LA Quick Hits: Cochabamba Clash, MAS Scrap, Correa/Uribe Talk, Peron Lives, Hugo Helps Danny, Human Rights Watch Wakes Up & More

• Violence broke out again in Cochabamba yesterday leaving two dead.
  
• Evo's MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) is threatening to scrap the Constitutional Assembly. Evo had previously threatened to impose his reforms by edict if this happened.
  
• Correa is touting the successful dialogue that he had with Uribe (en esp.) concerning the spraying on the border.
  
• Isabel Peron, the former president and the strongman's widow, has an arrest order for her from an Argentine judge. This stems from accusations made about her role of the disappearance of a leftist during the "Dirty War." Peron lives in Spain.
• Nicaragua has signed a couple of pacts with Venezuela to take advantage of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). (en esp.) This is Hugo's version of what we call the FTAA but that our Spanish speaking neighbors refer to as ALCA. Danny's deal gets him a refinery and housing.
• FT has an incredibly tepid op-ed on Hugo's "Left Turn."
• Oppo leader Manuel Rosales said that Hugo wants to perpetuate his reign - I'm glad he told me because I never would have guessed. (en esp.)
• Human Rights Watch rips Hugo for stacking courts and destroying the independent judiciary.
• Human Rights Watch also expressed disappointment over the new and improved UN Commission on Human Rights. I can't believe that it took them this long to realize that the reformed commission is barely an improvement over its previous incarnation. The whole thing should be scrapped - obviously the UN is beyond being an effective defender of Human Rights.
• Cubans paid homage to deceased dissident Miguel Valdes Tamayo. Tamayo died at 50 of a heart attack.
• Posada Carriles has been indicted for lying...that's like saying he has been indicted for breathing. I've said before and I'll say it again - if Posada would have kept his mouth shut and laid low no one would have bothered him. Unfortunately ego, delusions of his supporters and the cloistered hardline Cuban exile community allowed the genius to stage a grand press conference drawing attention to him and his cronies. The US gov't had to act then. The man got what he deserved.
• The UN is looking to help Monterrey Mex with its drug war.
  

Back in Cochabamba

Jim Shultz from Blog from Bolivia is talking about Cochabamba again. Here is his closing:

Today's march, unlike yesterday’s, resulted in no burned buildings (the outside of the governor’s office is all smoke stains and broken windows) and no gassing. It is important to note that, according to everyone I spoke with who was actually there yesterday, the police clearly started firing gas on a peaceful protest and the assault on the state building was an angry reaction. In addition to the march in the city center, protesters have also begun to blockade the highways in and out of town.

Watching it all I couldn’t help feel like the whole scene was about regular people, on both sides, being caught up in a game of political chess not of their making. All of this is about a power struggle between politicians at the highest level. Morales and MAS are fed up with the demand that a minority be given veto power over every procedural move in a Constituent Assembly that is utterly stalled. Manfred Reyes Villa wanted to get in the national political game and did so by allying himself with the anti-Evo forces of the nation’s eastern departments.

Looked at coldly, as political chess, it is easy to wonder whether Ryes Villa looked even a move or two ahead. Even though he played a central role in the water privatization here seven years ago (as Mayor he signed the local water company’s authorization of the , Reyes Villa has never been the target of the social movements that are so powerful here. Not until now.

A month ago he was happily governing his region utterly above the fray of the national political battle over the Assembly. A month ago he looked like a future president just waiting for his moment down the road. The people of Cochabamba voted by an overwhelming 63% against regional autonomy when it was on the ballot six months ago. Why Manfred set out to make himself a champion of what his voters so soundly rejected is anyone’s guess.

Today he has thousands of angry constituents demanding his resignation. And while some observers might say – he benefits from this, he looks like a victim of MAS strong-arming – there is one other rule in politics, be it in Bolivia or anywhere else. Having that many people so pissed off at you that they shut down a city to get you out of office, that isn’t where you want to be.