Americas: International Mother Language Day

Americas: International Mother Language Day

Posted By Laura Vidal On 2010-02-24 @ 15:29 pm In Americas, Arts & Culture, Ethnicity, General, History, Indigenous, Language, Spanish, Weblog | 2 Comments

UNESCO invites the world to celebrate the International Mother Language Day ^[1] annually on February 21 to encourage all communities to “promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.” According to Koïchiro Matsuura, former UNESCO Director-General:

…Languages constitute an irreducible expression of human creativity in all its diversity. Tools of communication, perception and reflection, they also shape the way we view the world and provide a link between past, present and future. They bear within them the traces of their
encounters, the diverse sources from which they have borrowed, each according to its own particular history.”

^[2]

Celebration in front of the International Mother Language Day Monument in Ashfield, Sidney (Australia). Photo by Anisur Rahman and used under Wikimedia Commons

In recent times when many of the world languages are in risk of extinction ^[3], this day reminds many of the importance of mother tongues through the discussion about the need to maintain global cultural diversity as long as possible. Part of these efforts, according to Matsuura, include a primary school in Kosovo that has launched a series of exchanges with students from “different schools and nations”; celebrations with poems, indigenous songs, stories, plays, and a ceremony organized in the Philippines titled, “In the Galaxy of Languages, Every Word is a Star.” This celebration has also been important in Bangladesh ^[4], where they have been celebrating the diversity of languages since 1952.

David Galeano Oliveira, in his blog Café Historia [es] ^[5] supports this idea:

Cada lengua refleja una visión única del mundo y una cultura compleja que refleja la forma en la que una comunidad ha resuelto sus problemas en su relación con el mundo, y en la que ha formulado su pensamiento, su sistema filosófico y el entendimiento del mundo que le rodea. Por eso, con la muerte y desaparición de una lengua, se pierde para siempre una parte insustituible de nuestro conocimiento del pensamiento y de la visión del mundo.

Each language reflects a unique vision of the globe and a complex culture that shows the way in which a community solves its problems around their own relationship of the world. It also shows how these peoples have made up their thoughts, their philosophical system and the understanding of their surroundings. This is why, with the death of a language, also comes the loss of an irreplaceable part of our own knowledge and our vision of the world.

The Ongoing Discussion About What is “Good” Spanish

“We ended up losing…we ended up winning…they took the gold and left us the gold…they took everything and left us everything…they left us the words”

Pablo Neruda ^[6]

Most Spanish speakers are located in Latin America ^[7]; of all countries with a majority of Spanish speakers, only Spain and Equatorial Guinea are outside the Americas. For many in the region, Spanish is considered to be their mother tongue based on the long history with Spain. However, the Spanish language differs from country to country, which brings up discussions and debates about origins, forms and “styles”. In the blog Sacando la Lengua [es] ^[8], I tried to underline the fact that these difference are today a futile matter of discussion:

Hace mucho que nos hemos dado cuenta de que el idioma más que algo abstracto pareciera más bien tomar la forma de un animal salvaje; y como tal, cambia, evoluciona y crece. ¿Se podrá dominar a este animal? Muy buena suerte a los que lo intenten. Una vez preso, cambiará de forma. Observar su belleza traerá seguramente muchos menos cotilleos bizantinos que determinar cuál es la exacta, o cuál es la “correcta” forma de hablar la lengua de Lorca, de las versiones y diversiones de Paz, de la hilarante modestia de Borges y de tantos otros que lo hablan y lo transforman hoy. El español que habla esta inmensa cantidad de gente no es, en efecto, el mismo.

It’s been long since we realized that the language, more than something completely abstract, actually seems to take the shape of a savage animal, and as such, it changes, grows and evolves. Is it possible to tame this beast? Good luck to those who dare to try! Once in the cage, it’ll change its features. Just observing its beauty will be surely the best way to avoid wasting time splitting hairs by pointing out which is the best and most accurate way to speak the language of (Federico García) Lorca, the same one that (Octavio) Paz used in his versions and diversions and in which (Jorge Luis) Borges showed his clever modesty. It is the same language so many people use and change today. The Spanish that this large amount of people speak is not the same.

This same idea is backed up by Viviana Mejenes-Knorr, who wrote as guest editor on the blog Lexiophiles [es] ^[9]:

Como cualquier otra lengua ampliamente hablada, el español no es uniforme; en cada país hispanohablante y en cada una de sus regiones, se le añaden sazones gramaticales que crean una colorida gama sociolingüística con rasgos léxicos únicos, además de agregarle diversidad a la pronunciación.

Like any widely-spoken language, Spanish is not uniform. In every Spanish speaking country and its regions, new grammatical flavours are added, and this creates a colourful socio linguistic range with unique lexical features and new diversities in pronunciation.

Other phenomena explored in the blogosphere is the Spanish used in United States. From Argentina, Pedro Ylarri writes in his Blog del Medio [es] ^[10] a review of a new encyclopedia of Spanish in USA, which he considers a turning point in the study of this language inside the country. Pedro underlines the study of the influence of youth and its role in this evolution through technology and also gives his thoughts around the expansion of the language through culture, literature and media:

Junto a los medios de comunicación, la producción cultural plasma el empuje del español en todos sus ámbitos: revistas literarias, cuentos, poesía, teatro, música…, toda manifestación artística es rastreada históricamente hasta nuestros días, según distintas nacionalidades y corrientes.

Ante el mundo de la novela, por ejemplo, Mercedes Cortazar y Eduardo Lago nos presentan una perspectiva complementaria, colocándonos respectivamente ante la pista de las posibilidades de la narrativa escrita en español en Estados Unidos, así como ante la existencia de multitud de escritores hispanos que se expresan en inglés.

With the mainstream media, the cultural production captures the force of the Spanish in all its spheres: literary magazines, short stories, poetry, theatre, and music… All artistic expressions are tracked historically to our days, according to the different nationalities and movements.

In the literary world, for example, Mercedes Cortazar y Eduardo Lago (among other Hispanic writers expressing themselves in English) present a complementary perspective and they give us the clue on the possibilities of Spanish narrative in the States.

Posting now from the Philippines, Manolo Pérez ^[11], a blogger from Spain, observes with fascination the presence of his language in what he considered a far away land:

Realmente el español nunca se ha ido de Filipinas, se habla poco pero permanece en las lenguas locales y, sobre todo, en la Historia y en los archivos de este país, en su literatura, etc. Más que de la vuelta del español hay que hablar de la vuelta de la enseñanza del español.

Este sigue siendo un país de sorpresas y para un español más.

The Spanish language never left the Philippines. It’s not widely spoken, but it still seen in local languages and, most of all, in the history of the country and its literature. More than the return of the Spanish, we should discuss more the return of this language in education.

This is a country full of surprises, even more for a Spaniard.

The Conquest of the Spanish Language and its “Adoption” in the New World

For others in Latin America, one's mother tongue is relative. A brief historical review is summarized in Salon Hogar [es] ^[12] about this spread of the Spanish language in a region where many languages had already been present. The diversity of languages in America was -and still is- immense. Some authors point out that this continent is the most fragmented, from the linguistic point of view, with more than a hundred families of languages, inside which there are also tens or even hundreds of dialects and languages. Nonetheless, some of the most important languages coming from indigenous communities are still alive, given the number of speakers or its influence in the Spanish. Languages like Nahuatl, Taino, Maya, Quechua, Aymara, Guarani and Mapuche are some of the most important examples.

