by the El Reportero’s news services
Daniel Ortega
Nicaragua has become illiteracy-free after reducing to 3.5 percent the number of citizens who do not know how to read and write, President Daniel Ortega has announced. Ortega made the announcement at a rally held Saturday at the Revolution Square in Managua, where Education Minister Miguel de Castilla gave him the certificate.
The President recalled that the literacy campaign had begun on August 23, 1980, a year after the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution.
At that time, the illiteracy rate was 53 percent. The Sandinistas then lowered it to 12 percent, but after 16 years of neo-liberal governments (1990-2006) the figure rose against to 30 percent.
Neo-liberal governments were not interested in teaching people how to read and write because they just want to get cheap labor force, Ortega said.
He urged the Ministry of Education to now teach people the Constitution, so they can defend their rights. Education and health are human rights, he added.
The Literacy Campaign now took almost two years. It began right after the Sandinista National Liberation Front party won the 2006 general elections. As in the fi rst literacy campaign, Cuban teachers now helped Nicaraguans to know how to read and write.
Nicaragua is the fourth Bolivarian Alliance for the People of our Americas bloc member to become illiteracy free after Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia.
U.S. more worried about Mexico than Colombia
August 20, John Feeley, the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Mexico City, told a security conference that the U.S. is more worried now about the situation in Mexico than it was about Colombia when the U.S. fi rst launched Plan Colombia at the beginning of the decade.
Such a strong statement suggests that the new Barack Obama administration’s evaluation of the internal security situation in Mexico has been completed and the verdict is that the current mix of policies are not working.
Honduras high court threatens Zelaya with arrest
Honduras’s Supreme Court has rejected a Costa Rica-brokered deal that would have restored ousted President Manuel Zelaya to power and sternly warned that he faces arrest if he returns.
In a ruling late Saturday that fell in line with similar pronouncements by the military-backed regime, the high court said that Zelaya will not be allowed to return to power, and “cannot avoid having to submit to established procedures of the penal process” should he return to Honduras.
Zelaya was ousted from power in a June 28 military backed coup and replaced with interim leader Roberto Micheletti.
The court decision also accused Zelaya of “crimes against the government, treason against the nation, abuse of power” and other misdeeds, as it affirmed the legitimacy of Micheletti’s government.
Fidel Castro appears on television
Former leader Fidel Castro appeared on Sunday on Cuban television for the first time since June of last year in a video of him chatting with students from Venezuela, reported Reuters.
Castro, 83, appeared to be in good condition as he spoke with the students about the state of the world in a meeting that took place on Saturday in Havana, according to the television report.
The video followed a front-page photograph of Castro meeting with Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa published on Sunday in the state-run newspaper Juventud Rebelde.
Castro has not been in public since undergoing intestinal surgery in July 2006. He resigned the presidency last year and was replaced by brother Raul Castro.
Does the U.S. want bases in Colombia?
One of the oddest aspects of the regional row over the proposed U.S. bases in Colombia is the U.S. administration’s lukewarm enthusiasm for the project.
This reserved U.S. attitude suggests that perhaps the U.S. does not view the deal’s enhanced access to the seven military bases in Colombia as the strategic necessity that the current Colombian government does.
