Santos wins: A vote for continuity in Colombia

The presidency of Colombia for the next four years is in the hands of Juan Manuel Santos. The former defense minister defeated Antanas Mockus by a margin of more than 40% in Colombia's presidential runoff on Sunday, Chris Kraul reports in The Times.

Santos' landslide win is a vote for continuity. The former military chief under current two-term incumbent President Alvaro Uribe promised in his campaign to extend Uribe's get-tough approach to guerrilla groups and to cocaine production. Analysts said the rescue of three hostages in rebel captivity announced a week before the voting also boosted the candidate's margin of victory.

Santos, who has never held elected office, assumes the presidency on Aug. 7. More from Kraul:

Santos is expected to continue Uribe's good relations with the United States, which regards Colombia's current leader as its chief Latin American ally and which over the last decade has delivered more than $6 billion in military and development aid to help the country fight drugs and terrorism.

His win also maintains the current ideological polarity in Latin America, between the United States-aligned right led by Colombia and the left led by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Uribe frequently clashed with Chavez, and as Uribe's defense minister, Santos led a 2008 incursion into Ecuador's territory against FARC rebels that heightened regional tensions.

But Santos received congratulations on Monday from both the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador, suggesting better relations with Colombia are possible under a Santos presidency. Santos told an interviewer that he would like to invite Chavez to his inauguration. Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, is ready to attend if invited (link is in Spanish).

The runoff was marked by less violence than previous Colombian elections but was not entirely peaceful. Rebel forces seeking to disrupt the vote killed seven police officers and three soldiers on Sunday, reports said.

A United Nations report released Tuesday notes that coca leaf production in Colombia dropped between 2008 and 2009, and that the world's leader of coca growth is now Peru.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia's president-elect. Credit: Semana.com

Chile earthquake: People on Ecuador's Galapagos moved to high ground

* Tsunami warning lifted for the volcanic archipelago

* 20,000 people live on Galapagos, thousands visit yearly

Residents and tourists on Ecuador's Galapagos islands moved to high ground Saturday after a massive earthquake in Chile generated tsunami warnings along South America's Pacific coast.

Witnesses on the islands said that waves in the area were unusually strong, but the government of Ecuador lifted a tsunami warning that had been issued for the Galapagos.

"As a preventive measure, there has been an evacuation (of people to high ground)," Edwin Pinto, an official at Ecuador's Oceanographic Institute, told reporters.

The evacuees were expected to remain away from low areas of the islands through Saturday afternoon, officials said.

The volcanic archipelago, about 600 miles west of the Ecuadorean coast, is home to scores of endemic species that closely depend on one another for survival. They helped inspire Charles Darwin to develop his theory of evolution some 175 years ago.

-- Reuters

Photos: Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, September 2007.

TV station Teleamazonas in Ecuador is broadcasting again following suspension

A private television station in Ecuador is broadcasting again after a three-day suspension by the country’s telecommunications authority that raised concerns about freedom of the press.

The Teleamazonas channel, which President Rafael Correa had accused of false reports, went back on the air Friday. The suspension followed government charges that the channel broadcast unsubstantiated information in its news reports.

Officials with the television station say the suspension was illegal and politically motivated, spurred by its criticism of Correa. The president says he does not oppose freedom of the press but that he does believe in more regulation.

“We will maintain our responsible, independent and pluralist journalistic line,” said Teleamazonas Vice President Carlos Jijon, according to Reuters.

-- Efrain Hernandez Jr.

Latin America Digest: Today's one-line news briefs

Bogota, Colombia -- Caqueta state Gov. Luis Francisco Cuellar was found dead Tuesday, Colombian authorities said, less than a day after he was abducted from his home by suspected leftist guerrillas.

Mexico City -- Gunmen shot dead the mother, brother, sister and aunt of an elite Mexican marine who died after participating in a raid last week that killed drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva, police said.

Caracas, Venezuela -- Venezuela imposed electricity rationing, limiting the hours of shopping malls and requiring businesses and large housing complexes to cut back or be penalized, in an attempt to avert widespread blackouts in the coming months.

Sao Paulo, Brazil  -- Brazil’s government will turn its focus to investment and away from stimulus measures, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, as the country’s economy makes a robust exit from recession.

Quito, Ecuador -- Ecuadorean authorities took Teleamazonas private channel off the air for three days in a move likely to fuel concern among President Rafael Correa’s critics over press freedom under his leftist government.

-- Times staff and wire reports

Latin America Digest: Today's one-line news briefs

Quito, Ecuador — Intelligence obtained by U.S. forces based in Ecuador helped Colombia’s military locate senior rebel commander Raul Reyes, who was killed in a cross-border raid by Colombian troops last year, a government commission said Thursday.

Mexico City -- Rafael Acosta, the peddler-turned-politico known as “Juanito” whose maneuverings have captivated Mexico City for months, quit as president of its most populous borough amid allegations that he filed a false birth certificate when he ran.

