AS/COA Online - Washington Steps up Talk on Passing Trade Pacts

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Could trade deals with Colombia and Panama see action from the U.S. Congress along with the South Korea pact? Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner gave one of the strongest indications yet that the Obama administration wants all three free-trade agreements (FTAs) passed this year during yesterday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing. “They're overwhelmingly in our favor economically and if we don't do it, what it means is that business just goes to other countries,” said Geithner. “So we need to find a way to pass them.” For more than three years, the deals have been gathering dust while awaiting congressional approval. But President Barack Obama’s job creation push coupled with pressure from key Republican legislators to pass the FTAs could help usher the deals through U.S. Congress within the coming months.

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AS/COA Online | Clinton Signals U.S. Support during Mexico Visit

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a one-day stop in Mexico for a bilateral tête-à-tête with Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa in the colonial city of Guanajuato before a visit to the capital to meet with President Felipe Calderón. The two secretaries broached a range of topics—from climate change to Haiti to economic ties—during their reunion. But Clinton’s praise for the Calderón government’s war against drug cartels arguably attracted the largest amount of press hits.

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AS/COA Online - Haiti Uneasy after Electoral Outcome

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Haiti was dealt another pair of blows this week, between news that a cholera outbreak could likely be traced back to UN peacekeepers and protests over election results. With no candidate winning the requisite majority of the vote, Haitians will choose their next president by casting ballots in a January 16 runoff. But some voters aren’t happy with the results from the November 28 election, which was tainted by fraud allegations; governing party candidate Jude Celestín edged out pop star Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly by less than a percentage point and will face former first lady Mirlande Manigat in the second round. The ruling party felt protesters’ wrath on Wednesday when its headquarters were set on fire. The December 7 election results coincided with news that a report leaked to the Associated Press linked UN peacekeepers from Nepal to a cholera outbreak that has, thus far, claimed 2,000 lives in Haiti.

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AS/COA Online - Ibero-American Summit Puts Democracy and Education Center Stage

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Mar del Plata played host to the twentieth Ibero-American Summit over the weekend, where leaders took a stand to reject undemocratic power seizures. In a special declaration, the members agreed to expel any country that fails to follow democratic processes. “There is no Latin American forum in which you can be a member if you do not respect the democratic order,” commented Argentina’s Foreign Minister Hector Timerman. Leaders in attendance signed on to a final document that focused on boosting education and social inclusion, as well as a series of releases touching on topics ranging from the Falkland Islands controversy to climate change. And, despite news reports wondering whether WikiLeaks about Latin America would cast a shadow over the summit, leaders carried on with business and inked deals on the sidelines.

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AS/COA Online - Entrevista con Gabino Cué, el nuevo gobernador del estado de Oaxaca, Mexico

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Gabino Cué, el nuevo gobernador del estado de Oaxaca en Mexico, conversó con la editora de AS/COA Online Carin Zissis pocos días antes de su toma de posesión en el primer día de diciembre. Por una alianza politíca inesperada del conservador Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN) y el izquierdista Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), Cué ganó una elección histórica en julio de 2010 y será el primer gobernador de oposición en el estado en mas de ocho décadas. Reemplazará Ulises Ruiz del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), quien podría ser investigado por corrupción y violaciones de derechos humanos después de entregar el poder.

Cué, quien perdió frente a Ruiz en 2004 en una elección marcada por alegaciones de fraude, habla sobre como planea el avance de su estado—rico en recursos pero con mucha pobreza—dejando atrás los protestas de 2006 que atrajeron atención internacional. También cuenta como es que su gobierno va a unificar detrás de ideologías diferentes de la alianza que lo aportó durante la elección. “Nosotros conformamos una alianza opositora, en base a una agenda por la transición democrática, para tratar temas de interés de todos los partidos,” dice Cué. “De la misma manera lo vamos a hacer en el gobierno.”

  • Read the English translation of the interview here.

AS/COA Online: Usted está reemplazando al Gobernador Ulises Ruiz, quien cuenta con el nivel de popularidad más bajo de todos los gobernadores en México. Como el primer gobernador de oposición de Oaxaca en más de 80 años, ¿cuál será la primera acción de su gobierno para llevar al estado de Oaxaca por un nuevo rumbo?

