Bolivia: Evo’s Final Hour!

The Observatório da Imprensa reprints the item from Valor Econômico: Evo Morales starts his own newspaper to counter the “lies” of the Bolivian press.

The news might make Brazilians of a certain age, like our dear Nona, who is 95, nostalgic for the days of Última Hora, the only major Brazilian newspaper to openly and uncritically support the Vargas government of the early 1950s.

(Última Hora — “last hour” — got its name from a common feature of newspapers of the day: a column of short news items received in the final hour before deadline.)

The paper, published by Samuel Wainer, duked it out with the Tribuna da Imprensa of Carlos Lacerda — the Veja of its day.

(Lacerda was, like Mike Bloomberg, both a media owner and governor of a large urban area — the federal district, still known as Guanabara state at the time. Unlike Lacerda, however, Bloomberg is not likely to be on the CIA payroll.)

The Lacerdist journalistic style was replete with vicious lying and innuendo in the service of a not particularly well-hidden agenda– sort of like that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer wins the Pulitzer for writing a Drudge-like rumor-driven blog.

That sort of press still exists down South American way. Venezuela’s RCTV was a prime example. You have to see this shit to (dis)believe it.

Anyway, on to the news of the news:

Enquanto o grupo espanhol Prisa, que edita o jornal El País, um dos maiores da Espanha, colocou à venda sua rede de mídia na Bolívia, o governo boliviano lançou na quinta-feira (22/1) um jornal estatal.

As the Prisa group, publisher of El País, one of Spain’s major dailies, puts its media network in Bolivia up for sale, the Bolivian government, on January 22, launched a state-run newspaper.

From the Thick Jungles: Police Torture Witness Shot

Ponte de Ferro, Cuiabá, XIX Century

The victims said that as they were headed home, they were cut off by two hooded motorcyclists.

I happened to be picking up a beef report from the Diário de Cuiabá, a fine daily from the capital of the wild, wild Western state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, and came across the following item, which tends to reinforce the answer I most often give to the question, “What aspect of life in Sambodia are you most paranoid about?”

Answer: The cops.

And mind you, I spent time cruising around Mexico in my VW van in my youth, so I am not a virgin on this subject.

This is not, furthermore, a phenomenon confined to the lawless Brazilian Northern Wyoming. See

• Sicário Slaying Has The Sousaphone Mulling Sambodian Hideaway

That one happened practically on our block. Bang bang. Out go the lights. Mob-style.

Duas pessoas que testemunharam uma sessão de espancamento e tortura praticada por três policiais militares tiveram o carro alvejado por tiros ontem de madrugada. Eles ocupavam um veículo Corsa verde; o motorista Paulo Sérgio Borges da Silva, de 22 anos saiu ileso, mas o passageiro, Júlio César Dias Monteiro, de 20, foi atingido por dois tiros de pistola calibre 45mm. Baleado nas costas e no braço, ele foi levado ao Pronto Socorro de Cuiabá (PSC) onde passou pelo box de emergência e foi liberado, horas depois.

Two persons who witnessed a session of beatings and torture perpetrated by three military policemen had their car shot up late last night. They were riding in a green Chevy Corsa. The driver, P.S.B.S. , 22, was unharmed, but the passenger, J.C.D.M., 20, was struck by two .45 caliber pistol rounds and taken to the Cuiaba Emergency Center, where he was treated and released several hours later.

Bolivia: Tip Your Hat to the New Constitution?

THE POLARIZATION MEME: "A Country Deeply Divided Votes Yes." Headline over IPSOS exit polling results in El Razón. Other exit polls point to 65-35 or 61-39 margins. Dick Cheney called Bush's narrow 51% victory in 2004 "a mandate." Go figure.

The strategy calls for block captains and party loyalists to coordinate accusations by neighbors, using the methods of covert propaganda, regarding fraudulent activities — whether such allegations are true or not — that can be attributed to the PRI, such as vote-buying, abuse of social programs, misappropriation of funds and failure to execute public works funded by the state goverment. — PANdemonium in Veracruz: Blueprint for Election Fraud

Evo comemora vitória da nova Constituição: In a rare admission that life exists elsewhere on the planet, outside the borders of Brazil, the Correio Braziliense covers the referendum on the Bolivian constitution.

