“Viral Racism in Mexico” by the National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination (Conapred in Spanish), shows scenes from interviews shot in October and November with children who are presented with two dolls — one white and one black. Interviewers then ask children questions including, “Which is the ugly one and which is the pretty one? Which is the good one and which is the bad one?”

Child respondents repeatedly selected the black doll as the ugly or bad one — even children who identified more closely with the black doll because of their skin color.

While the four-minute video presents only edited versions of a handful of interviews, Conapred director Ricardo Bucio told The Latin America News Dispatch that the responses were indicative of the study of 100 participants between the ages of 6 and 10.

“It was a little more surprising than we expected,” Bucio said.

The researchers’ interviews, conducted in October and November, included children of varying skin colors and students from both public and private schools.

When asked which doll is bad, a white respondent pointed to the black doll. Asked to elaborate, the respondent said “Well, this one is black and this one is white.”

When an interviewer asked a brown-skinned girl to explain why she identified the black doll as the ugly one, she said “because I don’t like the color brown.”

A brown-skinned boy identified the white doll as the “good” one, and said he had “a little more trust” in whites when asked to explain his answer. Later, when asked which doll he more resembled, the boy — visibly unsure of himself — looked back and forth between the two before settling on the white one. He identified the doll’s ears as the point of similarity.

Bucio said the study indicated that Mexicans tend to place higher social value on light skin — a phenomenon some of the children mentioned explicitly. When an interviewer asked one brown-skinned girl why she liked the white doll better than the dark one, she said “because his eyes are beautiful and his race too.”

The video is part of a larger campaign by Conapred to raise awareness about racism in Mexico. The campaign gained its sense of urgency, Bucio said, after a national survey published last year found that 60 percent of Mexicans said they had insulted others because of their skin color, 40 percent said they treated people differently based on skin color and 11 percent felt such discrimination was justified.

“Mexico is recognized as a country where there is machismo,” Bucio said, referring to a Latin variant of sexism. “But there are issues like racism and classism that we haven’t developed the same tools to confront.”

The deep-seated nature of racism in Mexico revealed itself in unexpected ways during the course of the study.

After designing the study, the researchers found that they were unable to purchase a dark-skinned doll because no one sold them, according to Bucio. “They had to take a white one and repaint it,” he said.

Conapred modeled its work on that of U.S. African-American psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, who used dolls to study children’s perceptions of race in the 1940s.

The worst punishment top politicians can receive in Brazil is to be fired from an important post. They are often prosecuted, but Brazilian justice is so slow that the statute of limitations for most of the cases expires. A few politicians are taking anti-corruption stances, but participation in demonstrations is not yet significant.  “We need an ‘Operation Clean Hands’ in Brazil as soon as possible,” Senator Pedro Simon of the state of Rio Grande do Sul has said.

In a movement led by the Brazilian Association of Lawyers to promote political demonstrations against corruption in Brazil’s major capitals, Simon and Senator Jarbas Vasconcelos from the state of Pernambuco have failed to ignite public anger against corrupt politicians. Most of the demonstrations have not gathered more than a few hundred people.

Agnelo Queiroz, the former director of ANVISA (National Agency of Health Surveillance, an organism similar to the FDA in the U.S.), is a member of the PT and the current governor of the Federal District. Back at ANVISA in 2008, he was accused of favoring companies that took a week to grant authorization for his wife’s business, when the process usually takes much longer. Now, as governor, he is being accused of illicit self-enrichment.

There are many types of corruption in Brazil that hurt democracy. What applies to all political parties and administrations, at every level, is the failure to declare the source of funding for political campaigns. Also, federal ministries, state secretariats and other positions are frequently negotiated based on support in Congress and assemblies. In some cases, parliamentary support is secured through bribery, as in the case of the Mensalão, a political scandal discovered in 2005 during Lula’s first term.

Brazil’s Tribunais de Contas (Accounts Tribunals) combat the theft of public money, but those who control them must be approved by the federal or state houses. This creates a give-and-take  relationship between executive and legislative branches.

“This exchange has been happening for a long time with all parties. It is always tit for tat. In the case of auditors, they appoint a person friendly to the incumbent governor or president”, explained Cláudio Abramo, president of NGO Transparência Brasil.

Cost

The permissive way that some Brazilians see corruption understates the costs of this troubled reality.  Money that can be sent to infrastructure projects, schools or hospitals many times goes nowhere. The country pays nearly 40 percent in taxes, the highest rate in Latin America. Cost overruns can reach 10 times the market prices and some projects take decades to complete. In the northeastern city of Salvador, Bahia, a subway that has been under construction for 12 years has already cost almost US$ 1 billion.

