Latin America
has in Caracas, Venezuela one of the largest active social groups
of expats (expatriates) in South America. Called the Rincon
Gang or Rinconeers, they publish a regular newsletter, the Rincon
Reminder, which updates their Caracas community web site, www.Expat-Village.com
The Rincon Reminder updates are also issued to ex-Caracas Rinconeers
now living and working in over 25 countries..
The Expat-Village web-site has all the latest Venezuelan news in English.
We publish news stories of interest to expatriates, including world news, sport,
entertainment and business. We have features on travel in Venezuela, Latin
America and the Caribbean, quick food recipes, and Venezuela security alerts.
Caracas social activities are listed in ‘What’s on in Caracas’, and we’ll keep
you amused with the 'Joke of the Day' page.
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Man attacked in Antigua to be flown to Britain
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A story from The Associated Press
ST JOHN'S, Antigua: A British man who
remains on life support after he was attacked during his honeymoon in
Antigua will be flown back home, a police sergeant said Thursday.
Benjamin Mullany will be transferred to a hospital in Britain as soon
as an air ambulance is available, Sgt. William Holder said. Mullany,
who doctors say is brain dead, has been at Holberton Hospital in the
capital of St. John's.
His wife Catherine was shot in the head and killed when the couple was attacked early Sunday inside their cottage at...................
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Expat Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas and
Porlamar, Margarita Island, Venezuela.
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Uribe Poised to Crush Colombian Rebels as Hostages Are Freed
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A Bloomberg story by Helen Murphy and Andrea Jaramillo at www.bloomberg.com
The bloodless rescue of
former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other
hostages puts President Alvaro Uribe within sight of his most cherished
goal: crushing the guerrillas who have spent 44 years trying to
overthrow the government.
The hostage rescue deprived the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
of its last major bargaining chips and proved the wisdom of Uribe's
hard-line policies, analysts said. The FARC, as the group is known, was
already reeling from the deaths this year of three top leaders,
desertion of dozens of its most seasoned commanders and betrayal by one
of its security chiefs.
``The FARC are for all intents and purposes finished,'' said Michael
Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy
research group in Washington. ``There will still be violence in
Colombia, and certain FARC fronts will remain heavily involved in the
cocaine trade, but now nobody is going to care.''
For Uribe, 55, the rescue provides a boost of international prestige at
a time few Latin American leaders have backed him in his confrontation
with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and a much sought-after...........
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Chavez best hope for Colombia's Betancourt
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A Reuters story by Todd Benson at www.reuters.com
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is
the best hope for successfully negotiating the release of
French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages held
by leftist Colombian guerrillas, her husband said on Friday.
France is spearheading a campaign to restart talks with the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the Marxist rebel
group holding hundreds of captives, including Betancourt, in secret
camps deep in the jungle.
Chavez, a self-proclaimed socialist revolutionary who has expressed
sympathies for the FARC, helped negotiate the release of six hostages
this year. But Colombian President Alvaro Uribe rejects a formal role
in release talks for Chavez, who irked his Colombian counterpart by
urging more recognition for the rebels.
"The Colombian government, I think out of pride, doesn't want Chavez to
participate," Juan Carlos Lecompte, Betancourt's husband, told Reuters
on the sidelines of an environmental conference in Sao Paulo.
"But for us, the relatives of the captives, he is the main hope that we
have. We've begged him to keep working for their release and that is
what he is doing."
Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate who also holds
French citizenship, was abducted by FARC rebels six years ago and has
become the public face of Colombia's hostage crisis.
Chavez and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, who has also clashed with Uribe, have said they were...........
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James Bond Film Rekindles Enmity as Chileans Portray Bolivians
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A Bloomberg story by Matthew Craze at www.bloomberg.com
The new James Bond movie, ``Quantum
of Solace,'' is providing little comfort to villagers in northern Chile
and the government of Bolivia. Scenes from the Sony Corp. film were
shot in Chile's Atacama Desert last week, using local Chileans as
extras and shots of Chilean war monuments.
The trouble is the movie is set in Bolivia, the Chileans play
Bolivians, and the monuments mark Chile's victory over its neighbor in
the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific.
``This shows a lack of understanding about the social sensitivities
between the two countries,'' Pablo Groux, Bolivia's vice-minister of
culture, said in a telephone interview from La Paz, the capital.
The two South American countries severed diplomatic ties in 1978 after
failing to reconcile territorial differences that date back to the war,
in which Chile seized Bolivia's Pacific coastline.
