Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1177, May 19, 2013
1. Argentina: Ex-Dictator Videla Dies in Prison
2. Latin America: 7 Ex-Rulers Remain Jailed or on Trial
3. Brazil: 30,000 People Displaced for Sports Events
4. Mexico: Activists Protest GMO Corn With Giant Banner
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Argentina: Ex-Dictator Videla Dies in Prison
Former Argentine dictator Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1981) died the morning of May 17 in the Marcos Paz prison in Buenos Aires province, where he was serving a 50-year sentence for crimes against humanity. He was 87. Videla led the coup that removed then-president Isabel Perón from office on Mar. 24, 1976 and started a period of military rule that lasted until 1983. Videla himself was made de facto president on Mar. 29, 1976 and held the office until March 1981, when he was replaced by Gen. Roberto Viola.
Human rights groups estimate that 30,000 people were disappeared during the “dirty war” against suspected leftists that the military junta carried out. Some 5,000 people are known to have died, and about 500 children were given up for adoption under false names after their parents were killed; so far 108 of the children have learned their real identities. The military leaders were sentenced to life in prison during the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989), but two laws passed in 1986 and 1987 gave them immunity from any further trials, and President Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999) granted pardons in 1989 and 1990. The Supreme Court overturned the immunity laws in 2005, and in December 2010 a court convicted Videla of crimes against humanity. At the time of his death the former dictator was on trial for his role in Operation Condor, in which South American military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s aided each other in repressing opponents; his last court appearance was on May 14.
Videla never apologized for the violence of the military regime. “Our objective was to discipline an anarchized society,” he said in an interview published in 2012 [see Update #1125]. The generals wanted “to get away from a populist, demagogic vision; in relation to the economy, to go to a liberal market economy. We wanted to discipline unionism and crony capitalism.” On the military practice of keeping pregnant captives alive until they’d given birth and then executing them, Videla said in court that the women, “whom I respect as mothers, were active militants in the machinery of terror. And many of them used their embryonic children as human shields at the time that they were operating as combatants.” (Adital (Brazil) 5/17/13 from TeleSUR; La Jornada (Mexico) 5/18/13 from correspondent)
The US government was aware of the military junta’s crimes. “We want a stable situation,” then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger told Argentine foreign minister, Adm. Cesar Augusto Guzzetti in 1976, according to declassified US documents. “We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before [the US] Congress gets back, the better” [see Update #723]. In December 1982 then-assistant secretary of state for human rights Elliott Abrams described a discussion he had with Argentine ambassador Lucio Alberto García del Solar about the “[c]hildren born to prisoners or children taken from their families during the dirty war.” Abrams wrote that he told the ambassador that “[w]hile the disappeared were dead, these children were alive and this was in a sense the gravest humanitarian problem.” Despite the “humanitarian problem,” Abrams had the US government certify that the dictatorship was making progress on human rights [see Update #1110].
*2. Latin America: 7 Ex-Rulers Remain Jailed or on Trial
The death of former Argentine dictator Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1981) on May 17 brings to seven the number of Latin American and Caribbean de facto heads of state who are now in prison or facing criminal charges for their acts while in power. All but one were charged in the last decade.
Former Bolivian dictator Luis García Meza (1980-81), known as the “narco-dictator,” has been serving a 30-year sentence since 1995; charges against him included sedition, genocide and the theft of the diaries of Argentine-born guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara [see Update #926]. He seized power in a coup in 1980 but was forced to resign in 1981. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/19/13 from AFP)
Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April 2009 for crimes that included the deaths of 25 people, two kidnappings, corruption and illicit enrichment [see Updates #1019, 1109]. Although he was elected democratically in 1990, Fujimori seized dictatorial powers with a “self-coup” in 1992. He was hospitalized on May 17 of this year with gastroduodenitis, according to his daughter, rightwing politician Keiko Fujimori. She blamed his condition on depression. The former president has been seeking a pardon on grounds of ill health. (La Nación (Argentina) 5/18/13 from DPA, AFP)
Former Uruguayan de facto president Gregorio Alvarez (1981-1985) was sentenced to 25 years in prison in October 2009 for 37 aggravated homicides committed from 1977 to 1978 as part of Operation Condor, a program coordinating repression in several South American nations [see Update #1030]. Alvarez’s presidency came during Uruguay’s 1973-1985 period of military rule.
Gen. Reynaldo Bignone (1982-1983), the last president in Argentina’s 1976-1983 military regime, was sentenced to 25 years of prison in 2010 for crimes committed in the Campo de Mayo, a military camp that included four torture centers during the dictatorship. In April 2011 he received an additional sentence, this one for life in prison, for crimes against humanity [see Update #1076].
Former Guatemalan dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1981-1982) was sentenced to 80 years in prison on May 10 of this year for genocide and crimes against humanity during the bloodiest period of the country’s 1960-1996 civil war [see Update #1176].
Francisco Morales Bermúdez, who headed Peru’s military dictatorship from 1975 to 1980, has never been convicted, but in 2007 the Italian justice system requested his detention and extradition for the disappearance of 25 Italians in South America in connection with Operation Condor. In February 2012 an Argentine judge also charged him with participation in Condor. He doesn’t face any charges in Peru. (LJ 5/19/13 from AFP)
Like Morales Bermúdez, former Haitian “president for life" (1971-1986) Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier has never been convicted. In January 2012 investigative judge Carvès Jean ruled that Duvalier should stand trial for corruption under his regime, but the judge said the statute of limitations had run out for human rights violations. A Port-au-Prince appeals court panel has been considering challenges from people who say they were victims and are demanding that the former dictator be tried for human rights abuses as well as corruption; Duvalier was forced to appear in court for one session on Feb. 28 [see Update #1166]. On May 16 the judges heard summations from the different parties; a ruling is expected soon.
Carvès Jean, the judge who exempted Duvalier from the human rights charges, was promoted to the Port-au-Prince appeals court on May 9. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 5/17/13; LJ 5/19/13 from AFP)
*3. Brazil: 30,000 People Displaced for Sports Events
A total of 3,099 families have been removed from their homes in Rio de Janeiro and another 7,843 have been threatened with removal as part of Brazil’s preparations for hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, according to a study released on May 15 by the Popular Committee of the World Cup and the Olympics. The group estimates that 30,000 people have been affected, based on the average number of people in the households. The study, “Mega-Events and Human Rights Violations in Rio de Janeiro,” was produced with the collaboration of the impacted communities, the Institute for Urban and Regional Research and Planning (Ippur) and other groups, including the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Global Justice.
The city government initially offered 18,000 reais (about US$8,872) for each home. Residents said this wasn’t enough even to buy the land for a new house. The city finally agreed to pay 40,000 reais (US$19,735), which residents said would pay for a two-bedroom house in the hills. “What we’re seeing is an urban restructuring project without any participation of society,” said Orlando Alves dos Santos Junior, an urban planning professor and one of the coordinators of the May 15 study. “In fact, what’s going on under this pretext [of preparation for the sports events] is a serious urban intervention, on the basis of the real estate industry. The presence of inhabitants from the poorest classes has become an obstacle to be removed from the path.” (Adital (Brazil) 5/17/13 from Canal Ibase (Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses))
*4. Mexico: Activists Protest GMO Corn With Giant Banner
Four activists from the Mexican branch of the international environmental organization Greenpeace climbed the Estela de Luz monument in downtown Mexico City on May 16 to protest efforts by multinational companies to increase the commercial use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the country’s corn crops. The protesters unfurled a 70-meter banner reading “No GMO” and showing an ear of corn with a time bomb. Near the monument Greenpeace spokesperson Aleira Lara told reporters that transgenic corn is a time bomb for the Mexican countryside, since it endangers the 59 native strains of corn. The activists continued the protest for four hours and then left in a van; the Mexico City police made no effort to arrest them.
Now a favorite site for protests, the 104-meter Estela de Luz was built by the center-right administration of former president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) for the 2010 commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the War of Independence and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. It cost more than 1 billion pesos (US$78 million), five times the initial estimate. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/17/13; Hispanically Speaking News 5/17/13)
The Mexican government still regulates the planting of transgenic corn, but it has begun allowing its use in crops for consumption. The Missouri-based biotech giant Monsanto Company and other multinationals now have outstanding requests for permission to expand the sowing of transgenic corn in northern and western states; activists say this will cover millions of hectares and the seeds will contaminate native corn [see Update #1174]. According to Camila Montecinos from the Chilean office of the Barcelona-based group Grain, the contamination is in fact intentional, “a carefully and perversely planned strategy” for marketing patented GMO seeds. The multinationals “chose maize, soy and canola because of their enormous potential for contamination,” Montecinos says, since the pollen is carried by the wind. “When contamination spreads, the companies claim that the presence of transgenic crops must be recognized and legalized.” (Truth-Out 5/10/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
A Healthy Life: Weighing Hydroelectricity’s Costs as the Climate Changes Around Us (Chile)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/5/17/healthy-life-weighing-hydroelectricity%E2%80%99s-costs-climate-changes-around-us
Uruguay: Birth of a Movement Against Mining and Extractivism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/uruguay-archives-48/4297-uruguay-birth-of-a-movement-against-mining-and-extractivism
What Changes Lay Ahead for Paraguay?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/4292-what-changes-lay-ahead-for-paraguay
After a Two-decade Occupation, Brazil's Landless Workers Movement Wins Land Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4296-after-a-two-decade-occupation-brazils-landless-workers-movement-wins-land-rights-
Brazil: The Biggest Extractivist in South America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4293-brazil-the-biggest-extractivist-in-south-america
Displaced by Gold Mining in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4290-displaced-by-gold-mining-in-colombia
Potato Farmers in Colombia Rebel Against Trade Laws, Rising Production Costs
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4295-potato-farmers-in-colombia-rebel-against-trade-laws-rising-production-costs
Venezuelan Peasants Relaunch the “War on Latifundio” in Lara State
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9233
Inside La Piedrita: Venezuela’s Popular Militias and the Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/4303-inside-la-piedrita-venezuelas-popular-militias-and-the-revolution
Indigenous Nicaraguans Fight to the Death for Their Last Forest
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/nicaragua-archives-62/4301-indigenous-nicaraguans-fight-to-the-death-for-their-last-forest
Noam Chomsky, Scholars Ask NY Times Public Editor to Investigate Bias on Honduras and Venezuela
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/14/noam-chomsky-and-scholars-ask-ny-times-public-editor-investigate-bias-honduras-and-ve
U.S. Still Supports Honduran Death Squads
http://ww4report.com/node/12251
U.S. Supported Former Ally Ríos Montt While Aware of Atrocities Committed by the Dictatorship (Guatemala)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/us-supported-former-ally-rios-montt-while-aware-of-atrocities-committed-by-the-dictatorship
Additional Evidence on Perez Molina (Guatemala)
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/additional-evidence-on-perez-molina.html
Follow Guatemala's Lead: Convene a Genocide Case Grand Jury
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/follow-guatemalas-lead-convene-genocide.html
Guatemala: So they weren’t “Zetas” after all
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4289-guatemala-so-they-werent-zetas-after-all
Despite Historic Conviction, Genocide Continues in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4300-despite-historic-conviction-genocide-continues-in-guatemala
Belize: Mayan pyramid bulldozed by road construction firm
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4298-belize-mayan-pyramid-bulldozed-by-road-construction-firm
Mother’s Day in Mexico: A Day of Grief and Indignation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4287-mothers-day-in-mexico-a-day-of-grief-and-indignation
Juarez Mothers Renew International Campaign (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/2013/05/13/juarez-mothers-renew-international-campaign/
Border Poppies (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/2013/05/16/border-poppies/
Internet Trends in Mexico
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/2013/05/17/internet-trends-in-mexico/
Assata Shakur and Cuba – U.S. Relations
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/16/assata-shakur-and-cuba-%E2%80%93-us-relations
Mrs. Clinton Can Have Her Factories: a Haitian Sweatshop Worker Speaks
http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/another-haiti-possible/mrs-clinton-can-have-her-factories-haitian-sweatshop-worker-speaks
An Interview with an Organizer for Batay Ouvriye (Haiti)
http://onestruggle.net/2013/05/01/interview-with-batay-ouvriye/
Haiti's Former President Préval Has Credible Charges that UN Tried to Remove Him
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/
Immigrant Workers Are Organizing in New York -- With or Without Immigration Reform (US/immigration)
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/wilson170513.html
Death and the Immigration Control Complex (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/15/death-and-immigration-control-complex
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
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Monday, May 20, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
WNU #1176: Guatemalan Dictator Convicted—Who’s Next?
