In article <20040110204336.26181.00002526@mb-m15.aol.com>, DDupin
writes
>I wonder how many of the U.S. visitors to Brazil have Brazilian origins. In
>southern Massachusetts (Boston and Cape Cod areas), there are at least 100,000
>people of Brazilian origin (perhaps because a lot of Portuguese fishermen
>settled here long ago). The few I've met talk about going home for yearly
>visits -- I wonder if they'll have to get fingerprinted, too.
>But, hey, we've got some wonderful Brazilian restaurants here now and some good
>music, too.
>But what about the contention made in the NY Times article that there are Al
>Queada cells in the Iguacu Falls area? Is there any basis for that?
Opposite Foz is Ciudad del Este and it has been the focus of CIA
activities since at least 1998 as you can see below. However, as someone
else said in this thread, they haven't found anything. It was thought
that the bombers of the Israeli synagogue in Buenos Aires were based
in that area, but nothing has been proven.
This is an article from 1998.
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Shady Business at Iguaçú Falls
Paraguay's Smuggling Haven: Ciudad del Este
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 13/14 June 1998 / NZZ Online, 19 June 1998
Charles E. Ritterband
Not far from the mighty Iguaçú waterfalls, one of the world's great
natural spectacles, a spectacular drama of quite a different nature is
played out. Paraguay's Ciudad del Este, which shady business has turned
into the world's third-largest goods trading center, is a true microcosm
of all the things that have given Paraguay the bad reputation it has.
The country's president-designate has promised to clean up the scene.
The contrast could not be greater: Iguaçú with its world-famous
"cataratas" (cataracts) - a natural amphitheater some 2,700 meters long,
in which 275 thundering, steaming, hissing, roiling waterfalls create an
unparalleled natural spectacle. And, hardly more than 20 kilometers away
across the border, the absolute opposite of this lofty, overwhelming
natural beauty - Ciudad del Este, a consumer hell carved out of the
jungle and sprouting like some tropical vine, in which only one thing
counts: the quick dollar, regardless of how it is made. This place,
which today so modestly calls itself "City of the East," was known until
nine years ago as "Puerto Stroessner," in honor of Paraguay's longtime
dictator.
One of the first big promises made by Paraguay's president-designate
Raúl Cubas Grau immediately following his election in early May, was
that he would clean up Ciudad del Este, in collaboration with his
country's Mercosur partners, and thus combat the phenomenon known here
under the rather bland euphemism of "intermediación" (intermediary
trade). But the term is a gross understatement. What it really
designates is large-scale smuggling and counterfeiting operations
running into the billions of dollars, exploiting Ciudad del Este's
strategic position in the triangle where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina
meet.
Even more poisonous plants, however, flourish in the lawless jungle of
Ciudad del Este, from the drug and arms trades to terrorism. It is
questionable whether Cubas will be able to clear this tangled tropical
thicket. Another, far more important question is whether, beyond his
pious pronouncements, he really has the will to do so. His Colorado
Party, the country's governing party for the past 51 years, is closely
interwoven with the corruption that supports this government, and those
who elected Cubas did so in part because they want things to remain as
they are.
[...]
As you drive toward Ciudad del Este, through the faceless Brazilian city
of Foz do Iguaçú, your attention is caught by gigantic, rather
primitively painted billboards along the edge of the road, their texts
telling you that Mona Lisa, mysteriously smiling, awaits your visit to
Ciudad del Este. That's all the billboards say, heightening the mystery
of what is behind the famous smile. Shortly before you reach the "Bridge
of Friendship" which spans the Rio Paraná, connecting the Brazilian and
Paraguayan sides, chaos grows. There are heavily laden pedestrians,
beasts of burden and horse carts wending their way between dilapidated
old buses wreathed in clouds of diesel fumes. Along the roadside,
hawkers have set up their stands with all manner of things: consumer
electronics, textiles, alcoholic drinks, tobacco products, bottles of
perfume - as if Ciudad del Este is bursting at the seams with a
superfluity of material goods.
Many people cross the Bridge of Friendship on foot, especially Brazilian
women who work on the other side as saleswomen, and petty merchants
crossing the other way, who try to sell their cheap goods at street
markets in Brazil or Argentina - and who smuggle thousands of things,
worth an aggregate of as much as $13 million a year, on their own backs,
or in the luggage compartments of cars and buses. But things do not
always go smoothly. Not long ago, passersby on the Bridge of Friendship
were being murdered.
At the far end of the bridge is the customs house, and in front of it
stand stocky men in jeans and cloth vests: the customs officers, as we
are later informed, and those vests have extra-roomy pockets - no
wonder, considering that the monthly wage of the customs "officials" is
just $250, and often less. These men show absolutely no interest in
passports or similar documents. Yet the security situation here has
alarmed the Americans as well as Paraguay's partners in the Mercosur
regional economic organization. For some time now, the presumption has
been growing that terrorist groups linked to the extremist Hizbullah
have taken root here, and there are concrete suspicions that two severe
terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires which took a total of 115 lives -
against the charity organization Amias in 1994, and against the Israeli
embassy two years earlier - were planned in Ciudad del Este.
About 15,000 Lebanese have settled in this city of 300,000 - the second
largest city in the country - and almost as many live in Foz, the
Brazilian city just across the border. In this virtually unmanageable
urban thicket, terrorists easily find asylum. America's FBI recently
opened an office in Brasilia and has launched a fact-finding mission in
the region, with special emphasis on the hornets' nest known as Ciudad
del Este.
--
JohnM
Author of Brazil: Life, Blood, Soul
http://www.scroll.demon.co.uk/spaver.htm
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