Suspected death squad cars found at Argentine base
BUENOS AIRES, March 27 (Reuters) – Argentine investigators have unearthed 43 Ford Falcon cars that death squads may have used to abduct dissidents during the country’s 1976-1983 “Dirty War,” court documents published on Tuesday showed.
The Falcons conjure spine-chilling memories in Argentina because they were used to haul suspected leftists off for questioning during the military dictatorship, when up to 30,000 people were killed.
The rusty, dust-covered cars dating back more than 30 years were found in a warehouse at the Puerto Belgrano naval base, located near the city of Bahia Blanca in Buenos Aires province.
They will be searched for traces of blood, hair or any other evidence that might link them to the Dirty War, as part of a federal court investigation of crimes against humanity, court papers published by the official judicial news agency showed.
“This car model effectively contributed to the military’s dark actions, allowing for the kidnapping and transportation of countless people while also becoming a symbol that seeded terror,” the documents stated.
Miriam Lewin, a 54-year-old journalist who was kidnapped in a bordeaux-colored Falcon in the 1970S, said the discovery of the cars proves the Navy continues to cover up evidence 30 years after the dictatorship ended.
“If the Navy has these 43 cars stashed in a dark warehouse on a military base, that means they could be a clue to something. Otherwise they would have sold them,” said Lewin, who was forced into the trunk of another Falcon when she was moved from one political detention center to another.
Argentina set to free up cenbank reserves, with lower house passage
BUENOS AIRES, March 14 (Reuters) – Argentina’s lower house approved a bill on Wednesday to free up more central bank reserves for debt payments, a move that paves the way for the government to keep spending high but which has been criticized as inflationary.
With Argentina’s trade and budget surpluses eroding on big public spending that has helped foster a booming economy for most of the past nine years, President Cristina Fernandez’s administration is seeking to plug fiscal holes.
Argentina has earmarked up to $5.7 billion in excess foreign reserves to pay debt in 2012 but under current rules, Latin America’s third-biggest economy has none left.
The country has been virtually shut out of global credit markets since defaulting on some $100 billion in debt in 2002 and tapping central bank reserves for a third straight year will help allow it to avert brutal fiscal cuts and costly debt issues, central bank chief Mercedes Marco del Pont has said.
But critics call this a desperate move and say it will only worsen inflation already clocked by private economists at over 20 percent per year. Some have argued that it institutionalizes a slush fund within the public sector that has no oversight.
With Fernandez’s allies in control of Congress, Senate approval of the bill is expected in the coming weeks. It passed the lower house by a 142-84 vote, with 10 abstentions, after a nine-hour debate.
The central bank’s current charter defines excess reserves as those surpassing what is needed to back up cash in the economy. The new definition scraps any correlation to the money supply and puts the criteria in the hands of the central bank’s board.
Argentine minister blasts U.S. judge’s order on defaulted debt
BUENOS AIRES, March 5 (Reuters) – Argentina’s Economy Minister on Monday lambasted a U.S. judge who ordered the country to pay interest to a holdout creditor on debt it defaulted on a decade ago, saying the judge had changed tack and succumbed to pressure from so-called “vulture funds”.
NML Capital Ltd and other holdout creditors who rejected debt swaps in 2005 and 2010 are suing to recover the full value of their non-performing bonds after Argentina defaulted on some $100 billion in sovereign debt in 2002.
Argentina has yet to return to international capital markets but should it try to do so, it faces the threat that some of its assets could be seized as holdouts try to enforce multibillion-dollar court judgments against the country.
Argentine daily La Nacion reported on Monday that U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa, who oversees U.S. litigation over the sovereign default, had ruled on Feb. 23 that Argentina must also pay NML any time it services its restructured bonds.
NML, an affiliate of the investment firm Elliott Management Corp, is seeking $650 million in capital and interest from Argentina, La Nacion said, adding that Griesa’s ruling affects “all parties involved directly or indirectly” including banks.
NML based its legal argument on the “pari passu” clause, under which securities issued have rights and privileges that are the same as those of existing securities of the same class, the paper said.
“The ruling has very little reasoning,” Economy Minister Hernan Lorenzino told reporters late on Monday, saying that the judge had ruled differently in December.
EXCLUSIVE-Argentina barters soy diesel for LNG imports
By Oleg Vukmanovic and Luis Andres Henao
LONDON/BUENOS AIRES, March 2 (Reuters) – Argentina, facing a dollar crunch and smarting from a surging fuel import bill, is pressing to change payment terms on seaborne gas imports by negotiating discounts and bartering for cargoes with biodiesel made from soybeans, not cash.
The shrinking of the nation’s reserves of dollars, blamed partly on a surge in energy imports, has forced the government in Buenos Aires to ask state-run energy firm Enarsa to curb expenditures in the U.S. currency. Energy imports are typically priced in dollars.
Enarsa in a letter sent two weeks ago asked its suppliers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to bring down delivery costs by at least 15 percent, an Enarsa source said.
In a further twist, the LNG trading arm of U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley is holding talks with Enarsa to forego traditional cash transfers in favour of accepting biodiesel produced from locally grown soybeans, a trade source involved in the transaction told Reuters.
The bank, which expects to deliver at least five cargoes of super-cooled gas to the country this year, swapped LNG for Argentine biodiesel once before in June 2009, he said.
Latin America’s fast-growing No. 3 economy also ranks third in the world for soybean exports.
Brazil’s northeast enjoys sweet sugar cane crop
SAO PAULO, Feb 29 (Reuters) – Record output from Brazil’s northeast sugarcane crop, an often overlooked but key source of global supply, will help offset losses from the struggling main center-south cane region this year partly due to an irrigation push that is giving it an edge.