When Christopher Columbus arrived to America in 1492, the Spanish language was already consolidated in Iberian Peninsula and it started a new process in the New World with the crossbreeding and the influence of the Catholic Church. The mixture was very complex, given the diversity, not only of the indigenous communities, but also that of the Spanish that settled in the land.

Many groups are promoting the preservation of their native languages, for example the blog Information Mapuche Chile [es] ^[13]; in which it is underlined the importance of maintaining of indigenous languages:

La oportunidad de utilizar y transmitir el pensamiento y tradiciones en sus lenguas originarias representa no sólo un derecho cultural, sino que una herramienta esencial para asegurar el conocimiento de los derechos humanos. Según datos de la UNESCO, el 90% de todas las lenguas del mundo desaparecerían en los próximos 100 años.

The opportunity to use and transmit thoughts and traditions in its original languages represents not only a cultural right, but also an essential tool to ensure the access and acquaintance of Human Rights. According to UNESCO, 90% of all languages in the world would disappear in the next 100 years.

In the blog Espacio Verde [es] ^[14], a Mexican community working for environmental development, a video is shared in which is seen the linguistic richness of the country.

Also, communities like Jaqi-Aru ^[15], a group of multilingual bloggers in El Alto, Bolivia , are engaged to the promotion of Aymara language in Internet. This group is devoted, thus, to protect the evolution of their own language. Through translation projects and blogging in their native tongue ^[16], Jaqi-Aru looks to contribute with the enrichment of the Aymara language in cyberspace.

In the end, UNESCO's celebration aims to promote the value of each language resulting in the intercultural exchanges. As language represents a cultural door to a new way of thinking and an interpretation of the world. Its main objective is to respect and promote the conservation of such expressions and give them a space in a world that, now more than ever, needs to exchange views, thoughts and grow in its intercultural relations.

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Article printed from Global Voices Online: http://globalvoicesonline.org

URL to article: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/02/24/americas-international-mother-language-day/

URLs in this post:

[1] International Mother Language Day: http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=40278&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

[2] Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Int-mother-lang-day-monument.jpg

[3] world languages are in risk of extinction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_language

[4] in Bangladesh: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/02/21/are-languages-free-thoughts-on-the-international-mother-language-day/

[5] Café Historia [es]: http://cafehistoria.ning.com/profiles/blogs/dia-internacional-de-la-lengua

[6] Pablo Neruda: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda

[7] Spanish speakers are located in Latin America: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language#Latin_America

[8] Sacando la Lengua [es]: http://www.sacandolalengua.com/2010/01/hispanoparlantes-de-la-cite.html

[9] Lexiophiles [es]: http://www.lexiophiles.com/espanol/el-espanol-neutro

[10] writes in his Blog del Medio [es]: http://blogdelmedio.com/2008/12/23/estadisticas-e-informacion-sobre-la-prensa-en-espanol-en-estados-unidos-instituto-cervantes/

[11] Manolo Pérez: http://blogs.hoy.es/manoloperez/2009/2/8/vuelve-espanol-filipinas

[12] Salon Hogar [es]: http://www.salonhogar.com/espanol/lenguaje/lengua/his_esp_ame.htm

[13] Information Mapuche Chile [es]: http://aureliennewenmapuche.blogspot.com/2010/02/ayer-fue-dia-mundial-de-la-lengua.html

[14] Espacio Verde [es]: http://espacioverdemexico.blogspot.com/

[15] Jaqi-Aru: http://www.jaqi-aru.org/

[16] blogging in their native tongue: http://www.jaqi-aru.org/blog

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Colombia: Stop Abuses by Paramilitaries’ Successor Groups

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Government must Protect Civilians, Prosecute Groups’ Members and Accomplices

February 3, 2010

(Bogotá) - Colombia needs to respond effectively to the violent groups committing human rights abuses that have emerged around the country in the aftermath of the flawed demobilization of paramilitary groups, Human Rights Watch says in a report released today.

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The 122-page report, "Paramilitaries' Heirs: The New Face of Violence in Colombia," documents widespread and serious abuses by successor groups to the paramilitary coalition known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC). The successor groups regularly commit massacres, killings, forced displacement, rape, and extortion, and create a threatening atmosphere in the communities they control. Often, they target human rights defenders, trade unionists, victims of the paramilitaries who are seeking justice, and community members who do not follow their orders. The report is accompanied by a multimedia presentation that includes photos and audio of some of the Colombians targeted by the successor groups.

"Whatever you call these groups - whether paramilitaries, gangs, or some other name - their impact on human rights in Colombia today should not be minimized," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "Like the paramilitaries, these successor groups are committing horrific atrocities, and they need to be stopped."

Based on nearly two years of field research, the report describes the successor groups' brutal impact on human rights in Colombia, highlighting four regions where the groups have a substantial presence: the city of Medellín, the Urabá region of Chocó state, and the states of Meta and Nariño. The successor groups pose a growing threat to the enjoyment of human rights in Colombian society. The most conservative estimates, by the Colombian National Police, put the groups' membership at over 4,000, and assert that they have a presence in 24 of Colombia's 32 departments. The groups are actively recruiting new members and despite arrests of some of their leaders, they are moving quickly to replace their leadership and expand their areas of operation.

The rise of the groups has coincided with a significant increase in the national rates of internal displacement from 2004 at least through 2007. Much of the displacement is occurring in regions where successor groups are active. In some areas, like Medellín, where the homicide rate has nearly doubled in the past year, the groups' operations have resulted in a dramatic increase in violence.

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The report documents multiple examples of successor group abuses, including the following:

• While a human rights defender was providing assistance to a victim of the paramilitaries at the victim's home in Antioquia, members of a successor group calling themselves the Black Eagles broke into the house, raped both women, and warned the rights defender to stop doing human rights work. She eventually had to flee town due to continued threats from the group.

• More than 40 people from the Pablo Escobar neighborhood of Medellín were forced to flee their homes between late 2008 and early 2009 as a result of killings and threats by the local armed group, which is partly made up of demobilized paramilitaries.

• In the southern border state of Nariño, most residents in three communities in the coastal municipality of Satinga were displaced after one of the successor groups (then using the name Autodefensas Campesinas de Nariño, or Peasant Self Defense Forces of Nariño) went into one of the towns, killed two young men, and reportedly caused the forced disappearance of a third.

The emergence of the successor groups was predictable, Human Rights Watch said, largely due to the Colombian government's failure to dismantle the paramilitary coalition's criminal networks during the demobilization process, between 2003 and 2006. The government's inadequate implementation of the demobilizations also allowed paramilitaries to recruit civilians to pose as paramilitaries for the demobilization, while keeping portions of their membership active. The report describes, for example, the North Block demobilization, where there is substantial evidence of fraud ordered by AUC leader Rodrigo Tovar (known as "Jorge 40").

The report also expresses concern over alleged toleration of successor groups' activities by some state officials and government security forces. Both prosecutors and senior members of the police said that such toleration was a real obstacle to their work. And in each of the cities and regions Human Rights Watch visited it heard repeated allegations of toleration of successor groups by security forces.

In Nariño, for example, one man complained that "the Black Eagles interrogate us, with the police 20 meters away... [Y]ou can't trust the army or police because they're practically with the guys." In Urabá, a former official said the police in one town appeared to work with the successor groups: "It's all very evident... The police control the entry and exit [of town] and ... they share intelligence." In Meta, an official said he received "constant complaints that the army threatens people, talking about how ‘the Cuchillos' [the main successor group in the region] are coming... In some cases, the army leaves and the Cuchillos come in."

