Diego Maradona, the Argentinian soccer genius notorious for the ”Hand of God” goal and a post-football descent into drugs, hits the big screen in Cannes on Tuesday in a documentary that also shows him as a staunch critic of the United States. Maradona is revered as a god-like figure in his home country.
The German government on Monday brushed off a verbal attack from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in which the leftist leader said Chancellor Angela Merkel was a political descendant of Adolf Hitler and German fascism. Merkel sets off for her first trip to Latin America on Tuesday.
Bolivia’s richest region of Santa Cruz voted overwhelmingly for autonomy on Sunday in a referendum widely seen as a rejection of President Evo Morales’ leftist reforms, exit polls showed. The ballot was the first of four referendums on greater autonomy from central government being planned by eastern provinces.
President Hugo Chávez is raising Venezuela’s minimum wage by 30% as inflation continues to soar in the oil-producing nation. The socialist leader has signed a decree that will fix the monthly minimum wage at , starting on May 1, International Workers’ Day. Chávez says the move will give Venezuela the highest minimum wage in Latin America.
The highest and oldest wall is that which separates ”us” from ”them”. This is described today as a great divide of religions or ”a clash of civilisations”, which are false concepts, propagated to provide ”the other” — a target for fear and hatred that justifies invasion and plunder, writes John Pilger.
The presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela ended a border dispute on Friday with a summit handshake after a week of regional diplomacy in the face of hostile rhetoric and troop build-ups.”And with this … this incident that has caused so much damage [is] resolved,” leftist Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez accused his Colombian counterpart of war crimes as Venezuela and Ecuador turned up the heat on Bogotá over its military strike on an insurgent camp inside Ecuador. ”A war crime occurred there,” Chávez charged late on Wednesday at a joint press conference with Ecuadorian counterpart Rafael Correa.
Venezuela deployed tanks and its air and sea forces toward the Colombian border in its first major military mobilisation in a crisis with Colombia, the country’s defence minister said on Wednesday. The move escalates tensions in a dispute over a Colombian weekend raid inside another of its neighbours, Ecuador.
Colombia said on Tuesday that Farc rebels had been planning to make a ”dirty bomb” with radioactive material, threatening the entire Latin American region. The charges by Vice-President Francisco Santos marked a dramatic turn in a regional crisis that has seen Venezuela and Ecuador cut diplomatic ties with Colombia.
Colombia’s military said on Saturday its troops had killed a top rebel commander in an attack on a jungle camp across the border in Ecuador in a severe blow to Latin America’s oldest guerrilla insurgency. Raul Reyes, one of seven members of the secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, was killed in an operation that included air strikes and fighting with rebels across the border.
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/ 27 February 2008
Two Venezuelan helicopters flew into Colombia on Wednesday to pick up four lawmakers held hostage for years in jungle camps by Marxist rebels, in a diplomatic victory for Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia last month released two politicians in a deal brokered by Chávez.
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/ 13 February 2008
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez stopped oil exports to Exxon Mobil on Tuesday, escalating a multibillion-dollar fight with the United States company two days after threatening to cut off all supplies to America. The anti-US president’s retaliation for Exxon’s legal offensive pushed oil prices higher in late trading.
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/ 30 January 2008
Venezuelan police swooped down on an ambulance used by robbers escaping a bank siege on Tuesday, arresting all four men and freeing a group of captives to end a two-day hostage stand-off. More than 50 people were held captive before the assailants negotiated an escape plan earlier on Tuesday.
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/ 27 January 2008
‘We’re running out of oil!” We’ve been hearing this warning at least since the 1970s oil shocks, but recently it has been proclaimed with increasing insistence. The idea goes back to 1956, when Shell geologist M King Hubbert declared that the world had enough oil for only about 50 more years, writes Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero.
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/ 14 January 2008
A Colombian woman freed last week after six years as a rebel hostage arrived in Bogota on Sunday and headed straight for a reunion with her son, Emmanuel, born in a jungle camp and then taken away by her captors. A slightly dazed Clara Rojas arrived from Caracas, where she had been since leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez brokered her release.
