently discovered military document "that shows that in April 1997, a Paraguayan colonel sent an Ecuadorian colleague a list of local 'subversives', as a 'contribution to add to the list of subversives in Latin America'."

"That document was taken before a judge, who summoned the colonel in question to testify. The officer revealed things that we did not expect. For example, that a list of this kind was exchanged at the Conference of American Armies held in 1995 in (the southern Argentine resort city of) Bariloche," said Almada.

The officer said that since the restoration of democracy, the "subversives" in the region have been basically activists with the homeless and landless movements and human rights organisations, investigative reporters, and those active in the "piquetero" movement of unemployed workers who have organised to demand jobs and express their grievances.

(The movement takes its name from the "piquetes" or roadblocks that are the groups' main tool of protest.)

After underlining that this was the first time he was invited to Uruguay to provide documents on Operation Condor, Almada said he believed that it was "the political climate in this country today that has made it possible for me to appear before one of the branches of the state.

"Never before had any Uruguayan government made a move to enable me to share documents from the archives of terror, despite the fact that presidents and other officials made many visits to Paraguay after the return of democracy," he added.

After socialist President Tabaré Vázquez of the leftist Broad Front took office on Mar. 1, the whereabouts of the victims of forced disappearance began to be investigated in Uruguay, with forensic teams searching – so far without success – for signs of clandestine graves and human remains at two military garrisons near Montevideo.

Thousands of leftists and other opponents of the dictatorship spent years in prison and were tortured in Uruguay.

But while as many as 30,000 people fell victim to forced disappearance in neighbouring Argentina during that country's 1976-1983 military regime, the number of Uruguayans who disappeared amounted to around 200, and most of them went missing in Argentina.

An amnesty law that Uruguayan voters ratified in a 1989 referendum put an end to prosecutions against members of the armed forces implicated in human rights violations.

Excerpt:

By Dario Montero
MONTEVIDEO, Aug 10 2005 (IPS)

She was 19 and pregnant when she was abducted in Argentina in 1976 along with her husband, a leftist activist, who was killed two months later. After she was taken to neighbouring Uruguay, she was held in a clandestine torture centre until giving birth, after which she was never seen or heard from again.

Her baby was given to a police officer’s family in Uruguay, who raised her as their own daughter.

Although between 10,000 and 30,000 – depending on the source of the estimate – people were "disappeared" by Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship, the case of María Claudia García de Gelman has drawn international attention because of the intense campaign mounted by her father-in-law, renowned Argentine poet Juan Gelman.

Through his own in-depth investigation, Gelman was able to locate his missing granddaughter, Macarena, in 2000.

On Tuesday, 20 years after the restoration of democracy in Uruguay, excavations began in an army garrison near the capital, in search of María Claudia García’s remains.

That is where the young "disappeared" woman’s body was buried, according to the first official military report on the "dirty war" waged by Uruguay’s 1973-1985 dictatorship.

Gelman’s daughter-in-law was taken to Uruguay as part of Operation Condor, a coordinated U.S.-backed plan among the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, involving cooperation in tracking down, capturing and eliminating left-wing opponents.

Forensic and legal experts say it could be a question of days or even hours before the first body of a victim of forced disappearance – that of María Claudia García – is found in Uruguay.

By contrast with Argentina, political prisoners in Uruguay were not systematically "disappeared", but were held in prison, in many cases for years. Some 200 Uruguayan leftists and others fell victim to forced disappearance, most of them in Argentina.

It was not until Uruguay’s new leftist Broad Front government took office in March that the armed forces began to provide information on the whereabouts of Uruguay’s "disappeared", under orders from Socialist President Tabaré Vázquez.

But although the imminent discovery of García’s clandestine grave represents a major breakthrough on the human rights front, it has become even less likely that her kidnappers and killers will be brought to trial.

On Monday, prosecutor Ricardo Moller asked that the case be shelved once again. Judge Gustavo Mirabal, who is handling the case, had already archived it once before, in 2003, at Moller’s request.

