Caracas, Venezuela Prepares for CELAC Founding Conference
Increased security, a range of cultural events, and a declared public holiday are some of the preparations underway in Caracas for the founding conference of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to be held there at the end of the week. CELAC is an organisation the Venezuelan government hopes will counter the Organisation of American States (OAS).
The CELAC unites all independent countries of the Americas except the United States and Canada. Moves for its formation began in February 2010 at a Latin American and Caribbean Unity Summit in Mexico just eight months after the coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.
The founding summit was going to be held on 5 July this year, to coincide with Venezuela’s celebration of 200 years since its Declaration of Independence, but was suspended due to President Hugo Chavez’s health. It will now be held on 2 and 3 December.
Venezuelan foreign minister Nicolas Maduro said the founding conference will discuss five key topics: the formal establishment of CELAC as an organisation, including its decision-making process and political structure; energy independence; social development, including food, health, and education policies; environmental development and the prevention of climate change; and the world economic crisis and its consequences, as well as independence from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Heads of states from 32 countries have confirmed their attendance, with Costa Rica the only country sending its vice-president.
Various Caracas sites have been decorated with countries’ flags or portraits of their presidents, to mark the event.
Luis Motta, Commanding General of the National Bolivarian Guard said they are increasing security measures and will be running a “special security operation” for the conference. The national government has also prohibited carrying weapons from today until 5 December in Caracas. Security forces assigned to the event are exempt. Vehicles over 3.5 tonnes, except those transporting food, water, water chemicals, gas, and medicine, are also prohibited.
Chavez declared Friday a public holiday in the Greater Caracas area, although only public sector workers will have the day off work.
Cultural events to coincide with the conference
Culture minister Pedro Calzadilla said various museums, theatres, and plazas will be “symbolically taken over” to mark the event.
“Caracas is going to become not just a celebration of Latin American union from the political point of view, but also from the cultural one,” he said.
The National Cinema Foundation will be showing 25 feature films from the region, and there will be dance performances and photographic exhibitions. Works of art from Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, Venezuela, Argentina, and Peru are on display, together with poems and sculptures from around the continent. All of the events will be free.
Venezuela’s Youth Symphonic Orchestra, lead by renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel, as well as the famous Puerto Rican band Calle 13, reggae singer Julian Marley- son of Bob Marley, Cuban group Buena Fe, and other Latin American groups will perform in a free concert on Saturday to celebrate CELAC .
Further, there is a Latin America and Caribbean Food festival being held, with traditional meals available from 16 of the 33 countries participating in CELAC. The festival includes cultural presentations, music, and cooking demonstrations from the contributing countries.
“[The launching of CELAC] is an event that will change the history of this continent,” Calzadilla said.
Analyst Luis Quintana, speaking on YVKE Mundial, said, “The birth of CLEAC is the demise of the OAS...which will continue existing but it won’t have the same political weight that it had before, because it hasn’t fulfilled its established goals...it has never helped to solve problems, rather it has increased them... the people are about to witness the most important event in the history of Venezuela and Latin America... CELAC will attend to the historical needs of people.”
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KIdnap wave
By Tatsuo, Miyachi at Dec 03, 2011 12:05 PM
Security firms fight tide of kidnappings in Venezuela
When the Venezuelan baseball star Wilson Ramos was freed from his two- day kidnapping ordeal this month, he flung his arms around his rescuers and wept in disbelief. It was a desperate embrace that Miguel Dao recognised only too well. “Rescuing somebody who has been kidnapped is one of those strange situations where the victim is forced to have total trust in a stranger,” said Dao, a 62-year-old Caracas-based kidnap negotiator. “A very special kind of bond arises.”
Dao is part of a growing team of negotiators and private security con- tractors battling to stem a tide of kid- nappings in what has become Latin America’s abduction capital. “My first advice is always to inform the police, preferably from a phone different to their own, and to delay paying a ransom as long as possible,” said the former lawyer, whose firm is based in the upmarket Chuao neighbourhood.
Ten years ago kidnappings were a distant concern for most Venezuelans, registering only via the occasional news report of ranchers being seized along the border with Colombia.
This year more than 1,000 tradi- tional ransom kidnappings have been reported in Venezuela. Add to that a spike in the number of so-called ex- press kidnappings – in which victims are abducted and frog-marched to cash machines – and an unknown numbe
of unreported crimes, and the true toll is likely to be far higher. Venezuela’s National Statistics Institute claims that more than 16,000 people were kidnapped in 2009.
The recent abduction of 24-year-old Ramos, a Major League baseball player with the Washington Nationals who was freed after a gunfight between police and his captors, served as a re- minder of the threat.
“People are worried,” said Johans- sen Mendoza, 36, a one-time body-
Venezuelan Washington Nationals’ baseball player Wilson Ramos was rescued this month
guard who now runs a Caracas-based transport company offering security details and advice to VIPs and foreign diplomats. “We are doing really bad and it’s going to get worse. Every day that goes by with corrupt institutions and rampant impunity, things get worse.”
Venezuela is not the only Latin American country to have suffered from the blight of kidnapping. In 2000, at the height of Colombia’s kidnapping epidemic, 3,572 people were taken cap- tive as the battle between government forces and leftist Farc guerrillas raged.
A decade ago Brazil’s economic capital, São Paulo, found itself at the centre of a major kidnapping boom.
Adding, Caracus is worst crime city, 24400 crimes occu, Contrary to gov press, jobless, poverty,homeless poor household sor
Why do kidnapp occur?
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