Animated Internet Series Skewers Latin American Policial Leaders

In just more than a month since it's debut, Presidential Island has become an Internet sensation.

The the online animated series that delights in poking fun of Latin American political leaders has become a massive hit even though its Venezuelan producers hail from a country where freedoms of speech are becoming disturbingly rare.

The series, is a sort of unholy combination of Lost and South Park with the presidents of South America as the protagonists. Cameos of other political leaders abound as well. US President Barack Obama has popped up and Spanish King Juan Carlos has also made a few appearances.

Since debuting in February the first episode of the series has drawn more than 660,00 viewers (a version with English subtitles is also available). The Presidential Island Twitter feed has almost 20,000 followers and there are more than 18,000 fans on the Facebook page.

The second episode debuted last week and at least two more are planned.

The creators of Presidential Island are three Venezuelans in their early 30s; Oswaldo Graziani, Alvaro Mora and Juan Andrés Ravell who is also the son of former head of the opposition channel Globovision. The trio also run a political humor website, The Bipolar Capybara - named for a type of huge rodent found in Venezuela known as a Chigüire in Spanish.

"We have some very colorful presidents,"Graziani said. "That gives us a lot of good raw material."

The series is chock full of pop-culture references (Wilson the volleyball from Tom Hank's Cast Away shows up) as well as whip-smart satire of South American politics. It's also funny as hell.

Viewers with even a passing knowledge of the region's recent political conflicts will recognize the humor in Colombia's Alvaro Uribe and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez struggle to command which direction the ship should turn.

Venezuelan officials have been unamused by Presidential Island and The Bipolar Capybara, going so far as to label the creators drug addicts on the country's state-television channel.

It's an uncertain time for freedom of speech in Venezuela and Chavez has already called for greater controls over the internet in his country where usage has ballooned from 820,000 users in 2000 to 7.5 million last year.

The outspoken leftist leader later backed off the statement but also announced he plans to start his own website soon. Although it's not likely to be as entertaining as his animated counterpart.

Machu Picchu Reopens But Access Remains A Challenge

While access Peru's premier tourist attraction, Machu Picchu, was restored on April 1, the headaches involved with getting to the famed "lost city of the Incas" continue to bedevil tourists.

On Jan. 24, the sole railway providing access to the ruins was washed away by floodwaters. Initially, officials said it would take months to re-open the railway. That was cut down considerably by restoring service over a portion of the route while repairs on the rest of the route are continuing.

Currently, the train line runs to Aguas Calientes station (the access point for Machu Picchu) from the town of Piscacucho which visitors must traveled to from Cusco by bus. According to Ferrocarril Transandino, work will continue to fully restore the line all the way to Cusco, expected to be completed by the end of June.

Yet the amount of tourists that can use the route is still limited. The maximum number of visitors able to use the train is only about 1,500 per day - almost 1,000 less then when the trains are running at maximum capacity. Officials say the expect to increase access as the rest of the rail line is repaired.

To handle the pent up demand following the unexpected closure of the popular site, Peru’s National Institute of Culture (INC) will ration the number of tickets to enter the ruins and imposed restrictions on their purchase.

Machu Picchu entrance tickets can only be purchased in Cusco (previously it was possible to buy them in Aguas Calientes) and backpackers wanting to hike the Inca Trail must show they have a return ticket and confirmed seat on the train.

Moreover, tickets to enter the ruins from the Inca Trail are reserved through June, according to Dircetur, Cusco's tourism agency. The 26-mile trail's limit of 500 people per day allows for only about 250 tourists when the accompanying guides and porters are accounted for.

Machu Picchu is the most popular tourist destination in South America and more than 580,000 foreign tourists traveled to see it in 2009, according to Peru's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism. It's considered the primary draw to the country's tourist industry and it's ten week closure is estimated to have cost the country more than $200 million in lost business.

To counter the loss of the country's premier tourist destination, Peru’s export and tourism agency Promperú launched an aggressive campaign to attract visitors to many of the country's other attractions.

The campaign, "Cusco Pone" included an advertising blitz and discounts on hotels, airfare and tourism packages. The agency recently announced it would be extending the campaign through July.

The demand for tickets to Machu Picchu and the uptick in travelers to Cusco has contributed to a boom in fraudulent tourist agencies, according to law enforcement officials.

In the first week of April, Peruvian national police received more than 20 complaints against agencies for fraudulent practices that are currently under investigation. Most involved agencies that had taken money for tour packages then disappeared. Most, according to police, are fly-by-night operations that are not registered businesses.

Cable Suggests Kissenger's Culpability In Operation Condor Killings

Recently declassified US government documents have increased questions surrounding former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's culpability in atrocities carried out in the 1970s as part of Operation Condor.

