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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…)

[Translations of two articles from La Jornada of Mexico City for March 18, a day celebrated in Mexico as the anniversary of the expropriation of the country’s petroleum industry in 1938, during the administration of President Lázaro Cárdenas, in office from 1934 to 1940. The resulting state enterprise, Pemex, has supplied the country’s petroleum successfully ever since but in recent years has been the target of privatization attempts by conservatives. Cárdenas is considered the most leftist of the country’s presidents. His son, Cuauhtémoc, also a leftist and also prominent in politics, was at one time head of the government of the Distrito Nacional, ran for president in 1988 and was one of the founders of the Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD).]

Cárdenas says Pemex contract “clearly in violation”

[See original here.]

By Alma E. Muñoz

Mexico, DF – On the 73rd anniversary of the expropriation of petroleum declared by Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, his son, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, spoke of the unconstitutionality of the incentive contracts Petróleos Mexicanos is preparing to award for the exploitation of its Magallanes, Carrizo and Santuario fields. (more…)

[Translation of an article from El Mercurio of Cuenca, Ecuador, for April 18, based on a dispatch from Agence France Presse.]

Quito – Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa announced on Saturday that he will introduce a bill in congress to expropriate the holdings of foreign oil companies that refuse to sign new contracts giving the state control of all production.

“We are sending a bill to the legislative assembly that would give me the means of expropriating oil fields in case the petroleum companies refuse to sign new contracts for the provision of services,” the president stated in his weekly message. (more…)