Politics are also mired in the past in this deeply conservative country of 7 million people. While elsewhere in Latin America a new generation of leftists has taken power, putting business leaders on the defensive to some extent and to varying degrees, Honduras' business elite flexed its muscles when a leftist prsident hinted he wanted to extend presidential term limits.

For four months Honduras has been led by a de facto leader, Roberto Micheletti, who took over after the army, Supreme Court and Congress together pulled a coup on elected President Manuel Zelaya, who was flown out of the country. Zelaya later sneaked back in to take asylum in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. Repeated attempts at a negotiated settlement between the two have dissolved into bickering.

Micheletti has shown staying power -- even after he was isolated on the global stage.  That's because he is backed by a secretive and relatively small group of business leaders that have long wielded political power in this Central American country, which is heavily dependent on foreign aid and on its biggest trade partner, the United States. The Honduran Documentation Center think tank has documented the control that a group of intermarried families has on the country's banks, industries such as the maquiladora factories that make clothes to export to the U.S., coffee and banana and cattle production, and power generation. The book "The Powers that Be and the Political System," by a group of researchers, argues that the business class has increased its influence over politics since Honduras returned to democracy 30 years after two decades of off-and-on military regimes. The book says each business group owns a media outlet that helps it maintain and transfer power from the "dinosaur" leaders to the next generations of "babysaurs."

No wonder Micheletti looks a little smug as he thumbs his nose at the international community, declaring a "unity and reconciliation" government without Zelaya's participation after they both signed a pact to name a joint cabinet. Zelaya is backed by organizations that say they want profound social change in Honduras but apparently not badly enough to invite further repression from the military and the police and sow chaos Bolivian style with huge marches and road blocks all over the country.

A pro-Zelaya television station and radio station provide blanket coverage of the so-called resistance movement -- after being briefly silenced by the Micheletti government -- but most TV channels assemble morning talk shows with experts and lawmakers who support Micheletti. It's not really a surprise. Honduras has never thrown itself in with the region's leftist movments. All three countries bordering on Honduras -- Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador -- had major leftist insurgencies that profoundly altered the political landscapes in those countries whether or not they eventually came to power. Honduras, meanwhile, became a base for the U.S. counter-insurgency, or Contra movement, against Nicaragua's Sandinista government.

Photo captions and credits:

Micheletti speaks with Craig Kelly, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs in Tegucigalpa 11/11/2009. REUTERS/Henry Romero

A supporter of Zelaya shouts at a rally outside Congress in Tegucigalpa 12/11/2009. REUTERS/Henry Romero

Zelaya walks inside the Brazilian Embassy 6/11/2009. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

So, no matter how much new Economy Minister Amado Boudou talks about his plans to resolve Argentina's different debt problems and issue a new global bond, eyes are on the presidential couple.  Boudou says he wants to move forward on various fronts. First, he wants to reopen a massive 2005 restructuring to attract holders of some $20 billion in defaulted sovereigns to neutralize their lawsuits -- but this means sending a bill to Congress, something the president would probably announce. Secondly, he wants to normalize rlations with the International Monetary Fund, which were derailed a few years ago.  Lastly, he wants to restructure some $6.7 in defaulted debt to wealthy creditor nations in the Paris Club. 

Argentine bonds have rallied strongly on expectations that Boudou will make progress on these fronts, but the rally could fizzle without prompt concrete steps.

Why has the president been silent for three months while Boudou repeats over and over his intention to return to the markets?  One theory is that the Kirchners' top priority for the moment is getting through Congress their pet project, a broadcast reform bill that could break up some of the countries big media conglomerates.  Some bankers and investors expect that once the Senate votes on the bill, this week or next, the Kirchners will turn their attention to the debt situation.

The Kirchners could also be holding back waiting for the right timing on the markets. With debt prices in many emerging market economies rallying, they could perhaps get a lower interest rate on a new global bond if they wait a while longer. Or perhaps they are still refining the political message that goes along with a return to the capital markets. The Kirchners have been vocal critics of Wall Street and they don't want to be seen by their supporters as playing by the rules of the investment community.

This Sunday's election showdown is a close race between ex-President Nestor Kirchner, running for Congress to bolster the faltering presidency of his wife Cristina Fernandez, and millionaire Francisco de Narvaez. They are both from different wings of the Peronist party and De Narvaez claims to want to make Argentina into a "normal" country that does business with the world instead of isolating itself and befriending extremists.

