Lots Going on in Latin America

There's a lot going on in Latin America this weekend that's worth bringing up. First, and most importantly in terms of states and peoples, there is a constitutional crisis brewing in Ecuador. President Rafael Correa is seeking Constitutional change, which is desperately needed in a country with an unfairly strong legislative and judicial branches, and a very weak presidency (hence the presence of 5 different presidents over 8 years). Correa is seeking to strengthen the executive branch, making the President actually be able to effect change in Ecuador without the traditional elites pushing him (or any subsequent presidents) against the will of the people who elected him. Still, the reinstatement of 57 of his opponents to Congress is going to make things difficult. There will be a lot more news coming from Ecuador, but hopefully, they will be able to get constitutional change established so that the President can actually try to help improve his country.

In Mexico City, the council is poised to pass a bill allowing Mexican women the right to an abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. Latin America has almost uniformly rejected the right for a woman to have the option to chose a safe, medical abortion (of course resulting in numerous unsafe abortions, as well as an unfair ability for wealthy women to gain an "unofficial" but medical abortion while the poor are unable to do so). Although this bill is only in Mexico City, and is already facing fierce protest from many sectors of the traditional Catholics in ther city, its importance is huge, both for women in Mexico and as what could end up being the first step in the broader rights of women in Mexico and throughout Latin America.

Finally, there is (of course) Brazil. Lula is in the States this week, following up Bush's visit to Brazil two weeks ago. Of course, the media is once again portraying Lula as far closer and more friendly to Bush than he is (nevermind that just two weeks ago he called Bush's tariffs "nefarious"). While Lula is undeniably involved in open dipolmacy in a non-stand-offish way (I wouldn't quite go so far as to call it "friendly") with the U.S., it's not as if he's a Tony Blair or a John Howard or even a Pervez Musharraf. It looks like this visit will have very little outcome or major devlopments (though Bush's concession that he is willing to lower tariffs is alone at least a change from his usual "no way, nohow" approach).

And in an oddly short story, the Brazilian government is providing free wireless internet to Indigenous peoples in the Amazon as part of its broader goal to save the Amazon by combatting illegal and corporate logging in the Amazon. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure how this will help the illegal logging (I suspect the goal is building support networks and spreading info via the internet), but the story is so short, and it's unfortunately the only one I could find.