Chile: Right Wins First Post-Pinochet Presidency

Sebastian Pinera wins Chile's presidency

For the first time since the end of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s lengthy military dictatorship (1973-1990), Chilean voters have turned to the right, electing billionaire Sebastian Pinera in a tight Jan. 17 runoff against former President Eduardo Frei (1994-2000) of the governing Concertacion coalition.

Pinera, a 60-year-old former senator from the center-right Renovacion Nacional (RN), obtained 51.61% of the vote in the head-to-head contest, edging past Frei (48.38%) to become Chile’s first elected conservative leader in more than half a century. The last rightist to win the presidency was Jorge Alessandri (1958-1964), who triumphed in 1958, also by 3 percentage points (31% to 28%), against Salvador Allende (1970-1973).

Energy: Brazil And Its Neighbors Turn Tentatively Toward Renewables

Photo by Corey Kohn

For all their differences, Brazil and its Southern Cone neighbors share a common challenge as they struggle to balance rising energy demand against resource constraints and environmental concerns. Wind and other renewable-energy sources may well be part of the solution, but so far investment in green technologies has been cautious at best.

In size, composition, and structure, the countries’ electricity sectors vary tremendously. Brazil, the largest country in the region, boasts what is by far the most extensive power grid, with installed capacity of roughly 100,000 megawatts (MW)–more than twice the electricity available in nearby Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chile combined. The “sleeping giant” derives much of that electricity (approximately 80%) from large-scale hydroelectric dams but also generates a modest amount of power (roughly 2,000 MW) from a pair of nuclear plants.

Paraguay is even more dependent on hydroelectricity, which accounts for basically all the country’s installed capacity. The massive dams it shares with neighboring Argentina and Brazil even allow Paraguay to export electricity–at least during nondrought years. Argentina and Chile, in contrast, generate only about 40% of their power from dams, relying chiefly on fossil-fuel-burning generators to provide the rest.

El Salvador: Two More Anti-Mining Activists Slain

An already bloody 2009 ended on a particularly macabre note for activists involved in a grassroots movement to block multinational mining companies from tapping El Salvador’s valuable gold and silver resources.

On Dec. 26, Dora Sorto Recinos, a 32-year-old mother of six, was gunned down near her house in Nueva Trinidad, Cabanas, some 80 km northeast of San Salvador. Alicia, as she was known to her friends, was eight months pregnant at the time. The Salvadoran press reported that the attack occurred while the victim was walking home after washing clothes in a nearby river. Sorto Recinos was carrying her two-year-old son, who received a bullet wound to the foot but survived the attack. Her unborn child did not.

El Salvador: Foreign Mining Companies Still Trying To Pry Open Country’s Gold Veins

As global financial uncertainties push the price of gold skyward, North American mining companies, frustrated by El Salvador’s continued refusal to allow extraction permits, are turning to a powerful intermediary–the World Bank–in an effort to strong-arm President Mauricio Funes’ government.

In mid-November, the bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) announced the formation of an arbitration committee to hear a multimillion-dollar suit that Canadian company Pacific Rim Mining filed last April against the Salvadoran government. Pacific Rim, which has spent years and a reported US$77 million prospecting for gold in El Salvador, considers the government’s refusal to grant extraction rights a breach of both Salvadoran and international law.

El Salvador: President Funes Seeks Military Help To Curb Violent Crime

As El Salvador’s notoriously high murder rate continues to soar, the country’s new President Mauricio Funes of the leftist Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN) is turning to an unlikely ally–the armed forces–to help stem the bloodshed.

In 2008, the rampant violence–-much of it blamed on the country’s numerous street gangs–took the lives of nearly 3,200 Salvadorans, a staggering number for a country whose total population is roughly equivalent to that of metropolitan Houston, Texas (5.7 million). This year the death toll is higher still.

Nicaragua: Recession And Job Loss Mark “Horrible Year”

Nicaragua ended a tumultuous political year with some dour economic news as well. For the first time since 1993, the economy slipped into recession. Although observers forecast a modest recovery in the months to come, rising unemployment, falling trade, foreign-aid cuts, and a growing fiscal deficit made 2009 a year to forget for the already deeply impoverished Central America nation.

Nicaragua: Ortega Power Push Divides, Isolates Country

The recent drenching Nicaragua received from Hurricane Ida did little to douse the flames of political dissent that have flared up regarding President Daniel Ortega’s quest to sidestep a constitutionally imposed term limit and compete in the 2011 elections.

A fixture in Nicaraguan politics for the past three decades, Ortega has competed in every presidential election since 1984, when he won his first five-year term as head of state (1985-1990). The Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) leader lost the next three elections but, thanks to changes in the country’s election rules, won a second mandate in the 2006 contest–with less than 40% of the vote (see NotiCen, 2006-11-09).

British “Black Gold” Prospectors Fawn Over Falklands

An aged North Sea oil rig known as the Ocean Guardian is making a snail’s-paced journey from northern Scotland to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, where its pending arrival promises to put the isolated archipelago–the site nearly three decades ago of a brief but bloody war between Great Britain and Argentina–very much back in the public eye.

Known in South America as Islas Malvinas and in Britain as the Falklands, the territory is a collection of rocky islands some 450 km off the coast of Argentina, which, despite losing the 1982 war, continues to claim the tiny territory as its own. After the conflict, life returned to quiet normalcy for the islands’ roughly 3,000 inhabitants, who share the land with more than a half-million sheep and an estimated 750,000 penguins. Growing fishing and tourism industries have bucked up the economy in recent years, allowing the islanders to enjoy their unassuming self-sufficiency in relative peace with the outside world (see 1999-07-23).

Chile: Tycoon Steamrolls Divided Left In First-Round Presidential Contest

Pinera comes out on top in opening round election

Chile’s Dec. 13 presidential election was at once historical and predictable, as opposition leader Sebastian Pinera, a front-runner throughout the campaign, finished well ahead of his three leftist rivals to become the first conservative winner in more than half a century.

Pinera, a wealthy businessman and former senator who hails from the center-right Renovacion Nacional (RN) party, grabbed 44% of the vote, significantly ahead of Democrata Cristiano (DC) candidate Eduardo Frei’s 30% but shy of the 50% needed to win the presidency outright.

Instead, he must now face Frei, a senator and former president (1994-2000), in a head-to-head runoff scheduled for Jan. 17. Frei represents the governing center-left Concertacion coalition, which ties together the DC, the Partido por la Democracia (PPD), Partido Socialista (PS), and Partido Radical Social Democrata (PRSD). Pinera heads Chile’s other principal coalition, the Alianza, which includes the hard-right Union Democrata Indpendiente (UDI), many of whose leading figures began their political careers during the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

Chile: No End In Sight For Worsening Mapuche Conflict

Historic tensions in southern Chile’s Araucania Region have escalated in recent months, with police and Mapuche activists now engaged in a dangerous game of cat and mouse that is turning increasingly violent and shows no signs of ending anytime soon.

After a period of relative calm, the “Mapuche conflict” kicked back into gear this past Southern Hemisphere winter when a delegation of indigenous leaders traveled to Santiago but was refused an audience with President Michelle Bachelet. The Mapuche, by far Chile’s largest indigenous group with an estimated population of some 800,000, seek greater political autonomy and recovery of ancestral lands, particularly in the Araucania, an area roughly 600 km south of Santiago, also known as Region IX.