Human Rights Watch said that the Colombian government has legal obligations to protect civilians from harm, prevent abuses, and ensure accountability for abuses when they occur.

But the government has failed to ensure that the police units charged with combating the groups, or the prosecutors charged with investigating them, have adequate resources. It has dragged its feet on funding for the Early Warning System of the Ombudsman's Office, which plays a key role in protecting the civilian population. State agencies have at times denied assistance to civilians who reported being displaced by successor groups. And the government has failed to take effective measures to identify, investigate, and punish state officials who allegedly tolerate the successor groups.

"The Uribe administration has failed to treat the rise of the successor groups with the seriousness the problem requires," Vivanco said. "The government has taken some steps to confront them, but it has failed to make a sustained and meaningful effort to protect civilians, investigate these groups' criminal networks, and go after their assets and accomplices."

Muscling Latin America

By Greg Grandin

This article appeared in the February 8, 2010 edition of The Nation.

January 21, 2010

LLOYD MILLER

In September Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, delivered on an electoral promise and refused to renew Washington's decade-old, rent-free lease on an air base outside the Pacific coast town of Manta, which for the past ten years has served as the Pentagon's main South American outpost. The eviction was a serious effort to fulfill the call of Ecuador's new Constitution to promote "universal disarmament" and oppose the "imposition" of military bases of "some states in the territory of others." It was also one of the most important victories for the global demilitarization movement, loosely organized around the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases, since protests forced the US Navy to withdraw from Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2003. Correa, though, couldn't resist an easy joke. "We'll renew the lease," he quipped, "if the US lets us set up a base in Miami."

Funny. Then Washington answered with a show of force: take away one, we'll grab seven. In late October the United States and Colombia signed an agreement granting the Pentagon use of seven military bases, along with an unlimited number of as yet unspecified "facilities and locations." They add to Washington's already considerable military presence in Colombia, as well as in Central America and the Caribbean.

Responding to criticism from South America on the Colombian deal, the White House insists it merely formalizes existing military cooperation between the two countries under Plan Colombia and will not increase the offensive capabilities of the US Southern Command (Southcom). The Pentagon says otherwise, writing in its 2009 budget request that it needed funds to upgrade one of the bases to conduct "full spectrum operations throughout South America" to counter, among other threats, "anti-U.S. governments" and to "expand expeditionary warfare capability." That ominous language, since scrubbed from the budget document, might be a case of hyping the threat to justify spending during austere times. But the Obama administration's decision to go forward with the bases does accelerate a dangerous trend in US hemispheric policy.

In recent years, Washington has experienced a fast erosion of its influence in South America, driven by the rise of Brazil, the region's left turn, the growing influence of China and Venezuela's use of oil revenue to promote a multipolar diplomacy. Broad social movements have challenged efforts by US- and Canadian-based companies to expand extractive industries like mining, biofuels, petroleum and logging. Last year in Peru, massive indigenous protests forced the repeal of laws aimed at opening large swaths of the Amazon to foreign timber, mining and oil corporations, and throughout the region similar activism continues to place Latin America in the vanguard of the anti-corporate and anti-militarist global democracy movement.

Such challenges to US authority have led the Council on Foreign Relations to pronounce the Monroe Doctrine "obsolete." But that doctrine, which for nearly two centuries has been used to justify intervention from Patagonia to the Rio Grande, has not expired so much as slimmed down, with Barack Obama's administration disappointing potential regional allies by continuing to promote a volatile mix of militarism and free-trade orthodoxy in a corridor running from Mexico to Colombia.

The anchor of this condensed Monroe Doctrine is Plan Colombia. Heading into the eleventh year of what was planned to phase out after five, Washington's multibillion-dollar military aid package has failed to stem the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States. More Andean coca was synthesized into cocaine in 2008 than in 1998, and the drug's retail price is significantly lower today, adjusted for inflation, than it was a decade ago.

But Plan Colombia is not really about drugs; it is the Latin American edition of GCOIN, or Global Counterinsurgency, the current term used by strategists to downplay the religious and ideological associations of George W. Bush's bungled "global war on terror" and focus on a more modest program of extending state rule over "lawless" or "ungoverned spaces," in GCOIN parlance.

Starting around 2006, with the occupation of Iraq going badly, Plan Colombia became the counterinsurgent marquee, celebrated by strategists as a successful application of the "clear, hold and build" sequence favored by theorists like Gen. David Petraeus. Its lessons have been incorporated into the curriculums of many US military colleges and cited by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a model for Afghanistan. Not only did the Colombian military, with support from Washington, weaken the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), Latin America's oldest and strongest insurgency, but according to the Council on Foreign Relations, it secured a state presence in "many regions previously controlled by illegal armed groups, reestablishing elected governments, building and rebuilding public infrastructure, and affirming the rule of law." Plan Colombia, in other words, offered not just a road map to success but success itself. "Colombia is what Iraq should eventually look like," wrote Atlantic contributor Robert Kaplan, "in our best dreams."

Traditionally in most counterinsurgencies, the "clear" stage entails a plausibly deniable reliance on death-squad terror--think Operation Phoenix in Vietnam or the Mano Blanca in El Salvador. The Bush administration was in office by the time Plan Colombia became fully operational, and according to the Washington Post's Scott Wilson, it condoned the activities of right-wing paramilitaries, loosely organized as the United Self-Defense Forces, or AUC in Spanish. "The argument at the time, always made privately," Wilson writes, "was that the paramilitaries"--responsible for most of Colombia's political murders--"provided the force that the army did not yet have." This was followed by the "hold" phase, a massive paramilitary land grab. Fraud and force--"sell, or your widow will," goes many an opening bid--combined with indiscriminate fumigation, which poisoned farmlands, to turn millions of peasants into refugees. Paramilitaries, along with their narcotraficante allies, now control about 10 million acres, roughly half of the country's most fertile land.

After parts of the countryside had been pacified, it was time to "build" the state. Technically, the United States considers the AUC to be a terrorist organization, part of the narcoterrorist triptych, along with FARC and the narcos, that Southcom is pledged to fight. But Plan Colombia did not so much entail an assault on the paras--aside from the most recalcitrant and expendable--as create a venue through which, by defining public policy as perpetual war, they could become the state itself. Under the smokescreen of a government-brokered amnesty, condemned by national and international human rights groups for institutionalizing impunity, paras have taken control of hundreds of municipal governments, establishing what Colombian social scientist León Valencia calls "true local dictatorships," consolidating their property seizures and deepening their ties to narcos, landed elites and politicians. The country's sprawling intelligence apparatus is infiltrated by this death squad/narco combine, as is its judiciary and Congress, where more than forty deputies from the governing party are under investigation for ties to the AUC.

Plan Colombia, in other words, has financed the opposite of what is taking place in neighboring Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, where progressive movements are fitfully trying to "refound" their societies along more inclusive lines. In place of the left's "participatory democracy," Colombian President Álvaro Uribe offers "democratic security," a social compact whereby those who submit to the new order are promised safe, even yuppified cities and secure highways, while oppositional civil society suffers intimidation and murder. Colombia remains the hands-down worst repressor in Latin America. More than 500 trade unionists have been executed since Uribe took office. In recent years 195 teachers have been assassinated, and not one arrest has been made for the killings. And the military stands accused of murdering more than 2,000 civilians and then dressing their bodies in guerrilla uniforms in order to prove progress against the FARC.