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AS/COA Online - Exclusive Interview: Gabino Cue, New Governor of Oaxaca, Mexico, on His State’s Power Shift

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Gabino Cué, the new governor of Oaxaca state in Mexico, spoke with AS/COA Online Managing Editor Carin Zissis on location in his transitional offices in the days leading up to his December 1 inauguration. Through an unlikely political alliance that included the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Cué won a historic July 2010 election to become the state’s first opposition governor in more than eight decades. He takes over from Ulises Ruiz of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who may be investigated on corruption and human rights abuse charges after stepping down.

Cué, who lost to Ruiz in a 2004 election marred by fraud allegations, talks about how he plans to move his resource-rich but poverty-plagued state beyond 2006 protests that drew international attention as well as how his government plans to unify disparate ideologies of the alliance that backed him during the election. “We built an opposition alliance that had at its core an agenda for a democratic transition that would tackle issues important to all parties,” says Cué. “We’re going to build our government in the same way.” The new governor also touches on topics ranging from national security to investment prospects to the 2012 presidential vote.

  • Usted puede leer la entrevista en español aquí.

AS/COA Online: You are replacing Governor Ulises Ruiz, who has the lowest approval rating of all the governors in Mexico. As the first opposition governor of Oaxaca in more than 80 years, what will be the first action your government takes to set Oaxaca on a new path?


Cué: First of all, we are experiencing a historic moment in Oaxaca where, after more than 80 years, the opposition won. There are great expectations when power shifts take place. And what we’ve said is that, at first, we want to do all we can to transition power from an authoritarian regime to a democratic regime. This means we have to dismantle the form in which practices have been carried out, which did little to support democracy. So, an important change will be the ways and style of relating to the electorate, the people, and those we govern.

The next change will be a package of institutional reforms that will allow us to move forward on practical themes: transparency, auditing, strengthening of autonomous agencies, the handling of human rights—all of which are, without a doubt, crucial in a state that has experienced so many violations of individuals’ rights. We have to do this through institutional changes that allow for better collaboration and equilibrium between powers—such as legislative power and judicial power—that permits greater independence and collaboration.

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AS/COA Online - Haiti's Presidential Vote Mired in Controversy

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Haitians won’t know the results of the November 28 presidential vote until next week, but even then the outcome may be shrouded in controversy. No fewer than 12 presidential candidates rejected the election as fraudulent while proceedings were described as chaotic and marked by inefficiency. Results are slated for December 7 at the earliest, with a final tally expected on December 20. Even if calls to cancel the election go unheeded, the results may not be decisive; a runoff would take place January 16 if no candidate wins the requisite 50-percent-plus-one portion of votes in the first round. Voters cast ballots not only for President René Préval’s successor, but also for 11 of 30 seats in the Senate and all 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies to govern a country beset by a cholera outbreak and still dealing with the repercussions of January’s massive earthquake. Despite initial outcry, two leading candidates backed away from those opposing the election, suggesting they expected to face each other in a second round.

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AS/COA Online - On APEC's Sidelines: Chile, Peru Move on Asian FTAs

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President Barack Obama may have fallen short last week when it came to sealing a trade deal with South Korea, but his Peruvian counterpart pulled off a trade pact with Seoul. Just after the Asia-Pacific Cooperation (APEC) summit in Japan, Presidents Alan García and Lee Myung-bak signed an agreement slated to take effect next year. The movement on that trade deal came on the heels of García concluding negotiations on another pact with Japan. But Peru wasn’t the only country deepening Asia ties on the sidelines of the APEC summit: Chile signed a deal with Malaysia and announced the start of trade negotiations with Thailand while President Felipe Calderón of Mexico focused his meetings with Asia-Pacific leaders on upcoming climate change talks in Cancun.

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AS/COA Online | Peru's Race for the Presidency Heats up

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Voters in Peru won’t head to the polls to elect their next president until April 2011, but competition is already heating up as more top contenders join the race and with former President Alejandro Toledo announcing his candidacy on November 10. He vies for the top seat against a number of candidates, including the current poll leader and two-term Mayor of Lima Luis Castañeda; Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of incarcerated ex-President Alberto Fujimori; former candidate Ollanta Humala; and Mercedes Aráoz, the ex-finance minister of the García administration. The crowded playing field could lead to a June runoff vote to determine who will next lead the Andean country.