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1176, May 12, 2013
1. Guatemala: Ríos Montt Is Convicted--Who's Next?
2. Guatemala: State of Siege Against Mine Protesters Is Lifted
3. Brazil: Protesters Suspend Belo Monte Occupation
4. Haiti: Aristide to Reenter Politics as a “Coach”
5. Mexico: Malcolm X Grandson Murdered in DF Bar
6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Guatemala: Ríos Montt Is Convicted--Who's Next?
On May 10 a three-judge panel of the High Risk Cases Court in Guatemala City convicted former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983) of ordering, supervising and permitting the killing of 1,771 people from the Ixil Mayan group—about 5.5% of the total Ixil population—in El Quiché department during his 17 months of de facto rule. The killings occurred during the most violent phase of a 36-year civil war in which some 200,000 people died, mostly civilians killed by the military, with covert assistance from the US. Ríos Montt was given a prison sentence of 80 years and was escorted from the court directly to the Matamoros prison. He said would appeal and called the proceedings an international farce. The court acquitted co-defendant José Rodríguez, Ríos Montt’s former intelligence chief.
The judges ruled that Ríos Montt’s crimes constituted genocide; he is the first former head of state to be convicted of genocide in Latin America, and possibly in the world. The trial—the result of years of effort by survivors and human rights advocates—began on Mar. 19 but was under constant threat from powerful rightwing forces and was suspended briefly in April [see Updates #1173, 1175]. Pandemonium broke out in the packed courtroom when the verdict was finally read. Weeping survivors and human rights advocates hugged each other while presiding judge Yasmín Barrios called for order, apparently concerned that Rios Montt might escape in the chaos. Before leaving, the indigenous witnesses and spectators turned to Judge Barrios and quietly said: “Tantixh,” “thank you” in Ixil.
In addition to convicting Ríos Montt, the court ordered the Public Ministry to continue investigating other people who might have participated in the crimes with which the former dictator was charged. “This important and unexpected aspect of the verdict,” wrote US investigative report Allan Nairn, who was present in Guatemala City as a potential witness, “means that there now exists a formal legal mandate for a criminal investigation of the [current] president of Guatemala, Gen. Otto Pérez Molina.” Although he has immunity while his term lasts, Pérez Molina was implicated by one witness during the trial.
“We might be in agreement or in disagreement,” Pérez Molina said in a May 10 interview after the verdict was handed down, “but the important thing is that we should respect the judicial authorities.” However, the sentence has created “delicate situation,” Pérez Molina added. “As we’re calling for them to come invest in Guatemala, regrettably this isn’t good news internationally.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/11/13 from correspondent; News and Comment blog 5/11/13; Prensa Libre (Guatemala City) 5/12/13)
*2. Guatemala: State of Siege Against Mine Protesters Is Lifted
Just one week after imposing a 30-day state of siege on four municipalities in southeastern Guatemala that have been the site of violent confrontations over a Canadian-owned silver mine, President Otto Pérez Molina announced on May 9 that his government was lifting the measure and instead declaring a state of prevention in the area. Under the less severe state of prevention, “some rights remain limited,” the president said, “such as the right to strike, and demonstrations when it’s going to interfere with public services, [along with] the carrying of arms.” Apparently, Pérez Molina had to back off from the May 2 state of siege because the National Congress had failed to approve it within three days, as required by law. (AFP 5/9/13 via Hoy (Dominican Republic); El Mercurio (Spain) 5/11/13)
The state of siege had restricted individual constitutional rights and put the military in control of Jalapa and Mataquescuintal municipalities, Jalapa department, and Casillas and San Rafael Las Flores municipalities, Santa Rosa department. Indigenous Xinka communities in the area have been protesting for about a year against the El Escobal mine, which is located in San Rafael Las Flores. The principal owner is San Rafael, S.A., the Guatemalan subsidiary of Vancouver-based Tahoe Resources Inc., but Goldcorp Inc., also based in Vancouver, retained 40% ownership after selling El Escobal to Tahoe in 2010. One of the leaders of the protest movement, Exaltación Marcos Ucelo, the secretary of the Xinka Parliament, was murdered on Mar. 17 [see Update #1171]; the case remains unsolved.
Protests intensified after the government granted an exploitation license to the mining companies on Apr. 3. Indigenous activists set up an encampment in San Rafael Las Flores near the mine five days later. On Apr. 27 mine security guards fired on a group of the protesters, injuring 10, two of them seriously. Responding to the shooting, protesters in Jalapa captured and disarmed 23 police agents on Apr. 29; a campesino was killed the next day when police tried to rescue the captured agent. Also on Apr. 30, a police agent was killed when police stormed the camp in San Rafael Las Flores.
Under the state of siege, more than 2,000 soldiers and police agents were deployed to the four municipalities in small tanks and in attack vehicles, detaining 16 community leaders. In a May 7 communiqué the Indigenous, Campesino and Popular March, which includes various indigenous organizations, described the state of siege as an act of “criminalization of protest” and charged that the government was carrying out “a brutal and systematic repression” against peaceful demonstrations. (Upside Down World 5/2/13; Servindi 5/7/13)
*3. Brazil: Protesters Suspend Belo Monte Occupation
On the night of May 9 some 150 mostly indigenous protesters left the construction site which they had occupied for a week at the Belo Monte dam, in Vitória do Xingu municipality in the northern Brazilian state of Pará [see Update #1175, where we reported 200 occupiers, following our sources]. The decision to end the protest came after Judge Sérgio Wolney Guedes of the Region 1 Federal Regional Court responded to a request from Norte Energia S.A., the consortium in charge of the dam, by ordering the activists to leave and authorizing the use of force by the police. “We went out the same way we entered, peacefully, without causing damage to public property or any type of aggression,” Valdenir Munduruku, a spokesperson for the protesters, told Agência Brasil, the government news agency, by phone. But he said the activists were unhappy with the court’s decision, “because we think that our rights are being violated.”
The occupiers, who included members of the Munduruku, Juruna, Kayapó, Xipaya, Kuruaya, Asurini, Parakanã and Arara indigenous groups, were demanding respect for indigenous communities’ right to prior consultation on the project; they were also protesting the heavy presence of soldiers and military vehicles in the region. When completed, the dam, the world’s third largest, is expected to flood some 516 square kilometers and displace as many as 50,000 people.
The federal government, dominated by the center-left Workers’ Party (PT), says it’s open to dialogue with the protesters. But officials from the General Secretariat of the Presidency have been trying to shift blame to the protesters for the failure to reach an agreement. The officials complained that at two previous meetings indigenous representatives presented contradictory proposals. An unidentified source in the government told the Cuban wire service Prensa Latina that the indigenous representatives didn’t want economic development in the region because they were involved in illegal gold mining. “[O]ne of the main spokespeople for the occupiers in Belo Monte is the owner of six boats that transport illegal raw material,” the source said. (Prensa Latina 5/7/13; Veja (Brazil) 5/10/13; AFP 5/10/13 via La Prensa (Nicaragua))
The government also seems determined to keep the protests from getting media attention. As reported last week, two journalists were removed from the site on May 3 and one was fined as they were trying to cover the occupation. The Journalism in the Americas blog notes that one of the three journalists, Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI) reporter Ruy Sposati, was harassed in December 2011 while reporting on layoffs at one of the dam’s construction sites. He said that two men in a truck owned by the Military Police called him a “troublemaker,” and that one threatened his life. Police agents located nearby reportedly didn’t intervene when the men tried to take Sposati’s camera equipment. (Journalism in the Americas 12/15/11, 5/6/13)
*4. Haiti: Aristide to Reenter Politics as a “Coach”
Former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004) made a tentative reentry into politics with a press conference held on May 9 at his home in Tabarre, a well-to-do suburb northeast of Port-au-Prince. Aristide said his political party, the Lavalas Family (FL), “is evolving, is becoming stronger and more powerful,” and he appeared confident that it would be able to field candidates in parliamentary and local elections to be held before the end of the year; electoral authorities kept FL off the ballot in 2009 partial senatorial elections and in the 2010-2011 presidential and legislative elections [see Update #1052] He predicted that the party would win seats, but not that it would dominate as it did during his 2001-2004 presidential term. “One person alone,” “one political party alone” or “one group in society” can’t solve the problem of hunger, Aristide said. “We have an indispensable coming together to do in order for us to diminish hunger in our country.”
Aristide spent seven years in de facto exile in South Africa after being driven from office in 2004. He suddenly returned on Mar. 18, 2011 but made very few public appearances until May 8 this year, the day before his press conference, when he went to a downtown courtroom to testify to an investigative judge about the April 2000 murder of journalist Jean Léopold Dominique and Jean-Claude Louissaint, the guard at Dominique’s Haïti Inter radio station [see Update #1166]. The police banned demonstrations but took no action when thousands of Aristide’s supporters turned out to see the former president. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 5/8/13, 5/9/13; Miami Herald 5/9/13 from correspondent)
Apparently Aristide has been holding meetings in an effort to revive FL, which has been weakened by factional rivalries along with the denial of ballot status. On May 4 Haitian-American musician Richard Morse told the Associated Press wire service that he and his wife, the popular singer Lunise Exume Morse, had been meeting with Aristide to discuss the possibility of running Lunise Morse on the FL line for senator for West department, which includes Port-au-Prince. “He’s back, and he's trying to get good people on his team,” Richard Morse said of Aristide, who is barred by the 1987 Constitution from seeking a third term. “He's not a candidate,” Morse explained. “He’s a coach. He’s an adviser.”
