An old man in Chinchero, Peru. Photo: Flickr user VautrinBaires

One of the more surprising outcomes of the Asia-Pacific summit meeting in Singapore this past week had nothing to do, as might have been expected, with Barack Obama or his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao.

Instead, Peruvian President Alan Garcia raised tensions with neighboring Chile by choosing to complain publicly about an espionage case in which a Peruvian intelligence officer has been charged with sending military secrets to Chile.

Historically, relations between Chile and Peru have had their ups and downs (they’ve gone to war or have been on the brink more than once).

Recently, the countries have an ongoing disagreement about their maritime borders - a case that was brought to the International Court of Justice. Part of the disagreement is whether or not they have a dispute in the first place.

Peru filed the complaint at the world court, but Chile says it has no problem and accepts international treaties on the boundary. That’s a little like the confusion that came up after Garcia’s comments at the Asia-Pacific summit.

Peru has arrested a Peruvian Air Force intelligence officer, Victor Ariza, saying that Chile gave him a monthly stipend over the last five years for passing along military secrets.

Garcia raised the issue with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet during the Singapore summit; Bachelet denied the spy charge and complained about Garcia having raised the issue in the first place.

The implication was that Peru wanted to embarrass Chile at the world meeting - especially since Ariza had been arrested two weeks earlier.

Garcia stormed out of Singapore a day earlier than planned, canceling meetings there, while Bachelet’s spokesperson declared “Chile doesn’t spy.” Garcia, for his part, has described the espionage case as “repugnant.”

Ordinarily, a good person to calm tempers and mediate would be the head of the Organization of American States. But the OAS secretary general, Jose Miguel Insulza, is Chilean.

Insulza was in Santiago over the weekend, on the campaign trail with his friend Eduardo Frei, a candidate in Chile’s upcoming presidential election. In any case, it’s not clear that the Chilean government will be able to turn down the temperature on its own.

Foreign Minister Mariano Fernandez reiterated Monday that his country was not conducting espionage against Peru. “Chile has nothing to do with this case,” he said, implying it was an internal Peruvian problem.

“We ask above all that the Peruvian authorities get to the bottom of this and stay calm so that the public can be told the truth about what has happened, as I say, among officials of the Peruvian Armed Forces.”

- Peter Eisner

Argentinian man views the daily newspapers in La Cumbre. Photo: flickr user Adam Jones, phD.

The Kirchner era in Argentina has been characterized by mixed signals. First there was Néstor Carlos Kirchner Ostoić, little-known as governor of Santa Cruz until he vaulted into the Argentine presidency in 2003. In a country that endured military coups, an economic collapse and a lack of confidence in institutions, the fact that he completed his term of office in 2007 – unlike others before him – was an accomplishment.

He was succeeded by his wife, Cristina Elizabet Fernández de Kirchner, in December of 2007. Both Kirchners have faced rising criticism since then, along with defections and demands that she resign or be stripped of the office before her four-year term ends.

The confusion about the Kirchners is trying to figure out what they are up to and what they stand for. They are members of the Justice Party, successors to Juan Domingo Perón , the dictatorial leader who governed on and off in the 1940s and 1950s with a reprise in 1973.

They have staunchly supported human rights and accountability for crimes during the military dictatorship after Peron’s death. But they have also been accused of arrogance, of an unwillingness to consider opposing views and of railroading their policies into law without debate.

Now President Cristina Kirchner (with Nestor just off stage) has promulgated a new national media law. Supporters say that it ends the practice of media monopolies and democratizes the news media; detractors say that it is an attack on freedom of the press.

One thing for certain—the Kirchners have no love lost for the news media. By happenstance, I, along with several colleagues at the Washington Post conducted the first interview with Nestor Kirchner after he took office in 2003. After that, I fielded calls from reporters in Buenos Aires asking for my impressions, since they hadn’t had the chance to talk to him.

All I could say was that he had spoken passionately about bringing justice to the country after the Dirty War, in which 20,000 to 30,000 people were killed by the right-wing military.

I was in Argentina during Cristina’s non-campaign for election in 2007 – she gallivanted around South America and beyond, with photo appearances in Brazil, Europe and the United States, while avoiding interviews and the campaign trail at home. All along, the polls had showed her way ahead and her handlers probably didn’t want to ruin a good thing by campaigning.

So there are reasons to suspect the context in which the new media law takes effect.

Eduardo Bertoni, an Argentine attorney and prominent advocate of press freedoms, says that the law has its merits. The previous law “suffered from illegitimacy from the outset – it was a law created during the military dictatorship,” he said. Bertoni is director of the Center on Freedom of Expression Studies at the University of Palermo in Buenos Aires. He also served at the Organization of American States as the special rapporteur for freedom of expression of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.

But he also understands the concerns of critics, who say that the government could have given itself too much power in deciding which media companies are allowed to grow, and how they operate. He says the
government “could do much to take any suspicion of bad faith off the table,” if it were to promote open debate about the measure.

So the question is: will the Kirchners use the law to promote democracy, or will they use their power to punish their critics?

- Peter Eisner

A young woman in Minas de Oro. Photo: Flickr user lonqueta

The United States has been actively engaged lately in solving the Honduran presidential crisis. The U.S. State Department officials have helped broker a deal to end the sometimes violent dispute between Mel Zelaya, the deposed Honduran president, and Roberto Micheletti, designated as president when the Honduran military escorted Zelaya out of town in his nightclothes. Let’s hope the crisis is resolved once and for all today.

Consider me an idealist, but I’m thinking beyond that — about steps that might solve the underlying social issues that plague Honduras.

As the months-long battle between the two presidents in Honduras moves toward a rational resolution, what about the abjectly poor Honduran majority?

Honduras needs financial support, economic relief, and definitely social help - why can’t the U.S. and other nations increase their involvement? Fifty percent of Honduras’ 7.7 million people are below the poverty line, and almost 40 percent are children. There is talk of a national unity government by the end of the year. Will that government be able to change the paradigm without international aid?

Inevitably, the U.S. has a role. It has characteristically abandoned social concerns once it finishes with its little wars and interventions. Don’t we have an ongoing responsibility in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the rest of the region?

Twenty-five years ago, probably the only positive part of turning Honduras into a U.S. staging base for American adventurism in Central America was that American military field hospitals scheduled regular health clinics in the countryside.

I remember seeing poor people waiting in line weekly medical screening, checkups and even surgeries that otherwise would not have taken place. I’m positive that thousands of Hondurans who rarely otherwise had seen a doctor benefited from American military largesse, even though the ulterior motives were not crystalline. It was part of the “hearts and minds” doctrine.

But development aid and social support are more than a handout. Stability in the Hemisphere is good for everyone.

First things first: Solve the political problem and then deal with underlying issues.