Although it appears to have passed, secessionists from the gas-rich, latifundiarian Half Moon region are alleging massive and nefarious fraud (much as ORVEX was prepared to do when and if Hugo Chávez won his last referendum in Hugoland — which he didn’t. See also

• O Globo: “Chávez Won the Referendum Because He Manipulated the System!”
• PANdemonium in Veracruz: Blueprint for Election Fraud)

Making very loud accusations of fraud, whether credible and well-founded or not, is the mark of true-believing extreme right wingnuts everywhere … thanks in no small part to the IRI, I imagine.

I translate in haste:

Boca-de-urna revela que cerca de 60% da população aprovou a nova Constituição. Oposição acusa o governo de fraude na votação

Exit poll reveals that nearly 60% of the population approved the new Constitution. Opposition accuses government of electoral fraud.

A Bolívia terá uma nova Carta Magna. Foi o que revelaram as pesquisas de boca-de-urna divulgadas na noite de ontem. Segundo esses levantamentos, cerca de 60% dos quase 3,8 milhões de bolivianos que compareceram às urnas aprovaram a Constituição Política do Estado. Os 2.816 colégios eleitorais fecharam às 16h (hora local) e o clima foi de tranquilidade. O único incidente registrado no país foi a prisão de 31 jovens armados com paus e morteiros em Santa Cruz.

Bolivia will have a new Magna Carta. That is what exit polls published last evening indicated. According to these surveys, nearly 60% of some 3.8 million Bolivians who showed up to vote approved the new document. The 2,816 electoral precincts closed at 4 p.m. local time and voting proceeding in a calm fashion. The only recorded incident was the arrest of 31 youth armed with clubs and mortars in Santa Cruz.

A oposição, porém, alega ter havido fraude — apesar da supervisão de 350 observadores de organismos internacionais, como a Organização de Estados Americanos (OEA), União de Nações Sulamericanas (Unasul), Mercosul, União Europeia e o Centro Carter, dos Estados Unidos.

The opposition, however, alleged that fraud occurred — despite the oversight of 350 observers from such international bodies as the OAS, Unasur, Mercosur, the EU, and the Carter Center.

The Sale of Two Cities: Sambodia and the Camorra

Documentos revelam a influência da Camorra na criação do PCC: Despite the insistence of a 2006 presidential candidate here in Brazil that the PCC criminal organization — the Primeiro Comando do Capital — of São Paulo was in cahoots with the Colombian FARC and other armed leftist groups in a bid to prevent him from becoming president, the Estado de S. Paulo reports today that the organization may have begun as a franchise of the Italian Camorra.

The report is timely because the film Gomorra — “The Italian Cidade de Deus” — is topping the modest Brazilian box office charts at the moment.

My mother-in-law’s comment after seeing the film: “Well, it is good to know there are some places worse than here, at least.”

It is also comes amid a moderate crisis in Italo-Brazilian relations over the extradition of Cesare Battisti — an issue I confess I do not understand too well yet.

I translate draft-quality por falta de outro assunto and pra inglês ver.

On ties among Italian, Brazilian and Colombian criminal organizations and the quest for the Mafia state, see also

• Rio-Sampa: “The Italian-Colombian Connection”

O Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) aprendeu a se estruturar como empresa e sindicato do crime com integrantes da Camorra, um dos braços da máfia. As aulas foram ministradas pelos irmãos Bruno e Renato Torsi. Os camorristas ficaram presos quatro anos em São Paulo na década de 90. Em 1993, não só assistiram ao nascimento do PCC na Casa de Custódia e Tratamento de Taubaté, no Vale do Paraíba, como ajudaram a organizar a maior facção criminosa paulista.

The PCC learned to structure itself like a corporation and crime syndicate from members of the Camorra, one of the arms of the Mafia. The classes were given by the brothers Bruno and Renato Torsi, Camorra members who spent four years in prison in São Paulo in the 1990s. In 1993, they not only witnessed the birth of the PCC in the Taubaté penitentiary … but also helped to organize São Paulo’s largest criminal faction.

Dantas’ Inferno: $2 Billion Frozen Over

Daniel Valente Dantas. Graphic: Veja magazine, May 2006, when it reported: “Daniel Dantas has a list that may show illegal offshore bank accounts controlled by the president and party bigwigs.” Veja had plenty of evidence that “almost certainly does not” was the word to use instead of “may.” Ecce Veja.

Bloqueados US$ 2 bi aplicados no exterior: $2 billion dollars in funds invested outside Brazil are frozen as part of what has become known as the Satyagraha case — after the federal police moniker assigned to it — but which we tend to think of as Dantas’ Inferno, after its central figure, the MIT-trained Bahian banker Daniel “The Quiet Brazilian” Dantas.

