Two dozen heavily armed special police from the Venezuelan Interior Ministry searched the Hebraica community center in Caracas last month, ostensibly looking for weapons or evidence of "subversive activity." There were no arrests or seizure of property. The Venezuelan Jewish community's umbrella organization, the Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela (CAIV), protested the raid as an "unjustifiable act" aimed at creating tensions between the community and the government of President Hugo Chávez. "It seems that the only interpretation is that this was an intimidation by the government," CAIV president Abraham Levy Benshimol told New York's Jewish weekly The Forward, noting that the raid came on the eve of the referndum on Chávez's proposed constitutional reform. "We're facing the first anti-Jewish government in our history," added Hebraica president Simon Sultan.

On Jan. 10 a group of about 20 rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released two hostages in the southeastern department of Guaviare in an arrangement worked out with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez Frias and Colombian ex-senator Piedad Cordoba. The hostages, Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo and Clara Rojas, were then taken to Santo Domingo, Venezuela, and later to a meeting with Chavez and Cordoba at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas.

Chilean agronomy student Matias Catrileo Quezada, an indigenous Mapuche, was shot dead early on the morning of Jan. 3 at the Fundo Santa Margarita estate, in Vilcun in the southern region of Araucania, presumably by police agents. He and other Mapuche activists were setting fire to bales of hay; the estate, which the local Mapuche community claims as part of its traditional ancestral lands, has been attacked several times in recent years. Activists told Bio-Bio radio station Catrileo was shot in the back with a machine gun.

New Constitution Escalates Polarization

by Ben Dangl, Upside Down World

"Let's go unblock the road, compañeros!" a man in an old baseball cap yells as he joins a group of people hauling rocks and tires from a central intersection in Cochabamba. This group of students and union activists are mobilizing against a civic strike led by middle-class foot soldiers of the Bolivian right. These actions in the street are part of a political roller coaster which is dramatically changing Bolivia as it enters the new year.

At the start of December, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez conceded defeat in his referendum on constitutional reform—but stated: "This is not a defeat. This is another 'for now.'" The proposed amendments included some populist measures (formal prohibition of torture and incommunicado detention, reduction of the workday to six hours and prohibition of forced overtime, reduction of the voting age to 16, a social security program for "informal" workers) as well as some authoritarian ones (press censorship and suspension of habeas corpus in states of emergency, suspension of the presidency's two-term limit, raising the signatures needed for presidential recall votes)—and some which were both populist and authoritarian (expropriation of private property by presidential decree, executive branch control over the central bank). There may be a paradoxical unity in these two faces of chavismo. As we asked our readers: "Should this be read as a carrot-and-stick tactic: wealth redistribution and social security guarantees to sweeten the pot as an authoritarian state is consolidated? Or are the populist and repressive measures more fundamentally unified: draconian measures will be necessary in order to effect the wealth redistribution—especially given the demonstrated putschist designs on Chávez by Washington and its local proxies?"

On Dec. 14 US president George W. Bush signed legislation approving the Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA, or TLC for its initials in Spanish), which will eventually eliminate tariffs between the two countries. The signing took place at a ceremony in the White House in Washington, DC, which Peruvian president Alan Garcia attended along with diplomats and members of the US Congress. According to an opinion poll by the Apoyo firm published in the daily Comercio on Dec. 16, 66% of Peruvians favor the accord and only 25% oppose it. Apoyo says the poll was carried out among 1,017 Peruvians between Dec. 12 and 14 and has a 3.1% margin of error. (El Diario-La Prensa, Dec. 17 from AP)

Colombia's main opposition party, the Polo Democratico, has issued a strong statement against Plan Colombia. The communique is also a grim assessment of Alvaro Uribe's Democratic Security policy, heavily influenced by Washington. The Polo cites the increase of human rights violations and forced displacement among communities targeted for crop eradication. Furthermore, the Polo asserts that under Plan Colombia, paramilitary groups have strengthened, achieving greater political, economic and social control throughout several regions.

Rodrigo Lara Restrepo, chief of the Colombian presidency's anti-corruption program, resigned Dec. 12—days after Miami's El Nuevo Herald reported documents showing his father, Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, had warned before his 1984 assassination that relatives of current President Alvaro Uribe might try to kill him.