by the El Reportero’s news services
Juan Manuel Santos was sworn in Saturday as the 59th president of
Colombia, which despite major security gains remains the Western
Hemisphere’s only nation beset by a politically based armed conflict.
A reminder of that was the absence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez
among the 14 Latin American and Caribbean leaders, including Felipe
Calderón of Mexico and Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, attending
Saturday’s ceremony on the carpeted cobblestones of Bogota’s central
plaza.
Chávez broke diplomatic relations with neighboring Colombia two
weeks ago after outgoing President Alvaro Uribe’s government presented
the Organization of American States with video of alleged Colombian
rebel camps in Venezuela.
Also attending was President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, which severed
ties with Uribe’s government in 2008 after the Colombian military
raided a guerrilla camp a mile inside its territory, killing a rebel
chief and 25 others.
The new president vowed to unify his country around the goals of
prosperity for all and of thwarting the nation’s leftist rebels.
Castro permits economic reforms to “perfect” Cuban Revolution
Cuba’s President Raúl Castro announced a series of “adjustments to the
socialist model” on 1 August during the opening of the biannual session
of the national assembly. His main message was the need to streamline
the State.
Castro said the “bloated” state sector would be shorn of some 1m
employees in a phased reduction which will run in tandem with a plan to
increase private enterprise, allowing more Cubans to become
self-employed and hire their own workers. Castro said this was one of
the “structural and conceptual changes” he promised in a major policy
speech three years ago.
Mexico car bomb triggers debate on escalation & shift to terrorism
The news that, for the first time ever, a car bomb had exploded in
Ciudad Juárez, prompted two intertwined debates. The first hinges on
whether this event marks the beginning of a new phase in Mexico’s drug
war; the second, on whether it can be considered as the onset of a
terrorist phase in the violence practised by the drug gangs.
The second debate is of particular importance because it has
repercussions that go far beyond Mexico. There are signs that it may
resurface again in Colombia with the accession to power of Juan Manuel
Santos on August 7.