La Paz, Bolivia — The government announced it had seized a 48-square-mile ranch in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands from soybean magnate Branko Marinkovic, a political rival of newly reelected President Evo Morales, as part of its plan to restore land to the country's indigenous majority.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras — Honduras’ de facto government will allow ousted President Manuel Zelaya, who remained holed up in the Brazilian Embassy, to leave the country if he signs a letter dropping his demand to be reinstated, officials said.

-- Times staff and wire reports

Ecuador President Rafael Correa presses for greater investments from oil companies

President Rafael Correa today pledged to "change the rules of the game" between Ecuador and oil companies if new contracts fail to include greater benefits for the South American country.

Correa said previous administrations allowed inadequate investment plans from state petroleum company Petroecuador. Private firms from other countries should sign new contracts in the coming year that help bring more wealth to Ecuador, he said. 

“Either they sign the new contracts by March or we are going to change the rules of the game and the relationship between the companies and the state,” Correa said during a televised town hall meeting, according to Reuters. “I will meet with the companies and we are going to speak plainly. They will invest or leave the country.”

-- Efrain Hernandez Jr.

'Crude' documentary explores Ecuador versus Chevron case

"Crude" sounds like the standard "this is an outrage" environmental degradation documentary, the latest in a line that includes "An Inconvenient Truth" and films about the death of the ocean, the evaporation of water, the murder of dolphins, even the disintegration of dirt. "Crude" fits that bill, but it is something considerably more interesting as well, writes Kenneth Turan.

The outrage in question is the subject of a class-action suit filed by 30,000 citizens of Ecuador against Chevron, the world's fifth-largest corporation, alleging that 18 billion gallons of toxic waste-water were dumped into the Amazon between 1972 and 1990, fatally poisoning the land and water and sickening inhabitants. The lawsuit, with a potential cost to Chevron of $27 billion, has been going on for so long, 16 years and counting, that the original American oil company in Ecuador, Texaco, was acquired by Chevron and no longer exists.

Director Joe Berlinger ("Brother's Keeper," "Metallica") has been working on "Crude" for three years, and though he feared he was coming too late to the story, a verdict is still not in sight. Having all that time to explore the situation has paid off for Berlinger, enabling him to gain the confidence of his subjects and show us situations that ordinarily would not be open to outsiders.

Read the rest of this movie review here, and click here for more posts about films and documentaries.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Video: The official "Crude" trailer.

Violence against journalists continues in Latin America

Attacks on the Press 2008: Carl Bernstein on Self-Censorship of the Press from Meredith Megaw on Vimeo.

Here in Mexico, we keep our eye on the frequent press-freedom reports that come out, given the high levels of violence against journalists in the country and the culture of impunity that abounds.

Tuesday's release by the Committee to Protect Journalists, sadly, held no surprises.

Internet use grows in Latin America

More affordable computers and an expanding broadband network are two of the factors helping to push Internet use in Latin America, according to a survey conducted by Pyramid Research for Google.

The Miami Herald reports that the recent expansion of Internet users in Latin America has been dramatic.

In 2007, for example, Colombia added 5.4 million Internet users, or about 12% of its population of 45 million -- an 80% increase in the number of Colombia's Internet users that year.

Brazil added 7.4 million Internet users in 2007 (17% growth), Mexico more than 2.2 million (an 11% increase) and Venezuela 1.58 million (38% growth).

Read the full report through the link above.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Ecuador keeps up oil cleanup fight against Chevron

Chris Kraul reports from Ecuador:

Abel Garrido has just struck oil and he's not happy about it.

Using a tree branch, the weathered farmer probed the edge of a pond that his cattle use for drinking water and soon turned up the smelly black sludge that he says has killed much of his livestock and sickened his family.

"I've lost 30 cows," Garrido said. "I cut them open and their insides are black."

Paying the medical bills to treat his three children for skin cancer has cost him his meager savings.

"Here's the cause," Garrido said, contemplating the dark slime gleaming on the end of the branch.

The contamination at Garrido's farm and hundreds of others in a Rhode Island-sized area here in the Ecuadorean Amazon is the basis of a controversial, long-running civil lawsuit in which a verdict is expected early next year.

On one side are 30,000 mostly peasant farmers like Garrido who say they are living a health and ecological nightmare caused by careless oil drilling and production methods that contaminated their drinking water and spoiled their lush jungle environment.

On the other side is defendant Chevron, the San Ramon, Calif.-based parent company which in 2001 acquired Texaco, which produced oil here from 1972 to 1990, and which the lawsuit claims polluted a vast swath of the Amazon. Chevron says Texaco cleaned up its share of the spills with three years of remediation work and that the Ecuadorean government absolved it of all future responsibility in 1998.

Read more of "Ecuador keeps up oil cleanup fight against Chevron" here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo:  Abel Garrido stands near his oil-polluted pond in Coca, Ecuador. “I’ve lost 30 cows,” Garrido says. “I cut them open and their insides are black.” Chris Kraul / Los Angeles Times