Honduras has taken a step backward during this crisis, according to Human Rights Watch.

“Honduras urgently needs to address the serious damage to human rights since the coup,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas Director at Human Rights Watch. “Honduras needs to roll back repressive legislation and give unequivocal orders to security forces to end their abuses and cooperate with the investigations of the human rights unit of the Attorney General’s office.”

- Peter Eisner

Valijagate threatens to embroil at least one South American leader. Photo: Flickr user quecomunismo

There’s a story in Argentina that has become widely known under a simple title: La Valija (the suitcase). It should be destined to become that country’s version of Watergate. “Valijagate” refers to the discovery in August 2007 that Guido Antonini, a Venezuelan-born American, was carrying a suitcase containing $800,000 in U.S. currency when he arrived on a private plane at the Buenos Aires city airport, Aeroparque Jorge Newberry.

A new book, Los Secretos de la Valija (The Secrets of the Suitcase), is just out in Argentina, written by an Argentine colleague, Hugo Alconada, a journalist with La Nacion and the newspaper’s former Washington correspondent. (Full disclosure: Hugo is a friend, and he mentions me in the acknowledgments of the book, but I didn’t work on the investigation itself).

Alconada’s story percolates with intrigue and new revelations about the suitcase and Antonini, who ultimately said in a Miami trial that he was carrying the loot on behalf of a top Argentine official and that the money was from the Venezuelan oil monopoly, PDVSA.

But that came only after he wore a wire and became a cooperating witness with the U.S. Government. In resulting tapes, Venezuelan handlers promised him protection for claiming the suitcase was his, and not revealing that the suitcase was sent to the presidential campaign of the now-president of Argentina, Christina Kirchner.

Argentinian officials have denied involvement and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has charged Antonini was employed by the Bush administration in a campaign to malign his government.

Alconada’s book, so far only in Spanish, deserves publication in English in the United States. His extensive investigation reveals:

• The plane carrying Antonini and the suitcase that was transporting much more than the $800,000 — a total of $5 million.

• Despite government denials, Antonini went to the Argentina presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, after the money was seized at the airport. Moreover, the book details a plan in which Argentine and Venezuelan officials coordinated a cover-up of the case.

• It also notes that Antonini had a history of working for Chavez. He helped organize trips to 24 countries in Africa, Southeast Asia and Pacific islands in a 2006 vanity campaign by the Chavez government to promote Venezuela’s appointment to a temporary slot on the UN Security Council.

There’s an interesting sidelight to the cloak and dagger story. A funny thing happened earlier this month as Alconada answered questions at a bookstore to promote his story. At some point, possibly when a questioner approached him as a distraction, his briefcase, which contained notes about three of his current investigations, disappeared.

A similar black briefcase was left in its place.

Alconada doesn’t get it and jumps to no conclusions. “My newspaper wrote a small piece about it, and it became a big deal. I don’t know how to explain what happened.”

- Peter Eisner

I was at Heathrow Airport last week when the news came along that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The award made sense there. The buzz in Europe is hopeful, and people are asking any American they can find: “Will Obama be able to make a difference?”

The Nobel Prize choice is more sensible than the analysis spread forth even by so-called middle-of-the-road news media, let alone the explosive rants on the cable-news-right, where some bloviating big mouths seemed likely to explode in the gross, gluttonous style of a Mike Myers character in Wayne’s World.

A lot of people in Europe are troubled by strident ignorance on the extreme right in the U.S.

Yes, of course, the award is political. The Nobel committee and millions of others outside the United States think that Barack Obama embodies their optimism in what they think the United States is all about.

The prize also applies pressure at a time when the president has big decisions to make – think Afghanistan, where the choices of troop involvement and fighting terrorism are monumental. It’s a call to the U.S. – find the peaceful solution.

Sure, as one cartoonist joked, it’s the No-Bush Prize; another said that in one way it’s like giving a gold medal to a runner at the starting line. And of course, President Obama could have refused the award with a “thanks anyway,” saying he hadn’t done anything yet.

But that all would be missing the point. First of all, you can’t separate the award from the context. President Obama, in part, said this:

…throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.

That is why I’ve said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.

World opinion supports President Obama’s move toward changing the world order – something simple, like saying that sometimes, we have to speak to countries identified as “our enemies,” instead of just threatening to invade and bomb them. Now, the Nobel Committee reminds him that the world is watching – on Afghanistan, Iran and the Middle East, above all.

Less than a year after his election, the U.S. has grown vastly in international public esteem.

Suddenly, people admire the U.S. once more.

President Obama might have refused the award, but it would have been wrong. The peace committee, to the extent that singling out any person for any award makes a difference, recognizes this particular person in this case who has the power in hand to change course and make profound decisions on war and peace.

The timing was just right.

- Peter Eisner

Political advertisements ahead of the parliamentary election in Greece.

ATHENS — On my trips overseas, I often find myself sizing up the country I happen to be visiting, and looking back by comparison at things going on at home.

Greece is in the final days before a Sunday parliamentary election, with the possibility that George Papandreou, the son and grandson of former prime ministers, may replace Kostas Karamanlis, nephew of a former prime minister.

I was chatting about the state of politics the other day with a Greek friend, and he was wondering out loud why his countrymen couldn’t find candidates besides those named Karamanlis and Papandreou, out of 12 million Greeks. “It’s a little bit like the Republicans and the Democrats,” said my friend, Kostas, trained as an economist. “I don’t think these guys would even be in politics at all if it weren’t for their famous last names.”

“Sounds familiar,” I said.

And the conversation turned to what was happening in the United States. I reminded Kostas that the big item on the table in Washington was the question of universal health care.

He just doesn’t get it. And neither do I. By sheer coincidence, the day after I arrived in Athens last week, I found myself taking my mother-in-law to the hospital at 4:00 a.m. after she’d fallen and sustained a cut on the side of her head. We arrived at the Hippocrates hospital clinic, about 10 minutes by car from our hotel, where we were able to communicate well enough with triage clerks and nurses. The wound was not serious, so they told us to have a seat and wait for a little while. The waiting room was modern, and we were given a number out of a series of priorities which were displayed on a large computer readout at one end of the room. “Don’t worry,” a nurse said. “It won’t take long.”

I saw people coming in with more serious injuries and a couple of older people that might have had heart attacks or similar ailments. They were brought in by efficient ambulances, and were quickly dispatched on gurneys to examination rooms.

My mother-in-law’s number came up after about 15 minutes, and she was ushered in. A friendly, Italian-trained doctor had a quick look, gave her two stitches and a tetanus shot, and told her to stop by his office for a checkup a few days later. “Oh, by the way,” he added, “let me write down your name.” He took notes on what he’d done and gave a copy to us.

That was it. We looked around, waiting, wondering, and the doctor smiled. We smiled. The nurses smiled.