The stakes are high in the race between the two men, who are fighting to take the biggest chunk of the 35 lower house seats that are up for grabs in Argentina's most populous district, Buenos Aires province.

If Kirchner loses, even by a small margin, he will still go to Congress under the proportional voting system, but he will have to give up on his run for president in 2011 to continue the interventionist economic policies of himself and his wife.

De Narvaez would use a win to push for the presidency even though the fact he was born in Colombia might rule out a candidacy.

De Narvaez launched his campaign a month ago with a brutally negative television advertisement that showed Argentines from all walks of life getting slapped across the face in slow motion -- trying to cash in on the resentment of farmers and some business sectors sick of Kirchner tax and price control policies.

Kirchner is yelling himself hoarse at campaign rallies where he attacks companies by name for allegedly paying juicy dividends to shareholders while failing to meet payroll. Meanwhile, his campaign team has tried to smear De Narvaez with alleged connections to drug traffickers.

But the most eye-catching negative tactic is the one where candidates accuse one of their rivals of having a secret pact with the other in order to try to discredit them. This has been rampant in the last week and reveals the power struggles that undermine any pretense Argentine political parties make at being institutions.

The fact is that even if Kirchner's wing of the Peronist party loses ground in Congress, there probably will be post-election alliances as the different blocs try to negotiate themselves into more powerful positions. But who is allied with whom is still unclear.

PHOTO - Nestor Kirchner campaigns for Congress, June 25, 2009. REUTERS/Imagen 233/Handout

PHOTO - Francisco de Narvaez campaigns for Congress, June 24, 2009. REUTERS/Marcelo Espinoza-Prensa Narvaez/Handout

The strange tale began on Thursday when Bolivian police killed three alleged terrorists or mercenaries and arrested two others in the eastern city of Santa Cruz. Morales said he ordered the men detained because they were plotting to kill him.  When police stormed the hotel, a gunfight broke out and three suspected were killed.

The third man killed was identified as Bolivian Eduardo Rozsa Flores, who the government says fought in separatist movements in the former Yugoslavia. In his blog, Rozsa describes himself as Muslim and in one entry he calls Morales' hero, Argentine revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara a racist and mass murderer. He also had this site.

Marton Dunai of Reuters in Hungary reports that Zoltan Brady, editor of the left-wing magazine Kapu, where Rozsa worked as a correspondent, said Rozsa had gone to Bolivia to fight with the separatist movement and against communism. Political opponents to Morales, a socialist, have demanded that the eastern part of the country have more autonomy from the central government.

Vice President Alvaro Garcia said the hotel gunfight lasted 30 minutes and that the three "highly dangerous terrorists" had guns, explosives and grenades. Yet the police emerged unscathed from the battle.

Two survivng men, identified as Hungarian and Bolivian, are under arrest.

Authorities also said they found evidence that the alleged mercenaries tried to put explosives on a navy boat when Morales and his cabinet traveled on Lake Titicaca, on the Peru-Bolivia border, a couple weeks ago.

Police also reported finding a stash of weapons including sniper rifles, high-caliber guns, dynamite and powerful explosives in Santa Cruz on the grounds of a trade fair organized by farmers and businessmen who are among Morales' strongest opponents. No wonder some opposition politicians scoffed that the whole thing was staged. However, one of Morales' arch enemies, politically speaking, Santa Cruz Gov. Ruben Costas also was among the targets of the alleged terrorists, the government said.

And, to top it off, police said the alleged terrorists used some explosives from their stash to attack the house of Cardinal Julio Terrazas earlier this week. There's lots of friction between between Morales and church leaders.

Morales frequently accuses his political rivals and U.S. spies of trying to kill him but has never provided substantial evidence.  This is the first time security forces have backed up the accusations by killing suspects.

____________________________

Photos:

Top: Bolivian President Evo Morales, show speaking at the presidential palace in La Paz on April 14, 2009, said he was one of the targets of an assassination plot that was foiled by police. Photo by REUTERS/David Mercado

Middle: Bullets were confiscated after Bolivian police broke up an assassination plot in a 30-minute shootout at a hotel in Santa Cruz. Photo by REUTERS/Marisela Murcia

Bottom: Police seized a vareity of weapons after the shootout. Photo by Reuters/Marisela Murcia

The Catholic Church frowned on his getting into politics, but eventually the Vatican granted him an unprecedented dispensation to serve as president of the South American country without breaking Church rules.  Would the pope have been moved to such leniency if he had known Lugo broke his vows?