According to a 2008 survey by FIESP (Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo), corruption accounts yearly for at least 2% of Brazil’s GDP.  “The resources are spent, but they don’t reach their goals. The most significant losses are in the increase of expenses in public investments and the waste of resources. It distorts the image of a hard-working country. Is is bad for serious business and public administrators,” said the economist Gustavo Grisa, partner of Agência Futuro, a local and regional development consultancy with offices in Brasilia and Porto Alegre.

Kurt Weyland, a professor of Latin American politics at the University of Texas at Austin, says that the political influence exerted by the corrupt contributes to other Brazilian problems. “Corruption helps to turn social inequality into political influence and thus helps to cement inequality. That is, corruption helps to perpetuate inequality although it did not cause it,” he said.

Causes and future

Endemic corruption in Brazil is not new. In the 19^th century, Emperor Dom Pedro II had a well-documented relationship of corruption with Congress. Clientelism is seen as a major factor contributing to a culture of corruption in Brazil. Dom Pedro II’s wife, Empress Leopoldina, was known to give a lot to the poor. “Even nowadays, Leopoldina is very adored and cited by poor Brazilians and is a well-known figure”, said historian Laurentino Gomes, author of the best-selling books ”1808″ and “1822″.

Many pundits also attribute corruption to illiteracy. “The mentality of assistencialism and clientelism creates conditions for corruption to thrive. The lack of social control and participation of citizens is the most preoccupying factor”, affirmed economist Grisa.

There are a variety of solutions the country could implement to promote transparency and honesty in public offices. One way is to decentralize the power of the federal government, outsourcing some services, privatizing state-owned companies and sharing more power with local governments. “The opportunities for corruption are higher where the public policy-makers allocate economic resources; more chances for influencing decisions with bribes. Paradoxically, market reform also involves state decisions over economic resources. For example, during the privatization process, to whom will public enterprises be sold, and under what conditions? But the more marketized an economy is, the more the opportunities for corruption diminish,” said Professor Weyland.

Manuel Balán, a professor of political science at McGill University, however, points out that every country should find its own way to fight corruption. “Not only are policies sometimes ineffective, but also what works in some places may not work in others. Policies against corruption shouldn’t be the same everywhere, and there are some policies that may even have negative effects,” he stated.

An important step Brazil took this year was to approve a law similar to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, giving the public more budget information and more transparency. “This law, based on our proposal, will help a lot in the long term,”said Claúdio Abramo of Transparência Brasil.

Professor Weyland affirms that Brazil’s growing middle class will have a great effect on the issue in the future. “The more people emerge from poverty and join the so-called ‘middle class’, the less corruption tends to be accepted. In the U.S., the fight against corruption took 150 years and is still not completed! It is a very difficult process,” he said.

Photo: Agência Brasil 

At a press conference held on Tuesday, student leaders of Chile’s student protest group (known by the Spanish-language acronym CONFECH) vowed that they would hold a mass demonstration this Thursday in the coastal city of Valparaíso.  “We will go out in order to inform the citizens of the treason committed by the ruling political class,” declared CONFECH spokesman Alexis González in response to the federal education budget passed last Friday by the Chilean legislature.

Education Minister Felipe Bulnes claimed that the new budget improves higher education in several ways, including offering more scholarships to poorer Chileans.  Yet CONFECH president Camila Vallejo noted that the state “needs to take charge to regulate the private higher education system, and that is not contemplated in the approved budget.”

For over six months, Chilean students have campaigned for educational reforms including free tuition and an increased involvement by the state.  At times the protests became tense and violent, though the students have earned the support of several sectors, such as the country’s labor unions.

Student protest leaders also suffered another setback on Tuesday when Congress approved the federal budget but left out the establishment of a public education fund.  Thus, one of CONFECH’s key demands will have to be debated in a bill separate from the approved budget plans.

Several student protest movements throughout Latin America have emerged from the original protests in Chile. In Colombia, for instance, over ten thousand people participated in marches held last week in ten cities.  One student protester in Bogotá claimed, “We’re here to defend a just and high quality education.”

Earlier this month, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos backed away from a proposed reform to the educational system that would have increased privatization.  This concession to one of the main demands of the student protest movement (known by the Spanish-language acronym MANE) helped facilitate the return of thousands of striking university students to their classes.   Nevertheless, MANE chief Paola Galindo observed that last Thursday’s “successful” protests helped “back the sovereignty and autonomy of the Colombian populace.”

Young people throughout the region participated in solidarity marches with student protesters in Chile and Colombia.  In Montevideo, hundreds of university students marched from the campus of the Universidad de la República to the Colombian embassy.  Protesters in Buenos Aires demonstrated in the streets and held banners with insignias such as “the student struggle is walking through Latin America.’’

Not all of the recent student marches in the Americas have had to do with seeking a quality education.  On November 18, a few hundred demonstrators in Caracas participated in protests against rising crime rates.