“Nice to meet you,” they said.

What was missing from the picture? The hospital didn’t have an intake desk, didn’t have a pay window, and no billing procedures that we could see. It was free.

“Of course,” my friend Kostas said, “the vast majority of our hospitals are public hospitals. Maybe it’s not the best system in the world, but it’s quite efficient, and we’re happy.”

I told Kostas that a late night emergency room visit to a hospital back home probably –- ball park estimate -– would have cost $1,000.

“Why?” he asked.

“Well, a lot of Americans seem to think that universal health care is socialist. Americans don’t like the word socialist. And powerful people are fighting the idea of free health care.”

Kostas had generally heard of the issue, but couldn’t believe my description of the uninsured, of high insurance rates, and of people being kicked off the roles of insurance when they lose their jobs or get really sick.

“That wouldn’t be a campaign issue here,” Kostas said. Neither the present Prime Minister Kourmanlis, who belongs to a center-right political party, nor his possible successor, Papandreou, a center-left candidate, would ever question the right of citizens to receive quality health care from the government.

“It sounds crazy,” said Kostas.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user ggia under a Creative Commons license.

Protesters at the Brazilian embassy in Honduras.

Peter Eisner describes the political climate in Honduras and shares the observations of a Worldfocus contributing blogger.

There was word of negotiations on Wednesday, but no sign of a quick resolution in the standoff between the de facto Honduran government and the deposed Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya remained holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa for a second day in a stalemate with Roberto Micheletti, the man who took office after Zelaya’s ouster on June 28.

Zelaya seeks a return to power. Micheletti says that is out of the question.

News reports from Honduras and Brazil said that a curfew was imposed in the Honduran capital, with soldiers on rooftops and helicopters hovering around at times.

On Tuesday, the reports said police used truncheons and tear gas to disperse crowds surrounding the embassy. AP reported 18 people were treated for injuries and that authorities had denied local reports that three people had died.

For a time, Honduran officials cut off power and access to the embassy. Finally, United Nations workers were allowed to deliver food to Zelaya, his family and as many as 85 people inside the compound.

There were several interviews with Zelaya and Micheletti published in newspapers and on international news wires. The Washington Post characterized the situation as “a battle of wills,” and and said that representatives of the two men had opened contacts to seek a resolution. The Post also said that U.S. diplomats and others were trying to negotiate an end to the impasse.

Why the Brazilian embassy? Zelaya told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo that Brazilian officials had no advance word that he would seek refuge there when he snuck back into Honduras over the weekend.

He told the newspaper that he valued Brazil’s stature in international affairs, but did not consult with its Foreign Ministry before going to the embassy. In fact, the Brazilian newspaper said, there was only one Brazilian diplomat in Tegucigalpa at the time, and that person ranked as minister-counselor, not ambassador.

“Brazil didn’t know about my plans. I took the decision to come directly to the embassy as a matter of strategy, a reserve position, so that the plan would not run a risk.”

Meanwhile, the people of Honduras wait. You can get a glimpse of the tension in the country from one of Worldfocus’ contributing bloggers, a religious volunteer in Santa Rosa de Copán. He wrote last night:

I spent most of today in the house – washing clothes, cleaning the house, reading, checking out the internet, because there has been a curfew. If you are out you could be arrested. But this is very much like a house arrest of about seven million people here in Honduras.

But I went out and talked with some neighbors and went to the pulpería (corner store) up the street. It appears that the police are not overly strict here. A neighbor who went out beyond the neighborhood was turned back gently by the police.

But in the main cities people are not permitted to go out, even to buy basic foodstuffs. This hasn’t stopped hundreds of demonstrators from going out on the streets, especially in Tegucigalpa. But think of the old woman who needs food or the mother of five kids who has no tortillas.

About 6 pm I went across the street (it’s a dirt road) to talk with my neighbors who were outside eating oranges. I guess we were violating the curfew. We talked and then amused ourselves with the silly dog tricks of their dog, Dinky. We laughed heartily - our way of snubbing the fear, insecurity, and sense of isolation that the curfew is supposed to instill in our hearts.

Final note: I hear kids shouting in the street “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.” - “The people united will not be defeated.”

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user vredeseilanden under a Creative Commons license.

Manuel Zelaya’s ouster has fueled passions in Honduras and beyond.

The stealthy return to Honduras by deposed President Manuel Zelaya this week highlights unusual alliances that make it hard to game the outcome. In the old days, there would have been late-night conniving and arm-twisting by a U.S. proconsul who happened to also be the ambassador or a top American diplomat. This time, the United States has not been a leader in solving the problem.

In diplomatic-speak, U.S. officials continue to reject the June 28 ouster of Zelaya and demand his peaceful return to power. At the same time, the Obama administration has seemed to undercut the role of the Organization of American States in performing a meaningful role. You get the feeling that the U.S. position is: Supporting democracy is one thing, but doing anything that might be beneficial to the interests and alliances of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is another.

Zelaya, a businessman, had been taking an increasingly populist, socially conscious stance and his detractors say he was seeking to usurp the constitution in the style of Chavez’ Bolivarian revolution. Zelaya, seized by the military in his pajamas and deposited in Costa Rica, says he sneaked back to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, over the weekend after a half day of trekking over hill and dale, without saying which border he had crossed. [El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua -- where he had taken refuge -- are the choices]

Meanwhile, of all places, Zelaya has taken refuge in the embassy of Brazil, a country which until recently had been loathe to play too high a profile in contentious international affairs. Increasingly, however, Brazil has filled in as a mediator and even player — consider President Lula’s ongoing attempts to encourage calm relations between the United States and Venezuela. Brazil also plays an ongoing, difficult role — not given enough credit in the United States — in keeping the peace with a military contingent in Haiti.

Especially under the absentee Latin American policies of former president George W. Bush, Lula’s role was important. And Brazil’s role is significant, especially since the United States has not been clear on what it wants for Honduras.

The Brazilian government agrees with the United States that whatever the outcome in Honduras, the process must be peaceful. But Brazil has allowed Zelaya to raise the animus of supporters from the balcony of the embassy, surrounded by police and demonstrators.

Don’t worry though, the United States is involved in its fashion. The interim (or de facto, acting or temporary, depending on the political connotation) Honduran president, Roberto Micheletti, published an op-ed piece in the Washington Post on Tuesday, in which he repeated his claim that the ouster of Zelaya was a perfectly constitutional exercise and not a coup at all. The article had the look and feel of airbrushing and massaging by lawyers at a K St. public relations firm.

The international community has wrongfully condemned the events of June 28 and mistakenly labeled our country as undemocratic. I must respectfully disagree. As the true story slowly emerges, there is a growing sense that what happened in Honduras that day was not without merit. On June 28, the Honduran Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for Zelaya for his blatant violations of our constitution, which marked the end of his presidency. To this day, an overwhelming majority of Hondurans support the actions that ensured the respect of the rule of law in our country.