It also seems that many right-wing warriors are not cut out for the quiet life offered by the Paz Uribista. The Bogotá-based think tank Nuevo Arco Iris reports mini civil wars breaking out among "heirs of the AUC" for control of local spoils. Yet Plan Colombia continues to be hailed. Flying home from a recent Bogotá-hosted GCOIN conference, the former head of Southcom wrote on his blog that Colombia is a "must see" tourist spot, having "come a long, long way in controlling a deep-seated insurgency just over two hours flight from Miami--and we could learn a great deal from their success."

Seen in light of his escalation in Afghanistan, Obama's support for the Colombian base deal endorses the kind of elastic threat assessment that has turned the "long war" against radical Islam into a wide war where ultimate victory will be a world absent of crime--"counterinsurgen-
cies without end," as Andrew Bacevich recently put it.

Shortly after the fall of Baghdad, Washington tried to conscript all of Latin America in the fight. In October 2003 it pushed the Organization of American States to include corruption, undocumented migration, money laundering, natural and man-made disasters, AIDS, environmental degradation, poverty and computer hacking alongside terrorism and drugs as security threats. In 2004 an Army War College strategist proposed "exporting Plan Colombia" to all of Latin America, which Donald Rumsfeld tried to do later that year at a regional defense ministers meeting in Ecuador. He was rebuffed; countries like Chile and Brazil refuse to subordinate their militaries, as they did during the cold war, to US command.

So the United States retrenched, setting about to fight the wide war in a narrower place, creating a security corridor running from Colombia through Central America to Mexico. With a hodgepodge of treaties and projects, such as the International Law Enforcement Academy and the Merida Initiative, Obama is continuing the policies of his predecessors, spending millions to integrate the region's military, policy, intelligence and even, through Patriot Act-like legislation, judicial systems. This is best thought of as an effort to enlarge the radius of Plan Colombia to create a unified, supra-national counterinsurgent infrastructure. Since there is "fusion" among Latin American terrorists and criminals, goes a typical argument in a recent issue of the Pentagon's Joint Force Quarterly, "countering the threat will require fusion on our part."

At the same time, schemes like the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project are using World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank financing to synchronize the highway, communication and energy networks of Mexico, Central America and Colombia, blending the North American and Central American free-trade treaties and, eventually, the pending Colombian Free Trade Agreement into a seamless whole. Thomas Shannon, Bush's top envoy to Latin America and Obama's ambassador to Brazil, called these initiatives "armoring NAFTA."

"Fusion" is a good word for this integration, since the melding of neoliberal economics and counterinsurgent diplomacy is explosive. One effect of Plan Colombia has been to diversify the violence and corruption endemic to the cocaine trade, with Central American and Mexican cartels and military factions taking over export of the drug to the United States. This cycle of violence is reinforced by the rapid spread of mining, hydroelectric, biofuel and petroleum operations, which wreak havoc on local ecosystems, poisoning land and water, and by the opening of national markets to US agroindustry, which destroys local economies. The ensuing displacement either creates the assorted criminal threats the wide war is waged to counter or provokes protest, which is dealt with by the avengers the wide war empowers.

Throughout Latin America, a new generation of community activists continues to advance the global democracy movement that was largely derailed in the United States by 9/11. They provide important leadership to US environmental, indigenous, religious and human rights organizations, working to develop a comprehensive and sustainable social-justice agenda. But in the Mexico-Colombia corridor, activists are confronting what might be called bio-paramilitarism, a revival of the old anticommunist death-squad/planter alliance, energized by the current intensification of extractive and agricultural industries. In Colombia, Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities fighting paras who have seized land to cultivate African palm for ethanol production have been evicted by mercenaries and the military [see Teo Ballvé, "The Dark Side of Plan Colombia," June 15, 2009]. From Panama to Mexico, rural protesters are likewise targeted. In the Salvadoran department of Cabañas, for instance, death squads have executed four leaders--three in December--who opposed the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining Company's efforts to dig a gold mine in their community.

And in Honduras, human rights organizations say palm planters have recruited forty members of Colombia's AUC as private security following the June overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya. That coup was at least partly driven by Zelaya's alliance with liberation-theologian priests and other environmental activists protesting mining and biofuel-induced deforestation. Just a month before his overthrow, Zelaya--in response to an investigation that charged Goldcorp, another Vancouver-based company, with contaminating Honduras's Siria Valley--introduced a law that would have required community approval before new mining concessions were granted; it also banned open-pit mines and the use of cyanide and mercury. That legislation died with his ouster. Zelaya also tried to break the dependent relationship whereby the region exports oil to US refineries only to buy back gasoline and diesel at monopolistic prices; he joined Petrocaribe--the alliance that provides cheap Venezuelan oil to member countries--and signed a competitive contract with Conoco Phillips. This move earned him the ire of Exxon and Chevron, which dominate Central America's fuel market. Since the controversial November 29 presidential elections, Honduras has largely fallen off the media's radar, even as the pace of repression has accelerated. Since the State Department's recognition of that vote, about ten opposition leaders have been executed--roughly half of the number killed in the previous five months.

It didn't have to be this way. Latin America does not present a serious military danger. No country is trying to acquire a nuclear weapon or cut off access to vital resources. Venezuela continues to sell oil to the United States. Obama is popular in Latin America, and most governments, including those on the left, would have welcomed a demilitarized diplomacy that downplays terrorism and prioritizes reducing poverty and inequality--exactly the kind of "new multilateralism" Obama called for in his presidential campaign.

Yet because Latin America presents no real threat, there is no incentive to confront entrenched interests that oppose a modernization of hemispheric relations. "Obama," said a top-level Argentine diplomat despairingly, "has decided that Latin America isn't worth it. He gave it to the right."

The White House could have worked with the Organization of American States to restore democracy in Honduras. Instead, after months of mixed signals, Obama capitulated to Senate Republicans and endorsed a murderous regime. Washington could try to advance a new hemispheric economic policy, balancing Latin American calls for equity and development with corporate profits. But the Democratic Party remains Wall Street's party, and shortly after taking office Obama abandoned his pledge to renegotiate NAFTA. With Washington's blessing the IMF continues to push Latin American countries to liberalize their economies. In December Arturo Valenzuela, Obama's assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, caused a scandal in Argentina when he urged the country to return to the investment climate of 1996--which would be something like Buenos Aires calling on the United States to reinflate the recent Greenspan bubble.

The Obama administration could reconsider Plan Colombia and the Pentagon's base agreement. But that would mean rethinking a longer, multi-decade, bipartisan, trillion-dollars-and-counting "war on drugs," and Obama has other wars to extricate himself from--or not, as the case may be.

Unable or unwilling to make concessions on these and other issues important to Latin America--normalizing relations with Cuba, for instance, or advancing immigration reform--the White House is adopting an increasingly antagonistic posture. Hillary Clinton, following a visit to Brazil by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, warned Latin Americans to "think twice" about "the consequences" of engagement with Iran. Bolivia denounced the comments as a threat, Brazil canceled a scheduled meeting between its foreign minister and Valenzuela, and even Argentina, no friend of Iran, grew irritated. As the Argentine diplomat quoted above told me, "The Obama administration would never talk to European countries like that."

Insiders report that high-level State Department officials are furious at Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in recent months has been as steadfast as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez in opposing Washington's ongoing militarism, particularly the White House's attempt to legitimize the Honduran coup. Having successfully thwarted a similar destabilization campaign against Bolivian president Evo Morales in 2008, Brazil, according to Lula's top foreign-policy adviser, Marco Aurélio Garcia, is worried that Obama's Honduras policy is "introducing the 'theory of the preventive coup' in Latin America"--by which Garcia means an extension of Bush's preventive war doctrine.