Image – Flickr @ Simenon (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Americas Society, a New York-based policy group, said it found that local laws seeking to crack down on illegal immigration fostered an environment unfriendly to job creation, when compared to so-called “sanctuary cities,” which avoid using local resources to enforce federal immigration law.

Jason Marczak of the Americas Society said he hoped the research would help advance the national immigration debate, which is “often filled with passionate debate and anecdotal claims.”

The study measured the number of businesses, jobs and employees across 53 cities that passed immigration laws or ordinances from 2006 to 2009. The researchers defined four types of laws or ordinances as “restrictive policies” — those requiring verification of employees’ immigration status, those requiring landlords to verify the status of tenants, 287(g) agreements giving localities the power to enforce immigration law and English-only laws.

The researchers classified 13 cities as sanctuary cities and 40 as restrictive. New York City, considered a classic example of a sanctuary city, was excluded because its immigration policies date back farther than the 2006 cutoff year. Likewise, the most controversial immigration laws passed in recent years — Arizona’s SB 1070, Georgia’s HB 87 and Alabama’s HB 56 — were not considered.

The results indicated that restrictive local immigration policies led to a contraction in the number of jobs in a given city, but did not have a significant effect on the number of businesses.

Policies restricting employment had the greatest effect, with such cities registering 0.26 times fewer employees than cities with nonrestrictive policies. In other words, the paper’s statistical model indicates that a hypothetical city of 10,000 with laws restricting employment for undocumented immigrants would have 2,600 fewer jobs than a similar city without such restrictions.

“I don’t think the proponents of these laws aim to create job loss in their cities, but that’s what we’re seeing,” Marczak said.

Though the authors did not find restrictive immigration policies to affect the number of businesses in a given area, they noted that the reduction of consumption and productivity caused by job loss may lead to business closures over the long term.

“Employment ordinances are then going to have a snowball effect,” said Jeronimo Cortina, a professor at the University of Houston and a co-author of the study.

Cortina cited ordinances prohibiting undocumented immigrants from renting apartments as one example of policies that can have wider economic effects than intended. Cortina said restricting undocumented immigrants’ ability to rent property led to more vacancies, which in turn eats into city tax revenue, affecting public services such as schools and hospitals.

In addition to job loss, restrictive immigration policies bring other unintended consequences, according to the panel of speakers that met to present the study at the New York office of the Americas Society Thursday evening.

Roderick Royal, the president of the Birmingham City Council and an opponent of Alabama’s strict state immigration law, said his state’s crackdown on immigration would hurt the construction industry during a period of rebuilding following April’s tornado and storm damage.

“This is also about skilled jobs — it’s about roofers, it’s about skilled bricklayers,” Royal said, noting that the state immigration law had driven workers out of the construction industry. “This necessarily means a delay,” Royal added.

Royal also said he feared Alabama’s immigration law would hurt the state’s tourist industry, if opponents decided to boycott the state as they did Arizona.

Tourism and international business played a major role in defeating an attempt to make English the official language of city government in Nashville two years ago, according to Ronnie Steine, a member-at-large of the Nashville City Council.

The famed country music capital receives some 350,000 foreign visitors annually and international businesses including Nissan, Bridgestone Americas and Volkswagon are major employers in the area, Steine said.

The Tennessee politician said he opposed “the notion that we were going to take down the ‘welcome to Nashville’ sign and put up the ‘stay away’ sign.”

Stein added that neighboring states’ tough immigration laws made Tennessee look more welcoming to immigrants and other foreigners by contrast. “Quite honestly, it’s a public relations boon for us,” he said.

Jimenez’s case is not unique, according to Mark Fleming, national litigation coordinator at the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC). He says the majority of the 270,000 detainers ICE issues each year — based on 2010 figures — are issued without establishing probable cause for deportation, and without notifying the person being detained or providing him or her with an opportunity to challenge the detainer.

Fleming and his colleagues at the NIJC helped Jimenez and a co-plaintiff, a legal permanent resident named Maria Lopez, to file a complaint with the seventh circuit federal court against federal and regional immigration officials for violating their fourth and fifth amendment rights, and for infringing on states’ rights as protected by the tenth amendement. If their petition for a class action lawsuit is approved, the decision would apply not only to the plaintiffs, but to anyone — whether a citizen or an undocumented immigrant — who is arrested and detained in the Chicago area.

Although the lawsuit is still in its early stages — the complaint was filed on August 12 — Fleming said that he hopes it will set a precedent for similar lawsuits on behalf of individuals who have been subject to mistaken ICE detainers. DHS and ICE officials declined to comment on this lawsuit and its potential implications.