Underlying all the rhetoric about a military overthrow are facts. Simply put, coups do not leave civilians in control over the armed forces, as is the case in Honduras today. Neither do they allow the independent functioning of democratic institutions — the courts, the attorney general’s office, the electoral tribunal. Nor do they maintain a respect for the separation of powers. In Honduras, the judicial, legislative and executive branches are all fully functioning and led by civilian authorities.

Pay no attention to that man on the balcony of the Brazilian embassy who pretends to be the president, Micheletti tells us. Let us look toward November elections, when, he says, he and his friends will prove that Honduras has been democratic all along.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user YamilGonzales under a Creative Commons license.

It was the Argentine military dictatorship’s organized terror campaign to seize young people, old people, their children, teachers, unionists, students — anyone on the their dread list of names — in the guise of fighting communism.

Some were lucky enough to escape, but suffered the loss of children, mothers, fathers, brothers, grandparents, grandchildren and friends. The wounds never heal.

Argentinians have been increasingly engaged in chronicling those years of atrocities. Stories that relive the past appear almost daily. A recent example is in the Buenos Aires Herald, which describes a new book about its former editor, Robert Cox, and his courageous efforts to publish the truth about the official terror policy of the military dictatorship.

The book, Dirty Secrets, Dirty War, was written by Cox’s son, David Cox. Robert Cox was a lonely voice during the dictatorship: One of the few journalists who dared to tell the story, before he was forced to flee Argentina, facing death threats.

The book is the latest effort by writers and others who feel compelled to chronicle those days. Commemorating 30 years since the Dirty War, there are new films, lectures and plays about that period, all with the aim of never forgetting the crimes, or the victims.

I’ve just come across one poignant example of the remembrance program, first produced two years ago by photojournalist, Gustavo Germano.

Germano produced a series of side-by-side photographs entitled Ausencias, “Absences.”  In each paired set, we see people at the beach,  in snapshots or family portraits — alongside the same scene years later missing those who were snatched from life. The result is ghostly and harrowing; profound.

In one paired set, the first photo is labeled 1975: Clara Altelman de Fink stands at a dining table looking over the shoulder of her son, Claudio Marcelo Fink. In 2006, the mother stands in the exact same place, hand on empty chair, looking at the camera. Claudio is not there.

In another, brothers Omar Dario Amestoy and Mario Alfredo Amestoy are charging down a grassy hill, filled with youth and vigor. Thirty one years later, we see Mario Alfredo running down the same hill alone.

A portion of Gustavo Germano’s photo series as seen on his Web site.

In a third, a young man, Orlando Rene Mendez, and a woman, Leticia Margarita Oliva, are at Happy Turtle Beach in Concordia, Entre Rios. In 2006, the beach is empty.

We absorb the anguish, the years and the injustice with hardly a word.

Germano’s exhibit was accompanied with a preface written by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina’s most renowned journalists.

More than criminal trials, or journalistic investigations, or philosophical essays, art accounts for the emptiness that unexplained absence provokes….The photos  of Gustavo Germano….evoke that deep trauma of contemporary Argentine identity, and introduce us to the mystery of time with the mute violence of a frozen gesture.

- Peter Eisner

Even with the embargo, the United States is Cuba’s fifth largest trading partner — there are exemptions on food sales to the island. Photo: USDA

There’s no reason to be surprised by President Obama’s decision this week to renew the U.S. embargo with Cuba — he was sticking the script followed by presidents since John F. Kennedy.

Not doing so would throw a wrench into his efforts in Congress on universal health care. Without even arguing pro or con on the issue, let’s just state the obvious — the president is dealing with pressing matters that take front-burner attention right now. Cuba and Latin America are way down on the list of problems to deal with.

All this despite the emptiness and loneliness of the embargo. Many Americans don’t realize the oddities of the U.S. stance — it can’t be called a policy. Something like 178 other countries have normal diplomatic relations with Cuba. Even with the embargo, the United States is Cuba’s fifth largest trading partner — there are exemptions on food sales to the island.

A majority of Cuban Americans now support an end to the embargo. Some of the most vociferous supporters of a change are midwestern Republicans, who want to open new markets for their constituents. And it should be made clear: Those suffering the most are the Cuban people, not the Cuban government.

President Obama’s decision therefore may be disappointing to the coalition of Americans who think it’s time to acknowledge the failure of the 50-year economic embargo of Cuba. But they won’t scream as hard as the other side would if the president endorsed a new policy. Obama can’t stand potential defections of support for the health care bill.

Cubans in Cuba and Miami tend to see their own issue as the only issue. But even they know the reality.

The Cuban government has expressed doubt for some time that Obama would strike up a new, close friendship with the Communist country. Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuba’s National assembly, told me in Havana this year that he hoped, but didn’t think the new president would live up to his billing as an agent of change.

Watch: Cuba embraces Obama and clamors to end the embargo.

Any idea of quick change comes from an early flurry of talk that Obama might be willing to drop a travel ban to Cuba affecting most U.S. citizens. There was a lot of noise in the spring when Obama suggested changes in U.S. Cuban policy. But he’s taken minor steps other than to eliminate restrictions imposed by George W. Bush on Cuban Americans traveling and sending more to relatives on the island.

Actually, there were two small changes that are worth mentioning. One is that the United States and Cuba have begun holding regular occasional meetings on immigration and other matters. So there is some level of official contact between the countries. There was also an odd contact point recently when Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico paid a visit to Havana and said he held unofficial meetings with high-ranking Cuban officials. It’s not clear whether he was carrying water for the president or not, and it’s also not clear who he really met with, besides Alarcon.

The real point person on Cuba and Latin America should be Arturo Valenzuela, who President Obama has designated as the deputy assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs. He’s not on the job yet — Congress is stalling on confirmation hearings.

Latin America, as usual, is an afterthought in U.S. foreign policy planning.

- Peter Eisner

Baltasar Garzón, Spain’s most prominent jurist. Photo: Presidencia Argentina

A right-wing organization in Spain has tried to turn the tables on Baltasar Garzón, the country’s most prominent jurist. Garzón found himself in the dock this week in Madrid, charged by a group calling itself “Clean Hands,” for allegedly overstepping his authority by investigating atrocities during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco three-quarters of a century ago.

Garzón never faced such scrutiny on his other prominent campaigns: He had the freedom and temerity to indict Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, file charges against Argentine military officers for their role during that country’s “Dirty War” of the 1970s and 1980s, and criticize and consider indictments against U.S. officials during the Bush administration for the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo.

Garzón testified for more than three hours on Wednesday in Spain’s Supreme Court. He has said his responsibility was no more and no less than to apply the law “to investigate the facts, to ferret out responsibility for the protection of the victims.”