In a region that has not seen a major interstate war for more than seventy years, Brazil is concerned that the Pentagon's Colombian base deal is escalating tensions between Colombia and Venezuela. The US media have focused on Chávez's warning that the "winds of war" were blowing through the region, but Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, places blame for the crisis squarely on Washington. Chávez, Amorim said, "had backed away from that statement. To talk about war--a word which should never be uttered--is one thing. Another is the practical and objective issues of the Colombian bases.... If Iran or Russia were to establish a base in Venezuela, that would also worry us."

There are also indications that the White House is hoping an upcoming round of presidential elections in South America will restore pliable governments. On a recent trip to Buenos Aires, for instance, Valenzuela met with a number of extreme right-wing politicians but not with moderate opposition leaders, drawing criticism from center-left President Cristina Fernández's government. In January a right-wing billionaire, Sebastián Piñera, was elected president of Chile. And if Lula's Workers Party loses Brazil's October presidential vote, as polls indicate is a possibility, the Andean left will be increasingly isolated, caught between the Colombia-Mexico security corridor to the north and administrations more willing to accommodate Washington's interests to the south. Twenty-first-century containment for twenty-first-century socialism. Fidel Castro, normally an optimist, has recently speculated that before Obama finishes his presidency, "there will be six to eight rightist governments in Latin America."

Until that happens, the United States is left with a rump Monroe Doctrine and an increasingly threatening stance toward a region it used to call its own.

About Greg Grandin

Greg Grandin teaches at New York University and is the author of Empire's Workshop and, most recently, of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City, a 2009 National Book Award finalist

Islamic militants boosting role in drug trade - Washington Times

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Claude Salhani THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The sea lanes of the South Atlantic have become a favored route for drug traffickers carrying narcotics from Latin America to West and North Africa, where al Qaeda-related groups are increasingly involved in transporting the drugs to Europe, intelligence officials and counternarcotics specialists say.

A Middle Eastern intelligence official said his agency has picked up "very worrisome reports" of rapidly growing cooperation between Islamic militants operating in North and West Africa and drug lords in Latin America. With U.S. attention focused on the Caribbean and Africans lacking the means to police their shores, the vast sea lanes of the South Atlantic are wide open to illegal navigation, the official said.

"The South Atlantic has become a no-man's sea," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity owing to the nature of his work.

A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) confirmed the new route.

"The Colombians have shifted their focus from sending cocaine through the Caribbean, and they saw an opportunity to sell cocaine in Europe, transshipping it through the South Atlantic from Venezuela and then to Africa, through Spain and into Europe," DEA spokesman Michael Sanders told The Washington Times. "That's what we're seeing. It's just a new location. That's the route they're taking, for the most part."

The Washington Times reported in March that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese Shi'ite group, is deeply involved in the drug trade. Increasingly, however, Sunni groups linked to al Qaeda are also dealing in narcotics to finance their organizations, specialists say.

"It's a weapon against the infidels in the West," said Chris Brown, a senior research associate at the Potomac Institute outside Washington. "As long as the target of the drug trade is the infidels, they have no problem doing it."

Concerns center on groups such as al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), which operates primarily in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. North African officials say they worry that AQIM is amassing large sums of money from the drug trade to use in financing attacks, with the object of frightening away tourists, undercutting local economies and, ultimately, secular regimes.

Much of the drug trafficking passes through Venezuela, said Jaime Daremblum, the director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the Hudson Institute and a former Costa Rican ambassador to the United States.

"Caracas has become the cathedral of narco-traffickers," he said.

Colombian and Peruvian drugs pass through Venezuela en route to Africa and then are transshipped to European markets, anti-drug specialists say. The FARC guerrilla movement, which seeks to destabilize the government of Colombia, is involved and has links to the Islamists in North Africa, they say.

"Most of the drugs that are available in Spain come from Venezuela," Mr. Daremblum said.

Venezuelan Ambassador to Washington Bernardo Alvarez said the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has nothing to do with the trafficking and actively fights against it.

"Do not forget that Venezuela is between the biggest producer of drugs [Colombia] and the biggest consumer of drugs [the U.S.]," Mr. Alvarez said in an e-mail. To accuse Venezuela of responsibility "would be like saying the U.S. government is blessing the trafficking of weapons to Mexico, considering that around 90 percent of the weapons confiscated in Mexico originate in the U.S."

The ambassador added, "Venezuela has adopted a comprehensive anti-drug strategy that includes prevention, drug seizures, arrests and extraditions of criminals, destruction of clandestine airstrips, and the monitoring of possible drug routes.

"Venezuela has cooperative anti-drug agreements with 37 countries, including France, Spain and Portugal. Venezuela's fight against drugs has been recognized and lauded by the Organization of American States and even the International Criminal Police Organization."

Michael Shifter, vice president for policy of the Inter-American Dialogue, a center in Washington that focuses on Latin America, said, "Venezuela is a major transshipment point" for drugs, but he said the problem is complex.

"The drug traffickers are having a field day," he said. "The FARC is clearly involved, but there are a lot more actors."

Intelligence officials and other specialists said some of the deals between Islamist groups and narco-traffickers are negotiated in the West African country of Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony where corruption is rampant.

In a recent report, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said there is "a real risk of Guinea-Bissau becoming Africa's first narco-state."

The ICG, a think tank based in Washington and Brussels that focuses on conflict prevention and amelioration, added that "in the absence of effective state and security structures, the country has become a prime transit point for drug trafficking from Latin America to Europe."

The Middle East intelligence official said the CIA tries to monitor the trafficking but cannot stop it in a country where Islamists and drug dealers buy impunity by paying hefty bribes to officials.

The official suggested that a joint tracking center be set up to coordinate data on air and plane shipments on both sides of the South Atlantic.

"If the South Americans know of a ship or plane coming to Africa, they can inform us, and we will track it from here," the official said.

Mr. Sanders of the DEA said his organization "knows there are extremist groups in West Africa, but at this point we don't know if they're playing a role in narcotics trafficking."

• Sara A. Carter contributed to this story from Washington.

Ex-Soldiers Want to Reveal Chile Dirty War Secrets - NYTimes.com

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SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- Hundreds of former military draftees rallying outside Chile's presidential palace were asked Sunday to come forward and reveal crimes they committed and witnessed during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

The draftees have long feared that if they name names and reveal where bodies are buried, they will face prosecution by the courts or retaliation by those who ordered them to torture and kill.

But now the information they once promised to carry to their graves has become both a heavy psychological burden and a bargaining chip. By offering confessions, some of these now-aging men believe they can improve their chances of getting government pensions and mental health care.

''Perhaps today is the day when the moment has come, for us to describe what we saw and what we suffered inside the military bases, the things that we witnessed and that we did,'' said Fernando Mellado, who leads the Santiago chapter of the Former Soldiers of 1973.

Mellado told his fellow former soldiers that he's made little progress with lawmakers as he lobbies for military draftees to be recognized as victims of the dictatorship, in part because no one understands what they went through.

''Our human rights were also violated,'' he declared. ''The moment has come for former military draftees to tell our wives, our families, the politicians, the society, the country and the whole world about the brutalities they subjected us to. I believe the moment has come for us to speak, for our personal redemption.''