This lawsuit comes at a time when ICE policies such as Secure Communities have been widely accused of intruding too far into state and local affairs and resulting in unneccessary deportations. After protests across the country, several state and local officials have tried to remove their jurisdictions from participating in Secure Communities, which compels state and local officials to cooperate with ICE in identifying and detaining immigrants. Last month, the Obama administration began a review of deportation cases for about 300,000 immigrants accused of minor infractions, as a partial reaction to this public outcry.

While state and local authorities may be legally obligated to share the fingerprints of those they arrest with ICE officials, they are not necessarily required to implement ICE detainers. Cook County, where Chicago is located, recently passed legislation stating that county officials will no longer honor ICE holds unless the federal government reimburses the county for the cost of additional detention, which amounts to an estimated $43 per person per day.

The plaintiffs in the case of Jimenez v. Napolitano assert that these ICE detainers are illegal as well as expensive. Fleming argued that because immigrant detention is a form of incarceration, those subject to ICE detainers should be entitled to the same fourth and fifth amendment rights that any criminal defendant would have.

“DHS detainers deprive thousands of men and women of basic constitutional due process rights,” said NIJC Executive Director Mary McCarthy, in an August 12 press release describing the lawsuit. “This expansive use of detainers harms U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, families and communities, and betrays American ideals of fairness and justice.”

According to the complaint filed in Jimenez vs. Napolitano, a detainer lodged by ICE instructs local enforcement officials to hold an individual while ICE assesses whether that person could qualify to be deported. By law, the person under investigation can be held for no more than 48 hours after the period for the local agency’s lawful custody has expired, before ICE must either assume direct, physical custody or allow them to be released. This limitation can be misleading, however, because an ICE detainer has additional consequences for individuals like Jimenez and Lopez who face criminal charges or convictions.

Maria Lopez, a permanent resident who has lived in the U.S. since age 4, pled guilty last December for a non-deportable misdemeanor offense in another drug-related case and is currently serving a one-year sentence at a federal correctional facility in Tallahasee, Florida. A mother of three, she cannot qualify to serve the rest of her sentence in a halfway house or take part in a work-release program because of an ICE detainer that was issued against her on Feb. 1. Her situation and Jimenez’s show that ICE detainers can last much longer than 48 hours in cases where they lengthen existing criminal custody.

“The detainer has so many implications for criminal defendants. But what’s most disturbing is that there is no proof that these immigrants are deportable, no sort of process for the detainers,” said Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy at the University of California at Berkeley’s Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy. Kolhi recently participated in a task force advising the Obama administration on how to address local concerns about Secure Communities, including state’s rights issues and the high number of non-criminals who have been detained and deported since the policy was first implemented in 2008.

The Obama administration’s recent reforms to deportation policy do not address the due process problems posed by immigrant detainers, said both Kohli and Fleming. This review applies only to individuals who are either in ICE custody or have already received final removal orders, not to those whose criminal trials and sentences have been compounded by ICE detainers. These individuals, like Jimenez and Lopez, have a limited ability to challenge their detainers and may not even be aware that such detainers exist.

“As a general policy, ICE doesn’t provide notice of a detainer. Often a detainee won’t learn about it until their criminal bonds hearing,” said Fleming. To this day, neither Lopez nor Jimenez have ever been contacted by an ICE or DHS official, he added.

Kohli noted that it is important that the plaintiffs in this case are a citizen and permanent resident, “because their rights are different than those of undocumented immigrants.” However, if the class action is approved, Jimenez v. Napolitano could prove to be a landmark case in winning rights of due process and legal representation for all immigrants facing detention and deportation.

En la siguiente entrevista realizada el 20 de septiembre en la Misión Permanente de Bolivia ante las Naciones Unidas, el Canciller boliviano David Choquehuanca nos habla del pedido de extradición que su gobierno ha solicitado a los Estados Unidos, el futuro de las reservas de litio del salar de Uyuni y la marcha en defensa del TIPNIS que ha golpeado la popularidad de la administración de Evo Morales durante las últimas semanas.

Latin America News Dispatch (LAND): Queremos hablar en principio tres temas, primero un tema que creo que es de bastante interés para la comunidad latina aquí en Estados Unidos, sobre todo la boliviana. Tiene que ver con el fallo de la Corte Supreme de Justicia el 31 de agosto de este mismo año en contra de Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada y varios de sus colaboradores en el gobierno. Como usted debe conocer, después de ocho años de proceso legal, basicamente, se les ha condenado de culpables de genocidio. ¿Qué representa este fallo histórico? ¿Cómo lo ve usted?