Morse, who founded the mizik rasin band RAM and manages the well-known Hotel Oloffson in downtown Port-au-Prince, supported Aristide in the early 1990s but broke with him later. More recently Morse was an adviser to rightwing president Michel Martelly, his cousin, but he quit in January, charging that there was “outright corruption” in the Martelly administration. (AP 5/5/13 via Huffington Post)
*5. Mexico: Malcolm X Grandson Murdered in DF Bar
According to Mexican authorities, Malcolm Shabazz, the grandson of assassinated US rights activist Malcolm X and educator Betty Shabazz, was found badly beaten on a sidewalk in Mexico City the night of May 8. Federal District (DF, Mexico City) emergency services took him to a hospital, where he died early in the morning of May 9. A Mexican friend, Miguel Suárez, said he and Shabazz had been invited into The Palace, a bar in the Plaza Garibaldi neighborhood. Later they were presented with a $1,200 bill for music, alcohol and the company of the women they had been drinking with. When they refused to pay, Suárez was separated from Shabazz and eventually escaped; apparently Shabazz was beaten to death.
In 1997, at the age of 12 Shabazz set a fire in which Betty Shabazz died. He was placed in juvenile detention, and had brushes with the law after his release, but more recently he had been studying and was active as a speaker and a blogger. He was visiting Mexico to help Suárez, a California activist who was deported to Mexico in April.
DF police and homicide detectives conducted a search in The Palace, which area shopkeepers say is known for its abuses of tourists who patronize it. Cases like the killing of Shabazz are the result of the authorities’ failure to enforce the law at such establishments, according to Gabriela Salido Magos, a member of the DF Legislative Assembly for the center-right National Action Party (PAN) and part of the Assembly’s tourism committee. She cited the reported rape of a young woman in the Cadillac High Class strip club in February and the robbery the month before of customers at the SO.DO.ME Bathhouse, a gay sauna. These abuses aren’t exceptional, Salido Magos said, but they are viewed differently when the victim is the grandson of an historic US activist. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/11/13, 5/12/13)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Michelle Bachelet: Inequality in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/4284-michelle-bachelet-inequality-in-chile
Using the Cold War: The Truman Administration’s Response to the Bolivian National Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4275-using-the-cold-war-the-truman-administrations-response-to-the-bolivian-national-revolution
Peru Backslides on Indigenous Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4278-peru-backslides-on-indigenous-rights
Private Bank Profits Don’t Represent the Health of the Economy (Ecuador)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/private-bank-profits-dont-represent-the-health-of-the-economy
Ecuador’s Indigenous People Still Waiting to Be Consulted
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4276-ecuadors-indigenous-people-still-waiting-to-be-consulted
Agricultural Workers Strike in Colombia as Peace Talks Continue
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/10/agricultural-workers-strike-colombia-peace-talks-continue
Venezuelan Elections 2013: Fingerprints All Over the Map
http://nacla.org/news/2013/5/7/venezuelan-elections-2013-fingerprints-all-over-map
"Part of the Transition to Socialism": Venezuela's Labour Law Comes into Effect
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9202
The New York Times on Venezuela and Honduras: A Case of Journalistic Misconduct
http://nacla.org/news/2013/5/9/new-york-times-venezuela-and-honduras-case-journalistic-misconduct
Central Americans Skeptical of Obama’s Promises for Greater Benefits from Integration
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9476
A Formal Legal Mandate for a Criminal Investigation of Guatemala's Current President, Perez Molina
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/a-formal-legal-mandate-for-criminal.html
The Guatemala Genocide Case: Testimony Notes Regarding Rios Montt
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/the-guatemala-genocide-case-testimony.html
Obama and the Militarization of the “Drug War” in Mexico and Central America
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/obama-and-the-militarization-of-the-drug-war-in-mexico-and-central-america
Obama in Mexico Amidst Demands for Migrant Rights
http://nacla.org/news/2013/5/6/obama-mexico-amidst-demands-migrant-rights
Labor Reforms No Cause for Celebration in Mexico’s May Day Rallies
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9493
Blood Along the Border: Environmental Activism and Violence in Juarez, Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4280-blood-along-the-border-environmental-activism-and-violence-in-juarez-mexico-
Water Fights Flare (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/2013/05/07/water-fights-flare/
Report Reveals How Canadian Diplomacy Supported Deadly Blackfire Mining Project in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4277-report-reveals-how-canadian-diplomacy-supported-deadly-blackfire-mining-project-in-mexico
Mexico’s Aging Laguna Verde Nuclear Plant a Fiasco
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9498
New Report Gives UN Failing Grade on Cholera (Haiti)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/10/new-report-gives-un-failing-grade-cholera
Cholera Victims’ Lawyers to Seek Billions in Damages if UN Continues to Deny Responsibility (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/cholera-victims-lawyers-to-seek-billions-in-damages-if-un-continues-to-deny-responsibility
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1176, May 12, 2013
1. Guatemala: Ríos Montt Is Convicted--Who's Next?
2. Guatemala: State of Siege Against Mine Protesters Is Lifted
3. Brazil: Protesters Suspend Belo Monte Occupation
4. Haiti: Aristide to Reenter Politics as a “Coach”
5. Mexico: Malcolm X Grandson Murdered in DF Bar
6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Guatemala: Ríos Montt Is Convicted--Who's Next?
On May 10 a three-judge panel of the High Risk Cases Court in Guatemala City convicted former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983) of ordering, supervising and permitting the killing of 1,771 people from the Ixil Mayan group—about 5.5% of the total Ixil population—in El Quiché department during his 17 months of de facto rule. The killings occurred during the most violent phase of a 36-year civil war in which some 200,000 people died, mostly civilians killed by the military, with covert assistance from the US. Ríos Montt was given a prison sentence of 80 years and was escorted from the court directly to the Matamoros prison. He said would appeal and called the proceedings an international farce. The court acquitted co-defendant José Rodríguez, Ríos Montt’s former intelligence chief.
The judges ruled that Ríos Montt’s crimes constituted genocide; he is the first former head of state to be convicted of genocide in Latin America, and possibly in the world. The trial—the result of years of effort by survivors and human rights advocates—began on Mar. 19 but was under constant threat from powerful rightwing forces and was suspended briefly in April [see Updates #1173, 1175]. Pandemonium broke out in the packed courtroom when the verdict was finally read. Weeping survivors and human rights advocates hugged each other while presiding judge Yasmín Barrios called for order, apparently concerned that Rios Montt might escape in the chaos. Before leaving, the indigenous witnesses and spectators turned to Judge Barrios and quietly said: “Tantixh,” “thank you” in Ixil.
In addition to convicting Ríos Montt, the court ordered the Public Ministry to continue investigating other people who might have participated in the crimes with which the former dictator was charged. “This important and unexpected aspect of the verdict,” wrote US investigative report Allan Nairn, who was present in Guatemala City as a potential witness, “means that there now exists a formal legal mandate for a criminal investigation of the [current] president of Guatemala, Gen. Otto Pérez Molina.” Although he has immunity while his term lasts, Pérez Molina was implicated by one witness during the trial.
“We might be in agreement or in disagreement,” Pérez Molina said in a May 10 interview after the verdict was handed down, “but the important thing is that we should respect the judicial authorities.” However, the sentence has created “delicate situation,” Pérez Molina added. “As we’re calling for them to come invest in Guatemala, regrettably this isn’t good news internationally.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/11/13 from correspondent; News and Comment blog 5/11/13; Prensa Libre (Guatemala City) 5/12/13)
*2. Guatemala: State of Siege Against Mine Protesters Is Lifted
Just one week after imposing a 30-day state of siege on four municipalities in southeastern Guatemala that have been the site of violent confrontations over a Canadian-owned silver mine, President Otto Pérez Molina announced on May 9 that his government was lifting the measure and instead declaring a state of prevention in the area. Under the less severe state of prevention, “some rights remain limited,” the president said, “such as the right to strike, and demonstrations when it’s going to interfere with public services, [along with] the carrying of arms.” Apparently, Pérez Molina had to back off from the May 2 state of siege because the National Congress had failed to approve it within three days, as required by law. (AFP 5/9/13 via Hoy (Dominican Republic); El Mercurio (Spain) 5/11/13)
The state of siege had restricted individual constitutional rights and put the military in control of Jalapa and Mataquescuintal municipalities, Jalapa department, and Casillas and San Rafael Las Flores municipalities, Santa Rosa department. Indigenous Xinka communities in the area have been protesting for about a year against the El Escobal mine, which is located in San Rafael Las Flores. The principal owner is San Rafael, S.A., the Guatemalan subsidiary of Vancouver-based Tahoe Resources Inc., but Goldcorp Inc., also based in Vancouver, retained 40% ownership after selling El Escobal to Tahoe in 2010. One of the leaders of the protest movement, Exaltación Marcos Ucelo, the secretary of the Xinka Parliament, was murdered on Mar. 17 [see Update #1171]; the case remains unsolved.
Protests intensified after the government granted an exploitation license to the mining companies on Apr. 3. Indigenous activists set up an encampment in San Rafael Las Flores near the mine five days later. On Apr. 27 mine security guards fired on a group of the protesters, injuring 10, two of them seriously. Responding to the shooting, protesters in Jalapa captured and disarmed 23 police agents on Apr. 29; a campesino was killed the next day when police tried to rescue the captured agent. Also on Apr. 30, a police agent was killed when police stormed the camp in San Rafael Las Flores.
Under the state of siege, more than 2,000 soldiers and police agents were deployed to the four municipalities in small tanks and in attack vehicles, detaining 16 community leaders. In a May 7 communiqué the Indigenous, Campesino and Popular March, which includes various indigenous organizations, described the state of siege as an act of “criminalization of protest” and charged that the government was carrying out “a brutal and systematic repression” against peaceful demonstrations. (Upside Down World 5/2/13; Servindi 5/7/13)
*3. Brazil: Protesters Suspend Belo Monte Occupation
On the night of May 9 some 150 mostly indigenous protesters left the construction site which they had occupied for a week at the Belo Monte dam, in Vitória do Xingu municipality in the northern Brazilian state of Pará [see Update #1175, where we reported 200 occupiers, following our sources]. The decision to end the protest came after Judge Sérgio Wolney Guedes of the Region 1 Federal Regional Court responded to a request from Norte Energia S.A., the consortium in charge of the dam, by ordering the activists to leave and authorizing the use of force by the police. “We went out the same way we entered, peacefully, without causing damage to public property or any type of aggression,” Valdenir Munduruku, a spokesperson for the protesters, told Agência Brasil, the government news agency, by phone. But he said the activists were unhappy with the court’s decision, “because we think that our rights are being violated.”
The occupiers, who included members of the Munduruku, Juruna, Kayapó, Xipaya, Kuruaya, Asurini, Parakanã and Arara indigenous groups, were demanding respect for indigenous communities’ right to prior consultation on the project; they were also protesting the heavy presence of soldiers and military vehicles in the region. When completed, the dam, the world’s third largest, is expected to flood some 516 square kilometers and displace as many as 50,000 people.