Picture of President Fernando Lugo taken April 13, 2009, REUTERS/Rafael Urzua; picture of Viviana Carrillo, the woman he fathered a child with, taken April 7, 2009, REUTERS/Courtesy Ultima Hora.

But Argentine President Cristina Fernandez made it startingly clear on Friday that the impact is coming and it's going to hurt. In a surprise announcement she said she was seeking to get election rules changed so mid-term elections -- to renew half of the lower house and a third of the Senate -- can be held in June instead of October.  She said this was so politicians can quickly wrap up campaigns and all get together to concentrate on healing the economy.

Opposition leaders said she was desperate and scared her allies in Congress will lose if they face election in October, when the country is in the grip of economic trouble.

Her language in an announcement speech was stark. She said it would be almost suicidal for politicians to campaign while the world falls apart. "We can't be in a marathon of elections from now to October during this world disaster." she said. 

She also said that things going on in the world, people losing houses and jobs and banks collapsing, are much worse than what people have seen in the media, a surprising comment from a leader who often chides local media for their negativity.

Shock announcements are a specialty of Fernandez and her husband and predecessor ex-President Nestor Kirchner. But they have had mixed results. She had to back down last year on her surprise move to hike export taxes on the country's top crop, soy, after farmers protested long and loud. But her shock nationalization of the private pension fund system breezed through Congress in November.

PHOTO CREDIT: Argentine President Cristina Fernandez in a file photo from January 2009 REUTERS/Enrique Marcarian

After viewing the massive Carnival processions in Oruro, I traveled to Bolivia's main city, La Paz, last week. There, I saw small groups of Bolivians from all walks of life gathered on street corners. Each group defined a ritual space on the sidewalk with colorful paper streamers and flower petals. The people set off firecrackers in the center of the improvised altar, and then stood around or sat on chairs drinking beer from cases they brought with them. Before each quaff, they poured a little beer onto the ground, or onto the wheels of a car that was decorated with ribbons, balloons and flowers. By making the offerings to Pachamama, they hoped to be blessed with luck, safety and abundance. 

Driving through the Andes, I saw Bolivians on streets, in the fields, and in the patios of their houses, getting together for ch'alla rituals, making offerings to the Pachamama and blessing their cars. Apparently Bolivians do ch'alla often when they drink -- spilling or flicking alcohol onto the ground -- but the practice becomes a full-blown ceremony on special days, such as at the end of Carnival, just before Lent begins.

What intrigued me was that many of the people I saw doing the ritual appeared to be of mixed European and indigenous descent and were dressed in so-called Western clothes, instead of the typical garb of Aymara or Quechua Indians. Pre-Columbian spiritual practices are part of everyday life in Bolivia and I was fascinated with how intermingled they are with Catholicism. In a drive to improve rights for indigenous people, President Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, included guarantees of freedom of religion in a new constitution. The previous constitution explicitly recognized and supported the Roman Catholic Church.

The llama sacrifice is a ritual at the heart of Bolivia's carnival, which also includes more familiar trappings such as parades, masks and carnival queens. The Quechua Indians who run the tired old Itos mine above the city of Oruro make offerings to two different protectors during carnival. As Catholics, they have a shrine to the Virgin Mary in the mine. As Quechuas who observe pre-Columbian religious beliefs they make sacrifices to "uncle," the spirit who owns the zinc and tin and silver they blast out of shafts 300 meters deep. It's dangerous work because they run aging equipment on a shoestring budget - each miner gives 10 percent of his earnings back to the cooperative. Commercial miners abandoned Oruro long ago, having sucked the biggest riches out of the mountain. The Quechua cooperative miners make a hard living off of the leftovers but if things go well at the sacrifice it could mean better days ahead.

For the sacrifice, dozens of miners and several journalists walk into the mine and stop in a cavern about 25 meters in. The atmosphere is serious, as befits a religious ceremony, but also joyous and a little unhinged as the miners drink heavily and their children run around squirting everyone with gigantic pump-action water guns (which is something children in Oruro do during carnival week). Some of the miners are in Andean ponchos, others in coveralls and helmets and headlamps. Most of their wives are in traditional Bolivian Indian wide skirts and bowler hats and shawls.