Recently, researchers with the non-profit research organization National Security Archive unearthed a cable sent by Kissinger to his his top Latin American deputy in 1976. The document was among tens of thousands recently declassified by the US State Department and made available to the public.

The cable, dated Sept. 16, 1976, ordered state department officials to halt efforts to warn the government of Uruguay about Operation Condor's efforts toward carrying out international political assassinations. The warning would have represented a formal notice to the authorities of the clandestine groups efforts and likely deterred planned actions.

Two days later Chile's ambassador under the previous leftist government, Orlando Letelier, was killed with a car bomb detonated on Embassy Row in Washington D.C. The execution was later tied to Chilean secret police working through the Condor network.

Operation Condor was the brainchild of Chile's General Augusto Pinochet, who rose to power with a US-supported coup against his country's the elected leftist government in 1973. The program was inaugurated in 1975 and represented a clandestine effort on the part of the right-wing governments of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay that targeted political opposition Latin America, Europe and even the United States.

The governments of Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil also participated in Operation Condor and the program, seen as a counter to Communist influence in the western hemisphere, was carried out with the tacit approval of the United States. More than 60,000 people are believed to have perished and tens of thousands were disappeared by the authorities.

Kissinger's cable effectively ended efforts to alert the governments of of Chile, Uruguay and Argentina about Operation Condor activities. Shortly after the Uruguayan cable, his top Latin America deputies moved to cancel U.S. warnings to other countries as well. Kissinger later argued his orders were taken too broadly and were only intended to apply to the Uruguay elements of the plan.

Poachers Slaughter 150 Vicuña In Peru Highlands

In the second such incident this year, poachers slaughtered 150 vicuña in the highlands of southern Peru in order to collect the valuable fur of the animals.

Peruvian authorities said the outlaws had trapped the animals in a remote area of Ayacucho region of last weekend killing them all, including newborns and adult males and females, to harvest their extremely fine wool.

In February, 300 vicuna were killed in a similar manner in nearby district of Laramate and an almost identical carnage occurred last year.

The vicuña is the national animal of Peru and is protected by law. There are about 140,000 of the animals in the country today, a far cry from the meager 6,000 that were alive when the species was declared endangered in 1974.

Vicuñas are related to llamas and alpacas but their wool is worth substantially more than either. The animals can only be shorn every three years and are extremely difficult to raise in captivity.

A pound of fiber - which requires the wool from least two animals to obtain - can fetch $400 on the local market and $2,000 on international markets. Current prices for vicuña yarns and fabrics can range from $1,800 to $3,000 per yard. Several years ago, an attorney in San Diego had a suit made of the material that cost more than $20,000.

Due to the value of the wool, poaching has always been a problem although the mass slaughter of the animals is a relatively new and worrisome development. Officials estimate that as much as 50,000 pounds of vicuña wool are exported each year as a result of illegal activities.

The regional government where the killings occurred has announced plans to create a security team to combat poaching. Local villagers have requested permission to form locally-organized civil defense forces known as ronderos similar to groups created in the 1990s to protect the region from Maoist insurgents.

$2 Billion Peru/Brazil Railrway Link Proposed

A $2 billion effort to link Peru's rail system to Brazil has been proposed by a Bermuda-based hotel and leisure company known for operating luxury hotels, cruise and train services around the world.

Orient Express Hotels Ltd. is seeking to obtain a concession from the Peruvian government in order to build and operate the 528-mile cargo railway that would link the Andean nation to it's eastern neighbor.

The proposed project would require extending a rail line almost 700 miles from the existing tracks near Cusco across the Andes and the Peruvian amazon to connect with the border town of Inapari - a route roughly the same as a highway currently under construction.

Orient Express is best known in Peru for operating the trains that ferry tourists on the 80-mile route from Cusco to Machu Picchu. The company partly owns and manages PeruRail in Peru which netted a 30-year concession on the route after Peru’s government privatized rail lines in 1999.

That monopoly has been threatened in recent years by two newcomers, Inca Rail and Andean Railways. Last month, Peru's antitrust regulator, Indecopi, found that Orient Express had indulged in "abusive" practices to thwart competition on the highly lucrative rail line.

The company is also planning to open its sixth hotel in Peru in 2011, and is evaluating another two hotel projects.

Orient Express' interest in cargo lines is not out of keeping with the company's investments in Peru. It recently completed a $25 million upgrade of a rail line serving Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.'s copper mine in the southern highlands.

If the proposed interoceanic railroad is built, it would allow Brazilian firms with operations in Peru to send cargo directly to markets in their home country instead of sending by sea. One example offered by Orient Express officials is the Brazilian mining giant Vale which owns the $479 million Bayovar fertilizer project in northern Peru.