The federal government, dominated by the center-left Workers’ Party (PT), says it’s open to dialogue with the protesters. But officials from the General Secretariat of the Presidency have been trying to shift blame to the protesters for the failure to reach an agreement. The officials complained that at two previous meetings indigenous representatives presented contradictory proposals. An unidentified source in the government told the Cuban wire service Prensa Latina that the indigenous representatives didn’t want economic development in the region because they were involved in illegal gold mining. “[O]ne of the main spokespeople for the occupiers in Belo Monte is the owner of six boats that transport illegal raw material,” the source said. (Prensa Latina 5/7/13; Veja (Brazil) 5/10/13; AFP 5/10/13 via La Prensa (Nicaragua))
The government also seems determined to keep the protests from getting media attention. As reported last week, two journalists were removed from the site on May 3 and one was fined as they were trying to cover the occupation. The Journalism in the Americas blog notes that one of the three journalists, Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI) reporter Ruy Sposati, was harassed in December 2011 while reporting on layoffs at one of the dam’s construction sites. He said that two men in a truck owned by the Military Police called him a “troublemaker,” and that one threatened his life. Police agents located nearby reportedly didn’t intervene when the men tried to take Sposati’s camera equipment. (Journalism in the Americas 12/15/11, 5/6/13)
*4. Haiti: Aristide to Reenter Politics as a “Coach”
Former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004) made a tentative reentry into politics with a press conference held on May 9 at his home in Tabarre, a well-to-do suburb northeast of Port-au-Prince. Aristide said his political party, the Lavalas Family (FL), “is evolving, is becoming stronger and more powerful,” and he appeared confident that it would be able to field candidates in parliamentary and local elections to be held before the end of the year; electoral authorities kept FL off the ballot in 2009 partial senatorial elections and in the 2010-2011 presidential and legislative elections [see Update #1052] He predicted that the party would win seats, but not that it would dominate as it did during his 2001-2004 presidential term. “One person alone,” “one political party alone” or “one group in society” can’t solve the problem of hunger, Aristide said. “We have an indispensable coming together to do in order for us to diminish hunger in our country.”
Aristide spent seven years in de facto exile in South Africa after being driven from office in 2004. He suddenly returned on Mar. 18, 2011 but made very few public appearances until May 8 this year, the day before his press conference, when he went to a downtown courtroom to testify to an investigative judge about the April 2000 murder of journalist Jean Léopold Dominique and Jean-Claude Louissaint, the guard at Dominique’s Haïti Inter radio station [see Update #1166]. The police banned demonstrations but took no action when thousands of Aristide’s supporters turned out to see the former president. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 5/8/13, 5/9/13; Miami Herald 5/9/13 from correspondent)
Apparently Aristide has been holding meetings in an effort to revive FL, which has been weakened by factional rivalries along with the denial of ballot status. On May 4 Haitian-American musician Richard Morse told the Associated Press wire service that he and his wife, the popular singer Lunise Exume Morse, had been meeting with Aristide to discuss the possibility of running Lunise Morse on the FL line for senator for West department, which includes Port-au-Prince. “He’s back, and he's trying to get good people on his team,” Richard Morse said of Aristide, who is barred by the 1987 Constitution from seeking a third term. “He's not a candidate,” Morse explained. “He’s a coach. He’s an adviser.”
Morse, who founded the mizik rasin band RAM and manages the well-known Hotel Oloffson in downtown Port-au-Prince, supported Aristide in the early 1990s but broke with him later. More recently Morse was an adviser to rightwing president Michel Martelly, his cousin, but he quit in January, charging that there was “outright corruption” in the Martelly administration. (AP 5/5/13 via Huffington Post)
*5. Mexico: Malcolm X Grandson Murdered in DF Bar
According to Mexican authorities, Malcolm Shabazz, the grandson of assassinated US rights activist Malcolm X and educator Betty Shabazz, was found badly beaten on a sidewalk in Mexico City the night of May 8. Federal District (DF, Mexico City) emergency services took him to a hospital, where he died early in the morning of May 9. A Mexican friend, Miguel Suárez, said he and Shabazz had been invited into The Palace, a bar in the Plaza Garibaldi neighborhood. Later they were presented with a $1,200 bill for music, alcohol and the company of the women they had been drinking with. When they refused to pay, Suárez was separated from Shabazz and eventually escaped; apparently Shabazz was beaten to death.
In 1997, at the age of 12 Shabazz set a fire in which Betty Shabazz died. He was placed in juvenile detention, and had brushes with the law after his release, but more recently he had been studying and was active as a speaker and a blogger. He was visiting Mexico to help Suárez, a California activist who was deported to Mexico in April.
DF police and homicide detectives conducted a search in The Palace, which area shopkeepers say is known for its abuses of tourists who patronize it. Cases like the killing of Shabazz are the result of the authorities’ failure to enforce the law at such establishments, according to Gabriela Salido Magos, a member of the DF Legislative Assembly for the center-right National Action Party (PAN) and part of the Assembly’s tourism committee. She cited the reported rape of a young woman in the Cadillac High Class strip club in February and the robbery the month before of customers at the SO.DO.ME Bathhouse, a gay sauna. These abuses aren’t exceptional, Salido Magos said, but they are viewed differently when the victim is the grandson of an historic US activist. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/11/13, 5/12/13)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Michelle Bachelet: Inequality in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/4284-michelle-bachelet-inequality-in-chile
Using the Cold War: The Truman Administration’s Response to the Bolivian National Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4275-using-the-cold-war-the-truman-administrations-response-to-the-bolivian-national-revolution
Peru Backslides on Indigenous Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4278-peru-backslides-on-indigenous-rights
Private Bank Profits Don’t Represent the Health of the Economy (Ecuador)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/private-bank-profits-dont-represent-the-health-of-the-economy
Ecuador’s Indigenous People Still Waiting to Be Consulted
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4276-ecuadors-indigenous-people-still-waiting-to-be-consulted
Agricultural Workers Strike in Colombia as Peace Talks Continue
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/10/agricultural-workers-strike-colombia-peace-talks-continue
Venezuelan Elections 2013: Fingerprints All Over the Map
http://nacla.org/news/2013/5/7/venezuelan-elections-2013-fingerprints-all-over-map
"Part of the Transition to Socialism": Venezuela's Labour Law Comes into Effect
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9202
The New York Times on Venezuela and Honduras: A Case of Journalistic Misconduct
http://nacla.org/news/2013/5/9/new-york-times-venezuela-and-honduras-case-journalistic-misconduct
Central Americans Skeptical of Obama’s Promises for Greater Benefits from Integration
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9476
A Formal Legal Mandate for a Criminal Investigation of Guatemala's Current President, Perez Molina
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/a-formal-legal-mandate-for-criminal.html
The Guatemala Genocide Case: Testimony Notes Regarding Rios Montt
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/the-guatemala-genocide-case-testimony.html
Obama and the Militarization of the “Drug War” in Mexico and Central America
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/obama-and-the-militarization-of-the-drug-war-in-mexico-and-central-america
Obama in Mexico Amidst Demands for Migrant Rights
http://nacla.org/news/2013/5/6/obama-mexico-amidst-demands-migrant-rights
Labor Reforms No Cause for Celebration in Mexico’s May Day Rallies
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9493
Blood Along the Border: Environmental Activism and Violence in Juarez, Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4280-blood-along-the-border-environmental-activism-and-violence-in-juarez-mexico-
Water Fights Flare (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/2013/05/07/water-fights-flare/
Report Reveals How Canadian Diplomacy Supported Deadly Blackfire Mining Project in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4277-report-reveals-how-canadian-diplomacy-supported-deadly-blackfire-mining-project-in-mexico
Mexico’s Aging Laguna Verde Nuclear Plant a Fiasco
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9498
New Report Gives UN Failing Grade on Cholera (Haiti)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/10/new-report-gives-un-failing-grade-cholera
Cholera Victims’ Lawyers to Seek Billions in Damages if UN Continues to Deny Responsibility (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/cholera-victims-lawyers-to-seek-billions-in-damages-if-un-continues-to-deny-responsibility
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
WNU #1175: Protesters Reoccupy Brazilian Dam
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1175, May 5, 2013
1. Brazil: Protesters Again Block Construction at Belo Monte
2. Guatemala: Will the Ríos Montt Trial Continue?
3. Haiti: Labor Groups Unite for May 1 March
4. Cuba: US Lets “Spy” Serve Probation in Cuba
5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Brazil: Protesters Again Block Construction at Belo Monte
About 200 protesters occupied the main construction site for the giant Belo Monte dam, in Vitória do Xingu municipality in the northern Brazilian state of Pará, on May 2 to demand the immediate suspension of work on the project until the government has respected the indigenous communities’ right to prior consultation on the project. The occupiers—who included members of the Munduruku, Juruna, Kayapó, Xipaya, Kuruaya, Asurini, Parakanã and Arara indigenous groups as well as fishing people and other residents in the area that will be affected by the dam—were also protesting the presence of soldiers and military vehicles in the region. They said they would maintain the occupation and block construction “until the federal government responds to the demands we’ve presented.”
The $13 billion dam, expected to be the world’s third largest, will flood 516 square kilometers, according to opponents, and it has been the target of repeated protests since construction began in March 2012. The most recent was an occupation of another of the four construction sites by 100 or more indigenous people and other residents on Mar. 21 of this year [see Update #1169].
According to news reports, a number of the 6,000 construction workers at the main site were supporting the protesters on May 3. Workers on the Belo Monte dam have held several work actions of their own, including an Apr. 5 strike that some 5,000 employees held at the project’s Pimental construction site over working conditions and dismissals. (Conselho Indigenista Missionário (CIMI) 5/2/13; Adital (Brazil) 5/2/13; Prensa Latina 5/3/13; Reuters 5/4/13)
On May 3 police agents removed two journalists who were covering the occupation; the police threatened to arrest the journalists if they returned, A third journalist was fined for his involvement. The three journalists were Reuters photographer Lunaé Parracho, Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI) reporter Ruy Sposati and Radio France Internationale (RFI) correspondent François Cardona. “Why don’t they want journalists here?” protester Valdenir Munduruku asked after the removal, which took place on the United Nations’ World Press Freedom Day. “If anything happens, the responsibility is the government’s,” he added. “From now on, the [indigenous people] are alone, facing the soldiers,” RFI Cardona correspondent wrote after his removal, “[w]ithout anyone to be a witness if the situation degenerates.” Police also kept federal legislative deputy Padre Ton, a Workers’ Party (PT) representative for Rondônia state, from entering the site. (RFI 5/4/13; Movimiento Xingú Vivo para Siempre website 5/5/13, 5/5/13)
*2. Guatemala: Will the Ríos Montt Trial Continue?
The status of the genocide trial of former Guatemalan dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) remained uncertain as of May 3, with observers disagreeing on the impact of four rulings by the Constitutional Court (CC) that day. The trial--in which Ríos Montt and former intelligence chief Gen. José Rodríguez face charges of causing the deaths of 1,771 indigenous Ixil Mayan civilians in the central department of Quiché during Ríos Montt’s dictatorship—started on Mar. 19 but was suddenly suspended on Apr. 18 after an appeals court appeared to reinstate the presiding judge from an earlier phase of the case [see Updates #1169, 1173]. The trial resumed on Apr. 30, but on May 2 the three trial judges decided to recess until May 7 to allow the defense to prepare.
