by the El Reportero news service
Álvaro Uribe
Just before midnight on 26 June President Alvaro Uribe announced that he intended to re-run the 2006 presidential election after the supreme court severely questioned the legitimacy of his re-election two years ago. Uribe’s plan to hold a new election is a dramatic and asymmetric challenge to the supreme court.
In passing sentence on Yidis Medina, the former congresswoman convicted of taking bribes to support the government’s re-election reform, the supreme court said that Medina’s crime invalidated the legislation that allowed Uribe to run for a second term rather than the legitimacy of his (landslide) victory.
However, Uribe knows that if he can score an even larger victory in a repeat of his second election in 2006, he will find it much easier to push for a third opportunity in 2010.
Latin banks raise interest rates
Across Latin America central banks are raising interest rates. There is nothing unusual in that, given that inflation is rising. What does make the central banks’ actions unusual is that their counterparts in the industrialised (and indeed in developing economies such as India and China) are mostly refusing to raise rates.
Oaxacan campesinos try to stay on the land
SANTIAGO DE JUXTLAHUACE, OAXACA, MEXICO – The Mixteca region of Oaxaca is one of the poorest areas in Mexico. Indigenous Mixtec, Triqui and other groups from this region now make up a large percentage of the migrants who have left to work in the United States. But many people try to stay on the land and farm, despite the difficulty.
Nopales grow on the ranch of Sidronio Rivera, in Santa Cruz Rancho Viejo near Juxtlahuaca, where his wife plucks a chicken for dinner.
Zacarias Salazar plows his cornfield behind oxen, in the traditional way with a wooden plough. Because of corn dumping enabled by the North American Free Trade Agreement, it is almost impossible for Salazar to grow and sell corn at a fair price in Mexico any longer, and his crop is now mostly for the sustenence of his family. Nearby, a family living in the U.S. has abandoned their home.
People sell produce and other products on Juxtlahuaca’s market day. Some farmers blockade the main highway, after being told there was no room for their stalls in the center of town.
US drivers risk their lives filling tanks with Mexican fuel
U.S. motorists are risking rampant drug violence in Mexico to drive over the border and fill their tanks with cheap Mexican fuel, some even coming to blows over gas shortages and long queues.
The gap between Mexico’s subsidized gasoline and record U.S. prices has made it well worth making the trip, and U.S. drivers are even shrugging off the dangers of Mexico’s drug war which sees almost daily shootings in border towns.
Some say they can save up to $100 a month by filling up every two weeks in Mexico.
The extra demand is causing shortages at hundreds of Mexico’s border gas stations, some of which are starting to ration fuel.
Mexico’s subsidized gasoline — around $1.40 cheaper per gallon than in the United States — is a huge draw as average U.S. pump prices hit an unprecedented $4 a gallon ($1.06 a liter). In West Coast cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, prices are over $4.50 a gallon.
(Pravda contributed to this report).