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/ 10 January 2008
An airborne operation to pluck two hostages from their rebel captors deep in the Colombian jungle lurched back to life on Thursday, after a botched handover attempt collapsed 10 days ago. Two Venezuelan helicopters departed for Colombia at dawn, said a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, in an interview with supermodel Naomi Campbell, predicted that the United States ”empire” is about to fall, called Jesus Christ history’s number one revolutionary and offered to pose topless. ”Why not? Touch my muscles!” the burly 53-year-old former paratrooper said.
A delicate mission to free three hostages held by Colombian guerrillas appeared to collapse on Monday as the government and rebel leaders accused each other of trying to kill the deal. The Venezuela-led plan to pick up two women hostages and a child born to one of them in captivity has been repeatedly delayed since last Thursday.
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/ 30 December 2007
Venezuela President Hugo Chávez promised on Saturday to tackle poor garbage collection and high crime in a bid to win back support for his socialist ”revolution”, which was hurt in a poll defeat a few weeks ago. Chávez spent much of 2007 working on political ”reforms” that would have allowed him to run for re-election indefinitely.
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/ 25 December 2007
Convalescing Cuban leader Fidel Castro has gained weight, is exercising twice daily and is in full control of his mental faculties in a signal of his recovery, his brother Raul Castro said on Monday. Fidel Castro, who took power in a 1959 revolution, handed over temporarily to Raul Castro in July 2006 after undergoing stomach surgery.
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/ 22 December 2007
Venezuelan authorities are standing by to receive three hostages Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels have said could be released as early as this weekend after spending years of captivity in the jungle. ”The mobilisation for the operation has begun,” one source close to the government said.
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/ 5 December 2007
President Hugo Chávez said on Wednesday his push to have Venezuela accept sweeping constitutional reforms has ”not finished” despite being rejected in a weekend referendum. ”The discussion on the transformation of the state is not finished,” he told state VTV television.
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/ 3 December 2007
Oil bounced back above a barrel on Monday as traders bet last week’s nearly sell-off was overdone, and might turn the tides against an expected increase in output by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries when the cartel meets later this week.
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/ 2 December 2007
Venezuelans vote in a tightly contested referendum on Sunday on whether to allow left-wing President Hugo Chávez to stay in power for as long as he keeps winning elections or hand him his first defeat at the polls. The anti-American firebrand, who has easily won one election after another against a fragmented opposition, is in the hardest campaign of his life.
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/ 30 November 2007
Colombian officials on Friday showed recently seized videotapes of rebel-held hostages, among them three United States defence contractors and a former presidential candidate — the first images in years providing evidence the captives may be alive.
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/ 29 November 2007
President Hugo Chávez is encountering unexpectedly strong opposition to a referendum on constitutional reform which would cement his rule in Venezuela, with violent clashes between rival demonstrations and security forces feeding a mood that the country is at a turning point.
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/ 26 November 2007
Colombia and Venezuela faced the worst crisis in their relations in years on Monday after the Colombian president accused Venezuela of seeking to install a Marxist regime in his country and Caracas ”froze” relations between the two countries. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said earlier he was putting bilateral ties in a ”freezer”.
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/ 31 October 2007
Canadian lobster and tuna fisherman Everett Condon had never travelled further south than the United States until this year, when he spent his off-season going to tango shows and getting plastic surgery in Argentina. Like thousands of others, mostly from the United States, Europe and Canada, Condon was drawn to South America’s attractive exchange rates and reputable doctors who are highly skilled due to a local rage for cosmetic surgery.
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/ 29 October 2007
Argentine First Lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner rode an economic boom and her husband’s popularity to victory in a presidential election on Sunday to become the country’s first elected woman leader. Fernandez, a glamorous lawyer and centre-left senator, will take over from President Nestor Kirchner in December.
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/ 22 September 2007
Fidel Castro looked alert and healthier during an hour-long interview taped and aired on Cuban television on Friday, responding to rumours of his death with a defiant ”here I am”. In the first video of the ailing 81-year-old revolutionary seen in more than three months, a pale Castro stayed seated the entire time.