by the El Reportero’s news services
Fidel y Raúl Castro
The ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro published an open letter on 18 February effectively resigning from the country’s presidency. In his letter, published by the communist mouthpiece Granma, Fidel stated “I will not aspire nor accept, I repeat, I will not aspire nor accept, the post of president of the council of state and commander in chief”. With this statement Fidel left the path clear for his younger brother, Raúl, to succeed him as Cuba’s president.
Nevertheless, he would keep his post within the National Assembly and the ruling Communist Party.
Raúl Castro, possible successor of his brother Fidel Castro in the presidency of Cuba, asked Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for help in the process of transition, since it considers Brazil a more suitable ally than Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Paulo said last week Sao’s newspaper Folha.
According to news versions, during the official visit that the head of state of Brazil did to Havana last January, Raúl Castro asked Lula to intervene possible private investments in Cuba and negotiation with the United States.
“For Raúl Castro, Brazil would be an ally more suitable than the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez “, said el diario de Sao Paulo, Folha.
Nicaraguan leader calls Obama’s campaign ‘revolutionary’
Hugo Chávez
MANAGUA, Nicaragua – President Daniel Ortega, who led the 1979 revolution in Nicaragua, says Barack Obama’s presidential bid is a “revolutionary” phenomenon in the United States.
“It’s not to say that there is already a revolution under way in the U.S. … but yes, they are laying the foundations for a revolutionary change,” the Sandinista leader said Wednesday night as he accepted an honorary doctorate from an engineering university. Ortega led a Soviet-backed government that battled U.S.-supported Contra rebels before he lost power in a 1990 election. He returned to office last year via the ballot box.
In statements broadcast on Sandinista Radio La Primerisima, Ortega said he has “faith in God and in the North American people, and above all in the youth, that the moment of great change in the U.S. will come and it will act differently, with justice and equality toward all nations.”
Obama, a senator from Illinois, is locked in a tight battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
Barack Obama
Ortega also called Obama a spokesman for the millions of Central American and Mexican citizens who migrate to the U.S. in search of work, though polls indicate most Latino voters so far have favored Clinton over Obama.
Bomb in Mexico City kills one person
On 15 February a bomb exploded, just before 2.30pm, in a main street in Mexico City, killing one person. The police say that the homemade bomb, which appears to have been set off by a cellular telephone call, is probably neither the work of guerrillas nor gangsters.
Chávez puts Colombian paramilitaries back in spotlight
Luiz Lula da Silva
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez claimed this week that the US and Colombia planned to fill Venezuela with paramilitaries.
His remarks come weeks after he accused the same countries of plotting a conspiracy against him.
They are significant because one of the main reasons Colombia’s President Álvaro Uribe is basking in such high approval ratings at the moment is that his fierce spat with Chávez over the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) has diverted attention away from his government’s difficulties with the demobilised paramilitaries from the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC).
The Colombian peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, reacted to Chávez’s remarks by reopening the government’s dispute with the judiciary over the legal status of demobilised paras.
(Associated Press and EFE contributed to this article).
