http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6247608.stm

Clashes between police and drug traffickers in a slum in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro left 19 people dead, officials have said.

Guns and grenades were used in the fighting, with armoured vehicles and helicopters backing police units.

The violence began when more than 1,000 policemen advanced on Alemao, the slum stronghold of a drug-dealing gang.

Rio de Janeiro officials are trying to make the city safer before it hosts the Pan-American games on 13 July.

Some 5,500 athletes and around 800,000 tourists are expected to visit the city for the games.

The city is also one of the host venues for the global series of Live Earth rock concerts on 7 July.

This is a war. My granddaughter was hit by a bullet in her home
Alemao resident

More than 30 people had been killed and 80 injured since the police first surrounded the slums in northern Rio known as the German Complex on 2 May.

But Wednesday's police operation was the biggest to date, triggering fierce fighting for several hours in the slums which are home to some 100,000 people.

Caught in cross-fire

There were conflicting reports of how many people had died, but police said 19 had been killed in the fighting by early on Thursday.

Several people were also reported to have been injured by stray bullets.

Residents at the Alemao slum complex in Rio de Janeiro
Local residents have often been caught in the gunfire

"This is a war. My granddaughter was hit by a bullet in her home," a resident told Brazil's Agencia Estado news agency.

The authorities have defended the operation and say all those killed were suspected drug dealers.

"We must retake control of the slums and instil public order. The goal is to put an end to the traffickers' arsenals," state public safety secretary Jose Mariano Beltrame said.

Up to 1,300 officers were involved in Wednesday's raid, the majority heavily armed and wearing flak jackets and some driving in reinforced vehicles.

Gang members set up barricades and created oil slicks to slow down the police assault.

The BBC's Gary Duffy in Sao Paulo says the police face a formidable opposition as many members of the drug gangs have high-calibre weapons.

In a recent exchange of gunfire a man was killed at a petrol station up to 2km (1.2 miles) from where the shot was originally fired.

The operation has been criticised by local community groups and human rights organisations and it is clear local people have been suffering considerably, our correspondent says.

Police were patrolling the streets and controlling all access points to the slums on Thursday, officials said.

Several schools were closed.

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming...

This makes sense, they have seen radical cultural changes, powerful leftist movements, and lots of bashing of The Establishment (the United States and any US propped-up governments in that region.) They also seem to be the only region in the world where a majority of nations are in one. Does anyone else have thoughts on why?

EDIT: If our generational theories had traction with everyone else, people might migrate there during every crisis like how birds do during the winter.

Chile's Sexual Awakening.


The place is a tangle of lips and tongues and hands, all groping and exploring. About 800 teenagers sway and bounce to lyrics imploring them to “Poncea! Poncea!”: make out with as many people as they can.
And make out they do — with stranger after stranger, vying for the honor of being known as the “ponceo,” the one who pairs up the most.
Chile, long considered to have among the most traditional social mores in South America, is crashing headlong into that reputation with its precocious teenagers. Chile’s youths are living in a period of sexual exploration that, academics and government officials say, is like nothing the country has witnessed before.
“Chile’s youth are clearly having sex earlier and testing the borderlines with their sexual conduct,” said Dr. Ramiro Molina, director of the University of Chile’s Center for Adolescent Reproductive Medicine and Development.
The sexual awakening is happening through a booming industry for 18-and-under parties, an explosion of Internet connectivity and through Web sites like Fotolog, where young people trade suggestive photos of each other and organize weekend parties, some of which have drawn more than 4,500 teenagers. The online networks have emboldened teenagers to express themselves in ways that were never customary in Chile’s conservative society.
“We are not the children of the dictatorship; we are the children of democracy,” said Michele Bravo, 17, at a recent afternoon party. “There is much more of a rebellious spirit among young people today. There is much more freedom to explore everything.”
The parents and grandparents of today’s teenagers fought hard to give them such freedoms and to escape the book-burning times of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. But in a country that legalized divorce only in 2004 and still has a strict ban on abortion, the feverish sexual exploration of the younger generation is posing new challenges for parents and educators. Sex education in public schools is badly lagging, and the pregnancy rate among girls under 15 has been on the rise, according to the Health Ministry.
Indeed, adolescent sexuality has changed throughout Latin America, Dr. Ramiro said, and underlying much of the newfound freedom is an issue that societies the world over are grappling with: the explosion of explicit content and social networks on the Internet.
Chilean society was shaken last year when a video of a 14-year-old girl eagerly performing oral sex on a teenage boy on a Santiago park bench was discovered on a video-hosting Web site. The episode became a national scandal, stirring finger-pointing at the girl’s school, at the Internet provider — at everyone, it seemed, but the boys who captured the event on a cellphone and distributed the video.
Chile’s stable, market-based economy has helped to drive the changes, spurring a boom in consumer spending and credit unprecedented in the country’s history. Chile has become Latin American’s biggest per-capita consumer of digital technology, including cellphones, cable television and Internet broadband accounts, according to a study by the Santiago consulting firm Everis and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Navarra in Spain.
Chileans are plugged into the Internet at higher rates than other South Americans, and the highest use is among children ages 6 to 17. Therein lies a central factor in the country’s newfound sexual exploration, said Miguel Arias, a psychologist and head of the Santiago consulting firm Divergente.
Fotolog, a photo-sharing network created in the United States, took off in the last two years in this country. Today Chile, which has a population of 16 million, has 4.8 million Fotolog accounts, more than any other country, the company says. Again, children ages 12 to 17 hold more than 60 percent of the accounts.
Party promoters use Fotolog, as well as MSN Messenger, to organize their weekend gatherings, inviting Fotolog stars — the site’s most popular users, based on the number of comments they get — to help publicize the parties and attend as paid V.I.P.’s. Many of the partygoers use their online nicknames exclusively, and some of the wildest events are dominated by teenagers who call themselves the “Pokemones,” with their multiple piercings, angular and pressed hair, and devil-may-care attitude.
Dr. Arias did a study of the Fotolog phenomenon, scrutinizing the kinds of photos teenagers are posting, even the angles and distances of the pictures — all of which are part of an “identifiable” language, he said. “The kids of today are expressing their sexuality in erotic ways for the whole world to see.”
That online world also carries over to Santiago’s parks, plazas and the afternoon parties, where teenagers go to discover the physical side of their digital flirtations. At the Bar Urbano disco on a Friday afternoon, a 17-year-old boy, Claudio, danced with Francisca Durán, also 17, whom he had just met, and soon the two were kissing and rubbing their bodies together. They posed eagerly for photos, sucking each other’s fingers as Claudio put his hands under the girl’s T-shirt. Within minutes they separated and he began playing with the hair of another girl. Soon, they, too, were kissing passionately. Claudio, who declined to give his last name, made out with at least two other girls that night.
“Before, someone would meet and fall in love and start dating seriously here; at a party today, you meet like three people and make out with all three,” said Mario Muñoz, 20, co-owner of Imperio Productions, which organizes some of the larger 18-and-under parties.
“There are very few kids having serious relationships,” he said, an observation shared by some doctors trying to reduce teenage pregnancy here.
On a recent Saturday, about 1,500 teenagers piled into the cavernous Cadillac Club, another downtown disco, for Imperio Productions’ weekly event. The partygoers, many no more than five feet tall, lined up at the bar to buy orange Fanta and Sprite, wearing oversize sunglasses.
Not too long ago, Mr. Muñoz and his brother Daniel were teenagers attending such parties themselves. Now they defend their parties as good, clean fun. Alcohol is not allowed, and cigarettes are not sold, though smoking was widespread among the teenagers at the Cadillac Club. Security guards monitor bathrooms and regularly throw out boys whose groping crosses the line — if the girls complain.
The Muñoz brothers said that party promoters feel pressure to be “hotter” than their competitors.
That includes scantily clad, older male and female dancers; strip shows that hold back just enough to remain legal; and party names intended to titillate, like “What would you do in the dark?” On this night, dancing was interrupted for a “slapping” contest onstage in which a boy, pulled randomly from the crowd, was blindfolded and had his arms held behind his back. A lineup of girls and boys took turns slapping him, with the final blow delivered by a heavyset D.J. that sent the slender boy flying across the stage. As he rubbed his reddened face, the boy got his reward: the chance to make out with the girl of his choice in public to the screams of other teenagers.
“Everything starts with the kiss,” Nicole Valenzuela, 14, said during a break from dancing at the Cadillac Club.
“After the kiss follows making out, and after that, penetration and oral sex,” she added. “That’s what’s going on, sometimes even in public places.”
Her mother, Danitza Geisel, a 34-year-old sex therapist, said in an interview that she did not worry about her daughter’s attending the parties and, expressing a somewhat contrarian view among academics here, she said the current generation of teenagers was no more promiscuous than previous ones. But Ms. Geisel lamented the dearth of sex education in Chile.
The parents of most adolescents today never received formal sex education. Chile’s first public school programs were put in place at the end of the 1960s. But after the 1973 military coup, the Pinochet government ordered sex education materials destroyed, and moral conservatism took hold. It was not until 20 years later, in 1993, that a new sex curriculum was introduced in the schools. Even so, by 2005, 47 percent of students said they were receiving sex education only once or twice a year, if at all. And now educators say they are struggling to keep up with the avalanche of sexual information and images on the Internet.
“Of course we are not happy with that,” said María de la Luz Silva, head of the sexual education unit of the Education Ministry. She said that the explosion of Internet access had created a “tremendous cultural breach” that was straining the limits of educators, but added that the ministry was putting in place a new sex education curriculum this year to better “protect” children.
For now, Chile’s teenagers are making decisions on their own.
“This is about being alive,” Cynthia Arellano, 14, said after the Bar Urbano party. “It is all about dancing, laughing, changing the words of the songs to something dirty.”
And with a slight giggle creeping in, she said, “Well, it’s about making out with other boys.”


Source: New York Times: 9/12/2008

Originally Posted by writerGrrl

I believe Latin America is right now in an Awakening...

This makes sense, they have seen radical cultural changes, powerful leftist movements, and lots of bashing of The Establishment (the United States and any US propped-up governments in that region.) They also seem to be the only region in the world where a majority of nations are in one. Does anyone else have thoughts on why?

EDIT: If our generational theories had traction with everyone else, people might migrate there during every crisis like how birds do during the winter.

What were the crisis events for Latin America back in the 60s and 70s?

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

What were the crisis events for Latin America back in the 60s and 70s?

Probably the "dirty wars" in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil against Leftists -- and the preceding economic and political chaos. Such is the only interpretation of any Crisis era in much of Latin America. But that all suggests premature Crises. All countries Latin America had Crisis-like situations during the Depression and World War II, with the United States and Britain trying to consolidate political resistance to the Third Reich.

Wow, I've got to go visit Chile it's sounds downright...perverse...no...sexual...yes and no...exciting yeah that's it.

What do you mean I can't go...what do you mean I'm broke...what do you mean no passport...what do you mean an easy target to be robbed and sodomized by a bunch of surly Chilean gangsters?

Well, that's trips canceled but something stood out to me about this Awakening...per say. Now, even though I know a big part of the Awakening was the sexual revolution there was more going on than just that a fight for civil rights, an anti-war movement, the hippies???

Having it just be about sex no matter how conservative the culture was before just seems more shallow and hedonistic than revolutionary.

So here's my theory (wow, that's the first time I said that here at this site I feel all smart and stuff) maybe the revolution against the dictatorship was the Awakening I mean it's a significant force to rebel against and these are the nomad children doing something hedonistic and materialistic indulging in both sex and using the Internet for parties. Though I could be wrong I mean the older generation did build infrastructure...very G.I. so I may be wrong.

But, they don't seem like prophets to me just my opinion.

U.S. clout in Latin America at lowest in decades

D.C. TURNED ATTENTION TO MIDDLE EAST

Other powers, such as Russia, have moved in

by Frank Bajak

The Associated Press

"QUITO, Ecuador-In a matter of weeks, a Russian naval squadron will arrive in the waters off Latin America for the first time since the Cold WarIt is already getting a warm welcome from some in the region where the influence of the United States is in decline.

"The United States remains the strongest outside power in Latin America by most measures, including trade, military cooperation and the sheer size of its embassies. Yet U.S. clout in what it once considered its backyard has sunk to perhaps its lowest point in decades. As Washington, D.C., turned its attention to the Middle East, Latin America swung to the left and other powers moved in.

U.S. financial woes

"The United States' financial crisis is not helping. Latin American countries forced by the U.S. to swallow painful austerity measures in the 1980s and 1990s are aghast at the U.S. failure to police its own markets.

"From 2002 through 2007, the U.S. image eroded in all six Latin American countries polled by the Pew organization, especially in Venezuela, Argentina, and Bolivia. (The others were Brazil, Peru and Mexico).

"In May, the prestigious U.S. Council on Foreign Relations declared the era of U.S. hegemony in the Americas over....

"Along with the loss in political standing has come a decline in economic power. U.S. direct investment in Latin America slid from 30 to 20 percent of the total from 1998 to 2007, according to the U.N. Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean.

"The U.S. still does $560 billion in trade with Latin America but in the meantime other countries are muscling in. China's trade with Latin America jumped from $10 billion in 2000 to $102.6 billion last year.

"Other countries are also biting into U.S. military sales in the region. Boeing is vying with finalists from France and Sweden for the sale of 36 jet fighters to Brazil. Venezuela's Chavez has committed to buying more than $4 billion in Russian arms, from Sukhoi jet fighters to Kalashnikov assault rifles.

"Chavez says he expects to hold joint Russian-Venezuelan naval exercises as early as next month.

"Bolivia also is looking to deepen ties with Russia and Iran....



"With the U.S. facing its own financial crisis, it's unlikely to be able to leverage economic influence in Latin America anytime soon."

Originally Posted by TimWalker

U.S. clout in Latin America at lowest in decades

D.C. TURNED ATTENTION TO MIDDLE EAST

Other powers, such as Russia, have moved in

by Frank Bajak

The Associated Press

"QUITO, Ecuador-In a matter of weeks, a Russian naval squadron will arrive in the waters off Latin America for the first time since the Cold WarIt is already getting a warm welcome from some in the region where the influence of the United States is in decline.

"The United States remains the strongest outside power in Latin America by most measures, including trade, military cooperation and the sheer size of its embassies. Yet U.S. clout in what it once considered its backyard has sunk to perhaps its lowest point in decades. As Washington, D.C., turned its attention to the Middle East, Latin America swung to the left and other powers moved in.

U.S. financial woes

"The United States' financial crisis is not helping. Latin American countries forced by the U.S. to swallow painful austerity measures in the 1980s and 1990s are aghast at the U.S. failure to police its own markets.

"From 2002 through 2007, the U.S. image eroded in all six Latin American countries polled by the Pew organization, especially in Venezuela, Argentina, and Bolivia. (The others were Brazil, Peru and Mexico).

"In May, the prestigious U.S. Council on Foreign Relations declared the era of U.S. hegemony in the Americas over....

"Along with the loss in political standing has come a decline in economic power. U.S. direct investment in Latin America slid from 30 to 20 percent of the total from 1998 to 2007, according to the U.N. Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean.

"The U.S. still does $560 billion in trade with Latin America but in the meantime other countries are muscling in. China's trade with Latin America jumped from $10 billion in 2000 to $102.6 billion last year.

"Other countries are also biting into U.S. military sales in the region. Boeing is vying with finalists from France and Sweden for the sale of 36 jet fighters to Brazil. Venezuela's Chavez has committed to buying more than $4 billion in Russian arms, from Sukhoi jet fighters to Kalashnikov assault rifles.

"Chavez says he expects to hold joint Russian-Venezuelan naval exercises as early as next month.

"Bolivia also is looking to deepen ties with Russia and Iran....



"With the U.S. facing its own financial crisis, it's unlikely to be able to leverage economic influence in Latin America anytime soon."

If America ends up assuming the role of post-Hannibal Carthage, might Latin America assume the role of King Massinissa's Numidia?

Of course now, we have two competitors for the 'Rome' position at present, of which China and Russia each bring specific strengths and weaknesses to the table.

Originally Posted by SVE-KRD

If America ends up assuming the role of post-Hannibal Carthage, might Latin America assume the role of King Massinissa's Numidia?

Of course now, we have two competitors for the 'Rome' position at present, of which China and Russia each bring specific strengths and weaknesses to the table.

Out of date pre-1992 cold war thinking.

Which could make a comeback, depending on how this 4T goes.

BTW, Cynic Hero, wasn't you who not so long ago spoke repeatedly of a long-standing Russian desire to exterminate us due to our alleged 'inferiority'?

Yes, but only if the nationalists (like the zhirinovskyites) gain power in that country, the old boy network which putin belongs to there merely believes in resecuring a sphere of influence corresponding to the CIS and parts of the middle east. China on the other hand has never truely been an overtly expansionist nation, like japan and germany once were.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

U.S. clout in Latin America at lowest in decades

"With the U.S. facing its own financial crisis, it's unlikely to be able to leverage economic influence in Latin America anytime soon."

In the 1930s Mexican president Cardenas nationalized the oil companies (which were mostly owned by US firms at that time). The Roosevelt administration demanded and got the Mexicans to pay for the American stake in the operations. But they went a step further: getting Mexican oil blackballed on the world market (an embargo that would last 30 years) and foreign (as in mostly American) companies refused to provide parts and equipment both for extraction and refining.

I guess my point here is that even larger countries to our south have never - even in the bad times - tended to have strong hands to play against Washington.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

China on the other hand has never truely been an overtly expansionist nation, like Japan and Germany once were.

Tell that to the Tibetans, Uighurs, Khalkha Mongols (under Chinese rule for over 200 years), Vietnamese (who were a Chinese province for close to 1000 years), Hmong, etc.

According to an article a Russian Air Force chief said that Russian bombers might be based in Cuba and Venezuela.

An independent military analyst said that this would be a retalitory gesture...aimed at hitting back after U.S. ships patrolled Black Sea waters near Georgia.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

According to an article a Russian Air Force chief said that Russian bombers might be based in Cuba and Venezuela.

Then right as soon as he shot his mouth off, the actual decision-makers on both the Russian and South American sides came right out and said, "Um.. not gonna happen..." The Russians even went so far as to ask what the point would even be of doing that.

I have a question about El Salvador. According to an article written in 2000 that I was reading for my Spanish Writing class, they were just coming out of a nasty civil war and were enduring a massive crime wave which had the entire city of San Salvador terrified and living behind burglar bars.

Are there any experts on El Salvador who could tell me if the civil war was a Crisis War or an Awakening War, and if the crime wave was simply the continuation of the war? Because it strikes me as a very strange form for a Recovery, however bad, to take.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

I have a question about El Salvador. According to an article written in 2000 that I was reading for my Spanish Writing class, they were just coming out of a nasty civil war and were enduring a massive crime wave which had the entire city of San Salvador terrified and living behind burglar bars.

Are there any experts on El Salvador who could tell me if the civil war was a Crisis War or an Awakening War, and if the crime wave was simply the continuation of the war? Because it strikes me as a very strange form for a Recovery, however bad, to take.

Pat, the crime wave sounds a lot like a Recovery gone awry. I'm actually reminded of the Somalian recovery of the past decade, where far more institutions were destroyed than rebuilt.

Somalia is currently in Recovery? OK - when I read that my first reaction was "Aren't they still 4T?" Shows how closely I've been following the foreign news! Thanks.

Originally Posted by Matt1989

Pat, the crime wave sounds a lot like a Recovery gone awry. I'm actually reminded of the Somalian recovery of the past decade, where far more institutions were destroyed than rebuilt.

It's a tad depressing that any Recovery era could be so luckless. If there's any turning for stability...

Bumping up this thread, since the newest Pope is from Argentina. Born in 1936. Does that make him an Adaptive (like our Silent Generation) or something else?

Originally Posted by Matt1989

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6247608.stm


Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming...

And gun control is working out just swell in Brazil, I must say.