The Constitutional Court’s May 3 rulings mostly concerned complaints filed by Ríos Montt’s attorney, Francisco García Gudiel. The current presiding judge--whose name is Yasmín Barrios or Yassmín Barrios, according to different media reports—removed García Gudiel on Mar. 19, the first day of the trial, leaving Ríos Montt without a defense team. The lawyer, who has since been reinstated, claims that the trial needs to start over again from the first day. The Constitutional Court postponed a decision on this claim, which according to the Guatemala City daily Prensa Libre means the trial is suspended until the issue is decided. But attorneys for the Ixil victims and other supporters of the prosecution insisted that the trial would resume as scheduled on May 7.
Many observers think political motives are behind the confusing legal maneuvers. Influential rightwing forces in the country, including current president Otto Pérez Molina, have made it clear that they don’t want the genocide trial to reach a verdict. The Apr. 18 suspension came when the three trial judges were close to starting deliberations. They had held 19 sessions and had heard from some 150 witnesses; only six more were scheduled to testify. (Prensa Libre 5/4/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 5/5/13 from AFP, DPA; Open Society Justice Initiative Ríos Montt trial blog 5/5/13)
*3. Haiti: Labor Groups Unite for May 1 March
Several hundred Haitian unionists and activists marched in Port-au-Prince on May 1 to celebrate International Workers Day and to demand reform of the country’s labor code, respect for labor standards and application of a legally mandated 300 gourde (about US$7.12) daily minimum wage for piece workers in the assembly sector [see Update #1164]. The march began at the large industrial park run by the semi-public National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi) in the north of the capital; the assembly plants there mainly produce apparel for sale in North America and are a focus of complaints over failure to pay the minimum wage. The unionists then moved on to the Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development Ministry (Marndr) to highlight the situation of agricultural workers. Police agents blocked the march for 20 minutes because Haitian president Michel Martelly and other officials were attending an event at the ministry.
The May 1 protest in Port-au-Prince was larger and broader-based than a similar march last year, which was sponsored principally by the leftist workers’ organization Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”) and the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA) [see Update #1138]. This year Batay Ouvriye and SOTA were joined by nearly a dozen other organizations, including the Confederation of Haitian Workers’ Forces (CFOH) and the Autonomous Confederation of Haitian Workers (CATH); the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (CSA-TUCA) were also represented at the protest. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 5/1/13) Batay Ouvriye reported that other May 1 demonstrations were held in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s second-largest city, in the north; in Ouanaminthe in the northeast at the Dominican border, where workers at the Compagnie de Développement Industriel S.A. (Codevi) “free trade zone” have won the only union contract in the country’s assembly plants; and in Anse-à-Veau, in the southeastern department of Nippes, where agricultural workers demanded back pay they said was owed them. (Email from Batay Ouvriye 5/3/13)
*4. Cuba: US Lets “Spy” Serve Probation in Cuba
In a sharp reversal of its previous policy, the US government has decided to let René González, one of five Cuban men convicted of espionage in 2001 [see Update #993], serve out the remainder of his probation in Cuba. González, a US citizen of Cuban origin, was released in October 2011 after spending 13 years in prison, but US officials initially turned down his request to serve his remaining three years’ probation in Cuba. In 2012 the US let him visit the island for two weeks to see his brother, who was ill, and in April this year he was allowed another visit to attend the funeral of his father, who died on Apr. 1. On May 3 US district judge in Miami Joan Lenard granted González’s request to stay in Cuba; she said the US Justice Department now had no objection to the arrangement. Apparently the only condition was that he would need to renounce his US citizenship.
Widely known as the “Cuban Five,” the men admitted they were Cuban agents but insisted that they were monitoring terrorist activities by rightwing Cubans based in Florida, not spying on the US. The Cuban government says the five men are heroes, and many US progressives have worked over the years for their release. The other four agents received longer prison sentences than González and remain in US prisons. Last year the Cuban government offered to negotiate the possible release of US citizen Alan Gross, who is now serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba for his work there with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) [see Update #1160], in connection with the release of the Cuban Five. At the time the US rejected the idea of linking the two cases. (New York Times 5/3/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 5/4/13 from DPA, AFP)
The decision on René González was one of three seemingly contradictory signals from the US government over a two-day period. On May 2 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) exploited the US designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism” during a press conference announcing that Cuban resident Assata Shakur was now the first woman on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list. Former Black Panther Party member Shakur, then known as Joanne Chesimard, was convicted in New Jersey in 1977 for the 1973 killing of a state trooper. Shakur, who insists she was wrongfully convicted, escaped prison in 1979 and has been living in Cuba since 1984. (World War 4 Report 5/3/13)
One day later, on May 3, the US government outraged rightwing Cuban Americans by allowing Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban president Raúl Castro, to visit the Liberty Bell, a US national symbol, in Philadelphia. Castro, the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), was in Philadelphia to receive an award from the Equality Forum at the LGBT rights organization’s annual conference, held from May 2 to May 5. The US State Department had delayed granting Castro a visa to attend the conference until Apr. 29. (The Lede, NYT blog, 5/3/13; LJ 5/4/13 from DPA)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Cartes’ Election: What it means and the challenges ahead (Paraguay)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9464
SOA Watch Issues Report on Paraguay's Election and Human Rights Violations in the Curuguaty Massacre
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4263-soa-watch-issues-report-on-paraguays-election-and-human-rights-violations-in-the-curuguaty-massacre
Bolivia Expels USAID: Not Why, but Why Not Sooner
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/bolivia-expels-usaid-not-why-but-why-not-sooner
Ecuador: Green-Washing Run Amok in the Andes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4269-ecuador-green-washing-run-amok-in-the-andes
Colombia to Resume Peace Talks with the FARC Amidst U.S. and Colombian Military "Saber-Rattling"
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/29/colombia-resume-peace-talks-farc-amidst-us-and-colombian-military-saber-rattling
Organizations Like Bamboo: Wellness and Resilience in Colombian Human Rights Defense
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4266-organizations-like-bamboo-wellness-and-resilience-in-colombian-human-rights-defense
Colombia: Marcha Patriótica Gains Momentum in the Struggle for Peace with Social Justice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4268-colombia-marcha-patriotica-gains-momentum-in-the-struggle-for-peace-with-social-justice
Violence Erupts in Venezuela’s National Assembly
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8970
Capriles Formally Contests Elections Before Venezuela’s Supreme Court
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9000
Salvador May Day march rejects privatization push
http://ww4report.com/node/12253
The Criminalization of Campesino Resistance in Honduras: Chavelo’s Story
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4262-the-criminalization-of-campesino-resistance-in-honduras-chavelos-story
Washington Insider Eduardo Stein Tries to Protect Ríos Montt from the Genocide Trial in Guatemala
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/washington-insider-eduardo-stein-tries-to-protect-rios-montt-from-the-genocide-trial-in-guatemala
State of Siege: Mining Conflict Escalates in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4270-state-of-siege-mining-conflict-escalates-in-guatemala
Rios Montt Trial to Resume Amid Expectations and Uncertainties (Guatemala)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4264-rioss-montt-trial-to-resume-amid-expectations-and-uncertainties
A Rough Guide to Obama’s Mexico Visit
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9449
Changing Perspectives on U.S.-Mexico Relations
http://nacla.org/news/2013/5/2/changing-perspectives-us-mexico-relations
Mexican Teachers' Rebellion Against Gov't Education Reform
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=213#1586
Five Students Seize UNAM Tower; Peaceful Solution Sought (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=213#1589
One Year after the Murder of Journalist Regina Martínez: Violence and Impunity Reign (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4267-one-year-after-the-murder-of-journalist-regina-martinez-violence-and-impunity-reign
The Looming Canada-CARICOM Free Trade Agreement (Caribbean)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/3/looming-canada-caricom-free-trade-agreement
A Cuban Spring?
http://nacla.org/news/2013/4/29/cuban-spring
A Tale of Two Trials: Duvalier vs. Ríos Montt (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/a-tale-of-two-trials-duvalier-vs-rios-montt
From the I-Word to the I-Deed (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/1/i-word-i-deed
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1175, May 5, 2013
1. Brazil: Protesters Again Block Construction at Belo Monte
2. Guatemala: Will the Ríos Montt Trial Continue?
3. Haiti: Labor Groups Unite for May 1 March
4. Cuba: US Lets “Spy” Serve Probation in Cuba
5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Brazil: Protesters Again Block Construction at Belo Monte
About 200 protesters occupied the main construction site for the giant Belo Monte dam, in Vitória do Xingu municipality in the northern Brazilian state of Pará, on May 2 to demand the immediate suspension of work on the project until the government has respected the indigenous communities’ right to prior consultation on the project. The occupiers—who included members of the Munduruku, Juruna, Kayapó, Xipaya, Kuruaya, Asurini, Parakanã and Arara indigenous groups as well as fishing people and other residents in the area that will be affected by the dam—were also protesting the presence of soldiers and military vehicles in the region. They said they would maintain the occupation and block construction “until the federal government responds to the demands we’ve presented.”
The $13 billion dam, expected to be the world’s third largest, will flood 516 square kilometers, according to opponents, and it has been the target of repeated protests since construction began in March 2012. The most recent was an occupation of another of the four construction sites by 100 or more indigenous people and other residents on Mar. 21 of this year [see Update #1169].
According to news reports, a number of the 6,000 construction workers at the main site were supporting the protesters on May 3. Workers on the Belo Monte dam have held several work actions of their own, including an Apr. 5 strike that some 5,000 employees held at the project’s Pimental construction site over working conditions and dismissals. (Conselho Indigenista Missionário (CIMI) 5/2/13; Adital (Brazil) 5/2/13; Prensa Latina 5/3/13; Reuters 5/4/13)
On May 3 police agents removed two journalists who were covering the occupation; the police threatened to arrest the journalists if they returned, A third journalist was fined for his involvement. The three journalists were Reuters photographer Lunaé Parracho, Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI) reporter Ruy Sposati and Radio France Internationale (RFI) correspondent François Cardona. “Why don’t they want journalists here?” protester Valdenir Munduruku asked after the removal, which took place on the United Nations’ World Press Freedom Day. “If anything happens, the responsibility is the government’s,” he added. “From now on, the [indigenous people] are alone, facing the soldiers,” RFI Cardona correspondent wrote after his removal, “[w]ithout anyone to be a witness if the situation degenerates.” Police also kept federal legislative deputy Padre Ton, a Workers’ Party (PT) representative for Rondônia state, from entering the site. (RFI 5/4/13; Movimiento Xingú Vivo para Siempre website 5/5/13, 5/5/13)
*2. Guatemala: Will the Ríos Montt Trial Continue?