The Estado de S. Paulo reports.

A report from Agência Brasil contests the amount frozen, suggesting, based on sources at the federal prosecutor’s office in São Paulo, that the $2 billion figure includes accounts previously frozen and still  does not add up to $2 billion.

A number of peculiar developments in the case have cropped up since last we blogged, including a scandalous campaign of partial leaks from a federal police investigation looking into whether the original federal police investigation into Dantas was guilty of leaks.

Correct: The leak investigation, designed to punish leakers, has leakers.

The campaign, which seems to suggest that the lead investigator in the Dantas case committed various heinous crimes in building his case against Dantas, has mostly been carried out by Consultor Jurídico and the one reporter at the Estado de S. Paulo.

(Uncharacteristically, the campaign has not been picked up and amplified by the rest of the heavily cartelized Brazilian news media. Interesting. )

They tell quite a colorful story, without providing the evidence on which it is supposedly based or telling you who spoon-fed them their factoids. Standard Brazilian investigative journalism, in a word.

In the meantime, the Brazilian justice ministry seems to have successfully convinced its colleagues in a number of jurisdictions to grab hold of some substantial sums of folding money.

One of the charges against Dantas was that his offshore funds improperly accepted Brazil-domiciled investors, aiding and abetting tax evasion by a bunch of Brazillionaires.

Brazillionaires tend to believe that taxes are a Communist plot, and that it is their God-given duty to avoid them at all costs. And then they complain of potholes on the federal highways when they are out cruising in their Ferraris.

O Ministério da Justiça anunciou ontem o bloqueio de cerca de US$ 2 bilhões (R$ 4,5 bilhões) – o maior da história do País – em contas bancárias no exterior rastreadas pela Operação Satiagraha, da Polícia Federal, por suspeita de origem ilícita. Desse montante, cerca de US$ 500 milhões (R$ 1,2 bilhão) resultam do acordo de cooperação com o governo dos Estados Unidos. O restante foi retido em vários países, entre os quais a Inglaterra e paraísos fiscais do Caribe.

The Ministry of Justice announced yesterday that some US$2 billion had been frozen — the largest such action in the history of Brazil — in bank accounts traced by the federal police operation known as Satyagraha, on suspicion that it was of illicit origin. Of this amount, some $500 million resulted from a law enforcement cooperation accord with the U.S. government. the rest was frozen in various other countries, including the U.K. and various Caribbean tax havens.

ROTA: “Nostalgic for Pre-Democracy”

How much has changed since the Globo reporter’s 1992 exposé on São Paulo’s “police who kill”? It’s a fair question.

A violência da Rota, também na internet: Agência Brasil de Fato argues bitterly that ROTA, the infamous “elite” squad of the São Paulo state police, is publicly nostalgic for the good old days of the military dictatorship.

On ROTA and why one tends to cross the street or duck into an adjacent doorway whenever one sees them cruising by in their sinister, hulking Toyota Hiluxes, see also

• “São Paulo’s Trooper Elite”: The Estadão on ROTA

Página da divisão de elite da Polícia Militar de São Paulo na internet resgata, com saudosismo, violência praticada durante ditadura civil militar.

Web site of the unit revives, with nostalgic fondness, the violence it practiced during the dictatorship

“Sufocado o foco da guerrilha rural no vale do Ribeira, com a participação ativa do então denominado Primeiro Batalhão Policial Militar “Tobias de Aguiar”, os remanescentes e seguidores, desde 1969, de ‘Lamarca’ e Marighella continuam a implantar o pânico, a intranqüilidade e a insegurança na Capital e Grande São Paulo. Ataques a quartéis e sentinelas, assassinatos de civis e militares, seqüestros, roubos a bancos e ações terroristas. Estava implantado o terror”.

“Once the rural guerilla in the Ribeira Valley was put down, with the active participation of what was then known as the First Military Police Battalion “Tobias de Aguiar,” the survivors and followers of Lamarca and Marighella continued, from 1969 on, to instill panic, unease and a sense of insecurity in São Paulo and the greater metro area. Attacks on barracks and guard posts, assassinations of civilians and military personnel, kidnappings, bank robberies and terrorist actions. Terror was being implanted.”