``It's Chilean territory that is being dressed up as Bolivian,'' said
Carlos Lopez, mayor of the Chilean desert municipality of Sierra Gorda,
who said he was arrested when he...............
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The Kirchners v the farmers
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An Economist article at http://www.economist.com
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| The countryside's beef about export taxes becomes the new government's first political test |
CLANK, clunk, clank, clunk. The
sound of a cacerolazo—Argentina's signature style of protest, in which
people pour into the streets banging pots and pans—had not been heard
in Buenos Aires since the depths of the country's economic collapse in
2002.
Yet on March 25th, after five years of breakneck economic growth that
has left the slump a distant memory, the steady clanging of kitchenware
returned to Argentina's main cities.
The target was the
country's president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Barely three
months after taking office, she has provoked a conflict with
Argentina's farmers which has blossomed into her government's first
real domestic political test. Ms Fernández was elected last year only
after her husband, Néstor Kirchner, chose not to stand for a second
term.
To support her campaign, Mr Kirchner ramped up spending on pensions and
public works. The new government is seeking to restore the fiscal
surplus to rein in the resulting inflation. So it has raised the
already steep export taxes it levies on most agricultural commodities.
The rate on soyabeans, to take the most extreme example, has been
hoisted to 40%, up from 27% last year.
Argentina's farmers have
hit back with a campaign of strikes and roadblocks across the country.
They launched similar protests under Mr Kirchner. But this time they
seem more determined. They have vowed to continue until the taxes are
cut. Some foodstuffs are running short: the meat racks in one
supermarket in Palermo, a fashionable neighbourhood of Buenos Aires,
are all but bare.
The government has refused to negotiate while
the strike continues. “I won't give in to extortion,†Ms Fernández said
in a speech this week. Comparing the farmers' protest to those during
the economic collapse, she added: “In 2001, there were roadblocks of
misery.
This last weekend we saw the other side, roadblocks of plenty.†That prompted some 10,000 pot-banging protestors to descend on............
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Peru keeps a watchful eye on Chávez
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A Miami Herald
story by ANDRES OPPENHEIMER at www.miami,com
Peruvian President Alan García nods
with a knowing smile when asked about Colombia's recent seizure of
computer files that seem to show Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's
active support for Colombia's FARC guerrillas. Something similar may be
happening right here in Peru, he says.
García, a former leftist populist, told me in an interview in his
office Friday that there are an estimated 200 pro-Chávez Casas del ALBA
operating in Peru.
These ''homes'' are believed to be tied to the Bolivarian Alternative
of the Americas -- ALBA by its Spanish acronym -- a Chávez-led Latin
American alliance to counter U.S. influence in the region.
The residences, mostly private homes with an ALBA sign on the front,
have been described by Peruvian officials as meeting places for
pro-Chávez radical leftist and coca-growers groups which in many cases
have ties to armed rebel groups.
Ostensibly, they do charity work, including sending...............
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Venezuela's Chavez finds Castro happy in retirement
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A Reuters story at www.reuters.com
HAVANA (Reuters) - Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez visited his friend and mentor Fidel Castro on
Saturday for the first since the 81-year-old retired as Cuba's leader
and said he found him happy and flowing with ideas.
Chavez spent all morning chatting with Castro during a stopover in Cuba
on his way home from a regional summit in Santo Domingo, Dominican
Republic, where Latin American presidents defused a tense border
dispute between Colombia and Ecuador.
"I found Fidel happy, splendid and full of ideas, full of deep and wise thoughts," Chavez told Cuban television.
Castro, who has not appeared in public since falling ill in July 2006, was.....
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Raúl may look past Venezuela for oil
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BY CASTO OCANDO El Nuevo Herald at www.miami.com
While relations between Cuba and
Venezuela are expected to remain friendly, experts said Raúl Castro may
seek to end the island's dependence on Hugo Chávez's oil.
Fidel Castro's resignation and the likely rise of his brother Raúl will
not mean visible changes in Cuban-Venezuelan relations, but could have
important repercussions for the government of Hugo Chávez in the short
run, analysts say.
Venezuela will continue to be a strategic priority for Havana, thanks
to the supply of 93,000 barrels of crude oil and derivatives a day, but
the heavy dependence on energy is increasingly seen as a vulnerability
unacceptable to a pragmatic leader like Raúl Castro.
At the same time, relations between Cuban and Venezuelan military men,
which during Fidel Castro's era were frequently tinged with political
and ideological activism, will enter a phase of strict........
