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[Translation of an article from El Clarín of Santiago, Chile, for April 21. See original here.]

By Marcos Roitmann Rosenmann

Measures taken to nationalize and to recuperate basic riches in Latin America or Africa or Asia have always suffered the ire of colonial centers and the enterprises affected. There is no shortage of examples: Lázaro Cárdenas, Jacobo Arbenz, Fidel Castro, Omar Torrijos, Velasco Alvarado, Salvador Allende, Evo Morales, Hugo Chávez; the list is long.

Accustomed to ordering and to being in charge, arrogant empires are unfamiliar with the concepts of independence and sovereignty. They are reluctant to deal as equals. Paternalism, based on positions of strength, shapes the discourse of imperial haughtiness. To declare oneself opposed to paternal authority and the established order usually brings on exemplary punishment: blockades, destabilizing processes, economic strangulation, assassinations of leaders or coups d’état. These days, the expropriation of a private company, Repsol YPF, whose interests are those only of their stockholders and whose objective is to obtain profits at the cost of any ethical, judicial or environmental consideration, awakens the ire of the hegemonic powers, their institutions and principal political leaders. (more…)

London admits that the conflict is clear-cut

[Translation of a column from Página/12 of Buenos Aires for March 29. See original here and related articles here and here. April 2 marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the war between Argentina and England over the Malvinas Islands, known in Great Britain as the Falklands. The British won the war but Argentina still claims sovereignty over the islands. And here Atahualpa Yupanqui reads "La Hermanita Perdida."]

By Martín Granovsky

Unless all its functionaries have a command of the language worthy of Winston Churchill, but not his political acumen, the British foreign service admitted yesterday that the question of the Malvinas is “a white elephant.” In an Asian tradition that the foreign office knows well, a white elephant is something difficult to care for, at a cost disproportionate to the advantages it offers.

According to diplomats in the region consulted by this newspaper, the expression was used by Jeremy Browne, Foreign Office Minister, a position equivalent to that of vice-chancellor, representing in this case several areas, one of them Latin America. Browne, a member of the administration of the conservative David Cameron, spoke during a working breakfast with all the Latin American diplomats only five days before April 2, the 30th anniversary of a maneuver by the Argentine dictatorship that consolidated the power of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party. (more…)

[Translation of an article from Página/12 of Buenos Aires for July 22. See original here.]

By Darío Aranda

“The gold of the future” the mining companies call it. It’s “a strategic resource” for government authorities. But it’s “our life” for the 86 indigenous communities who yesterday blocked National Highway 52 to oppose the lithium mining now spreading across their ancestral lands despite being covered by national and international laws that spell out indigenous peoples’ rights to the land. Lithium is a coveted mineral, used in batteries for cell phones and computers and needed by the automobile industry, which is experiencing the gradual replacement of hydorcarbons with electric vehicles. “We are expressing our rejection of lithium mining projects and we demand the titles to the commuity lands that belong to us,” the community members declared. Last November the spread of lithium mining reached the supreme court of the nation and arrived last week at the United Nations.
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Voters also chose members of newly formed communal councils

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for July 11. See original here. Buenos Aires is an autonomous city ruled by a Chief of Government, a Deputy Chief of Government and a 60-member Legislature. All elected official serve four-year terms. The Communal Councils, discussed in the article, are a new feature.]

By Stella Calloni

Buenos Aires – As predicted in the polls, the current head of government of this city, Mauricio Macri, of the rightist Propuesta Republicana (PRO) party, won the election tonight but is to stand in a runoff on July 31 in which he will compete with former Education Minister Daniel Filmus, candidate of the country’s ruling Frente para la Victoria (FPV), as occurred in 2007 but with a stronger challenge by the latter this time. Most important was the election of comuneros to the communal councils in Buenos Aires.

Initial data from the 26 percent of polling places counted show more than 45 percent for Macri, 30 percent for Filmus and, in third place, Fernando Pino Solana of Proyecto Sur, who received 13 percent of the vote, half of what he received in 2007. (more…)

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for February 24. See original article here and the Página/12 article quoted below, in English translation, here.  See US embassy cables on Argentina as released by Wikileaks here.]

by John Saxe-Fernández

An enormous C17 (Globemaster III) belonging to the United States air force, with equipment for police “training,” tried to bring into Buenos Aires an undeclared cargo of powerful long weapons, equipment for encrypted communications, secret information programs and narcotic and stupefacient drugs, “with no satisfactory explanation of what it would be used for” (Página 12, 13-II-2011). In view of the regime change operations against Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador and the Honduran putsch, the resumption of this type of operation with United States personnel, halted by Néstor Kirchner, is surprising; the secret cargo on the C-17 demonstrates the serious risk of these schemes in view of a diplomacy of power that is growing more intense: were they going to teach a course or stage a coup? (more…)

[Translation of a BBC World article from El Mostrador of Santiago, Chile, for February 19. See original here.]

In the past few weeks, the deaths of at least eight children in northern Argentina from serious malnutrition problems has again focussed attention on a problem that baffles many: why do children die of hunger in a country that is one of the world’s main producers of food?

According to the Cooperadora para la Nutrición Infantil (CONIN – Cooperating Agency for Childhood Nutrition), 260,000 children under the age of five suffer some degree of malnutrition, while 2,100,000 people do not have assured daily access to food.

