by the El Reportero’s news services
Evo Morales
“A new land reform law which would do away once and for all with latifundia and overhaul the land reform institute [Inra]”.
This pledge, delivered by President Evo Morales this month to indigenous and campesino supporters at an event in Villa Tunari, Cochabamba, along with 18,600 property titles, harks back to one of the chief demands of his support base which has only been partially addressed by the new plurinational 2009 constitution.
While coming amid other signs of progress by the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government vis-à-vis land reform efforts (core to its declared priority of redistributing wealth to the impoverished majority), the pledge also follows – or could even be in direct response to – other government actions which have raised major question marks over its commitment to indigenous land rights.
Chávez champions new look personally and politically
He might look harder with his head shaved in the wake of chemotherapy to treat his unspecified cancer, but Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez is keen to show a softer side. He is reaching out to the middle class, just as he did before the last presidential elections in 2006, with symbolic gestures. First up is a sartorial change.
The colour red, synonymous with radical revolution, is no longer in vogue; Chávez is sporting yellow shirts and even wearing suits. Too much revolutionary dogma is also out of fashion. Chávez is even extolling the virtues of private enterprise, at least when it involves small businesses.
One thing that has not changed is his appetite for power: Chávez has now pushed his retirement date back from 2021 to 2031.
Steps forward and back as Guatemala addresses civil war past
There have been some recent milestones, vis-à-vis the pledge by centre-left President Álvaro Colom to redress past impunity in relation to the 1960-1996 civil war that left more than 200,000 people dead and saw the State (chiefly the military) accused of 93 percent of human rights violations committed.
These include: the first ever conviction of former soldiers for a massacre; the arrests of the highest-ranking military official to date, on charges of genocide, and of the suspected mastermind of the emblematic 1980 Spanish embassy attack; and the launch of a new centre providing unprecedented public access to the country’s military archives.
These developments are significant when comparing Guatemala’s efforts with those of Southern Cone countries which, bar Argentina which convicted top military officials in the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, only began acting in 2010, some 30 years after the region’s return to democracy. By Latin News.
