by the El Reportero’s news services
Porfirio Lovo
Two developments, in two small neighbours in Central America, in the space of a week will cause serious domestic and international repercussions. Honduras is poised to shake off its pariah status and rejoin the Organization of American States (OAS) after President Porfirio Lobo finally managed to strike a deal with Manuel Zelaya nearly two years after he was ousted in a coup.
Meanwhile El Salvador, one of the top allies of the US in Latin America even after the left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) came to power in 2009, has been rocked by startling revelations about an entrenched organised crime network implicating business leaders, politicians, judges and the security forces.
Mexico considers cancelling state election
On 25 May the national leaders of the country’s three main parties announced that instead of allowing the electors of Michoacán to pick the next governor they may agree on a joint candidate. The proposal is a demonstration of how weak President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa now is and how vulnerable his key policy of using the army to combat drug trafficking gangs has become.
Michoacán has been the scene of a major upswing in gang violence in the past 10 days and the politicians now fear that elections, due this November, would be impossible. This admission raises questions for other state elections this year, especially in Nayarit, where 28 people were killed by gangsters on 25 May and which goes to the polls on 3 July, and also for the congressional and presidential elections due in July 2012. The US government has a clear understanding of what is happening in Mexico: on 24 May the US President nominated Earl Anthony Wayne, currently deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, to be the next ambassador to Mexico. Wayne, a career diplomat, was ambassador to Argentina from 2006 to 2009.
Paraguay, closer to becoming the region’s energy hub
Recent efforts by Brazil and Argentina to promote greater energy integration within the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) by providing concessions to their smaller partners, Paraguay and Uruguay, have finally made an integrated regional energy market a distinct possibility. In particular, both countries appear more inclined to accede to Paraguay’s longstanding demand to regain sovereignty over its hydroelectric output.
However, a fi nal decision, which rests in the hands of Argentina, has been stalled for political reasons, as the two Mercosur powerhouses assess the implications.
Cuba’s (r)evolution
On 19 April President Raúl Castro closed the ruling Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC)’s sixth party congress with a defi ant vow “to defend, preserve and continue perfecting socialism, and never permit the return of capitalism”. It’s unclear what the 79-year old Castro meant by “capitalism”, but it’s certainly the case that the ruling gerontocracy that was (re-) confi rmed in the leadership may well struggle with the planned transition to a mixed system, whereby a centrally planned economy run by a one party state is expected to co-exist in harmony with a limited private entrepreneurial sector for the fi rst time in fi ve decades. (Latin News contributed with this report.)