The matter at hand is unfinished business: Charges of mass graves, kangaroo courts and barbaric human rights violations committed by the Franco regime. The challenge to his authority makes it clear: the Spanish Civil War still roils emotion and divides political sentiment. The conservative opposition Popular Party, which was in power and closely allied with the Bush administration during the Iraq invasion, virulently opposes Garzón’s investigation. So does the Catholic Church in Spain, which warns that an investigation would “open old wounds.”

Thirty-four years after Franco’s death, the children and grandchildren of those who defended the Spanish republic against Franco -– who was supported by Hitler and Mussolini in a dress rehearsal for World War II –- seek a full accounting of the past. There are numerous stories around the country of mass graves still undiscovered, atrocities not documented. For some, it is a matter of conscience; for others, like those who challenge Garzón, it is dangerous to cast light on the violence of the Franco period.

Garzón, by the way, is not considered a left-wing ideologue. In the course of his career, he has faced criticism from both sides of the spectrum. In the matter at hand, he is defended by the governing Social Democratic Party and supported by significant editorial comment.

The influential Madrid daily El Pais, for example, expressed outrage that “ultra-rightwing” political groups could influence the Supreme Court.  “There is no explanation, unless it has to do with pure repression based on ideology,” El Pais said in an editorial. “One cannot cease to be astonished that, in effect, the judge that brought Pinochet to justice and who investigated crimes against  humanity in the Southern Cone during the 1970s, should be pursued criminally for trying to do the same thing in his own country. If this doesn’t stop in time, the case will turn grotesque and cause enormous international shock.”

The battle brings to mind the wise old words of George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Garzón has sought to hold international leaders to a simple test of justice under civilized law. It is a lesson of all.

- Peter Eisner

Venezuela has agreed to export 20,000 barrels of gasoline per day to Iran.

Here’s something from the Associated Press that needs some refining:

TEHRAN, Iran — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sealed an agreement to export 20,000 barrels per day of gasoline to Iran, state TV reported Monday. The deal would give Tehran a cushion if the West carries out threats of fuel sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program.

The two countries signed the agreement late Sunday during a visit by Chavez, who pledged to deepen ties with Iran and stand together against what he called the imperialist powers of the world.

Before we start fretting about Hugo Chavez giving aid and support to an enemy (it’s not helpful to talk about Venezuela or Iran that way), let’s take a look at the reality. Iran’s oil production of about 4 million barrels daily is twice as large as Venezuela’s. Its refineries have a capacity to produce more than 1.5 million barrels of gasoline daily — Chavez’s generous offer to Iran amounts to about 1.5 percent of Iran’s ability to produce refined products. Iran has been a gasoline importer, but is taking steps to halt imports within four years.

In short, Iran won’t benefit much with gasoline from Venezuela, its fellow OPEC member. If the United States and Europe were to follow through with sanctions, Iran probably would still be importing all of the goods it needs and its refineries would still be running. (Not to get too technical: a barrel of oil is about 42 gallons, and that yields roughly 19 gallons of gasoline)

Chavez is actually making a small deal with Iran to thumb his nose at the United States, an exercise he and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad practice whenever they can. Europe is part of the game in this case, because Chavez is supporting Ahmadinejad’s defiance of a deadline declared by U.S. and European officials, threatening sanctions by the end of September if no progress is made on reining in Iran’s nuclear program.

Whatever you want to call Chavez, whose country sells roughly 1 million barrels of crude to the United States daily, you’re not going to change his mind, or change the policies of the Iranian government by employing threats and boycotts. Ahmadinejad and Chavez share something -– they are both reactionaries in the true sense of the word: They do and say things to be provocative.

The Obama administration, in both cases, appears to understand that better than its predecessor, which railed and saber-rattled to no end. Meanwhile, boycotts and embargoes, state-sponsored, rarely if ever work. The United States imposed a boycott on Cuba 50 years ago, and that policy is widely considered a failure. The United States slapped a grain embargo on the Soviet Union in the 1980s after the Communist government invaded Afghanistan — international grain merchants kept the grain running through subsidiaries in places like Brazil and Argentina.

Sanctions usually paper over the lack of a policy. The problem with Iran and Venezuela is that the United States would do well to find ways to negotiate. Unlike George W. Bush, President Obama has said that you don’t only talk to friends; sometimes you have to negotiate with people you don’t necessarily like.

It is one of many challenges that will define U.S. foreign policy these years, and provocative acts and speeches have to be understood and kept in context.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Magnera under a Creative Commons license.

The site in Buenos Aires where a car bomb killed 85 people in 1994.

Today, Iran’s parliament came out in support of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s nominee for defense minister, Ahmad Vahidi, who is wanted by Interpol for his suspected role in the 1984 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.  According to the Iranian news agency FARS,  an Iranian lawmaker who planned to speak against the nomimation offered his support instead, along with a denunciation of Israel.

Worldfocus editorial consultant Peter Eisner blogged about the issue recently.  Check back this week for Peter’s new updates on the story.

On July 18, 1994, a car bomb killed 85 people and wounded 300 others at the Jewish Community Center in downtown Buenos Aires. The Argentine government and many international intelligence agencies have long contended that Iranian and Hezbollah agents were responsible for the attack as part of a series of retaliations on predominant Jewish targets.

But the claim of Iranian responsibility has often been mixed with political attempts by successive U.S. presidents to cast Iran as a sponsor of international terrorism. And Argentina’s former president, Nestor Kirchner, once told me he thought his country’s original investigation of the attack was faulty.

The government of his successor and wife, President Cristina Kirchner, continues to pursue the Iranian case. More than 15 years after the bombing, the political ramifications are still seething.

This week, the Iranian government rejected criticism from Argentina when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad designated a man blamed for involvement in the attack as his new defense minister. The new appointee, Ahmad Vahidi, is wanted by Interpol for his alleged involvement in the Jewish community center attack.

Argentina said Vahidi played a major role and has sought his capture since 2007. The Argentine government, according to the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarin, expressed “its ‘most energetic condemnation’ of the decision of Ahmadinejad to propose Avhidi as minister of defense of his government, and declared that it represented and ‘affront’ to Argentine justice and the victims of the attack.”

Iran denies any involvement in the attack on the center, which is known by its Spanish acronym as AMIA.

“We recommend that, instead of playing a blame game and propaganda, try to identify real culprits of the terrorist attack that based on the documents and evidences available in Argentina, the main terror agents can be identified,” said Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hassan Qashqav.

There is substantial information, according to U.S., Argentinian and Israel intelligence agencies, that links Hezbollah and Iran to the AMIA bombing. It took place at a time in which other attacks were carried out on predominantly Jewish targets in third countries, including the bombing of a Panamanian plane, and an attack on the Israeli Embassy in London.

