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 South American leaders meeting in Venezuela for the first regional energy summit agreed Tuesday, April 17, on a declaration that includes traditional and alternative fuels, such as ethanol, plus the creation of the South American Energy Council to follow up hemispheric energy related agreements.
Addressing the closing ceremony host president Hugo Chavez said that the energy summit had concentrated on four basic guidelines: oil, natural gas, alternative fuels and energy saving.
The promotion of biofuels to supplement hydrocarbons production which became a controversy issue between Venezuela and Brazil (the world's leading ethanol exporter) was finally ironed out behind doors and a consensus reached.
"We have reached a consensus so that in the final declaration, the use of biofuels is encouraged" said Chilean Energy Minister Marcelo Tokman.
Venezuela's Chavez is concerned that increased ethanol production could cut food supplies and worsen poverty adding that the ethanol accord signed last month by US President George W. Bush and Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is "true craziness' and could end draining agricultural output and tightening U.S. grip on the region's resources.
However Chavez denied any controversy on the issue backing alternative fuels as a way to promote increased oil and bio-fuels production. He said the plan can boost both oil- and agriculture-based economies.
"The press is saying there's an ethanol war," Chavez told reporters. "No. Ethanol is a valid strategy as long as it doesn't affect food production."
Chavez also called for the construction of 13 new Latin American oil refineries to reduce reliance on U.S. processing plants. He said ethanol plants should be built next door to the refineries to boost output of gasoline blended with ethanol.
The summit agreed to create a regional alliance, to be known as the Union of South American Nations, UNASUR, instead of the South American Community of Nations, as well as the South American Energy Council to regulate and promote cooperation in the sector.
A small functional permanent secretariat for the Union of South American nations will be seated in Quito, Ecuador.
All South American presidents were present at the Isla Margarita summit with the exception of Uruguay's Tabare Vazquez and Peru's Alan Garcia.
Mercopress
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
While Chavez has his oil companys and he is #1
as small as Ecuador they are #2
but are less spoken of by booth chavez and lula
why is that .
there nations oil export and there tursimo is well and above most SA countries but yet no one speaks of them
they use US money , labor is cheep also land boom has not hit there yet and you should see some of the hill side views on to the ocean from that side of SA
did that movie a few years back chase every one off .