Can you hear me now? Then pay up.

Reuters reports that a growing number of Colombian mobile telephone users are being scammed by criminals posing as phone operators.

The bogus callers instruct the users to turn off their phone for two hours. The con artists then call the user's family to report that their loved-one has been kidnapped, and instruct them about where to drop off the ransom before the two-hour deadline expires, Reuters reports.

Needless to say, the scam only works if the relative doesn't have a home phone and isn't nearby. But many poor residents in Latin America don't have home telephone service, and get by with inexpensive cell phones and pay cards.

Posted by Geoffrey Mohan in Los Angeles

Buenos Aires pays homage to Bergman

The passing of Ingmar Bergman has unleashed a global wave of appreciation for the work of the Swedish film director, whose impact on international cinema was far-reaching. On its cover Tuesday, the Buenos Aires daily Pagina/12 said Bergman had left an ``indelible’’ mark on Argentine culture.

Cartoonist Daniel Paz chose a tribute from Bergman’s art-house classic, The Seventh Seal, which featured a medieval knight in plague-wracked Europe trying to outwit Death in a chess match.

``Checkmate, Ingmar,’’ declares the black-hooded reaper below the headline announcing Bergman’s death.

Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell in Buenos Aires

"Indian" remark causes flap in Argentina

"How could this Indian be a diplomat?"

Celima Torrico, Bolivia’s justice minister, said she overheard an Argentine immigration official use this expression of incredulity when she presented her credentials upon arriving at Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires. An appointee of President Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous chief of state, Torrico is a Quechua Indian who favors indigenous-style dress.

The episode of alleged discriminatory behavior hit the Bolivian and Argentine press in recent days, prompting embarrassed Argentine officials to vow an inquiry. Torrico had traveled to Buenos Aires to participate in an event about the status of Bolivian immigrants, who often toil in sweat-shops and other low-wage jobs in Argentina.

Reports of bigotry against Latin America’s indigenous minority are an extremely sensitive matter. Bolivia has one of the Americas’ highest proportion of indigenous residents, and President Morales, an Aymara Indian, has championed indigenous rights and customs. In Argentina, as in the United States, Indian populations were decimated and European immigrants and their descendants became dominant.

Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell in Buenos Aires

Fujimori loses election bid in Japan

The Lima daily La República labeled Sunday’s Japanese election results a ``humiliating defeat’’ for ex-President Alberto Fujimori.

The self-designated ``last samurai,’’ free on bail in neighboring Chile pending an extradition request from Peru, failed in his absentee bid to win a Senate seat in far-off Japan. Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants to Peru, holds Japanese and Peruvian citizenship.

``I couldn’t conduct my campaign and that resulted in a lamentable ending,’’ Fujimori told Japanese reporters in Santiago.

The long-distance senate campaign was widely seen among critics a ploy for Fujimori to gain diplomatic immunity and thus sidestep extradition back to Peru, where he is wanted for human rights and corruption counts arising from his tumultuous presidency (1990-2000). Fujimori fled to Japan after being implicated in a bribery scandal, but he has denied any wrongdoing.

In 2005, Fujimori traveled to Chile in the quixotic hope of launching a new political career in Peru. That move backfired: Fujimori was arrested in Santiago at the behest of Peruvian authorities.

A Chilean judge ruled this month that Lima had provided insufficient evidence to justify extradition. But Peru’s government is appealing.

Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell and Andrés D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires.

U.S. to boost bedside manner in Latin America

The United States is stepping up its Latin American “medical diplomacy” in a bid to counteract the influence of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, whose free medical care to the poor in Central and South American have won them ardent supporters.

The U.S. doubled its operations in Panama this year, and on June 15 sent the USNS Comfort, a military hospital ship, on a 12-nation tour. So far, the ship’s medical staff has seen 55,465 patients in Belize, Guatemala, Panama and Nicaragua. It will soon call on ports in Colombia, Haiti, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

The ship’s medical staff has performed 274 surgeries and 9,102 dental procedures, dispensed 24,129 orders for pharmaceuticals, and given out 5,304 pairs of eyeglasses, according to the U.S. Military's Southern Command.

Posted by Chris Kraul in Bogota

No bodies, no answers in Colombia

The Organization of American States announced Friday it will form an international forensic commission to investigate the killings last month of 11 Colombian legislators held hostage by leftist guerillas since 2002.

The lawmakers were reportedly killed in a clash with an unidentified military group, rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) said. One legislator survived the alleged confrontation.

President Alvaro Uribe denied that the victims died in a bungled rescue attempt by Colombian forces, saying there were no such military operation on June 18, the date the rebels said the clash occurred.

Since then, the FARC has apologized for the deaths and promised to return the bodies. But a month later, there is still no sign of the victims’ remains.

