Chile: Government gets tough with looters in the middle of the chaos – Terrestrial communications restored – the earthquake tests progress ♦ Guatemala: drug traffic reaches the head of police ♦ Brazil: sugar cane production due to increase ♦ Mexico: GM crops are not the solution
Chile: Government gets tough with looters in the middle of the chaos – Terrestrial communications restored – the earthquake tests progress
The Government of outgoing President Michele Bachelet (pictured with visiting Peruvian President Alan Garcia) sent more troops to the towns that have been most affected by the earthquake, to restore order and prevent looting.
Bachelet ordered the redeployment of 7,000 extra troops to Biobio and the Maule regions, south of the capital, Santiago. There have been arson attacks and armed neighbours have been taking the law into their own hands, in places where the security forces are all but absent. In Concepción, the worse affected city, curfew was extended and will be in place between 8 pm and midday of the following day.
Looting has become the main problem in Concepción, where a supermarket was set on fire by a mob. Neither the police nor the army have been able to cope with the situation and the emergence of vigilante groups threatens to complicate matters further. A woman who tried to steal the contents of a house that had been abandoned by their owners was killed.
Buses and lorries are being stopped by groups of neighbours armed with machetes and knives, to prevent gangs from operating in the region. Hours after the earthquake hit Chile, groups of well organised thieves arrived in heavy vehicles to loot supermarkets and abandoned houses.
“They say that the army is in the streets but here we haven’t seen anyone. We thought we had survived the earthquake but this is worse” said Fernando Llanos, in the town of San Pedro de La Paz.
President Bachelet expressed regret about the situation and made a plea to cooperate with the authorities. For the security forces, things are complicated. On the one hand, they have to deal with looters, some of whom are people with a genuine need for food and medicine, and who have lost everything in the earthquake. On the other hand, there are the vigilante groups who refuse to let go and have set up check points on roads and streets.
While the army and police deal with law and order problems, emergency aid and rescue operation are on their way. The Ministry of Public Works says that all terrestrial communications have been restored and that “there are no isolated regions in Chile that cannot be reached by road”. This will make it easier to evaluate the damage in remote villages in the south and to start rescue operations.
Emergency teams are using the coastal routes to reach the most affected areas. The Government has ordered the armed forces to continue its efforts to reach the affected areas by air. Almost 300 tons of aid arrived in Concepción with milk, rice, water and ready-made meals. The navy has sent battleships that this time will fulfil a different function: to distribute emergency help using ports in the south of the country.
Some analysts believe that the earthquake has been a test for how far Chile has progressed as a nation. According to columnist Sara Arenas, despite the fact that Chile has been invited to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), becoming only the second Latin American country to be a member of such an exclusive club (the other one is Mexico), the tremor has exposed the profound inequalities that still prevail in Chile.
“In Chile, poverty has always been there, and suddenly, it has become painfully evident” says Arenas. She believes that Chile has been affected by three tragedies: earthquake, tsunami and social violence.
Most poor people live in old houses or buildings which do not comply with anti-seismic regulations. Many of the victims and indeed the neighbours who organised themselves to stop looters, live in those houses and are the ones who have been demanding help from the government.
Latin America Bureau
El Mercurio (Chile, Spanish)
http://diario.elmercurio.com/2010/03/02/nacional/especial/noticias/C39E55C8-3EBB-48EB-AE5A-1050AAD5A5C2.htm?id={C39E55C8-3EBB-48EB-AE5A-1050AAD5A5C2}
La Tercera (Chile, Spanish)
http://www.latercera.com/
Guatemala: drug traffic reaches the head of police
Baltazar Gómez (pictured) is supposed to maintain law and order in Guatemala, a country ravaged by criminal violence. After all, he is head of the National Police. And yet, he decided to change sides and has joined the vast network of drug traffickers that used the Central America country as a route to send their “produce” to the USA.
Gómez was arrested after eight months of investigation into the activities of drug gangs. But Baltazar Gómez is not the only high ranking official to be caught. Nelly Bonilla, head of the department in charge of the fight against drug traffic and Fernando Carrillo, a high ranking official in the department of ports and airports were also arrested as part of a gang that steals drugs confiscated to traffickers.
The investigation was conducted by the International Commission Against Impunity, the judiciary and the central government. The conclusions of the investigation are frightening: Gómez allegedly belonged to a group of high-ranking officials who stole confiscated drugs, used their authority to intimidate witnesses, conducted illegal raids, were in possession of weapons, chemical arms and explosives.
According to investigators, the gang sold the drug they confiscated to international gangs of drug traffickers.
Last week, former Deputy Minister of Interior, Francisco Cuevas, had denounced the existence of death squads in the police forces. The former Minister of Interior, Raúl Velásquez confirmed Cuevas’ accusations and said that Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom knew. Both Cuevas and Velásquez claim that they lost their jobs because they knew too much.
In April last year, after a battle between armed gangs and the security forces, the police were accused of stealing drugs from traffickers linked to the Zetas, the powerful Mexican cartel. This prompted investigations that led to the arrest of Gómez and his accomplices.
The scandal is the most serious since the end of the military dictatorships that ruled Guatemala until 1985. Guatemala is one of the most violent countries in the northern hemisphere. Political violence has given way to criminal violence. The fact that the very head of the forces in charge of the protection of society was part of a criminal organisation will do very little to reassure Guatemalans that things are better now than they were before.
Prensa Libre (Guatemala, Spanish)
http://www.prensalibre.com/pl/2010/marzo/03/379161.html#
El Pais (Spanish)
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Detenido/jefe/policia/Guatemala/narcotrafico/elpepuintlat/20100303elpepuint_1/Tes
ECONOMY
Brazil: sugar cane production due to increase
The production of sugar cane in the southern region of Brazil will increase by 10% in the next harvest. This will increase the production of raw sugar and ethanol and will increase the income of the producer thanks to the high prices of the international markets, especially in the case of ethanol which has become a controversial alternative to oil as fuel for vehicles.
Productivity has increased in recent months to cover the losses experienced by producers, due to the fact that at least 50 million tons of sugar cane were left uncrushed last year because of bad weather.
The central southern region accounts for 90% of Brazil’s sugar cane production.
Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aA2hix4SuTN8
NATURE
Mexico: GM crops are not the solution
A group of experts who met in Guadalajara to discuss genetically modified food say that GMs are not a solution for hunger or climate change.
According to Miguel Altieri, a scientist from the University of Berkeley, GM crops have not contributed to the reduction of poverty in developing countries. A study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) there is no evidence that GM crops help reduce the dependency suffered by small farmers.
Altieris says that GM crops make it difficult to fight plagues, develop resistant weeds and produce toxic substances that destroy the biodiversity and contaminate native plants.
Greenpeace Mexico (Spanish)
http://www.greenpeace.org/mexico/news/transgenicos-ni-salud-ni-alim
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