The status of the genocide trial of former Guatemalan dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) remained uncertain as of May 3, with observers disagreeing on the impact of four rulings by the Constitutional Court (CC) that day. The trial--in which Ríos Montt and former intelligence chief Gen. José Rodríguez face charges of causing the deaths of 1,771 indigenous Ixil Mayan civilians in the central department of Quiché during Ríos Montt’s dictatorship—started on Mar. 19 but was suddenly suspended on Apr. 18 after an appeals court appeared to reinstate the presiding judge from an earlier phase of the case [see Updates #1169, 1173]. The trial resumed on Apr. 30, but on May 2 the three trial judges decided to recess until May 7 to allow the defense to prepare.
The Constitutional Court’s May 3 rulings mostly concerned complaints filed by Ríos Montt’s attorney, Francisco García Gudiel. The current presiding judge--whose name is Yasmín Barrios or Yassmín Barrios, according to different media reports—removed García Gudiel on Mar. 19, the first day of the trial, leaving Ríos Montt without a defense team. The lawyer, who has since been reinstated, claims that the trial needs to start over again from the first day. The Constitutional Court postponed a decision on this claim, which according to the Guatemala City daily Prensa Libre means the trial is suspended until the issue is decided. But attorneys for the Ixil victims and other supporters of the prosecution insisted that the trial would resume as scheduled on May 7.
Many observers think political motives are behind the confusing legal maneuvers. Influential rightwing forces in the country, including current president Otto Pérez Molina, have made it clear that they don’t want the genocide trial to reach a verdict. The Apr. 18 suspension came when the three trial judges were close to starting deliberations. They had held 19 sessions and had heard from some 150 witnesses; only six more were scheduled to testify. (Prensa Libre 5/4/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 5/5/13 from AFP, DPA; Open Society Justice Initiative Ríos Montt trial blog 5/5/13)
*3. Haiti: Labor Groups Unite for May 1 March
Several hundred Haitian unionists and activists marched in Port-au-Prince on May 1 to celebrate International Workers Day and to demand reform of the country’s labor code, respect for labor standards and application of a legally mandated 300 gourde (about US$7.12) daily minimum wage for piece workers in the assembly sector [see Update #1164]. The march began at the large industrial park run by the semi-public National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi) in the north of the capital; the assembly plants there mainly produce apparel for sale in North America and are a focus of complaints over failure to pay the minimum wage. The unionists then moved on to the Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development Ministry (Marndr) to highlight the situation of agricultural workers. Police agents blocked the march for 20 minutes because Haitian president Michel Martelly and other officials were attending an event at the ministry.
The May 1 protest in Port-au-Prince was larger and broader-based than a similar march last year, which was sponsored principally by the leftist workers’ organization Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”) and the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA) [see Update #1138]. This year Batay Ouvriye and SOTA were joined by nearly a dozen other organizations, including the Confederation of Haitian Workers’ Forces (CFOH) and the Autonomous Confederation of Haitian Workers (CATH); the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (CSA-TUCA) were also represented at the protest. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 5/1/13) Batay Ouvriye reported that other May 1 demonstrations were held in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s second-largest city, in the north; in Ouanaminthe in the northeast at the Dominican border, where workers at the Compagnie de Développement Industriel S.A. (Codevi) “free trade zone” have won the only union contract in the country’s assembly plants; and in Anse-à-Veau, in the southeastern department of Nippes, where agricultural workers demanded back pay they said was owed them. (Email from Batay Ouvriye 5/3/13)
*4. Cuba: US Lets “Spy” Serve Probation in Cuba
In a sharp reversal of its previous policy, the US government has decided to let René González, one of five Cuban men convicted of espionage in 2001 [see Update #993], serve out the remainder of his probation in Cuba. González, a US citizen of Cuban origin, was released in October 2011 after spending 13 years in prison, but US officials initially turned down his request to serve his remaining three years’ probation in Cuba. In 2012 the US let him visit the island for two weeks to see his brother, who was ill, and in April this year he was allowed another visit to attend the funeral of his father, who died on Apr. 1. On May 3 US district judge in Miami Joan Lenard granted González’s request to stay in Cuba; she said the US Justice Department now had no objection to the arrangement. Apparently the only condition was that he would need to renounce his US citizenship.
Widely known as the “Cuban Five,” the men admitted they were Cuban agents but insisted that they were monitoring terrorist activities by rightwing Cubans based in Florida, not spying on the US. The Cuban government says the five men are heroes, and many US progressives have worked over the years for their release. The other four agents received longer prison sentences than González and remain in US prisons. Last year the Cuban government offered to negotiate the possible release of US citizen Alan Gross, who is now serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba for his work there with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) [see Update #1160], in connection with the release of the Cuban Five. At the time the US rejected the idea of linking the two cases. (New York Times 5/3/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 5/4/13 from DPA, AFP)
The decision on René González was one of three seemingly contradictory signals from the US government over a two-day period. On May 2 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) exploited the US designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism” during a press conference announcing that Cuban resident Assata Shakur was now the first woman on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list. Former Black Panther Party member Shakur, then known as Joanne Chesimard, was convicted in New Jersey in 1977 for the 1973 killing of a state trooper. Shakur, who insists she was wrongfully convicted, escaped prison in 1979 and has been living in Cuba since 1984. (World War 4 Report 5/3/13)
One day later, on May 3, the US government outraged rightwing Cuban Americans by allowing Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban president Raúl Castro, to visit the Liberty Bell, a US national symbol, in Philadelphia. Castro, the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), was in Philadelphia to receive an award from the Equality Forum at the LGBT rights organization’s annual conference, held from May 2 to May 5. The US State Department had delayed granting Castro a visa to attend the conference until Apr. 29. (The Lede, NYT blog, 5/3/13; LJ 5/4/13 from DPA)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Cartes’ Election: What it means and the challenges ahead (Paraguay)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9464
SOA Watch Issues Report on Paraguay's Election and Human Rights Violations in the Curuguaty Massacre
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4263-soa-watch-issues-report-on-paraguays-election-and-human-rights-violations-in-the-curuguaty-massacre
Bolivia Expels USAID: Not Why, but Why Not Sooner
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/bolivia-expels-usaid-not-why-but-why-not-sooner
Ecuador: Green-Washing Run Amok in the Andes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4269-ecuador-green-washing-run-amok-in-the-andes
Colombia to Resume Peace Talks with the FARC Amidst U.S. and Colombian Military "Saber-Rattling"
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/29/colombia-resume-peace-talks-farc-amidst-us-and-colombian-military-saber-rattling
Organizations Like Bamboo: Wellness and Resilience in Colombian Human Rights Defense
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4266-organizations-like-bamboo-wellness-and-resilience-in-colombian-human-rights-defense
Colombia: Marcha Patriótica Gains Momentum in the Struggle for Peace with Social Justice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4268-colombia-marcha-patriotica-gains-momentum-in-the-struggle-for-peace-with-social-justice
Violence Erupts in Venezuela’s National Assembly
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8970
Capriles Formally Contests Elections Before Venezuela’s Supreme Court
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9000
Salvador May Day march rejects privatization push
http://ww4report.com/node/12253
The Criminalization of Campesino Resistance in Honduras: Chavelo’s Story
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4262-the-criminalization-of-campesino-resistance-in-honduras-chavelos-story
Washington Insider Eduardo Stein Tries to Protect Ríos Montt from the Genocide Trial in Guatemala
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/washington-insider-eduardo-stein-tries-to-protect-rios-montt-from-the-genocide-trial-in-guatemala
State of Siege: Mining Conflict Escalates in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4270-state-of-siege-mining-conflict-escalates-in-guatemala
Rios Montt Trial to Resume Amid Expectations and Uncertainties (Guatemala)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4264-rioss-montt-trial-to-resume-amid-expectations-and-uncertainties
A Rough Guide to Obama’s Mexico Visit
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9449
Changing Perspectives on U.S.-Mexico Relations
http://nacla.org/news/2013/5/2/changing-perspectives-us-mexico-relations
Mexican Teachers' Rebellion Against Gov't Education Reform
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=213#1586
Five Students Seize UNAM Tower; Peaceful Solution Sought (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=213#1589
One Year after the Murder of Journalist Regina Martínez: Violence and Impunity Reign (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4267-one-year-after-the-murder-of-journalist-regina-martinez-violence-and-impunity-reign
The Looming Canada-CARICOM Free Trade Agreement (Caribbean)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/3/looming-canada-caricom-free-trade-agreement
A Cuban Spring?
http://nacla.org/news/2013/4/29/cuban-spring
A Tale of Two Trials: Duvalier vs. Ríos Montt (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/a-tale-of-two-trials-duvalier-vs-rios-montt
From the I-Word to the I-Deed (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/1/i-word-i-deed
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Monday, April 29, 2013
WNU #1174: 50 Injured as Argentine Police Attack Hospital
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1174, April 28, 2013
1. Argentina: 50 Injured as Police Attack Hospital
2. Mexico: Party Offices Trashed in Guerrero Teachers’ Protest
3. Mexico: Monsanto Pushes for More GMO Corn
4. Haiti: Quake Survivors Still Being Evicted From Camps
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration, US/policy
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Argentina: 50 Injured as Police Attack Hospital
Some 200 to 300 agents of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Police invaded the grounds of the José T. Borda public psychiatric hospital in the Argentine capital during the early morning of Apr. 26 to guard demolition workers as they bulldozed one of the hospital buildings. When hospital workers, patients and community members gathered later to protest the demolition, police agents used nightsticks and rubber bullets against the crowd. Protesters said some 50 people were injured, including at least 10 patients, seven nurses, three media workers and a member of the city legislature, María Rachid. The authorities reported 36 people injured, 17 of them police agents. Eight people were arrested.
Rightwing Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri insisted that the agents, who were equipped with helmets and shields, had to use force to defend themselves from rock-throwing protesters. The protesters cited police attacks that appeared to be unprovoked. Leaders of the State Workers Association (ATE), which represents some of the hospital workers, charged that union delegates were attacked by agents when they tried to mediate the situation. Local legislator Rachid gave a similar account. “I went into the place,” she said, “and when I asked who was in charge of the operation, the police shoved me and beat me.”
The demolished building had housed a rehabilitation and job-training workshop for patients; it was being removed to make way for a new Civic Center, where the city government plans to relocate some of its offices. Opponents of the plan say Mayor Macri, who is linked to construction interests, originally intended to use the space for high-rise buildings; strong opposition forced him to switch to the Civic Center project. The city claims that the building was already empty and that the workshop was being relocated elsewhere. The ATE—an affiliate of the Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA), the more radical of the country’s two largest labor federations—was the only one of the five unions at the hospital to oppose the plan, according to the authorities.