Colombians are keen to find out whether the killings show evidence of a military crossfire, or, as Uribe insists, summary execution.

The OAS said the forensic commission would begin work as soon as the bodies are found.

Posted by Chris Kraul in Bogota

Buzz over Chilean icon's private papers

She was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for literature (1945), though today her fellow Chilean poet (and former student) Pablo Neruda has wider international fame.

But Gabriela Mistral remains an icon, her stern visage adorning Chile’s 5,000 peso note. Now, the Chilean literary world is abuzz with news of the imminent opening of Mistral’s long-closed archive, sealed for 50 years in the United States (where she died in 1957).

As many as 300 unpublished poems are found Mistral’s voluminous private papers, Luis Vargas Saavedra, a professor at Catholic University in Chile, told the daily El Mercurio, outlining plans for a new book. The archive also contains correspondence, photographs, tapes, prose pieces and other papers of Mistral (born Lucila Godoy Alcayaga), who was also a noted educator, prolific journalist and longtime Chilean diplomat.

An agreement has been reached to return the originals to Chile and make copies available to researchers.

"This really means we’re going to have to sit back and reconsider Mistral’s entire career,’’ said Elizabeth Horan, a Mistral expert at Arizona State University who is working on a new biography.

Horan is also co-editor of a collection of letters between Mistral and Victoria Ocampo, the late Argentine literary figure and feminist, that is to be published in Buenos Aires in October.

Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell in Buenos Aires

Guatemalan candidate faces ungodly fight

Alvaro Colom wants you to know that he is not the devil.

Colom, the candidate of the center-left National Unity for Hope, is leading in the polls ahead of Guatemala's Sept. 9 presidential election. His detractors have been sending mass emails with PowerPoint presentations that show him dressed as the devil, pointing out that Colom spelled backward is Moloc, the Prince of Hell in Christian mythology (in English more commonly spelled Moloch).

After countless Internet megabytes, and with the rumors spreading in the Guatemalan media, Colom finally decided to fight back this week. In a press release entitled "Clarification to the People of Guatemala," Colom states: "I ask the people of Guatemala not to take seriously the acusations against my person, since I am not, nor do I represent, the devil, or Satan. Nor am I the evil biblical god Moloc. I am Alvaro Colom, a Mayan priest who aspires to lead Guatemala as your president."

Yes, Colom is the rare non-Mayan initiated as a Mayan priest. This happened a couple of decades ago. He keeps an altar at his home, where he burns incense with "the sacred fire of nature." In his press release, Colom acknowledges that his Mayan altar might be one source of the rumors. "If these offerings and rituals were diabolical or evil, do you think I would expose my wife and children to damnation and diabolical forces, or to the punishment of Our Lord God, just as the Bible warns us? Of course not!"

Posted by Héctor Tobar in Mexico City

Colombia's new export: Chinese immigrants?

Colombia saw a huge increase in Chinese visitors earlier this year after it suspended visa requirements for Chinese tourists: 5,589, more than five times the 2006 entry tally.

That's a a troubling sign for U.S. immigration officials concerned about "trampoline" countries funneling illegal immigrants to the United States.

The Colombian government found that significant numbers of the Chinese who entered vanished with no record of having left the country through official channels. Many others were found crammed a dozen to a room in suburban Bogota hotels, apparently in preparation for being smuggled to the United States.

Some of the well-heeled "tourists" had paid $60,000 to be brought to Colombia, with assurances it was a way station to the United States, according to an official with the Department of Administrative Security, Colombia’s FBI equivalent.

The smugglers sometimes promised to provide the Chinese visitors with fake Japanese passports to facilitate entry into the United States.

So far this year, Colombia has deported 300 Chinese, up from 37 all of last year. And it recently began requiring Chinese to apply for visas. The flow of` “tourists” has fallen accordingly.

Posted by Chris Kraul in Bogota

Colombian paramilitaries may end confessions

The Colombian peace process hit a speed bump this week when dozens of paramilitary leaders threatened to cease all public confessions and reparations to victims, two of the three conditions that form the basis of the 2003 demobilization pact they signed with President Alvaro Uribe.

The militia leaders, most of whom are holed up in a Colombian prison, began confessing last year to their numerous crimes, including mass murder, election fraud and extortion, in expectation they would later receive lenient sentences. But now they are balking, claiming that the Uribe is imposing more stringent terms.

Critics say the paramilitaries have made limited confessions and paltry reparations to their victims. Four years into the process, only 5,000 acres of land have been surrendered, out of the hundreds of thousands of acres the paramilitiaries are alleged to have illegally appropriated, according to Bogota’s El Tiempo newspaper. In addition, an official reparation fund has received three cars, 152 head of cattle and two horses. The number of registered victims eligible to receive reparations now totals 70,000.

Posted by Chris Kraul in Bogota