Deep in the mountain around me, miners are taking creaky lifts into other mines this day to make their own sacrifices asking for safety and abundance for the next 12 months.

"We must do this with all our faith," says Jorge Gutierrez, the head of the mining cooperative, speaking through a wad of coca leaves. Then a Quechua witch doctor, Jose Morales, takes over the celebration, sprinkles sugar over the crowd in the dim cavern and blesses the eggs, alcohol and other offerings that were pushed into the mine on a trolley.

As he speaks people cheer, raise their 1-1/2-liter bottles, sprinkle beer on the floor and then drink deeply and drag off of cigarettes that were handed out as part of the ritual. I hear the rustle of hands in green plastic bags as the miners grab coca leaves from their stash and stuff them in their cheeks. They drink, chew coca and smoke at the same time.

The witch doctor, in a long red poncho, prays that the miners who cut the llamas will have "steady hands." This is because the goal is to take out their hearts still beating - which is a good sign for safety in the mine. The brass band starts up again with gusto.

Betsabe Pacheco, a 48-year-old school teacher married to a miner, says she has come with her husband to the "challa," or offering, for 20 years in a row. "I always ask for things to go well. We do this with all our hearts. I ask for a lot of mineral, a lot of zinc, a lot of silver," she says.

The miners invite television camera crews to close in around them while they slit the llamas' throats, drain blood into bowls, then open the animals' chests to pull out their hearts. Morales holds up each gleaming heart in a bowl. Each one in turn beats vigorously for several seconds.

The lift rushes up and down the elevator shaft, taking blood to each level of the mine. The miners smear their faces with blood and then hug each other, their children and their wives and pose for photos. The band plays on. I jump when firecrackers go off behind me.

"Everything has its place. The things below the earth belong to uncle," Morales tells me, looking a little dazed after the ceremony and rubbing his blood-caked hands. "We are giving something back for what he has given us. The blood is so we don't have any accidents and we also ask that he gives us good veins of minerals," he said.

The miners are eager to tell reporters about the ritual and their mine. Jaime Robles boasts to me that he can still carry 70 kg of ore on his back even though he is 51. After ascertaining that I'm roughly in his age group he tries to get me to dance. I can smell his coca breath as he leans in to tell me about the spirit of the mountain.

"He owns everything in there, he can kill us. You have to have a lot of faith in uncle."

Photo credit: Reuters/David Mercado (Scenes from Ilama scrifice at Bolivian mine, February 20, 2009)

    His assumption as president coincides with hers.
    Also, it all took place in the capital of Paraguay, Asuncion, which is Spanish for assumption, and was founded on August 15, 1537 -- hence its name.
    Read more on Paraguay's new president here.

    Lugo's campaign was not overtly religious, but he did use slogans such as "Faith in the Future." The first two letters of his first name, fe, are the Spanish word for faith, which he also played on his Web site .
    On Wednesday, Lugo spent the night at the Community of the Congregation of the Divine Word Missionaries, the Asuncion center of his former order, presumably to pray and meditate before taking office.
    Since he was ordained as a priest in 1977 and obviously never married, Lugo's sister Mercedes will be his first lady.
    Many Paraguayans say they would like to see him get married now that Pope Benedict granted him an unprecedented waiver and downgraded him to layman's status. But his sister says she believes he will return to the priesthood after serving as president.
    It's not clear what view the Vatican would take on that, since it suspended him from priestly duties when he said he was running for president, and only reluctantly allowed him to return to lay status. The reluctance was because the Roman Catholic Church has frowned on priests getting involved with politics.
    The Vatican's diplomatic emissary in Asuncion has said that Lugo, 57, could only become a priest again with a special papal authorization.
    For more than 10 years Lugo served as bishop in the impoverished region of San Pedro, but the bearded and bespectacled clergyman shed his cassock in late 2006 to launch his political career despite church opposition.
    Mercedes Lugo told Argentina's Clarin newspaper in an interview that "in his spirit he's not going far from the religious life. He only changed his cathedral, now it's the whole country. I'm almost convinced that when he ends his mandate he'll return to the religious life."
    To read the whole Mercedes Lugo interview in Spanish, click here.

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado, Aug 15, 2008, PARAGUAY