A billboard of Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looms over a motorway in Venezuela, marking the entrance to a factory designed to produce three things: tractors, influence and angst. The tractors, lined up on the grounds of Veniran, a joint venture between Venezuela and Iran, are for peasants and socialist cooperatives across Latin America.
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/ 4 December 2006
Colombia’s political establishment has been shaken by near-daily allegations of how President Alvaro Uribe’s allies worked with rightwing militias who for more than a decade used terror in pursuit of their own ends. The Supreme Court has ordered six pro-Uribe lawmakers, including the foreign minister’s brother, to answer questions about alleged links with the paramilitaries who are blamed for the murder of thousands of Colombians.
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/ 18 February 2005
The presidents of Colombia and Venezuela met in Caracas this week to patch up frazzled relations after the worst diplomatic row between the South American neighbours for decades. Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe was greeted with a 21-gun salute on his arrival in Caracas to meet Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, who barely a month ago had threatened to break off commercial and diplomatic relations.
Ten years ago, United States Marine Staff Sergeant Mark Hardin arrived in Haiti as part of a US force to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. Earlier this week, after the US had forced Aristide to leave, Hardin was back. ”It looks like nothing’s changed,” he said.