O trecho acima, que mais parece ter sido retirado de um documento escrito pelos responsáveis pelo golpe de 1964, que instaurou uma ditadura civil militar no Brasil, faz parte da página institucional na internet do 1º Batalhão de Polícia de Choque Rondas Ostensivas Tobias de Aguiar, (Rota), divisão de elite da Polícia Militar de São Paulo.

The above passage, which sounds as though it might have been taken from a document written by those responsible for the 1964 coup that installed a military dictatorship in Brazil, is part of the official Web site of the First Shock Battalion, Ostensive Patrols “Tobias de Aguiar” (ROTA), an  elite unit of the state military police of São Paulo.

Passadas mais de duas décadas após o fim da ditadura civil militar, em pleno Estado Democrático de Direito, a pagina da Rota resgata, com saudosismo, uma série de acontecimentos que envolveram a Polícia Militar e a própria Rota, a partir de 1970, quando foi criada. São citadas, por exemplo, a participação das forças do Estado na Guerra de Canudos, 1897, na Bahia, na Revolução Constitucionalista de 1932, em São Paulo, no que chamam de “Revolução” de 1964 e na “Campanha do Vale do Rio Ribeira do Iguape, em 1970, para sufocar a Guerrilha Rural instituída por Carlos Lamarca”.

More than two decades after the end of the military dictatorship, in a regime founded on the democratic rule of law, ROTA’s Web site evokes with nostalgia a series of events involving the state military police, as well as the unit itself, beginning in 1970, when it was created. It mentions, for example, the participation of São Paulo militiamen in the Canudos War in Bahia in 1987; in the 1932 Constitutionalist Revolution in São Paulo; in the so-called revolution of 1964; and in the Valley of the Ribeira do Iguape River campaign in 1970, which put down the rural guerrilla founded by Carlos Lamarca.

Sambodian Snooping: Who Bugged the Toucan Man?

DEIC started investigating the illegal scheme in 2004. At that time, a group was discovered in which 5 state judicial policemen were involved. They would forge court orders authorizing the use of wiretaps and hand them over to the telephone companies.

Polícia aponta esquema de grampo ilegal e prende nove: In a case they have been working with their usual maximum efficiency for five years now, São Paulo anti-organized crime police up and arrest nine persons engaged in illegal electronic surveillance of politicians, business rivals, and unfaithful spouses.

Uma operação da Polícia Civil de São Paulo desbaratou quadrilhas de dois detetives particulares que quebravam ilegalmente sigilos telefônicos, bancários e fiscais. Os dados eram usados em espionagem industrial e investigações sobre infidelidade conjugal.

An operation by the state judicial police of São Paulo broke up the criminal conspiracies headed by two private detectives who illegally invaded the privacy of banking and tax records and telephone conversations. The data collected was used in industrial espionage and investigations into spousal infidelity.

Having recently read Bruno Lima Rocha’s (nearly unreadable) study of one celebrated case of industrial espionage and media scandal, the “BNDES Wiretaps” (above), I’m reminded of the author’s main conclusion.

The Brazilian press tends to treat the leaking of illegal wiretaps (to the Brazilian press, often) as a scandalous exception to the general way of things, but in fact it is standard operating procedure for a corrupt permanent state security apparatus that remains oriented toward surveillance of “the internal enemy.”

In that BNDES case, for example, some of the Brazilian intelligence officials found guilty of producing the wiretaps — published by the Editora Globo’s flagship newsweekly with great fanfare — which suggested the 1997 telecoms privatizations may have been “steered” by senior government officials, were found to have been working second jobs as private detectives.

They were even listed in the telephone book as offering telephone surveillance services.

Same here: Five São Paulo state policemen were allegedly misusing their authority to invade the privacy of persons being probed by private investigators … much as the late Sen. Magalhães would use his pull with prosecutors in Bahia to add the names of his political enemies to the list of wiretap targets in criminal cases they had nothing to do with.

Uma das vítimas dos criminosos foi o deputado federal José Aníbal (PSDB). “Isso vem confirmar que o grampo ilícito está se tornando um problema muito grande no país. Milhares de pessoas podem estar sendo vítimas desse crime”, disse ele.

One of the victims of the criminals was federal legislator José Aníbal (PSDB). “This just confirms that illegal wiretapping is becoming a very big problem here in Brazil. Thousands are being victimized by this crime,” he said.

2009: Let’s See What The Dog Digs Up

Fábio, Pincinguaba, Ubatuba prefecture, just this side of the Rio-Sambodian state border near the BR 101 highway: As for 2009, let’s just wait and see what the dog digs up.