Despite circumstantial evidence, an extensive report last year in The Nation concluded that the charges against Iran were part of a Bush administration frame-up to isolate Iran diplomatically. The magazine, for example, quoted Clinton administration-era diplomats posted in Buenos Aires as saying the evidence against Iran for the AMIA bombing was “flimsy.”

The Nation reported:

James Cheek, Clinton’s Ambassador to Argentina at the time of the bombing [said] “To my knowledge, there was never any real evidence [of Iranian responsibility]. They never came up with anything.” The hottest lead in the case, he recalled, was an Iranian defector named Manoucher Moatamer, who “supposedly had all this information.” But Moatamer turned out to be only a dissatisfied low-ranking official without the knowledge of government decision-making that he had claimed. “We finally decided that he wasn’t credible,” Cheek recalled. Ron Goddard, then deputy chief of the US Mission in Buenos Aires, confirmed Cheek’s account. He recalled that investigators found nothing linking Iran to the bombing. “The whole Iran thing seemed kind of flimsy,” Goddard said.

If those former officials are right, and while Argentina and Iran continue their charges and denials, it appears unlikely we’ll know the real culprits in the horrible AMIA attack anytime soon, if ever.

– Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user crylov under a Creative Commons license.

President Barack Obama with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts at a trilateral meeting in Guadalajara on Monday. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

I’ve had some telling glimpses over the years of how politics and diplomacy really work. There was the time years ago when I sat in a U.S. ambassador’s office in Bolivia and listened to him brazenly giving orders to the country’s interior minister.

Or when I watched how an American official tried to cajole the president of Honduras into a military dispute with Nicaragua.

And the time when I was told that a top U.S. official was traveling to Mexico City to observe Mexico’s drug interdiction program.

“What drug interdiction program?” a confused Mexican government spokesman asked me. I had gotten advance warning of the visit. “We don’t have a drug interdiction program.”

Five minutes later, the same Mexican spokesman called me back and said — without a trace of irony — that I was invited to attend a meeting between U.S. and Mexican officials who would be discussing Mexico’s “drug interdiction program.” It had somehow materialized.

Those anecdotes are the product of the last century, but I was reminded this week that things haven’t changed much.

The U.S. government arrogantly figures that the governments of other countries can meet the imposed values that the United States expects. One can respect the people of Mexico and honor that country’s heritage and sense of pride, but still say: The Mexican government is over-gunned by drug dealers and will not be able to stop the violence and out-of-bounds profits earned by the narcotics trade.

For some sense of the absurdity of the fight, have a look at the New York Times story about Mexican prisons, headlined: War Without Borders: Mexico’s Drug Traffickers Continue Trade in Prison

The cycle of violence and death waxes and wanes, but the reality hasn’t changed for decades; there is too much money in drug dealing to stop the industry. Drug cartels practically own the Mexican prisons where they are held. Plagued by corruption, drug producing nations have been unable over the years to control the production and flow of illegal narcotics.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon won praise from President Obama this week during the annual North American summit in Mexico:

We will work to make sure Mexico has the support it needs to dismantle and defeat the cartels.  And the United States will also meet its responsibilities by continuing our efforts to reduce the demand for drugs and continuing to strengthening the security of our shared border — not only to protect the American people, but to stem the illegal southbound flow of American guns and cash that helps fuel this extraordinary violence.

I have to say that the words are mighty, but if history is a guide the U.S. Congress will do little if anything to halt the sale of guns southward. And the United States has not shown signs of augmenting Mexican security efforts to the degree needed. International money laundering of drug trafficking  appears beyond control. I’d love to end up being surprised that I’m wrong.

A must-read to see the depths of the problem is an extensive report in the Washington Post by my old colleagues Steve Fainaru and Bill Booth.

This paragraph sums it up:

Beyond the reach of the U.S. and Mexican governments in their fight against drug traffickers is an intimate, complex world of communal violence and crippled institutions. At the center of the drug war is Michoacan, a rugged, rural state in the southwest where all forms of traditional authority — city hall, the military, police and even the Catholic Church — have been unable to protect the people against the assassinations, kidnappings and extortions associated with the narcotics trade.

The United States has acknowledged the obvious many times: that U.S. consumption of drugs is a driving part of the problem of the international narcotics trade. But no politician in the United States will seriously consider drug decriminalization, or broad social programs and education that will change the formula of drug consumption, or laws that — heaven forfend — would curtail gun sales.

The promises are all words, and nothing changes.

- Peter Eisner

Venezuela shut down 34 radio stations.

My guess is that you are one of the poor deprived people among us who has not had the opportunity to watch and understand the charming, engaging, benevolent, all-knowing president of Venezuela — Hugo Chavez — in action.

It also could be that you are doing this on purpose — that would make you not just deprived, but depraved. Perhaps you are an agent of Venezuela’s enemies.

Fortunately Chavez is protecting Venezuela against you and all such agents. Last week, to root out the vermin that spread lies and plot against the people, President Chavez shut down several dozen private radio stations. His parliament — whose members understand exactly what needs to be done in all cases — has promoted new libel laws that protect the Chavista revolution from foul lies that could be spread on the airwaves. “Any person who speaks out in any form in the news media” can be considered a “media criminal” for disseminating seditious opinions, we’ve learned from Teodoro Petkoff, a long-time Venezeulan political analyst. Petkoff’s column last week was titled with a large headline reading “Censorship Law.”

It all makes perfect sense.

Venezuela’s enemies fall into two categories — you are either well-meaning but deceived and brainwashed; or you are an enemy of the revolution, and you could be a spy sent by the Central Intelligence Agency.

I learned this by watching Chavez’s televised performance at a meeting of his Cabinet in February, during his successful campaign for a referendum that abolished presidential term limits. Chavez apparently has a little button he can press when he wants to preempt all television and radio broadcasting in Venezuela to speak directly to the people. In the particular meeting, he told jokes, gave orders and questioned Cabinet members seated around the table, who looked uncertain when to laugh, agree, disagree, or react in any way, fearing for their heads. He also denied any involvement, as the CIA-stooge opposition was charging, in an attack on a synagogue in Caracas some days earlier.

In any case, when you can have the president speaking directly to you, why do we need a filter from these troublesome, CIA-funded newspaper and broadcast reporters, who are certain to be on a vendetta to destroy the country? If the president is all-knowing, infallible and looking out for our interests, who needs critics, dissent, or anything that will get in the way of the true path that the president has now set out for us?

Such a filter is Teodoro Petkoff, the journalist and politician, who has been a prominent critic of Chavez. Petkoff, by the way, is an ex-guerrilla, a student leader, and ran against Chavez briefly for the presidency in 2006. Beware — how can he be reliable? He disagrees with the president.

