by the El Reportero’s news services
Alan García
Salvadoran authorities say at least 192 people were killed by floods and landslides that swept through the country last week.
El Salvador’s Civil Protection agency says in a statement that 89 of the victims were killed in the state of San Vicente, where days of heavy rains caused mud and boulders to sweep down the side of the Chichontepec volcano before dawn a week ago.
The agency said Sunday that dozens more remain missing. It says that more than 14,000 Salvadoran have been affected by the floods and mudslides that were indirectly linked to Hurricane Ida’s passage through the region.
Peruvian President Alan García cut short his trip to the Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Singapore, returning to Lima this morning to deal with a brewing spying case. Mr. Garcia abruptly announced his return—which comes a day earlier than had been scheduled—in order to publicly address an alleged incident of Chilean espionage involving an officer from the Peruvian Air Force. This newest diplomatic spat between the two countries had already provoked the cancellation of a meeting yesterday between President Garcia and his Chilean counterpart, Michelle Bachelet.
A Peruvian Air Force official Victor Ariza Mendoza, is accused of passing secret documents detailing Peru’s projected future military acquisitions to Chilean intelligence officers in exchange for money.
Obama’s new multilateralism founders on Honduras
When U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad on April 17 he pledged an era of equal partnership and a new chapter of engagement with the region that reflected his stated preference for multi-lateralism in regional affairs.
Seven months later, the administration’s patience with multilateralism appeared to have already worn thin, amid the failure of the efforts led by the main hemispheric Organization of American States (O.A.S.) to bring about a resolution to the Honduras coup crisis.
Obama has moved to re-assert the U.S. as the ultimate arbiter in Latin America, probably out of sheer frustration, but also at the cost of principle and in doing so has provoked a fresh rift with the region.
Zelaya backtracks as congress refuses to take orders
The ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya claims that the de facto president Roberto Micheletti breached and voided the Tegucigalpa-San José Agreement when he moved on Nov. 5 to install a ‘unity and national reconciliation’ government with himself as its head.
Few have taken note of the fact that Zelaya had by then already declared the agreement void, and had rejected an offer from Micheletti to overcome their differences.
This has thrown the international participants in the crisis into confusion.
Environmentalists alarmed by Puerto Rico policies
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Sweeping from lush mountain rain forests to pristine beaches, a corridor of land protected by Puerto Rico’s last governor hosts dozens of rare and endangered species and was championed by celebrities who helped fight off resort proposals.
Now new Gov. Luis Fortuno has revoked the reserve as part of a drive to bring jobs and investment for the U.S. territory’s struggling economy. And activists see a broader pattern of looser protection for the island’s environment.
Fortuno’s Oct. 30 order allows large-scale development inside the 3,200-acre 1,300-hectare) parcel of land immediately north of El Yunque, the only tropical rain forest in the U.S. National Forest system.
(Latin News, AP and AQ Online contributed to this report)