Mellado has been working with similar groups across Chile to figure out whether and how to turn over the information. He urged those in the crowd to provide their evidence to him, and promised to protect their anonymity.

Of the 8,000 people drafted as teenagers from Santiago alone in the tumultuous year when Pinochet overthrew Salvador Allende's government and cemented his hold on power, Mellado believes ''between 20 and 30 percent are willing to talk.''

A small crowd among the former draftees was inspired enough by Mellado's call to immediately approach Associated Press journalists at the rally.

''They made me torture -- I am a torturer -- because they threatened me that if I didn't torture, they would kill me,'' volunteered Jorge Acevedo. He said several prisoners died when he applied electricity during torture sessions, and that their bodies may have been dumped in abandoned mines at the Cerro Chena prisoner camp.

Chilean security forces killed 3,186 people during the dictatorship, including 1,197 who were made to disappear, according to an official count.

In nearly two decades of democracy since then, less than 8 percent of the disappeared have been found, said Viviana Diaz of the Assembly of Family Members of the Disappeared Detainees.

Hundreds of recovered remains, some just bone fragments, have yet to be identified. Only those who buried the bodies know where other common graves lie. Diaz, for one, hopes the former draftees do start talking, even if they do so in a way that avoids prosecution.

Chilean law allows for a ''just following orders'' defense if people submit to the mercy of the courts, naming names and providing information that could help resolve some of the thousands of crimes committed under Pinochet's 1973-1990 rule.

The defense ''theoretically applies and exists'' in Chile, and judges can even have people testify in secret, said attorney Hiram Villagra, who represents families of the dead and disappeared.

But most former soldiers fear the consequences for themselves and their families. Some worry that judges who rose through the ranks under Pinochet might protect their former superior officers instead.

Mellado maintains that the former draftees also are victims -- forced into service as minors and made to do unspeakable things -- and that many now want to get it off their chests.

One confessed to shooting an entire family. Another -- now an alcoholic who sleeps in the street in Santiago -- said he was forced to drown a 7-year-old boy in a barrel of hardening plaster. Others describe harrowing torture sessions, and loading bodies onto helicopters to be dumped at sea.

''Our mission was to stand guard outside, and listen to their screams,'' former draftee Jose Paredes said as he told the AP about his service at the Tejas Verdes torture center. ''They would end up destroyed, torn apart, their teeth and faces broken.''

''There are things that I've always said I will take to the grave,'' Paredes said, his grizzled face running with tears as he named a half-dozen officers who he said gave the orders. ''I've never told this to anyone.''

The Chilean government has made several high-profile efforts to resolve dirty war crimes, but Mellado said former draftees who wanted to testify were turned away: The Defense Ministry sent them to civilian courts, while civilian authorities considered them to be military.

Villagra agrees the time is overdue for the soldiers to seek redemption -- and sent a message of support for Mellado's efforts to gather their testimony.

''Clearly there is no desire from our part for these soldiers to carry the burden of guilt of the officers, who were the ones who made the decisions,'' Villagra said.

An AP review found 769 current and former security officers, most of them military, have been prosecuted for murders and other human rights violations. Almost all deny committing crimes. Only 276 have been sentenced.

Much of the evidence came from former prisoners. Testimony from former soldiers could do much to resolve these cases.

Ousted Leader, Manuel Zelaya, Returns to Honduras - NYTimes.com

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By ELISABETH MALKIN

MEXICO CITY — Three months after he was expelled in a dawn coup, the deposed president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, sneaked back into his country on Monday, forcing world leaders gathered in New York to refocus their attention on the political stalemate to the south and presenting a new challenge to the de facto government.

After what he described as a 15-hour trek through the mountains, taking back roads to avoid checkpoints, Mr. Zelaya and his wife took refuge at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. He did not say which country he crossed into Honduras from.

At the embassy, he gave a series of interviews with the international news media, saying that he hoped to begin meeting with “prominent Hondurans” and members of the de facto government that ousted him to find an end to the crisis that has engulfed the country since he was exiled on June 28.

“We ask those in the coup government to think and to come to dialogue with us,” he told Al Jazeera’s English network.

His return appeared to have caught the de facto government by surprise. Roberto Micheletti, who was appointed president by Congress, at first denied that Mr. Zelaya had returned, calling the reports “media terrorism.”

But on Monday evening, after imposing a nationwide curfew, he acknowledged Mr. Zelaya’s presence but said it “changes nothing of our reality.” He called on Brazil to hand Mr. Zelaya over for arrest and trial.

“We are waiting for him,” Mr. Micheletti said in a news conference earlier in the day. “A court is ready to proceed against him legally, and a jail is also ready.”

The de facto government has said that Mr. Zelaya would be arrested if he tried to return, citing 18 charges against him, including treason.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday evening that the two sides must find a way to talk. “It’s imperative that dialogue begin,” she said. “It’s also imperative that the return of President Zelaya does not lead to any conflict or violence, but instead that everyone act in a peaceful way to try to find some common ground.”

President Óscar Arias of Costa Rica, who has led the international negotiations on Honduras, offered to go to Honduras to mediate if he were asked.

Mr. Arias and Mrs. Clinton were meeting in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting there.

Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, also in New York, denied that Brazil had helped plan the return of Mr. Zelaya and his wife, Xiomara Castro, to Honduras. He said they had arrived at the embassy through “their own peaceful methods.”

Mr. Amorim did not say whether there was a time limit on Mr. Zelaya’s stay in the embassy, but he stressed that the Organization of American States should renew efforts to negotiate a solution. “If the O.A.S. doesn’t work to give guarantees to a democratically elected government, in the case of a coup like this, then what is the O.A.S. for?” he said.

Delegates from the organization met late Monday in Washington to discuss the crisis.

Mr. Zelaya has accepted a proposal offered by Mr. Arias that would restore him to the presidency with limited powers and grant an amnesty on all sides. Mr. Micheletti has rejected it.

As the talks have stalled and the international community has turned its attention elsewhere, Mr. Zelaya has grown impatient.

Since the coup, he has tried to return to Honduras at least twice. A week after the coup, he tried to fly into the Tegucigalpa airport, but soldiers massed on the tarmac and blocked his plane from landing.

In July, he set up camp with his supporters just over the border in Nicaragua, and stepped briefly into Honduran territory before returning to Nicaragua. Rumors that Mr. Zelaya was already in the country, or was about to return, have circulated through the capital repeatedly since then.

The curfew was announced just 30 minutes before it took effect at 4 p.m. Monday, sending residents of the capital rushing to get home and tying traffic in knots, residents said.

At the time of his removal, Mr. Zelaya was planning a nonbinding referendum that his opponents said would have been the first step toward allowing him to run for another term in office, which is forbidden under the Honduran Constitution. Mr. Zelaya has denied any attempt to run for re-election.

No country has recognized the de facto government of Mr. Micheletti. President Obama and other leaders in the hemisphere have insisted that Mr. Zelaya be returned to office, contending that he was removed in a coup. The United States, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have all suspended aid to Honduras in protest.

But the Micheletti government has stood fast, insisting that Mr. Zelaya was removed from office legally. Mr. Micheletti has promised to hand over power to a new president who will be elected in national elections scheduled for Nov. 29.

Alexei Barrionuevo contributed reporting from New York.

Soccer spoken here - Philadelphia Inquirer

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By Michael Matza

Inquirer Staff Writer

On a patchy South Jersey playground, on a summer Sunday afternoon, soccer coach Daniel Rodriquez paced in front of the bench - a clump of towels, really.