Among the most vulnerable groups are the indigenous communities, especially those living in the northeast of the country, in the area known as Gran Chaco or Chaco Salteño, which includes the provinces of Salta, Formosa, Chaco, Santiago del Estero and Santa Fe. (more…)

[Translation of an article from Página/12 of Buenos Aires for February 13. See original article here and related article here.]

By Horacio Verbitsky

The federal government has blocked the entry of secret “sensitive cargo” that arrived at the Ezeiza international airport aboard a United States air force flight with no satisfactory explanation of what it would be used for.

The expression “sensitive cargo” was used last Monday by [United States] embassy management counselor Dorothy Sarro when she requested authorization to have a truck with an attached trailer enter the operations area. The enormous C17, a Boeing Globemaster III cargo plane, larger than the well known Hercules, arrived on Thursday afternoon with an arsenal of powerful weapons aboard for a course on management of crisis and hostage taking offered by the United States government to the federal police Grupo de Operaciones Especiales Federal (GEOF – Federal Special Operations Group), which was to be held through the entire months of February and March. The government estimates that the total cost for transportation and for conducting the course approaches two million dollars. The course was authorized by the Argentine govnernment, but when personnel checked the content of the cargo against a list submitted beforehand, machine gun and rifle barrels and a strange suitcase were discovered which had not been included on the manifest. (more…)

Timerman faults Macri for accepting US anti-terrorism training for city police without federal approval

[Translation of an article from Diario Hoy of La Plata, Argentina, for February 6. See original here.]

Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman today accused Mauricio Macri [head of government of the autonomous city of Buenos Aires] of turning into “a feudal lord” within the city and repeated his criticism of Buenos Aires management for accepting financing from the United States for training of city police without notifying the federal government.

“I am a firm opponent of having the security forces trained by other countries,” declared the Kirchner administration’s head of diplomacy, who also said of recent statements by national and provincial authorities concerning the conflict, “The only thing they do is verify that my criticism was correct.”

In the same vein, he pointed out that he had always rejected that “the United States finance courses for Argentine security forces because that is a violation of national sovereignty.” (more…)

As solidarity grows among  South American nations

Three articles

[Translations of articles from Clarín of Buenos Aires for January 4 and January 8 and from Folha of São Paulo for January 11.  See original Clarín articles here and here, Folha article here. Related article from the British Daily Telegraph is here, related article on this site is here, related article from Sartma of the disputed islands is here.]

Foreign office hardens position on Malvinas
Says English military maneuvers hinder cooperation

[From Clarín]

By Natasha Niebieskikwiat

Every January 3, on the occasion of another anniversary of the British occupation of the Malvinas, which began in 1833, making this anniversary number 178, successive Argentine governments have customarily unleashed, with more or less acrimony, their claim of sovereignty over the islands. In the one unleashed yesterday, the Foreign Office declared that unilateral actions by the United Kingdom regarding natural resources, like the exploitation of petroleum, or military exercises on the archipelago, are an “unbridgeable obstacle” to the continuation and the development of “bilateral cooperation” under the “provisional understandings” signed by London and Buenos Aires, which are currently being completely disregarded.
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[Abridged translations of two articles, the first from Página/12 of Buenos Aires for January 2, the second from La Jornada of Mexico City for January 8. See original articles here and here.]

Slave labor for an elusive grain dealer

By Horacio Verbitsky

The operation carried out in San Pedro on December 30 illustrates what is possible in uncontrolled markets. Nidera, a transnational grain company that the AFIP [Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos – Federal Public Revenue Administration] has charged with tax evasion amounting to 260 million pesos, had confined 130 workers from the north, adults and adolescents, who did not know where they were, could not leave, had no electric lights or water and were charged exorbitant prices, deducted from the salaries they had accrued, for food the company sold them, including pasta from the Scioli social services plan. (more…)

[Translation of an article from El Día of La Plata, Argentina, for December 16. See original article here and related article here.]

The Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Lugano, the partido of Lomas de Zamora in the province of Buenos Aires (1) and the city of Rosario in Santa Fe Province (2) were the sites of tension today over the occupation of land in circumstances requiring police presence.

In Lomas de Zamora, residents of the Campo Tongui neighborhood used burning tires to block traffic on the Camino Negro at Villa Fiorito for several hours to demand that water and electicity be cut off, although the situation was resolved shortly before noon. (more…)

The housing problem and the controversy over immigration

[Translation of an article from La Nación of Buenos Aires for December 10. See original here.]

by Maia Jastreblansky

The origins of the conflict. The violent incidents in Villa Soldati, which have resulted in three deaths so far, have their origins in the serious housing shortage, which has worsened in the southern area of the national capital.

According to the Instituto de la Vivienda de la Ciudad (IVC – City Housing Institute), some 500,000 people in the city are in need of housing assistance. There is a housing emergency resulting from the marked growth of makeshift dwellings.

In the area surrounding the Indoamericano Park, an important green area for the city and the epicenter of the occupations, are Villa 20 and Los Piletones. It is in the context of a housing crisis that the residents of those surrounding areas decided to cross over into the park and begin dividing it up into lots for the construction of new dwellings. (more…)