Nevertheless — understanding that the president of Venezuela doesn’t want you to hear about this, read about it, or even think about it — here’s what Petkoff has to say about the new censorship law promulgated by Chavez:

The proposed law has to be sent to all the governments of America, to all the news media of the world, so that they might see for themselves the dictatorial and totalitarian monstrosity that has been placed before our nation. It is not necessary in any way to even comment about it. It is so obvious, so naked in its repressive intent, that it explains itself. For us, Venezuelans, this “law” is a call to battle stations. One can hope that everyone is listening.

- Peter Eisner

Health care in China comes at a fraction of the cost compared to the U.S., writes Peter Eisner.

Here’s an antidote to the delirium pills that some in the U.S. health care industry want us to swallow during the universal health care debate. The fact is that many countries think that good health care is a right, not a privilege; as a result people don’t have to mortgage their lives when they get sick.

The latest case I’ve come across is a report from a close friend who just back from the central Chinese city of Wuhan — population at least 6 million, 650 miles west of Beijing.

She woke up one day with a painful case of shingles, a nerve disease produced by the chicken pox virus that can lie dormant in the body for years. By the second day, it was clear that she needed to see a doctor. But she had no idea of how the Chinese medical system works, and doesn’t speak Mandarin.

First, she telephoned a doctor in the United States, who confirmed that she did in fact require treatment right away.

Then, with the help of a translator, she went to an outpatient clinic at Wuhan University Hospital. She was examined, diagnosed and treated in less than one hour. She had feared primitive conditions and scant supplies, but encountered an efficient, patient-friendly system. She saw both a dermatologist and an ophthalmologist who worked in a well-organized setting, including computer tracking of each patient. The doctors confirmed the diagnosis of shingles, and they set out a regimen of treatment.

After that, she was straight off to the billing window — the visit with the two doctors totaled 8 Yuan, little more than $1. And then another quick stop at the pharmacy, where she filled four prescriptions. The bill: 136 Yuan, about $17.

She called home to tell a doctor about her treatment; the physician was impressed, and said the medicines prescribed were well chosen, including the latest anti-viral product.

Two weeks later, the medicine was doing the job and she improved every day, still on the road. For those who complain about discussing medical care in a Communist country, the next stop was Japan, where my friend also had quick, efficient and reasonably-priced checkups.

Her husband concludes, “We can learn from our less-developed Asian counterpart and the more modern Japanese system. The care we experienced randomly was quite professional, effective, expedient, endorsed by the U.S. medical personnel we consulted, and inexplicably inexpensive.”

Case closed.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user televiseus under a Creative Commons license.

Haiti is plagued by severe poverty and life expectancy is some 20 years lower than in the U.S.

Imagine a country in which a child is 10 times more likely to die before reaching five years of age than a child in the United States, a country where the overall life expectancy is 57 years old, nearly 20 years less than in your own country — a country where human beings sometimes eat dirt pies for nourishment.

And imagine finally that something can be done to resolve the tragedy facing the majority of the 9 million people who live in a nation not far south of the United States. That country is Haiti.

Haiti comes to the news pages when there is some new spot event, like the sorry case of a boat overloaded with 200 migrants capsized in the Caribbean this week, throwing a number of people to their deaths. But the nightmare of desperation never ends for Haitians, wracked by violence, hunger, fear and deprivation across generations.

Forget for the moment that U.S. policymakers looked the other way during decades of kleptocracy by the Duvalier family in Haiti during the 20th century; or that the Bush administration essentially tricked the elected president of the country, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, out of the country in 2004; and that thereafter, the United States has cared little and thought less about Haitians, whose lives were made even worse last year after the punishing hurricane season.

Change could come in the form of a new commitment to attacking the cycle of misery. The first signal was the appointment of former President Bill Clinton as the United Nations special envoy to Haiti. His role is intended to raise awareness of the problem and he has already won more than $300 million in pledges for international aid to Haiti. That’s not enough, not by a fraction.

Significant change could come if Dr. Paul Farmer, as expected and hoped, is named the new administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which happens to exist on the flow chart under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Farmer has been in the running for the job for months now, with no announcement.

He is the visionary co-founder of Partners in Health and established a free health clinic in Haiti 20 years ago, treating the dire problems of disease and nutrition among Haiti’s impoverished majority. He has now extended his formula of consciousness-raising and local-based problem solving to Rwanda and Malawi. Partners in Health looks beyond individual health care to sustainable ecology and infrastructure. And the organization is careful to work with local governments, rather than dictating solutions on high.

Farmer’s inspiring mission was the subject of Tracy Kidder’s 2003 book, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World.

It could be that the administration doesn’t want another high-profile issue on the front burner. Farmer, meanwhile, might not want to be dragged down by government bureaucracy. Whether or not he gets the job, his commitment inspires people to move mountains –- and the need in Haiti and other countries requires new thinking and global commitment to change. We are all diminished by suffering of such a scale that goes along chronically, untreated and ignored.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user glasshalffull91 under a Creative Commons license.

The Cuban government had erected flags to block the view of the U.S. interest section’s news ticker in Havana.

It’s interesting to hear — but not very significant — that the United States under President Obama has turned off the useless news ticker that was running in the windows atop the U.S. interest section in Havana. The move is one more in a series of steps that leaves U.S.-Cuban relations still awaiting some major breakthrough after 50 years of hostility.

The news crawl was a vestige of the belligerent and unsuccessful U.S. policy toward Cuba during the administration of George W. Bush. The Bush administration pretended that it was a means of providing unfettered news to the Cuban people, but the streaming headlines did little more than to give the Cuban government a chance to rally support against American policies. At the time, Fidel Castro established a freedom plaza in front of the U.S. diplomatic building –- located along the Malecon, Cuba’s seafront — and big black flags obscured vision of the ticker when people drove past.

While Obama has rolled back a few other Bush era measures — allowing easier transit by Cuban-Americans to the island, and dropping strictures on how much money family members were allowed to send to their relatives on the island — nothing else has changed. The Cuban government, under Fidel’s brother, Raul, has toned down anti-U.S. rhetoric hoping for an eventual opening to U.S. tourism and other measures that could bring big economic changes in Cuba.

When I was in Cuba earlier this year, I didn’t see any indication that Cubans on the street were lacking information about the basics of what is happening in the United States and the world. And those I spoke to were also surprisingly willing– on camera — to criticize the government for not providing enough
employment, food and opportunities for improving their lives. Young and old were as enthusiastic as people around the world about the prospect of a vigorous, open-minded president of the United States, who happened to be a person of color. And they hoped that Obama would break the logjam.

Cubans appear to know the score, and they’re just tired of waiting for changes that will give them more contact with their friends and relatives in the outside world. Fifty years of the U.S. economic embargo has done nothing to incite popular insurrection in Cuba — if that was the goal — and most people in the United States, even a majority of Cuban-Americans, think it’s time for the embargo to go.