With one minute left, his team, Achuapa, was locked in a tense, 1-1 game with archrival La Mancha. Watching mostly in silence were about 100 spectators, sprawled on blankets and lawn chairs in the beating sun or under tarps tied to a chain-link fence.

At stake for the players in this immigrant soccer league was another step toward the championship game, to be played today at Campbell's Field, Camden's 6,400-seat riverside stadium.

On weekdays, the men are janitors, landscapers, farmhands, and factory workers across the region. Most Sundays from spring through fall, they seek exercise, camaraderie, competition, and bonds of ethnic identity in the sport many knew in their homelands as fútbol.

For decades, immigrant soccer leagues have flourished in ethnic enclaves throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Today, many are made up mainly of Latinos, but also include players from Africa, the former Soviet Union, and the Caribbean.

"Most of us are from countries where we didn't have much, and soccer is our common denominator," said Liberian immigrant Joe Capehart, a forklift operator.

Capehart directs field operations for Imperial Azteca, the 900-player amateur league that includes Achuapa, La Mancha, and 26 other teams. It bills itself as the region's "premier" league and is among the largest.

Azteca was founded in Camden in 2003 by Milton Valdovinos, 33, a Mexican immigrant who owns Plaza Tepis Sports on Federal Street, where players often shop for uniforms and equipment.

But the economics of immigrant soccer do not end with striped shirts and shorts.

Including insurance and referees' fees for the 20-game season, each 22-man team pays about $600 a year to enroll in the Azteca league. On some teams, each player antes up his share. For other teams, such as Achuapa, the managers foot the bill. Some might even pay for players' cleats, uniforms - and a few tortillas now and then.

Those are usually available at the games, where league-authorized vendors do a lively business in Latino comfort food: refried beans, sugary Mexican soft drinks, and homemade, wagon-wheel-shaped crisps of fried dough called chicharrines.

In the proud subculture of immigrant soccer, newcomers to America feel at home on the field and the sidelines. And men like Achuapa manager Rodriguez - a cleaning-company manager with enough spare income to subsidize a team - live the dream of a sports career.

A final extravaganza

As the ball squirted free from a jarring tackle in the Achuapa-La Mancha game, fans shouted at the referee, "Es una mano, señor!" It's a hand ball, sir!

The ref ignored them.

Rodriguez, 35, a study in calm, said nothing and seemed confident that his stars, the wily forward Renberto "Diablo" Polanco and hefty fullback Hector "Pork Chop" Aguilar, would come through in the clutch. They played well, but the game ended 1-1.

"Every game is different," explained Rodriguez, reassuring himself he would make the final again this year. "I wasn't really scared because we're always the ones to beat."

So it will be this afternoon.

Achuapa will face Jalapa for the championship at 1, followed by an exhibition game at 4 between Chivas and América, visiting professional teams from Mexico that have been rivals for decades.

In a league rich with players from Latin America, Achuapa and Jalapa are dominated by Guatemalans. Like many teams, they are named for villages or famous teams back home. Most Achuapa players were born in Jutiapa, the half-mile-high town in Guatemala's south-central highlands. Jalapa is a village to the northwest.

Today's final is a far cry from the fields of bad bounces and twisted ankles where previous championships were played.

Valdovinos, Azteca's founder, is the impresario behind the 2009 extravaganza. The costs - including stadium rent, airfare for the two 18-member Mexican teams, accommodations at the Philadelphia Sheraton - could exceed $100,000, he said.

While admission to regular-season games is free, tickets for today's games are $20 and $25. If Campbell's Field sells out, proceeds will be about $150,000. Valdovinos said he would like to use at least a portion of any profit to improve Camden's playing fields.

"This helps, first of all, my business - I don't want to lie," he said. But sprucing up city parks is important, too, "because the soccer fields in this area are not good."

Social goals

Nonetheless, from such challenging turf across the region have sprung many immigrant leagues. There is no definitive number, since some are organized and others are little more than pickup games.

But the common thread goes well beyond sport. Participants across the leagues say the weekly games, while a connection to a familiar past, are also an informal marketplace for new and established immigrants to share information about jobs, affordable housing, and social services.

Liga Amistad, a six-team "Friendship League," was founded in Philadelphia in 2005, with weekly games at Sacks Playground on Washington Avenue in Southwark.

Organizers say the league, made up mostly of Mexicans, was created to address a drinking problem in the community.

"The guys would spend the day kind of partying, doing not-so-productive activities," said Varsovia Fernandez, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and one of the league's volunteer commissioners.

"In the Latino culture, Sunday is a family day. Now soccer brings them together in a healthy, recreational environment, and the wives and children come to watch."

For women who want to do more than watch, there is International Soccer 7, a female league of about 100 members on teams of seven players each. It was founded six years ago in South Philadelphia by Ruth Bull, 42, a player on Mexico's 2000 Olympic team who was sidelined by knee surgery.

For immigrants who work all week to support families in America or send remittances abroad, "soccer gives us something to do. It is a nice pastime," said Antiqua-born Mitch Williams, 41, a home remodeler who lives in Somerdale with his wife and four children.

A sinewy midfielder with a powerful kick, he modestly admitted to being able to "take a shot at a good distance with some force" - affirmed on a recent Sunday by the rocket shot he took from 50 yards out. It seemed to be still accelerating as it sailed over the goal.

As the only English speaker among Hispanics on the team called Juventud, Williams depends on body language and hand signals to communicate.

"When I first started playing, I would get so upset because there were simple little things that could improve the team's quality of play, but I couldn't communicate," said Williams, who is deeply competitive on the field.

"After dealing with it week after week . . . I started to see it from a different perspective," he said. "It's an opportunity to really let go. It's a type of joy we get nowhere else. We've been doing this since we were little kids without shoes in the streets."

Mexico Replaces Attorney General as Drug Violence Soars - WSJ.com

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MEXICO CITY -- President Felipe Calderón on Monday replaced his longtime attorney general, one of the key figures in his government's effort to bring Mexico's powerful drug cartels to heel, as the country's drug violence continues to spiral.

In a short speech, Mr. Calderón said Arturo Chávez, a former attorney general of northern Chihuahua state, was replacing Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora. Chihuahua's largest city, Ciudad Juárez, has become the epicenter of Mexico's drug violence. Just last week, gunmen took over a drug rehabilitation center there and executed 18 patients, marking a new and grisly milestone in the country's drug violence.

Mr. Calderón also announced changes at the agriculture ministry and at state oil company Pemex. Mr. Calderón named former Pemex Chief Financial Officer Juan José Suárez Coppel as the company's new chief executive, taking over from Jesús Reyes Heroles, a former energy minister. Mr. Suárez Coppel takes the reins at a tough time for the oil giant: Output has fallen to 2.5 million barrels a day from a peak of 3.4 million in 2004 amid a dramatic decline in output from Mexico's main oil field, Cantarell.

The changes come as Mr. Calderón tries to regain political traction following July midterm legislative elections in which his center-right National Action Party suffered a major defeat to the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, which now has the most seats in the lower house of Congress.

Since coming to power in 2006, Mr. Calderón has made the fight against Mexico's warring cartels the centerpiece of his policy. He has deployed an estimated 40,000 soldiers to cities like Ciudad Juárez to take on the drug gangs, using soldiers instead of often-corrupt local police.

More than 13,000 people have died since Mr. Calderon took office, according to newspaper estimates, most victims of internecine warfare between drug cartels fighting over drug routes to the U.S. and increasingly lucrative Mexican drug markets.