David Choquehuanca (DC): Mira, los asesinatos tienen una condena de 30 años. Cuando uno en Bolivia comete un asesinato la condena es 30 años. Estos no solo han cometido un asesinato, sino han muerto muchas personas. O sea, no solamente han atentado contra la vida de las personas, han atentado contra la vida de un país. Así que el fallo que conocemos nosotros no satisface a los familiares. No satisface a los alteños. No satisface a sus hijos, los que han quedado huérfanos…

A los compañeros, las familiares, el pueblo alteño, las organizaciones han dicho ‘el fallo es leve…’

Nosotros queremos llevar adelante – garantizando el debido proceso, ¿no? – en Bolivia queremos, simplemente queremos hacer justica. No puede ser que en este siglo puedan tener protección esas personas que cometen este tipo de actos, violación, crimenes de lesa humanidad, violación de todo tipo de derechos, no solamente de las personas, sino de todo un país…

LAND: ¿Y han pedido formalmente la extradición [del ex presidente Gonalo Sánchez de Losada, quien actualmente reside en Estados Unidos]?

DC: Hemos pedido formalmente, hemos pedido varias veces, hemos pedido audiencias con el Departamento de Justicia. Nosotros como poder ejecutivo, o sea, no somos los que tenemos que tramitar, o sea, respetamos la independencia de los poderes. Está en manos del poder judicial. Pero nosotros somos los vehículos en canalizar lo que trabaja el poder judicial…

LAND: Ahora, las relaciones bilaterales entre los Estados Unidos y Bolivia están un poco deterioradas. Usted cree que eso puede influir en que se de o no la extradición de Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada? (…)

DC: La relación con Estados Unidos nunca ha diso fácil. Siempre ha sido una relación complicada con Estados Unidos. Les duele que hayamos expulsado a su embajador. Les duele que hayamos expulsado a la DEA [las siglas en inglés de la Aministración de Cumplimiento de Leyes sobre las Drogas]. El presidente dice no, Estados Unidos, o sea, la DEA, hace el control del narcotráfico con fines políticos. Esto no ayuda a que podamos construir una relación sincera, una relación transparente con Estados Unidos. Nosotros queremos tener las mejores relaciones con todos los paises del mundo, incluyendo Estados Unidos. (…)

EL LITIO

LAND: Cambiando de tema, me gustaría conversar con usted sobre el litio y las enormes reservas – las más grandes del mundo, de hecho, se dice que más del 50 por ciento del litio sobre el planeta está bajo la costra salina del salar de Uyuni. Como tengo entendido, en el plan de industrialización del litio que ha propuesto el gobierno están basicamente planteadas tres fases. La primera, la construcción de la planta piloto. La segunda es la producción industrial del carbonato de litio y por último el proceso de industrialización, que vendría siendo la producción de baterías, etc. Siempre ha llamado la atención, creo que le ha llamado la atención a todo el mundo que en las primeras dos fases la consigna del estado ha sido la consigna de 100 por ciento estatal, que se desarrolle con fondos del estado. Y de hecho, creo que es un punto de honor para este proyecto. Usted cree que el estado boliviano está preparado para asumir con plenitud lo que es considerado el proyecto económico y extractivista más importante de la historia de Bolivia? (…)

DC: Ahora, el salar de Uyuni no es de Evo Morales. El salar de Uyuni es de todos los bolivianos. No es de las transnacionales, es de nosotros. Y nosotros somos los que estamos trabajando para establecer alianzas estratégicas con empresas que nos ayuden y que permitan llevar adelante procesos de industrialización. (…)

Queremos nosotros dar mayores niveles de valor agregado en Bolivia. No queremos que se lo lleven nuestra materia prima hacia afuera. Necesitamos inversiones. Bolivia necesita inversiones. No tenemos tecnología. Pero queremos que la inversión venga acompañado de transferencia de teconología. Queremos una inversión que nos ayude a salir de la pobreza. No es que no ha habido inversión en Bolivia. Ha habido inversión en Bolivia. Pero esa inversión en el pasado nos ha vuelto pobres. (…)

LAND: Recientemente en la página de la Gerencia Nacional de Evaporíticos se publicaron por primera vez los memorandum de entendimiento que tiene Bolivia con Francia y usted mencionó Japón, Corea, Brasil, Irán, varios paises. Y se entiende que hay un proceso de negociación bastante importante precisamente para buscar ese socio comercial. ¿Cuál cree usted, dentro de los candidatos, cual se perfila como el más prometedor?

DC: Mira, dicen que el litio alcanza para todos. Podemos trabajar con los alemanes, podemos trabajar con los franceses. Podemos trabajar con los chinos. Podemos trabajar con los coreanos. Y ellos saben. Saben de que se puede trabajar de esta forma. (…)

LAND: ¿Estaríamos hablando entonces de la posibilidad de que Bolivia se asocie con varios paises para industrializar el litio, el carbonato de litio?

