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Jaime Morales Carazo
Nicaragua’s vice president said Wednesday he is not planning to comply with a diplomatic deadline to withdraw troops from a border zone with Costa Rica, as tensions flared over a two-century-old territorial dispute. Vice President Jaime Morales Carazo said he rejected the complaints by Costa Rica that Nicaragua was invading its territory – because the territory in dispute belongs to Nicaragua.
Anti-UN protests turn deadly in Haiti
On 15 November, at least one protester was shot dead by a UN peacekeeper following protests against the UN stabilization mission (Minustah) in the cities of Cap-Haitien and Hinche. The growing national antipathy to the UN puts a major questionmark against the international community’s plans to hold presidential and legislative elections in Haiti on 28 November. The UN, with its 8,940 troops and 4,391 police officers is supposed to ensure that the elections are at least peaceful. Even before the killing, the elections were problematic because of the cholera epidemic, which has killed almost 1,000 people, and the authorities’ failure to make much progress on rebuilding after the earthquake which demolished most of the country’s infrastructure on 12 January.
Cuba and Venezuela head in divergent directions
Cuba and Venezuela are moving in opposite directions. Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez visited Cuba this week to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the special partnership signed by the two countries. Cuba’s President Raúl Castro took advantage of this historic occasion to announce that the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) would hold its long-anticipated congress in April 2011, nine years later than scheduled, to set out the future direction of the Revolution. Castro presented Chávez with a copy of a key document that will be discussed at the congress: it advocates widening the private sector and attracting foreign investment without renouncing socialism. The irony was unmistakable: Chávez is curbing the private sector, discouraging foreign investment, in the name of socialism.
Costa Rica – no longer the exception to the rule?
Costa Rica faces an “unprecedented crisis of delinquency”. The country once hailed as the exception to the rule in Central America should be seen “in the mirror of Mexico, as [the country] could well be heading down a similar route.” These were the warnings President Laura Chinchilla chose to issue to her people on the anniversary of Costa Rican independence on 15 September. The following day, the country’s unprecedented inclusion on the US State Department’s annual drugs black list shocked local and foreign observers alike, prompting questions as to whether there was no longer any substance to Costa Rica’s traditional reputation as an oasis of peace and social equality in a region otherwise afflicted by violence and poverty.
Brazil sabre-rattles over weak dollar
Throughout the past month, Brazil’s minister of fi nance, Guido Mantega, has made increasingly fi erce criticisms of US economic policy and the developing ‘global currency war’. After the US Federal Reserve Board’s decision to print another US$600bn of cash, commentators fear that there will be a showdown between the US and the world’s emerging economies, led by Brazil and China, at the forthcoming G-20 meeting in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 11-12.
