Sunday readings: 17 August 2008

Our Their Woman In Havana

Diana Barahona,  writing in Spanish in La Republica and in English in Machetera on Cuban double-agent Aleida Godínez:

…Godínez went on to become an independent journalist, and independent librarian, founder of the Cuban Christian Democratic Party, a leader of two independent labor organizations, the right hand of Martha Beatriz Roque, a trusted spy of a CIA officer and a close friend of Frank Calzón, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba. All of the titles and organizations were fictitious, and all followed the orders of the US Interests Section.

In her capacity as celebrity dissident Godínez was a guest on Radio Martí, filing 102 reports about supposed human rights violations between 1992 and 1993. She met with diplomats and delegations from several countries, and recieved copious amounts of money, gifts and free meals. She was tasked with spying for the United States, and carried the required information, gathered by her Cuban handlers, to her American handlers at the USIS.

A fatal obsession… with foreigners

P.M. Corn (Mexico Trucker On-Line) complains that obsessive worry about Mexican truckers operating in the United States is misplaced. The dangers lurk elsewhere

The violations discovered in the bus belonging to Angel Tours that crashed in Sherman Texas Friday morning points to the stupidty and ignorance of a small percentage of people obsessed with ending the Cross Border Pilot Program, which has operated safely for the past 11 months, while ignoring American common carriers who flaunt and ignore the laws and rules thinking it does not apply to them…

Vow of poverty?

Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo was sworn in Friday, promising to “work, work, work.” Lugo, a former Divine Word missionary priest, and later Bishop, was released from his religious obligations by the Pope at his own request. According to the Financial Times (U.K.) he

…sees himself as a moderate.

He will need to be a skilled negotiator, holding together a gaggle of coalition parties, and brokering deals in Congress, where he lacks a majority and outgoing President Nicanor Duarte Frutos is expected to remain an influential force.

He has also vowed to introduce land reform and charge Brazil more for electricity produced from their jointly owned Itaipú hydro-electric dam. Paraguay sells its excess to Brazil at well below market prices.

Mr Lugo also says he will not draw his presidential salary – nearly 16m guaranies ($4,000, €2,750, £2,150) a month – saying: “This money belongs to the poorest.”

Tyler Bridges of McClatchy News‘ Caracas Bureau, attended the inauguration. He has a fine eye for detail.

Lugo’s speech lasted 45 minutes. Afterward, the presidents walked two blocks to the Cathedral. Chavez attracted the biggest yells from the people lining the crowd barrier. He also drew the most attention from the press.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner shook hands the entire way to the Cathedral. I noticed she had a bracelet around her left ankle. I’d never before seen a president with one of those!

I was too far away to see but Peru’s vice president, Luis Giampietri, confirmed to me that Lugo was wearing his trademark Fransican sandals “Without socks!” Giampietri told me.

And, only a toothbrush… with visuals

IT BAFFLES THE MIND to meet some of the mindsets in our country about migrants and the lives they lead, and the pains they go to to find work that will sustain them. The way some xenophobic individuals speak, you’d imagine Mexicans (because it’s always Mexicans to these people) stroking long luxurious mustachios and plotting which part of the USA they will reconquer, just exactly what excellent careers they will steal away from us, and how much of their fat moneyroll they will squander on coyotes. It’s always Mexicans to the haters because for them to acknowledge out loud in one rational conversation that people are coming from Mexico, from Cuba, from Guatemala, from Central America and South America would point to a huge economic crisis and imbalance that any rational person would have to connect back to U.S.

After presenting a BBC News audio slide show on migrants catching freight trains in Lecheria, an industrial park on the far north side of Mexico’s Federal District, the Unapologetic Mexican concludes, “”These politicians are devils in human form. And they are our ‘leaders.”