DC: Veremos. Estamos abiertos. A ver – por ahi hay una propuesta interesante. Tenemos que tomar la mejor opción, pero siempre pensando en los bolivianos. (…)

El estado ha empezado a preocuparse por sus recursos naturales. Ya no está en subasta nuestros recursos naturales. Hay normas, hay leyes y se tiene que respetar esas normas, esas leyes, cualquier inversor. (…)

TIPNIS

LAND: ¿Cómo fue que se tomó la decisión, a nivel de estado de ir hacia adelante con el proyecto de la carretera? Es decir, ¿qué fue lo que se evaluó? ¿Se hizo una evaluación de los posibles costos ambientales versus los beneficios de la carretera? ¿Cuáles fueron los elementos que se manipularon ahi, en esa discusión?

DC: El presidente públicamente, en reunión de gabinete, reuniones de evaluaciones con las otras organizaciones, nos ha dicho ‘podemos cometer errores, pero jamás vamos a traicionar a nuestro pueblo.’ (…)

“La marcha sale en defensa de TIPNIS, en defensa del derecho a la consulta. Así sale la marcha. Si usted ve a los periódicos, la marcha es en defensa del derecho a la consulta de los pueblos indígenas. El presidente ha dicho que vamos a llevar adelante la consulta en el marco de la normativa nacional, en el marco de la nuestra constitución política del estado y las normas internacionales, convenio 169 Declaración Universal de los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas. Y ha dicho además, con el acompañamiento de organismos internacionales, de las Naciones Unidas, de la OIT. Y los indígenas dicen ‘no queremos consulta.’ No entendemos. Los indígenas – pero no solamente ahora es el derecho a la consulta, no solamente es TIPNIS. TIPNIS es un punto ya, sino hay otras 15 puntos más que han agregado. Quince puntos. Ellos dicen que esta marcha es en defensa de la Madre Tierra. (…)

Por un lado dicen que están en defensa de la Madre Tierra, ¿no? Quieren defender sus bosques. Y por otro lado te dicen ‘queremos participar en RED.’ Yo pienso, así no piensan los indígenas. Ese pliego no ha sido hecho por los indígenas. Y hay varias contradicciones que ellos, esta elaboración de los TIPNIS. Nosotros hemos insistido varias veces para dialogar. No quieren.

LAND: Y ¿quién hizo el pliego entonces?

DC: Yo no sé. Hay que preguntar. Posiblemente son esas ONGs que no conocen nuestras necesidades. Nunca han vivido como nosotros. Siempre han tenido buenos sueldos. Y han trabajado años. La razón de ser de ellos es un movimiento campesino aislado, excluido. Mientras haya un movimiento campesino indígena aislado, excluido, ellos van a seguir con sus ONGs, ganando buenos sueldos. (…)

Ellos han dicho, cuando han salido — ya estaba el tramo uno, el tramo dos — cuando han salido, han dicho por el derecho a la consulta. El presidente ha dicho ‘vamos a hacer la consulta.’

LAND: ¿Pero la consulta no se supone que tendría que ser antes de que comience el proyecto de construcción?

DC: El presidente ha dicho ‘yo puedo cometer errores, pero jamás voy a traicionar.

LAND: ¿Fue un error entonces, no hacer la consulta?

DC: Puede ser. No sé.

LAND: ¿Cuales son los beneficios que va a brindar esta carretera al país?

DC: Necesitamos integrarnos nosotros. Necesitamos integrarnos. Es una — es un pedido, es un pedido de muchos (…) llevamos en este momento un referendum, seguramente nos van a pedir carreteras. Hemos tenido reuniones. Los ministros cuando han tenido reuniones con los de TIPNIS, ellos no solamente quieren que la carretera pase así, sino quieren que vaya a sus comunidades, algunos quieren que pase por su puerta de su casa. Por eso tienen miedo a la consulta ellos ahora. Nosotros, cuando el presidente dice que vamos a llevar adelante la consulta con el acompañamiento de las Naciones Unidas, y hay una publicación de las Naciones Unidas, dice que ellos están dispuestos a acompañar. ¿Por qué no quieren los indígenas?

LAND: ¿Y qué entonces de la ley de la Madres Tierra? ¿Y de –

DC: No de la Madre — en defensa de la Pachamama.

LAND: Claro.

DC: ¿Cuántos kilómetros hoy día se han construido sobre nuestra Pachamama?

LAND: No, pero ¿por qué construir más?

DC: No, la Pachamama es total. No solo es TIPNIS nuestra Pachamama. Cuando hablamos de la Pachamama, estamos hablando de Canadá, de Estados Unidos, todo. Estamos hablando del planeta. ¿Cuántos kilómetros hoy día se han construido sobre esta nuestra Pachamama? ¿Cuántos kilómetros?

LAND: No tengo idea.

