by the El Reportero’s news services
Rigoberta Menchu once more aspires to the Guatemalan presidency, this second time with a fully indigenous organization but joined to a leftist coalition.
The 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner founded Winaq (integral human being) and registered it as a party. She then joined Alternativa Nueva Nacion and Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca in a Broad Front, created last April 24.
The leaders and members of the last two groups approved the candidature of Menchu, who considers her participation a choice with different proposals, regardless of the results on Sept. 11. Latin News and Prensa Latina contributed to this report.
The Mexican government declared three days of national mourning after 52 people, mostly women, were killed when gangsters set fire to the Casino Royale in Monterrey in the middle of the afternoon of Aug. 25.
It seems almost certain that the gangsters did not intend to kill so many people, only to intimidate the casino owners by destroying their property.
The death toll, probably the second highest for a single incident (after the cold-blooded murder of 72 migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas on 23 Aug. 23, 2010 [WR-10-34]) appears to have shocked the government into changing its stance on organized crime. The government, which had previously argued that gangsters killed mostly other gangsters, now seems to be admitting civilians are also targets.
Chávez’s missing US$29 bn
The lengthy mystery over Venezuela’s executive controlled off-budget National Development Fund (Fonden) is gradually being solved by some tenacious opposition bloggers. Even taking into account the fact that these blogs are openly against the government led by President Hugo Chávez, the numbers as provided by the finance ministry don’t appear to lie.
Yet the Fonden doesn’t seem to have much of an economic impact. As one blogger surmises, “projects are drawn out for years, badly executed and the money is not being spent in the right areas, because the Chavista government prioritizes ideology (Defense, Cuba) over investment projects that generate jobs or infrastructure.
And even when they have these projects, after 12 years in power, they have not found a way to be effective and efficient. Corruption is being ignored!”