Moller argued this week that the case cannot be reopened because the government of Jorge Batlle (2000-2005) had decided that García’s disappearance was covered by Uruguay’s amnesty law, which was passed in 1986 and ratified by voters in a 1989 referendum.

The law put an end to prosecutions against members of the armed forces accused of committing crimes against humanity during Uruguay’s 12-year de facto regime.

But the law also gave the executive branch some leeway in determining which cases of human rights abuses were covered by the amnesty, while ordering the government to investigate the whereabouts of the disappeared.

José Luis González, the lawyer for the Gelman family, told IPS that it is now a question of waiting to see what the judge decides.

"Mirabal could follow Moller’s recommendation, and in that case, it’s all over," he said, pointing out that the only route that would be left would be to turn to an international body like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

But he added that "I am confident that the judge will keep the case open" and summon the retired members of the military and police who are implicated in the case to testify.

The prosecutor would then be likely to appeal, and the case could eventually make it to the Supreme Court.

González noted, however, that the whole process could take too long for justice to be done, because the statute of limitations could expire.

Lawyer Guillermo Payssé with the Peace and Justice Service (SERPAJ), a Uruguayan human rights group, was a bit more optimistic about the future of this and other human rights cases.

"I am confident that the judiciary will rise to the occasion, in keeping with the current widespread climate against impunity," he remarked to IPS.

"I believe it is time for each person to examine their own conscience, to revise positions taken by the judiciary, and for everyone to combat the impunity, within the framework of today’s laws, because it is not good for a state of law to be built on a foundation of impunity," said Payssé.

Now that the armed forces have begun to cooperate with the government in the search for the remains of the disappeared, it is ironically a prosecutor who has become the biggest hurdle in the fight to uproot impunity.

The investigation into the whereabouts of García’s body has made greater headway than another high-profile case: the May 1976 murders of Uruguayan legislators Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz and of two other Uruguayan political activists in Buenos Aires.

President Vázquez stated in his inaugural address that neither the disappearance of García nor the murders of the four Uruguayan politicians and political activists are covered by the amnesty law.

Vázquez’s predecessors, Batlle and Julio María Sanguinetti (1985-1990 and 1995-2000) of the right-wing Colorado Party and Luis Alberto Lacalle (1990-1995) of the centre-right National Party, had decided that all human rights cases fell under the amnesty law.

The body of Marcelo Gelman, García’s husband, was found in the 1980s in Buenos Aires. He had been shot to death shortly after he was kidnapped at the age of 20.

By means of his own investigation, Marcelo’s father Juan Gelman found that the baby girl that García gave birth to in Uruguay was given to a police officer with close ties to former president Sanguinetti, who in his second term in office did not order an investigation into the case, despite Gelman’s requests and international pressure to do so.

International cultural figures sent hundreds of letters to Sanguinetti urging him to reveal the whereabouts of the poet’s granddaughter Macarena and the remains of his daughter-in-law María Claudia.

But it was Sanguinetti’s successor, Batlle, who confirmed the identity and location of Macarena, after he set up a Peace Commission.

The independent Commission established that 26 of the 200 Uruguayans who were "disappeared" during the dictatorship died under torture in military barracks.

The final fate of many others could now be clarified as a result of the ongoing excavations on the grounds of military garrisons in Uruguay.

The report turned over to Vázquez Monday by the three branches of the armed forces also provides new information that was not made available to the Peace Commission.

"This is the start of a new phase, the route of truth, which we have been demanding in our silent marches every May 20 (the anniversary of the murders of Michelini and Gutiérrez Ruiz), and the participation of the armed forces is welcome," said Payssé.

The activist applauded the new government for living up to the campaign pledge to investigate the fate of the disappeared.

"I believe that the armed forces will admit that they were wrong to act as they did during the dictatorship," he added. "The least they should do is apologise to the nation."

Excerpt: