Columbia and the FARC: Talking About Talks

A SECRET known for months to a small group of political insiders first became a cocktail-party rumour and then, this week, a nationwide bombshell. In a brief televised message on August 27th Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, confirmed reports that a small team of officials has been talking to leaders of the FARC guerrillas to lay the groundwork for formal peace negotiations. These could start as soon as October 5th in Norway. They will doubtless be long and hard. But their prospect raises the hopes of Colombians that half a century of internal armed conflict may at last be drawing to a close.

According to well-placed sources, exploratory talks have been held at regular intervals in Havana since January. The two sides have now reached a framework agreement. Its core is an agenda for formal negotiations which covers legal guarantees for the guerrillas and their future participation in democratic politics, as well as land restitution and the issue of FARC involvement in drug-trafficking. Formal talks would start in Norway but would mainly be held in Cuba. A second guerrilla group, the ELN, this week said it wanted to join in.

From Darkness, Dawn

THE APOCALYPSE WAS on its way, and it would begin in Mexico. Where else? When archaeologists dug up Mayan calendars that ominously seemed to run out in the final days of 2012, some doomsayers predicted the end of the world. To many Mexicans it seemed like just another example of their country’s unending run of bad luck. The steepest recession on the American mainland, a plague of H1N1 swine flu and a deepening war against organised crime had made the preceding few years fairly grim. In 2009 the Pentagon had given warning that Mexico could become a “failed state”. Armageddon would be the icing on the cake.

A rum do: The new president faces a tax revolt

THE Dominican Republic has seen healthy economic growth in recent years. But it is one of the few Latin American countries where income distribution has become more unequal over the past decade. That is partly because the state does little to help the poor: the tax take, at 12.8% of GDP, is the region’s third-lowest. To make matters worse for the new president, Danilo Medina, who took office in August, he discovered that this year’s budget deficit would be 8% of GDP, rather than 5% as the previous government claimed.

BRASILIA | Sat Nov 24, 2012 2:57pm EST

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, moving quickly to nip a new scandal in the bud, ordered the dismissal on Saturday of government officials allegedly involved in a bribery ring, including the country's deputy attorney general.

Federal police raided government offices in Brasilia and Sao Paulo on Friday and arrested six people for running an influence peddling ring that sold government approvals to businessmen in return for bribes.