Mr. Medina Mora's departure is a boost for Public Security Minister Genaro García Luna: The two men had clashed over Mr. García Luna's plans to create a single national police force under his command. Mexico's Congress killed that plan, but Mr. García Luna has begun creating a de facto national police, his new Federal Police force.

"This shows beyond any doubt that Mr. García Luna is the one driving the drug-war policy and is closest to Mr. Calderón's beliefs and ideas," said Guillermo Zepeda, a criminal justice specialist at Mexico's Center for Development Studies, a think tank.

Mr. Medina Mora, a corporate lawyer, had been attorney general for the last three years. During the previous administration, he served as head of the CISEN, Mexico's equivalent of the U.S.'s Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Calderón said Mr. Medina Mora will continue to serve Mexico in a diplomatic post. Mr. Medina Mora is expected to be named Mexico's ambassador to the U.K., people familiar with the situation say.

Mr. Medina Mora posted some victories, such as the capture of an alleged methamphetamine dealer together with a record stash of $207 million in cash. Mr. Medina Mora also extradited a record number of alleged drug traffickers to the U.S.

But a year ago, his office was shaken by scandal when it was revealed that several top members of the attorney general's office's antidrug unit had been on the payroll of one of Mexico's most powerful drug gangs. Neither Mr. Medina Mora nor Mr. García Luna have been to recapture an alleged top drug dealer, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.

Mr. Chávez, a member of Mr. Calderón's center-right National Action Party, was Chihuahua's attorney general from 1996 to 1998. Jorge Montaño, a former ambassador to the U.S. and a native of Chihuahua, said Mr. Chávez did a good job, but lamented that the president hadn't reached out beyond the ranks of the PAN. "It's all the same gang," he said.

—David Luhnow contributed to this article.

Write to José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com

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Doctored Data Cast Doubt on Argentina

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 16, 2009

BUENOS AIRES -- Workers at the government's National Institute of Statistics call it crass manipulation: Their agency, under pressure from above, altered socioeconomic data to reflect numbers palatable to the presidency. Inflation and poverty miraculously dropped, they said in interviews, and the economy boomed.

At least officially.

"They just erased the real numbers," said Luciano Belforte, an 18-year veteran at the institute. "Reality did not matter."

The alleged manipulation, which is under investigation by anti-corruption prosecutors, has angered Argentines. But in a globalized world, where a pensioner in Italy might be as likely to invest in Argentina as in Fiat, the suspected modifications are being felt far beyond this city.

In fact, an association of community college professors in New Jersey, a cattleman in Colorado and a Latino business group in California say they too are being shortchanged because they hold Argentine bonds. By underreporting inflation figures, economists say, Argentina is cheating investors of proper compensation on nearly $50 billion in debt benchmarked to inflation.

"The way these bonds work is that every month, or every six months, the principal adjusts for inflation," said Robert Shapiro, co-chair of the American Task Force Argentina, a Washington group lobbying for Argentina to pay its debt to American investors. "So if inflation is actually 30 percent, and they're only adjusting 10 percent, that's a huge loss."

Kathy Malachowski, president of the New Jersey professors group, said its pension plan invests in Argentine bonds. "We want to be able to retire and know that our money is going to be there," she said.

Officials at the Economy Ministry, the presidency and the INDEC, as the statistics institute is known, declined interview requests. A spokesman for the Economy Ministry, Sergio Poggi, said the new minister, Amado Boudou, is undertaking a review of INDEC methodology going back to 1999 and is creating a technical council of academics to advise the institute.

"This is the best way for all of us to be sure that things are being done correctly," President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said last month.

But credit-rating agencies and financial investment companies, among them Credit Suisse, say they are skeptical anything will change.

The problems at the INDEC, recounted in interviews with seven current workers and one former administrator, began in late 2006 during the presidency of Fernández de Kirchner's predecessor, her husband, Néstor Kirchner.

In accounts backed up by a 91-page complaint by prosecutors, institute employees recalled incessant phone calls from high-ranking government officials who wondered aloud whether there was a way to arrive at lower inflation numbers.

In early 2007, several statisticians, data-entry clerks and field workers who collect consumer prices were replaced, the prosecutors' investigation has shown. The institute then began to report lower inflation figures, which are used to calculate poverty rates, economic growth and other statistics, according to documents at the attorney general's office.

"It's a maneuver that brought economic consequences and a lack of credibility in the information produced by the Argentine state," said Manuel Garrido, the former anti-corruption prosecutor who brought the case.

Economists say the official inflation rate of 8.5 percent in 2007 was really about 25 percent. In the 12 months ended this June, the INDEC put the rate at 5.3 percent, but economists say it might be three times higher. Argentina's vaunted economic growth this decade might have been exaggerated, too. Credit Suisse said the 7 percent expansion the government reported last year is likely 2 to 3 percent lower.

Political analysts and economists say the allegations have hurt the country's credibility with investors and its ability to access foreign credit, a market closed to Argentina after its 2001 default on $95 billion.

"It's very difficult to analyze the country as a result of statistics that can't be believed," said Fergus McCormick, senior vice president at DBRS, a New York credit-rating agency that tracks Argentina.

The controversy at the INDEC has cast a spotlight on a vital, if little understood, practice of economic planning -- the collection of socioeconomic data. Authorities use the data to set salaries and direct social services. Companies use the information to make long-term plans.

Government critics say officials in Néstor Kirchner's administration began fiddling with the INDEC figures as his wife's campaign to succeed him gathered momentum ahead of the October 2007 election.

Even so, by the spring of 2008, months after taking office, Fernández de Kirchner's popularity had plummeted after the country's powerful agricultural sector revolted against her economic policies. Analysts here say that disbelief over the INDEC figures -- polls showed that only one in 10 Argentines trusted official inflation figures -- further tarnished her image. In June, her ruling coalition was trounced in midterm congressional elections.

Raúl Cabral, who helps run the 120-year-old Progreso food market, said skepticism about the government's data has generated antipathy toward the Kirchners. "The inflation takes away their credibility," Cabral said. "They talk of inflation of 4 percent, and a liter of milk goes from one to two pesos."

What prosecutors call the illegal and arbitrary recording of economic data is said to have first taken place in January 2007. That was when a team headed by Graciela Bevacqua, a mathematician who oversaw the collection of consumer prices, tabulated that month's inflation at nearly 2 percent. Officials, though, released a 1.1 percent rate, said Bevacqua, whose account was backed up by the prosecutors' complaint.

"It was mathematically impossible," said Bevacqua, who no longer works at the institute.

Statisticians, mathematicians and survey-takers who still work at the INDEC described how managers stopped surveying products that had recorded steep price hikes. "If something went up more than 15 percent, they'd take it off the list," said Marcela Almeida, a mathematician and one of several workers deposed by prosecutors.

Almeida said managers would obsess about certain products, such as bread, urging surveyors to come back to the INDEC office with prices that remained low. If they were not low enough, Almeida said, "the person who received their forms would change this price."

The controversy has raised questions about the government's official poverty figure. The INDEC's calculation is 15.3 percent; the Catholic Church says it is closer to 40 percent. After Pope Benedict XVI called poverty in Argentina a "scandal" this month, the government acknowledged that as many as 23 percent of Argentines might be poor.

But economists, among them Juan Bour, of the Latin American Foundation for Economic Investigations, said they expect no major changes in the INDEC's data-gathering. "It would be a recognition of significant failure," Bour said.