Argentine journalist Stella Calloni writes that human rights groups say the Buenos Aires force includes officers who worked under the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, along with advisers from Israel and the US. The violence at the Borda hospital came a month and a half after Metropolitan Police agents used tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition to break up a sit-in protesting efforts to privatize part of a public cultural center [see Update #1168]. (Noticias Argentinas 4/26/13 via Terra Argentina; Buenos Aires Herald 4/26/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/27/13 from correspondent; Kaos en la Red 4/27/13)
On Apr. 27 a majority in the Buenos Aires city legislature, including members from rightwing parties, responded to the incident at the hospital by calling for the city’s security minister, Guillermo Montenegro, to resign; only members of Macri’s Republican Proposal (PRO) backed the city government. Center-left Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a longtime opponent of Macri, also condemned the police operation. The ATE will protest the action with a nationwide strike and a rally in Buenos Aires on Apr. 30, according to the union’s general secretary, José Luis Mataza. (LJ 4/28/13 from correspondent; Buenos Aires Herald 4/26/13)
*2. Mexico: Party Offices Trashed in Guerrero Teachers’ Protest
Thousands of teachers marched in Chilpancingo, the capital of the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero, on Apr. 24 to protest the Guerrero legislature’s vote the day before to ratify a national education “reform” plan proposed by Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto [see Update #1172]. The march—sponsored by the State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG), an organization of dissident local members of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE)—stopped at the headquarters of various political parties, where masked participants vandalized offices. The main damage was at the office of Peña Nieto’s party, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI); the attackers, armed with clubs, broke windows, threw furniture, papers and plants into the street, tore up a photograph of the president and started a fire in the office, which firefighters put out. There were also attacks on the offices of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the social democratic Citizens’ Movement (formerly the Convergence for Democracy).
Within hours Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre Rivero announced that the state government would stop all negotiations with the CETEG and that arrest warrants had been issued for two of its leaders, Minervino Morán and Gonzalo Juárez; the governor described them as the force behind the vandalism. Aguirre also claimed that activities were normal at 95% of the state’s schools despite a strike carried out by CETEG supporters since March. Apparently there was confusion in the state government: at almost the same time Governance Secretary Humberto Salgado Gómez blamed the damage on “people infiltrated” into the protest. “What happened here was acts of barbarism,” he said. “It’s not a question of teachers but of people who are alien to the movement.” Later he changed course and said the state was investigating the teachers for the vandalism. (AFP 4/24/13 via Prensa Libre (Guatemala); El Economista (Mexico) 4/24/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/25/13)
Meanwhile, the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), the national organization of SNTE dissidents, concluded its Fifth National Education Conference in Mexico City on Apr. 27 with an affirmation of its commitment to opposing the “reform” program; the group called for teachers, parents, students and social organizations to prepare for an open-ended national strike in defense of education. The group’s National Political Directorate agreed to meet on Apr. 30 to plan the strategies they would apply after the traditional May 1 labor marches. (LJ 4/28/13)
*3. Mexico: Monsanto Pushes for More GMO Corn
As of Apr. 26 environmental activists still hadn’t learned the Mexican government’s response to requests that the Missouri-based biotech giant Monsanto Company filed on Mar. 26 for permission to expand the sowing of transgenic corn in four northern and western states. Monsanto asked for clearance to sow commercial crops in 28 municipalities in the state of Chihuahua, 11 in Coahuila and nine in Durango. These requests were in an addition to filings it made in January and February to carry out noncommercial pilot projects in the same municipalities and in Comondú in Baja California Sur. Another biotech company, Swiss-based Syngenta AG, filed on Mar. 26 for permission to carry out pilot projects in the state of Sinaloa. People opposing the use of genetically modified organisms (GMO) for crops say the total requests would affect 12 million hectares.
At the end of 2011 the Mexican government lifted the last barrier to growing GMO corn for consumption, although the sowing is still regulated and is confined to dry northern and western states where GMO proponents claim it is less likely to contaminate native corn [see Update #1118]. Environmentalists say even the limited sowing so far has already affected native crops as far away as the southern state of Oaxaca, where local communities and communities from other states testified this month to a committee of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (TPP), an international group founded in Italy in 1979 to influence world opinion on various issues. The use of transgenic corn causes malformed plants and low productivity and puts small producers out of business, community representatives told the committee in what was called a “pre-hearing” to decide whether to go ahead with the case. The committee’s members are Camila Montecinos from the Chilean office of the Barcelona-based group Grain; Joel Aquino, a Mexican campesino leader; Mexican author Gustavo Esteva, who writes about autonomy and community development; and Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/5/13, 4/27/13)
Monsanto reported a net income of $1.48 billion for its second quarter, which ended on Feb. 13, up significantly from the $1.21 billion it earned in the same quarter last year. The company seems equally successful in influencing US politicians. A “continuing resolution” passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in late March to fund the US government’s budget this fiscal year turned out to contain a section protecting companies from lawsuits over health risks that might be related to genetically modified seeds. GMO opponents called the section the “Monsanto Protection Act.” (Huffington Post 4/3/13, some from AP)
*4. Haiti: Quake Survivors Still Being Evicted From Camps
At least 60,978 of the people left homeless by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit southern Haiti in January 2010 were forcibly evicted from displaced persons camps between July 2010 and the end of 2012, according to a report released by the human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) on Apr. 23. The report, “‘Nowhere to Go’: Forced Evictions in Haiti’s Camps for Displaced People,” says that another 977 families were forcibly evicted during the first three months of 2013 [see Update #1166]. The evictions have been tolerated by Haitian authorities, and in many cases government agencies have actively participated in the operations, Haitian human rights groups charge.
“The government says nothing” about the evictions, AI researcher Chiara Liquiori told an Apr. 23 press conference in Port-au-Prince. AI noted the need for a comprehensive national housing program, especially since Haiti had an estimated deficit of 700,000 houses even before the earthquake, but for the short term the group called for the authorities to declare a moratorium on the evictions. “Forced evictions threaten nearly a quarter of the more than 320,000 people still living in camps more than three years on from the earthquake,” AI special adviser Javier Zúñiga said in a press release issued by the organization on Apr. 23. (AI press release 4/23/13; AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/23/13)
One of the camps under the threat of eviction is the Gaston Magwon camp in Carrefour, a town just west of Port-au-Prince. Some 150 families were violently driven out on Feb. 15 by police agents and men armed with machetes and knives. A baby was reportedly injured when the armed men and police damaged a shelter with the child still inside. Some of these families returned to the camp, which now holds about 650 families; they have been warned that another eviction is eminent. AI issued an urgent action asking for letters to Haitian president Michel Joseph Martelly (communications@presidentmartelly.ht) and National Police of Haiti General Director Godson Orélus (godore68@hotmail.com) calling for the authorities not to carry out more evictions at Gaston Magwon, to investigate the earlier incidents and “to seek durable solutions to the housing needs” of the earthquake’s victims. (AI urgent action 3/22/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration, US/policy
Threat of the Trans-Pacific Agreement (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9416
Climate Debt: Who Profits? Who Pays? (Latin America)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/4/22/climate-debt-who-profits-who-pays
Paid to Trash Argentina, Raben Does Just That, Without Disclosing Financial Interests
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/paid-to-trash-argentina-raben-does-just-that-without-disclosing-financial-interests
Chile: A Carnival in Defense of Water Sweeps through the Streets of Santiago
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/4252-chile-a-carnival-in-defense-of-water-sweeps-through-the-streets-of-santiago
Uruguay: Birth of a Movement Against Mining and Extractivism
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9439
Paraguay: House of Cartes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/4257-paraguay-house-of-cartes
Bolivia: TIPNIS Road On Hold Until Extreme Poverty Eliminated
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/25/bolivia-tipnis-road-hold-until-extreme-poverty-eliminated
Three Ecuadorans to appeal libel sentences
http://ww4report.com/node/11409#comment-450284
Colombia: Campesinos of Asoquimbo Liberate Lands under Control of Emgesa-Endesa-Enel
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4261-colombia-campesinos-of-asoquimbo-liberate-lands-under-control-of-emgesa-endesa-enel
The Venezuelan Presidential Vote -- What is the Probability That It Could Have Been Stolen?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/the-venezuelan-presidential-vote-what-is-the-probability-that-it-could-have-been-stolen
The New Yorker Should Ignore Jon Lee Anderson and Issue a Correction on Venezuela
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/24/new-yorker-should-ignore-jon-lee-anderson-and-issue-correction-venezuela
Venezuela Faces a Soft War
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/8813
Salvador legislator implicated in Venezuela destabilization
http://ww4report.com/node/12220
Honduras: Exhumations in the Aguán in Search of the Truth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4253-honduras-exhumations-in-the-aguan-in-search-of-the-truth
Defending Rio Blanco: Three Weeks of the Lenca Community Roadblock in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4249-defending-rio-blanco-three-weeks-of-the-lenca-community-roadblock-in-honduras
If Enough Forces Weigh In, the Trial Can Resume (Guatemala)
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/04/if-enough-forces-weigh-in-trial-can.html
New Wave of Attacks against Land Rights Activists in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4250-new-wave-of-attacks-against-land-rights-activists-in-guatemala-
Israel’s Proxy War in Guatemala
http://nacla.org/news/2013/4/23/israel%E2%80%99s-proxy-war-guatemala
Noopemig: The Global Rallying Cry from Capulálpam (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9398
“We are All Guerrero”: Mexico’s New Popular Revolt Takes on the State
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9403
Mexico: violence escalates in Michoacán
http://ww4report.com/node/12229
A Hard Day’s Labor for $4.76: the Offshore Assembly Industry in Haiti
http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/another-haiti-possible/hard-day-s-labor-476-offshore-assembly-industry-haiti
Accused of Sexual Abuse, MINUSTAH Officer Flees Haiti
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/accused-of-sexual-abuse-minustah-officer-flees-haiti
Memoirs of a Guestworker (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/4/23/memoirs-guestworker
Chican@ Studies and the Fight Inside U.S. Schools to Drop the ‘I’ Word (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/24/chican-studies-and-fight-inside-us-schools-drop-%E2%80%98i%E2%80%99-word
Federal Judge Orders Release of Names of School of the Americas/ WHINSEC Graduates (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4258-federal-judge-orders-release-of-names-of-school-of-the-americas-whinsec-graduates
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1174, April 28, 2013
1. Argentina: 50 Injured as Police Attack Hospital
2. Mexico: Party Offices Trashed in Guerrero Teachers’ Protest
3. Mexico: Monsanto Pushes for More GMO Corn
4. Haiti: Quake Survivors Still Being Evicted From Camps
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration, US/policy
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Argentina: 50 Injured as Police Attack Hospital
Some 200 to 300 agents of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Police invaded the grounds of the José T. Borda public psychiatric hospital in the Argentine capital during the early morning of Apr. 26 to guard demolition workers as they bulldozed one of the hospital buildings. When hospital workers, patients and community members gathered later to protest the demolition, police agents used nightsticks and rubber bullets against the crowd. Protesters said some 50 people were injured, including at least 10 patients, seven nurses, three media workers and a member of the city legislature, María Rachid. The authorities reported 36 people injured, 17 of them police agents. Eight people were arrested.
Rightwing Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri insisted that the agents, who were equipped with helmets and shields, had to use force to defend themselves from rock-throwing protesters. The protesters cited police attacks that appeared to be unprovoked. Leaders of the State Workers Association (ATE), which represents some of the hospital workers, charged that union delegates were attacked by agents when they tried to mediate the situation. Local legislator Rachid gave a similar account. “I went into the place,” she said, “and when I asked who was in charge of the operation, the police shoved me and beat me.”
