This Week in the Americas

Mexico's Presidential Elections
"Urbane" Debate Reveals Contrasts in Candidates' Proposals
By Laura Carlsen

If one took the June 7 televised presidential debate at its face value, it would be difficult to understand what’s at stake in Mexico’s upcoming presidential elections. The heavy use of cosmetics and canned speeches left the viewers to read between the lines of what was actually said to ascertain the political proposals being sold over a medium that has indeed become the message.

All eyes were on the frontrunners, Felipe Calderon of the rightwing National Action Party (PAN) and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), who have been locked in a battle of mutual accusations lately. But those who expected blood were disappointed. The debate was civil to the point of boredom and the duel was mostly with the camera itself.

The themes established for this second debate were a grab-bag that included crime, corruption, federalism, and foreign policy. Calderon and Lopez Obrador outlined two “projects for the nation” that followed fairly traditional center-left and rightwing precepts. Although both lack specific details and much remains to be seen about how either would govern, the political proposals presented reveal important differences between the two candidates.

Laura Carlsen directs the Americas Program of the International Relations Center, online at www.irc-online.org.

Andean Community: Requiem for a Dream II
By Ariela Ruiz Caro

The announcement of Venezuela's withdrawal from the Andean Community of Nations puts an end to the conflicted relationships that dominated among member countries since the beginning of free trade agreement negotiations in May 2004. In July of that year, at the XV Andean Presidential Summit in Quito, President Chávez warned his Andean neighbors that signing free trade agreements with the United Status could put regional integration in jeopardy.

Ariela Ruiz Caro (ariela@independiente.com) is a Peruvian economist, international consultant, and frequent contributor to the Americas Program at IRC (www.americaspolicy.org).

Time for Pollutant Disclosure in Mexico
By Talli Nauman

Mexico moved upstage on the international scene this month with representation in Geneva of its non-governmental organizations at the meeting of the Working Group on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs).

PRTRs are the government inventories for which private industrial sites are required to disclose annual discharges of toxic waste to air, water, and land, so citizens can exercise the right to know what pollutants are in their communities. The United States and Canada have these mandatory, public registers, as do many other nations. But Mexico has been dragging its feet for ten years on its international commitments to instate them.

But UN officials are excited about this possibility. So are representatives of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, established by the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Talli Nauman is a founder and co-director of Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness, a project initiated with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This article was originally published in The Herald-Mexico.

Getting to the Palm Heart of Development
By Bill Hinchberger

Home to 150 families at the end of a long stretch of dirt road, Guapiruvú sits astride Intervales State Park in São Paulo state. Two other state parks lie adjacent. The three reserves protect a bit of what's left of the Atlantic Rainforest. Now a series of disconnected slivers of green that hold out in Brazil's otherwise gray urbanized East Coast, the Atlantic Rainforest once occupied a vast expanse of territory comparable to the Amazon. Guapiruvú is situated in the poverty-stricken Vale do Ribeira, in the southeastern corner of São Paulo state. Protected areas account for over half of the land area in the in the Vale do Ribeira.

For most of the poverty-stricken population, palm-heart poaching has become one of the few viable options for making a living. However, by promoting community-based, environmentally-conscious economic development, AGUA, a local NGO, is helping to offer alternatives to predatory hunting and gathering. Its projects span a wide range of activities, from a banana-distribution collective to kiddy litter brigades, from ecotourism to agroforestry (sustainable cropping within the natural forest), from medicinal plant research to the micro-credit program.

Bill Hinchberger is the founder and editor of BrazilMax: www.BrazilMax.com and contributor to the IRC Americas Program: www.americaspolicy.org. The Center for Social and Environmental Support (CASA) and the Greengrants Alliance of Funds (GAF) (www.greengrants.org) provided support for this article.