DC: Y esos movimientos que dicen solidaridad con TIPNIS, por qué no dicen nada? Incluso hay movimientos de solidaridad en Estados Unidos. ¿Y qué están haciendo ellos? ¿Qué moral tienen? Hoy día cuanto — pregúntense ¿cuántos kilómetros — hoy día se han construido sobre nuestra Pachamama? Y ¿qué daños ocasionan ellos? Ellos dicen defender la Pachamama, pero yo les pregunto a ellos — y hemos conversado, de hecho – ¿cuál le hace daño a la nuestra Madre Tierra? ¿Una carretera de 400 kilómetros? O sea, ¿cuál le hace daño, más daño a nuestra Madre Tierra, nuestra Pachamama — una herida de 400 kilómetros, o un herida de 60 kilómetros? ¿Cuál le hace más daño?

LAND: ¿Cuál es el aliado más importante que tiene Bolivia hoy en día en esa cruzada ambientalista?

DC: Los movimientos sociales. Sí.

LAND: ¿En términos de paises miembros de la ONU, por ejemplo?

DC: Mira, los movimientos sociales. Fundamentalmente los movimientos sociales. Estos movimientos sociales se han reunido 140 paises en Bolivia. Líderes, representantes de los movimientos sociales, donde han estado científicos, representantes de gobiernos y han creado un movimiento mundial en defensa de la Madre Tierra y de lucha contra el capitalismo, en Tiquipaya. Esa es nuestra fuerza. Ese es nuestro aliado. Por eso, cuando nos dicen (…) yo les digo, no estamos solos. Estamos con los pueblos. Y el tiempo va a darnos razón.

Roque Planas and Elisa Perea contributed to this report. 

In what can be viewed as both an angry retort to the failure to pass the jobs act and an early campaign appeal to Latino voters, Obama lashed out against Republicans and said that his proposed legislation would help 25 million Latinos.

“This is a debate about fairness and who we are in this country,” Obama said. “This jobs bill will help the Latino community right now.”

Along with immigration, job creation is one of the most important issues to Latino voters with the unemployment rate among the community being one the highest in the country at 11.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The national unemployment rate in September was 9.1 percent.

“None of this matters to the Republicans in the Senate,” Obama said of the Republican filibuster that that shot down his $447 billion plan in a 50-49 vote that was well short of 60 needed to pass the legislation. “They said no to more jobs for teachers, no to more jobs for cops and firefighters.”

Republicans oppose the bill’s stimulus-style spending and tax surcharge for the very wealthy. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) on Tuesday blamed the Obama administration for “political posturing” and said both parties need to work together as they did with the free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

“What we will not do, though, is vote in favor of any more misguided stimulus bills because some bill writer slapped the word ‘Jobs’ on the cover page,” McConnell added, according to CBS News.

Obama also cited the need for a bipartisan effort to pass the jobs act and said during his speech Wednesday that “the time for games and politics is over.”

His speech to the Forum on American Latino Heritage seemed to be intended to reiterate points he made in a statement Tuesday after the jobs act failed to pass through the Senate.

“With each vote, Members of Congress can either explain to their constituents why they’re against common-sense, bipartisan proposals to create jobs, or they can listen to the overwhelming majority of American people who are crying out for action,” Obama said in a statement. “Because with so many Americans out of work and so many families struggling, we can’t take “no” for an answer.”

The Latino community is a key voting demographic for both Obama and his Republican challengers in next year’s presidential election. While Obama handily won the Latino vote back in 2008, the community has become disheartened by his failure to pass any comprehensive immigration reform.

This sentiment has only been strengthened after the recent release of  report that Obama has sent home over 1 million undocumented immigrants while in office – on pace to deport more in one term than former President George W. Bush did in two.

Republicans, however, have done little capitalize on the Latino discontent with the Obama administration and instead have tried to appeal to their more conservative voter base by touting their own tough stances on immigration and border security.

Latinos are the fastest growing minority in the U.S., making up 16.3 percent of the national population, according to 2010 Census statistics. Their vote is seen as key to winning the 2012 presidential election.

Photo:Pete Souza @ Wikicommons.

The organizers said after a screening of the film Entre Nos at Tribeca Cinemas that they had raised $20,000 to fund 10 scholarships for undocumented students who might benefit from in-state tuition or financial aid if the DREAM Act were passed. The organizers continued to raise funds after the screening, calling out to members of the audience to donate $50.

The announcement comes as Republican preference for beefed up immigration enforcement is making a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill more ellusive. The DREAM Act, with its narrower focus on providing a path to citizenship for certain immigrants who came to the United States as children, provides activists with a more practical short-term goal.

But if Republicans have largely backed away from immigration reform, the organizers did not see the Obama administration as a source of inspiration either. A panel with the director of Entre Nos Paola Mendoza, journalist José Antonio Vargas and immigrant rights activist Chung-Wha Hong criticized both parties’ approach toward immigration reform after the screening.