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AS/COA Online | Paraguay Could Unlock Titanium Potential

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Bolivia may turn out to be the Saudi Arabia of lithium, but neighboring Paraguay could corner the market on titanium. A new mineral discovery near the country’s Brazilian border may constitute the world’s largest reserves of the metal used in a range of products, from ships to space shuttles to watches.

Paraguay’s future mineral prowess hinges on the validity of an announcement by American prospector, David Lowell. The 82-year-old American geologist already has 14 major mineral finds under his belt, including the 1981 discovery of Escondida in Chile’s Atacama desert—the planet’s largest copper reserve. He has now laid claim to mineral rights in an area of Paraguay’s Alto Paraná that is roughly the size of London and told Bloomberg last week: “Our deposit could control the world titanium market, a big enough piece of production that whoever operates it would dictate what the price is going to be.”

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AS/COA Online - A River Runs through It: The Costa Rica-Nicaragua Dispute

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Co-authored with David Schreiner.

Encroaching military camps, a convoluted 150-year long border dispute, and regional quarrels: the ongoing Costa Rican-Nicaraguan row over the northern country’s dredging of the San Juan River has it all. The Organization of American States (OAS) continues to mull the disagreement at the request of the Tico government, while Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega wants to bring the issue to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague. Costa Rica had asked Nicaragua to move a dredge that was dumping silt on Isla Calero, located in the Río San Juan delta and of uncertain ownership, as early as October 24. But tensions flared when a Costa Rican flyover of the dredge revealed troops flying a Nicaraguan flag on the Isla Calero. Costa Rican Security Ministry José María Tijerino called the move invasion of his country’s territory.

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AS/COA Online - Second Time's a Charm: Dilma Wins Brazil's Runoff Vote

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Brazil elected its first female president on October 31, when voters chose Dilma Rousseff—and continuity—over ex-Governor of São Paulo José Serra. With 99 percent of ballots counted, the Worker’s Party (PT) candidate won 55.4 percent of votes compared to the roughly 43.5 percent garnered by her opponent from the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PDSB). Most commonly referred to by her first name, Dilma offered supporters the pledge of carrying on the policies of her popular predecessor President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. She served as his cabinet chief and went on to become his handpicked heir. “Twenty-eight million Brazilians have been lifted out of poverty,” said Dilma Friday. “I will remove the remaining 20 million.”

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AS/COA Online - Resource Guide: Brazil's Runoff Election

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Dilma Rousseff and José Serra face off October 31 in a runoff presidential election. Dilma, as she is commonly known, is popular President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva’s handpicked successor and former cabinet chief and remains the favorite in polls. Still, Serra, the former governor of São Paulo, has seen the gap ebb and flow since the first round on October 3. One of them will take office in January 2011. AS/COA Online offers an overview of polls, coverage, and primary sources as the country’s 1.36 million voters prepare to head to the polls.

Topics Covered:

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AS/COA Online | Costa Rica, U.S. Ink Conservation Deal

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Costa Rica, long seen as a model for environmentalism, inked a debt-for-nature deal that could put it on the global map for meeting conservation targets. The agreement paves the way for Costa Rica to expand protected marine and rainforest areas and become the first developing country to meet its environmental protection commitments spelled out under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. At the heart of the program is an accord signed Friday by Washington and San José whereby Costa Rica will draw down its debt to the United States and invest $27 million in conservation efforts over the next 15 years. The Nature Conservancy, which donated nearly $4 million, and the Central Bank of Costa Rica also signed the deal.

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AS/COA Online - Covering Chile's Rescue from above and below

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Luis Urzua, the last miner rescued, stands with Chilean President Piñra (R). (Photo: HUGO INFANTE / GOVERNMENT OF CHILE)
 The rescue of the 33 miners trapped in a collapsed Chilean mine captured the world’s attention this week in ongoing and emotional coverage of the 22-hour operation. AS/COA Online offers an overview of official coverage, exceptional graphic and multimedia reports, and news about what comes next for those rescued and Chile’s mining industry.

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AS/COA Online - Exclusive Interview: Governor Bill Richardson on Washington's Latin American Ties

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“It’s not going to be easy, but I believe we need that comprehensive immigration bill more than anything or the country is going to be torn apart.”


Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM) spoke with AS/COA Online Managing Editor Carin Zissis about Washington’s Latin American ties, saying, “It’s our own region and if I might say so, we’ve kind of neglected it in a bipartisan way.” The former U.S. ambassador to the UN discussed the need for a hemispheric accord on transnational crime as well as the shifting U.S.-Cuban relationship, which he called “the best that I’ve seen in a long time.” But he cautioned that movement on trade deals and immigration reform may have to wait until next year. “What you will see if there isn’t bipartisan, comprehensive [immigration] reform is more patchwork laws like Arizona’s, which are not just unconstitutional—they’re very discriminatory, they’re divisive,” he said. He added: “They hurt our foreign policy relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean.”

AS/COA Online: To start off, I’d like to talk about Mexico. The Obama administration has referred to a “shared responsibility” in the fight against organized crime in Mexico. As a border-state governor who also has a personal connection to Mexico, if you had to name one area for the U.S. to prioritize in its policy toward Mexico’s security situation, what would it be?

Gov. Richardson: It would be in the area of more shared intelligence with Mexico, and secondly, more cooperation in the area of restricting automatic weapons going into Mexico—a cooperative effort that I believe can be improved. On the issue of shared intelligence, it’s going to mean our joint security operations not just having more opportunities to do training and law enforcement activities. I support the Merida Initiative’s plan makes of additional helicopters. But we have to more effectively share intelligence, especially on the Mexican side.

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AS/COA Online - Taking Stock of the Hispanic Vote in U.S. Midterms

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On November 2, Americans head to the polls for mid-term elections that will likely have a profound impact on the ability of U.S. President Barack Obama to advance his legislative agenda. Among those who could play an integral part in deciding the balance of power are Hispanics, who account for more than 15.8 percent of the overall U.S. population and close to 8 percent of registered voters. But even if Latinos are far more likely to vote for Democrats than the electorate at large, the question remains as to whether they’ll turn out to vote in large numbers.
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AS/COA Online - Venezuela's Vote: Opposition Breaks Pro-Chávez Supermajority

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In the early morning hours of September 27, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced, via Twitter, “a solid victory” in Sunday’s parliamentary elections. Indeed, with all 167 seats in the National Assembly up for grabs, early results showed Chávez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) nabbing at least 95 seats. Yet, as The Economist blogged: “Seldom has an election victory tasted so bitterly of defeat.” The opposition coalition’s Coalition for Democratic Unity (MUD) ended the chavistas’ two-thirds majority by picking up at least 61 seats. Moreover, the opposition parties won roughly half of the popular vote. “The Venezuelan people have spoken. May the voice of the people be heard,” said the MUD’s representative Ramón Guillermo Aveledo as the results came in.
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AS/COA Online - Measuring Mexico's Bicentennial Mood

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Mexico celebrates its bicentennial this week amid a glut of pulse-taking media coverage reflecting on the country’s mood. As Mexicans prepare for the September 15 grito—the shout marking the climax of Independence Day festivities—the country celebrates its birthday but mourns the more than 28,000 lives claimed over the past four years by the drug war. A week before party time, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton caused a stir when she commented on Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s war against organized crime, saying Mexico is “looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago” and compared the cartels’ strength to an “insurgency.” Her remarks drew criticism from the Mexican government and some observers, forcing U.S. President Barack Obama to smooth over the controversy. In an interview with La Opinión, Obama described Mexico as a “progressive democracy and, as a result, you cannot compare what is happening in Mexico with what happened in Colombia 20 years ago.”
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AS/COA Online - Latin America Looks to India

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Latin America already has significant Chinese investments and trade agreements under its belt, but the region could set its sights on another resource-hungry Asian giant: India. A new report by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) recognizes that, even though Latin America’s commercial ties with India have been on the upswing in recent years, more could be done to build up the South Asian country as a Latin American market. “The region and India are increasingly together at the table when major decisions are taken,” said IDB head Luis Alberto Moreno in comments about the report’s release. “We are starting to see greater integration among them and there is a tremendous opportunity for more trade and cooperation.”

His comments allude to India as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, with GDP growth rates forecast to hit 8.5 percent for 2010, as well as areas for partnership with Latin America, such as with Brazil as a fellow BRIC member. India has fostered trade links with the region, including a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) with the Mercosur bloc that went into effect in June 2009 and covers roughly 900 products. A PTA with Chile came into force three years ago. 

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