The rise in cane output in the northeast, which churns out almost as much sugar as Russia, has allowed the region to become one of the world’s top 10 producers, at a time when strong global demand and weak output from the massive center-south region has pushed sugar futures above 25 cents per lb <SBc1>.
More robust cane varieties and the increased use of irrigation allowed the northeast to reap a bumper 2011/12 crop, seen about 8 percent higher at up to 67 million tonnes, while output in the center-south fell 11 percent to about 493 million tones, its first decline in 11 years.
“This means that the northeast will expand its contribution to the country’s total output to 12 percent in the 2011/12 season from 10 percent previously,” said Julio Maria Borges, president of sugar and ethanol consultancy Job Economia.
If the northeast keeps investing, it can play an important role in the future to help offset losses during poor crop years in Brazil’s main cane growing region.
“That’s something you can’t dismiss,” Borges said.
“Iron Lady” film draws sympathy for Thatcher in Argentina
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Long reviled in Argentina for leading Britain to war over the Falkland Islands, Margaret Thatcher’s portrayal as a vulnerable, elderly woman suffering from dementia in new film “The Iron Lady” has won her newfound sympathy with Argentine moviegoers.
The Oscar-nominated film shows Thatcher, the 86-year-old former British prime minister, as a confused and lonely old woman remembering flashbacks of her divisive political career, and its release comes as diplomatic tensions over the Falklands are flaring anew.
“The image of the old woman makes me sad, it’s an image of the tremendous solitude that comes with power,” Alicia Fischer, a retired chemical industry worker said after seeing the film featuring Meryl Streep when it opened in Buenos Aires this weekend.
Argentina’s invasion of the British territory on April 2, 1982, is seen by most people here as a terrible mistake by the discredited military dictatorship in power at the time, but they also believe that the islands are rightfully part of Argentina.
Fischer said she will always see Britain as the enemy, but her perception of Thatcher changed after the film.
“You have to put yourself in her shoes,” Fischer said. “She did what she had to do for her country … At any rate, it’s not easy to be a stateswoman in a country like Britain.”
Thatcher broke gender and class barriers in her rise from humble beginnings as a grocer’s daughter to leader of Britain’s Conservative Party and then prime minister.
Brazil OJ industry wants US to ease fungicide limit
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s orange juice industry said on Friday it is urging U.S. authorities to permit a higher level of the fungicide carbendazim in its shipments, several of which have been detained by the United States.
Industry representatives told reporters on a call that they are asking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow up to 60 parts per billion in frozen concentrated orange juice, still within levels deemed safe but more than the current 10 ppb limit.
They also said they were studying alternatives to carbendazim should the juice shipments be rejected.
Mercosur bloc presidents agree to raise tariffs
MONTEVIDEO | Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:26pm EST
(Reuters) -Presidents of the Mercosur trade bloc on Tuesday agreed to individually raise tariffs on imports to shield their industries from a flood of cheaper imported goods stemming from the global economic crisis.
At a meeting in Uruguay’s capital, full members Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay said the plan to hike duties aims to protect industries from what Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff called “an avalanche of predatory imports that jeopardize growth and employment.”
During Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s first official trip abroad since undergoing cancer surgery in June, Mercosur countries also pushed for Venezuela’s incorporation into the trade bloc.
The 57-year-old socialist leader aims to quell concerns over his health after doctors removed a large tumor from his pelvis and gave him chemotherapy. He plans to run for another six-year term in an October presidential election.
“I’ve overcome the most difficult phase of this cancer,” Chavez told reporters upon arrival in Montevideo. “I’m fully back on my feet and here to make a strong play for Latin America’s integration and unity.”
Venezuela has been aiming for full status in the trade bloc for years, but congressional approvals have been slow to come and Paraguayan legislators continue to block the move.
Argentine lower house passes foreign land sales bill
BUENOS AIRES, Dec 16 (Reuters) – Argentina’s lower house approved a bill on Friday to curb farmland sales to foreigners in one of the world’s top grains exporters, a measure the center-left government says is vital to protect a strategic resource.
Growing global demand for biofuels and food, especially grains crops such as soybeans, have fueled the debate over the need for tighter controls on land sales to foreigners in Argentina and neighboring countries such as Brazil and Uruguay.
If the Argentine bill is passed as expected by the Senate, foreigners will only be allowed to buy up to 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) of land in the country’s most productive farming belt, or the equivalent elsewhere.
The bill would also set a 15 percent limit on the total amount of land that can be owned by foreigners in the country as a whole and in each of its municipalities. Critics say the curbs could cause uncertainty and deter investment in Argentina, the world’s third-biggest soybean exporter and a major producer of corn and wheat.
“The risk with this measure is that it will very likely drive away investors because no one is interested in buying something they can’t sell later,” said Roberto Frenkel-Santillan, head of the Argentine Chamber of Agricultural
Realtors (CAIR). “This is just another example of more controls on the agro sector.”
Argentine fishing chief to become agriculture minister-source
BUENOS AIRES, Dec 1 (Reuters) – Argentina’s Undersecretary of Fishing Norberto Yahuar will replace the departing agriculture minister when a new government is sworn in this month, a high -level source at the farm ministry said.
Agriculture is a vital sector in Argentina, the world’s top soymeal and soyoil exporter. Current farm minister Julian Dominguez will leave the post to take a seat in Congress as of Dec. 10, when President Cristina Fernandez starts a second term in office.
“It’s confirmed. Yahuar will without a doubt become our next agriculture minister,” the source told Reuters late Wednesday on condition of anonymity.
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