Despite supporting the DREAM Act in speeches, Chung-Wha pointed out that Obama has not heeded activists’ demands to place a moratorium on the deportation of immigrants who would qualify for the DREAM Act if it were passed.

Instead, Chung-Wha said, Obama went “halfway” and ordered the Department of Homeland Security to review some 300,000 deportation cases and exercise prosecutorial discretion to decide which cases merited priority attention.

“Both parties have shown such a lack of courage,” Chung-Wha said.

“I find myself getting angrier and angrier,” said the journalist-turned-activist Vargas, referring to the lack of political energy behind immigration reform efforts. “It’s hard for me to wait for the Obama administration to do anything about this. I think they’re more worried about getting themselves reelected.”

Vargas, who declared his undocumented status publicly in a New York Times Magazine article published in June, implored U.S. citizens to throw their support behind reform legislation such as the DREAM Act. “We are in the middle of a civil rights movement,” Vargas said. “You have a responsibility in the same way that white people did during the civil rights movement to say ‘this is not right.’”

The film Entre Nos tells the story of Mariana, an undocumented Colombian immigrant with two children, all three of whom wind up homeless in Queens and working as can collectors when the children’s father abandons the family. The story is based on director Paola Mendoza’s personal experience and dedicated to her mother.

“We wanted to put a human face on the immigrant experience,” Mendoza said of her film.

Local DREAM Act student activists shared their stories with the audience before and after the screening.

Cesar Vargas, an undocumented student who recently graduated from CUNY Law School, said when he was growing up he learned English as a foreign language and worked since he was 11 to help his mother pay rent.

“Despite that sacrifice, I may never become a lawyer because of my status,” Cesar Vargas said, adding that he is working to found a national lobby firm to push the DREAM Act.

The film’s message resonated with DREAM Act activist Lucia Allain, a college student who grew up poor in Jackson Heights, Queens. “Back then, I also picked up cans, and now I stand where I am, studying broadcast journalism,” said Allain, who recently cofounded an advocacy group called the Dream Scholars.

The statements came in response to rumors circulating through social media that Chávez’s health situation had deteriorated Tuesday night, leading to his hospitalization. Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources, that Chávez had been hospitalized due to kidney problems.

Chávez read aloud from a number of newspaper reports published by the international media referring to the alleged hospitalization and proceeded to call the reports untrue.

“Sure, that’s what they want, all those newspaper owners,” Chávez said.

The convalescing Venezuelan leader refused once again to disclose what specific part of his body the cancer had affected, though he pointed to his belly and said the operation left him with a long scar and that the incision required 40 stitches to close.

He denied explicitly, however, that he suffered from colon cancer, as many experts consulted by the media have speculated. “All of that is false,” Chávez said of the colon cancer theory.

“I had cancer, the size of a baseball, which was removed,” Chávez said, holding up a baseball. He continued to grasp the ball in his left hand long after he had moved on to discuss other topics.

Chávez, a socialist, referred to capitalism as a kind of cancer.

Image: Chavezcandanga @ Flickr. 

The Oval Office Meeting on October 5 will come only a few weeks after Lobo’s address at the United Nations, where he highlighted his country’s commitment to restoring human rights in the aftermath of the June 2009 coup that ousted then-President Manuel Zelaya.

“The President also welcomes the opportunity to underscore the strong bonds of friendship between the American and Honduran people, as well as President Lobo’s efforts to restore democratic and constitutional order in Honduras and the country’s return to the Organization of American States earlier this year,” The White House press release said.

In his speech at the U.N. earlier this week, Lobo pushed an agenda of human rights and  praised the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which his government established in an effort to avoid future human right’s abuses. The report, released in early July, found that the government caused the death of 20 people, eight of whom were assassinated and 12 others were killed during street protests. “We are taking the necessary steps to implement those recommendations,” Lobo said of the Commission.

The claims by Lobo that his country is actively pursuing a cleaner human right’s record have been off-set by high levels of violent crime and targeted killings of journalists, opposition party members and people in the LGBT community among others.

Some of the violence in Honduras can be attributed to the worsening security situation in the country, which Obama and Lobo plan to discuss. Honduras, like much of Central America, has been infiltrated by drug cartels looking for transshipment routes from South America to Mexico and the U.S.

Speaking during a two-day conference in June on regional security, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton promised $300 million in aid this year to the nations of Central America to battle drugs and organized crime, 10 percent more than in 2010.

Clinton said that murder rates in the region were reaching “civil war levels” and that the country’s must “build police forces and courts that are well-funded and well-equipped, capable of protecting human rights and earning the trust of the communities they serve.”