Political reality in the United States makes that difficult. Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, is promoting phased-in engagement with Cuba, and an eventual end of economic sanctions. The rationale is that increased contact will put the United States in a better position to promote a shift toward democratic change.

His middle-of-the-road approach clashes with hard-line opponents of the Castro brothers who want no change in relations unless Cuba makes a move first on political freedom. They note that several hundred political prisoners are held in Cuban jails. But the United States is unlikely to have leverage to bring any change under the current stagnant formula.

So Cuba and the United States continue plodding along, dealing with vestiges of failed rhetoric and policies passed. The news sign is off on the U.S. interest section, but there’s no sign in the short term that the Obama administration plans to go much further than that.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Indrani Soemardjan under a Creative Commons license.

A banner voices opposition to the coup in Honduras.

International politics have never been far from the surface of the presidential crisis in Honduras.

– What was the role of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in supporting ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya?

– Was the mediator in the case Costa Rican President Oscar Arias truly neutral? Or did he have advance warning that Zelaya would be deposed and then sent into exile in his pajamas to Costa Rica?

– And what is the full agenda of U.S. policymakers, who don’t like Chavez, but overtly support Zelaya as the constitutional president of Honduras?

Zelaya is vowing to march back into the country overland through Nicaragua this weekend. He hopped into an SUV in Managua on Thursday and drove himself north to the border, urging supporters to meet him there. Zelaya and his interim successor, Roberto Micheletti, have not budged on their mutual demands despite the mediation of Arias.

One new wrinkle in the story is the revelation that Lanny Davis, a longtime ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, was working with Honduran businessmen who opposed Zelaya and promoting his ouster. Davis has been talking up the coup in Congress.

Davis’ role in the Honduran case was described in a report by Roberto Lovato at the online magazine, American Prospect.

Robert White, a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, now president of the Washington-based Center for International Policy, an independent think-tank in Washington, discussed the case with
Lovato.

“If you want to understand who the real power behind the [Honduran] coup is,” White told Lovato, “you need to find out who’s paying Lanny Davis.”

Davis was White House counsel to President Clinton from 1996-1998, and worked with Hillary Clinton on her unsuccessful presidential bid. He has been making the rounds in Congress, promoting the idea that the Honduran coup was justified and playing down widespread reports of repression and curbs on the news media.

Lovato also interviewed Davis:

“My clients represent the CEAL, the [Honduras Chapter of] Business Council of Latin America,” Davis said when reached at his office last Thursday. “I do not represent the government and do not talk to President [Roberto] Micheletti. My main contacts are Camilo Atala and Jorge Canahuati. I’m proud to represent businessmen who are committed to the rule of law.” Atala, Canahuati, and other families that own the corporate interests represented by Davis and the CEAL are at the top of an economic pyramid in which 62 percent of the population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank.”

White and those who oppose Micheletti and the coup said that the underlying problem is that a small class of businessmen in Honduras don’t recognize or care about that larger context — the vast majority of Hondurans are abjectly poor and have suffered while an oligarchic minority has thrived.

Coups, White told Lovato, “happen because very wealthy people want them and help to make them happen, people who are used to seeing the country as a money machine and suddenly see social legislation on behalf of the poor as a threat to their interests. The average wage of a worker in free trade zones is 77 cents per hour.”

One of Zelaya’s cardinal sins, critics of the coup charge, was that he was a dissident member of the wealthy business class, and converted to social-minded pursuits only after he was elected to office.

Davis and other opponents say that Zelaya had been in the process of creating an official coup, subverting the constitution and attempting to maintain himself in office much the same way as Chavez has seized absolute power in Venezuela.

Again, the bottom line, what does this all mean to the suffering, malnourished Honduran majority? They watch politicians come and go from squalid slums and never see life getting any better at all.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user pablo.cardozo under a Creative Commons license.

Gibraltar was ceded to Britain in 1713.

“Spain’s foreign minister,” we are told, “met [in Gibraltar] Tuesday with his British counterpart and with the head of Gibraltar’s local administration in the first visit by a Spanish Cabinet official to the British colony.”

Hardly the top of the news, you say — but it reminds me of how crisis points in the world wax and wane in importance. Gibraltar was a strategic fortress for Britain and the Allies during World War II — and Britain vowed to hold onto it forever, or at least, according to legend, as long as the Barbary apes remain on station.

Gibraltar is an outcropping of rock, a British territory roughly 1,093 miles south of London, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and attached to Spain by a neck of land. It was ceded to Britain in 1713. Spain wants it back, but don’t hold your breath.

News Item 2: “The Rock of Gibraltar is echoing to gunfire for the first time since the Spanish attacked Britain’s Mediterranean toehold nearly 300 years ago.”

British soldiers are training in Gibraltar’s maze of underground caves to seek and destroy al-Qaeda strongholds in Afghanistan and Pakistan, previously believed to be impervious.

Sky News quoted Captain Charles Bonfante, of the British Army’s Royal Gibraltar Regiment, on the subject. “As a training area, this is unique…I did a tour in Afghanistan, around Musa Qala. One of our battles was fought in underground tunnels, just like this.”

Interesting, and Sky News doesn’t have it quite right. Gibraltar has heard gunfire in modern times. It had complex, secret gun emplacements during World War II, ready to fight off any invasion by Hilter, if he decided to speed to the Mediterranean coast. Several years ago, I interviewed Jean-Francois Nothomb, a prominent underground leader who snuck in and out of Gibraltar during World War II. Nothomb was a protagonist in my book, Freedom Line, which detailed the rescue of Allied pilots from Nazi territory.

He recalled going for a stroll one day in Gibraltar on a promontory overlooking the harbor. “What appeared to be a stony mound suddenly gave way to a sliding pedestal and he could hear the sound of gears and motors. Suddenly a two-man gun emplacement rose out of the earth, with two helmeted British gunners at the controls. This was no ordinary field. What had appeared to be a natural landscape was actually a stage set for antiaircraft guns.”

Hilter was diverted from his designs on Gibraltar by his overriding passion to focus on an invasion of Russia to the north instead. German presence in Gibraltar would have created a dominant position at the entrance to the Mediterranean. British and American analysts at the time went as far as to say that Hitler could have won the war if he took Gibraltar.

Fascinating to me that 70 years after playing a strategic role in World War II, Gibraltar is now a training site for soldiers seeking a latter-day enemy, Osama bin Laden.

I wouldn’t argue for or against the notion that this is the time for Britain to give up this last relic of the empire. But it sure has a colorful history. I’ll take the democratic line: Here’s a vote for self-determination of the 30,000 people of Gibraltar.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user cwgoodroe under a Creative Commons license.