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Sun, sea and murder in the Caribbean
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An Economist article at http://www.economist.com
ELEVEN people, including five
children, were shot dead in Guyana last weekend when unidentified
gunmen went on the rampage in the village of Lusignan. A couple
clung to their 11-year-old grand-daughter as bullets were pumped into
them; a little boy clutched his mother's night-dress as she tried to
crawl under her bed. Furious villagers later set up barricades,
demanding protection and justice.
Police suspect it was the work of a gang acting on the orders of
Rondell “Fineman†Rawlins, Guyana's most wanted man with a $150,000
bounty on his head. He is said to blame the government for the
disappearance eight days earlier of his pregnant girlfriend, on her way
to the nearby capital of Georgetown to give birth. But racial hatred
provided the target. Like Guyana's government and half the population,
Lusignan is mostly ethnic Indian, while Rawlins and his gang are ethnic
Africans.
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Many of Guyana's neighbours suffer even worse violence. Indeed, the
Caribbean, better known for its blue skies, cricket and rum punch, is
the world leader in violent crime. According to a joint UN-World Bank
study last year, it has a murder rate of 30 per 100,000
inhabitants—four times the.........
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Dancing Hitler for Carnival Shocks Over-The-Top Rio
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A Bloomberg story by Adriana Brasileiro at www.bloomberg.com
Even Rio de Janeiro has its limits.
The city, whose annual Carnival celebrations regularly include
half-naked women and over-the-top parties, banned a samba group from
entering a holocaust-inspired float in the championship this year.
The float, with a pile of atrophied concentration-camp victims at its
base, was to be accompanied by a dancer dressed as Adolf Hitler.
``The idea of a dancing Hitler on top of dead Jews is outrageous,''
said Jose Roitberg, a spokesman for Rio de Janeiro's Israelite
Federation, which represents Jewish interests and sued to have the
float thrown out.
During the five-day event, which started Feb. 1, Rio's top 12 samba
groups, known as schools, each present an 80-minute parade featuring
hundreds of drummers and as many as 5,000 dancers. The group's theme is
reflected in its songs, elaborate costumes and floats.
The holocaust float was part of samba group Viradouro's ``It Gives You Goose Bumps'' show, which..............
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Colombian Hostage describes jungle childbirth with FARC
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Freed hostage Clara Rojas wore a
photograph of her three-year-old son around her neck as she described
his birth and upbringing among Colombian rebels in jungle camps.
A day after she was released along with another Colombian hostage, she
said her main priority was being reunited with her son Emmanuel, who
was fathered by one of the guerrillas and separated from her at
eight-months-old. The boy has been living in a foster home in Bogota.
"Very soon I will meet him and little by little we'll start sharing
what for us is a rebirth," Rojas told reporters in Caracas, Venezuela
where she and Consuelo Gonzalez met their families and thanked
President Hugo Chavez for negotiating their release.
In their accounts of some six years in captivity, Rojas and Gonzalez
described long treks through the forest, prisoners in chains and tense
moments when rebels told captives to be silent for fear of..................
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Venezuela's Chavez to star at Cuba oil summit
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A Miami Herald story by Herald Anita Snow at www.miami.com
CIENFUEGOS, Cuba -- Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez and his nation's oil wealth - not Fidel Castro -
will likely be the star attraction Friday as Caribbean leaders gather
in Cuba for a regional oil summit.
The 81-year-old Castro, with his talent for energizing crowds, was
always the central figure at such regional events. But his place at the
Petrocaribe summit will be taken by his dour younger brother Raul, who
has headed Cuba's provisional government since Fidel underwent
intestinal surgery in July 2006.
The elder Castro even indicated in an ambiguous statement earlier this
week that he could be thinking about permanent retirement. Chavez
discussed the summit with Castro during an "emotional and fraternal" 2
1/2-hour meeting Thursday, official media reported Friday.
Now the loquacious Venezuelan president is filling the rhetorical
vacuum as he leads Petrocaribe, a group of 16 Latin American and
Caribbean nations created as an alternative to Washington's
unsuccessful Free Trade Area for the Americas.
Venezuela provides about $5 billion to the region annually through
long-term preferential financing under Petrocaribe and other similar
initiatives, according to Chavez, who promotes the pact as part of a
larger effort to create a "confederation of republics" from Argentina
to Cuba independent of U.S. influence.
Chavez will also restart an oil refinery Friday that his country helped
Cuba renovate after it was left idle following the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the latest evidence of how Venezuela has replaced the.........
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