The demolished building had housed a rehabilitation and job-training workshop for patients; it was being removed to make way for a new Civic Center, where the city government plans to relocate some of its offices. Opponents of the plan say Mayor Macri, who is linked to construction interests, originally intended to use the space for high-rise buildings; strong opposition forced him to switch to the Civic Center project. The city claims that the building was already empty and that the workshop was being relocated elsewhere. The ATE—an affiliate of the Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA), the more radical of the country’s two largest labor federations—was the only one of the five unions at the hospital to oppose the plan, according to the authorities.
Argentine journalist Stella Calloni writes that human rights groups say the Buenos Aires force includes officers who worked under the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, along with advisers from Israel and the US. The violence at the Borda hospital came a month and a half after Metropolitan Police agents used tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition to break up a sit-in protesting efforts to privatize part of a public cultural center [see Update #1168]. (Noticias Argentinas 4/26/13 via Terra Argentina; Buenos Aires Herald 4/26/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/27/13 from correspondent; Kaos en la Red 4/27/13)
On Apr. 27 a majority in the Buenos Aires city legislature, including members from rightwing parties, responded to the incident at the hospital by calling for the city’s security minister, Guillermo Montenegro, to resign; only members of Macri’s Republican Proposal (PRO) backed the city government. Center-left Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a longtime opponent of Macri, also condemned the police operation. The ATE will protest the action with a nationwide strike and a rally in Buenos Aires on Apr. 30, according to the union’s general secretary, José Luis Mataza. (LJ 4/28/13 from correspondent; Buenos Aires Herald 4/26/13)
*2. Mexico: Party Offices Trashed in Guerrero Teachers’ Protest
Thousands of teachers marched in Chilpancingo, the capital of the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero, on Apr. 24 to protest the Guerrero legislature’s vote the day before to ratify a national education “reform” plan proposed by Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto [see Update #1172]. The march—sponsored by the State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG), an organization of dissident local members of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE)—stopped at the headquarters of various political parties, where masked participants vandalized offices. The main damage was at the office of Peña Nieto’s party, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI); the attackers, armed with clubs, broke windows, threw furniture, papers and plants into the street, tore up a photograph of the president and started a fire in the office, which firefighters put out. There were also attacks on the offices of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the social democratic Citizens’ Movement (formerly the Convergence for Democracy).
Within hours Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre Rivero announced that the state government would stop all negotiations with the CETEG and that arrest warrants had been issued for two of its leaders, Minervino Morán and Gonzalo Juárez; the governor described them as the force behind the vandalism. Aguirre also claimed that activities were normal at 95% of the state’s schools despite a strike carried out by CETEG supporters since March. Apparently there was confusion in the state government: at almost the same time Governance Secretary Humberto Salgado Gómez blamed the damage on “people infiltrated” into the protest. “What happened here was acts of barbarism,” he said. “It’s not a question of teachers but of people who are alien to the movement.” Later he changed course and said the state was investigating the teachers for the vandalism. (AFP 4/24/13 via Prensa Libre (Guatemala); El Economista (Mexico) 4/24/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/25/13)
Meanwhile, the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), the national organization of SNTE dissidents, concluded its Fifth National Education Conference in Mexico City on Apr. 27 with an affirmation of its commitment to opposing the “reform” program; the group called for teachers, parents, students and social organizations to prepare for an open-ended national strike in defense of education. The group’s National Political Directorate agreed to meet on Apr. 30 to plan the strategies they would apply after the traditional May 1 labor marches. (LJ 4/28/13)
*3. Mexico: Monsanto Pushes for More GMO Corn
As of Apr. 26 environmental activists still hadn’t learned the Mexican government’s response to requests that the Missouri-based biotech giant Monsanto Company filed on Mar. 26 for permission to expand the sowing of transgenic corn in four northern and western states. Monsanto asked for clearance to sow commercial crops in 28 municipalities in the state of Chihuahua, 11 in Coahuila and nine in Durango. These requests were in an addition to filings it made in January and February to carry out noncommercial pilot projects in the same municipalities and in Comondú in Baja California Sur. Another biotech company, Swiss-based Syngenta AG, filed on Mar. 26 for permission to carry out pilot projects in the state of Sinaloa. People opposing the use of genetically modified organisms (GMO) for crops say the total requests would affect 12 million hectares.
At the end of 2011 the Mexican government lifted the last barrier to growing GMO corn for consumption, although the sowing is still regulated and is confined to dry northern and western states where GMO proponents claim it is less likely to contaminate native corn [see Update #1118]. Environmentalists say even the limited sowing so far has already affected native crops as far away as the southern state of Oaxaca, where local communities and communities from other states testified this month to a committee of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (TPP), an international group founded in Italy in 1979 to influence world opinion on various issues. The use of transgenic corn causes malformed plants and low productivity and puts small producers out of business, community representatives told the committee in what was called a “pre-hearing” to decide whether to go ahead with the case. The committee’s members are Camila Montecinos from the Chilean office of the Barcelona-based group Grain; Joel Aquino, a Mexican campesino leader; Mexican author Gustavo Esteva, who writes about autonomy and community development; and Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/5/13, 4/27/13)
Monsanto reported a net income of $1.48 billion for its second quarter, which ended on Feb. 13, up significantly from the $1.21 billion it earned in the same quarter last year. The company seems equally successful in influencing US politicians. A “continuing resolution” passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in late March to fund the US government’s budget this fiscal year turned out to contain a section protecting companies from lawsuits over health risks that might be related to genetically modified seeds. GMO opponents called the section the “Monsanto Protection Act.” (Huffington Post 4/3/13, some from AP)
*4. Haiti: Quake Survivors Still Being Evicted From Camps
At least 60,978 of the people left homeless by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit southern Haiti in January 2010 were forcibly evicted from displaced persons camps between July 2010 and the end of 2012, according to a report released by the human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) on Apr. 23. The report, “‘Nowhere to Go’: Forced Evictions in Haiti’s Camps for Displaced People,” says that another 977 families were forcibly evicted during the first three months of 2013 [see Update #1166]. The evictions have been tolerated by Haitian authorities, and in many cases government agencies have actively participated in the operations, Haitian human rights groups charge.
“The government says nothing” about the evictions, AI researcher Chiara Liquiori told an Apr. 23 press conference in Port-au-Prince. AI noted the need for a comprehensive national housing program, especially since Haiti had an estimated deficit of 700,000 houses even before the earthquake, but for the short term the group called for the authorities to declare a moratorium on the evictions. “Forced evictions threaten nearly a quarter of the more than 320,000 people still living in camps more than three years on from the earthquake,” AI special adviser Javier Zúñiga said in a press release issued by the organization on Apr. 23. (AI press release 4/23/13; AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/23/13)
One of the camps under the threat of eviction is the Gaston Magwon camp in Carrefour, a town just west of Port-au-Prince. Some 150 families were violently driven out on Feb. 15 by police agents and men armed with machetes and knives. A baby was reportedly injured when the armed men and police damaged a shelter with the child still inside. Some of these families returned to the camp, which now holds about 650 families; they have been warned that another eviction is eminent. AI issued an urgent action asking for letters to Haitian president Michel Joseph Martelly (communications@presidentmartelly.ht) and National Police of Haiti General Director Godson Orélus (godore68@hotmail.com) calling for the authorities not to carry out more evictions at Gaston Magwon, to investigate the earlier incidents and “to seek durable solutions to the housing needs” of the earthquake’s victims. (AI urgent action 3/22/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration, US/policy
Threat of the Trans-Pacific Agreement (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9416
Climate Debt: Who Profits? Who Pays? (Latin America)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/4/22/climate-debt-who-profits-who-pays
Paid to Trash Argentina, Raben Does Just That, Without Disclosing Financial Interests
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/paid-to-trash-argentina-raben-does-just-that-without-disclosing-financial-interests
Chile: A Carnival in Defense of Water Sweeps through the Streets of Santiago
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/4252-chile-a-carnival-in-defense-of-water-sweeps-through-the-streets-of-santiago
Uruguay: Birth of a Movement Against Mining and Extractivism
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9439
Paraguay: House of Cartes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/4257-paraguay-house-of-cartes
Bolivia: TIPNIS Road On Hold Until Extreme Poverty Eliminated
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/25/bolivia-tipnis-road-hold-until-extreme-poverty-eliminated
Three Ecuadorans to appeal libel sentences
http://ww4report.com/node/11409#comment-450284
Colombia: Campesinos of Asoquimbo Liberate Lands under Control of Emgesa-Endesa-Enel
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4261-colombia-campesinos-of-asoquimbo-liberate-lands-under-control-of-emgesa-endesa-enel
The Venezuelan Presidential Vote -- What is the Probability That It Could Have Been Stolen?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/the-venezuelan-presidential-vote-what-is-the-probability-that-it-could-have-been-stolen
The New Yorker Should Ignore Jon Lee Anderson and Issue a Correction on Venezuela
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/24/new-yorker-should-ignore-jon-lee-anderson-and-issue-correction-venezuela
Venezuela Faces a Soft War
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/8813
Salvador legislator implicated in Venezuela destabilization
http://ww4report.com/node/12220
Honduras: Exhumations in the Aguán in Search of the Truth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4253-honduras-exhumations-in-the-aguan-in-search-of-the-truth
Defending Rio Blanco: Three Weeks of the Lenca Community Roadblock in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4249-defending-rio-blanco-three-weeks-of-the-lenca-community-roadblock-in-honduras
If Enough Forces Weigh In, the Trial Can Resume (Guatemala)
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/04/if-enough-forces-weigh-in-trial-can.html
New Wave of Attacks against Land Rights Activists in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4250-new-wave-of-attacks-against-land-rights-activists-in-guatemala-
Israel’s Proxy War in Guatemala
http://nacla.org/news/2013/4/23/israel%E2%80%99s-proxy-war-guatemala
Noopemig: The Global Rallying Cry from Capulálpam (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9398
“We are All Guerrero”: Mexico’s New Popular Revolt Takes on the State
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9403
Mexico: violence escalates in Michoacán
http://ww4report.com/node/12229
A Hard Day’s Labor for $4.76: the Offshore Assembly Industry in Haiti
http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/another-haiti-possible/hard-day-s-labor-476-offshore-assembly-industry-haiti
Accused of Sexual Abuse, MINUSTAH Officer Flees Haiti
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/accused-of-sexual-abuse-minustah-officer-flees-haiti
Memoirs of a Guestworker (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/4/23/memoirs-guestworker
Chican@ Studies and the Fight Inside U.S. Schools to Drop the ‘I’ Word (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/24/chican-studies-and-fight-inside-us-schools-drop-%E2%80%98i%E2%80%99-word
Federal Judge Orders Release of Names of School of the Americas/ WHINSEC Graduates (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4258-federal-judge-orders-release-of-names-of-school-of-the-americas-whinsec-graduates
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
WNU #1173: Korean Firm Accused in Attack on Nicaraguan Workers
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1173, April 21, 2013
1. Nicaragua: Korean Firm Accused in Attack on Maquila Workers
2. Guatemala: Victims Challenge Suspension of Ríos Montt Trial
3. Mexico: Thousands March for Release of Chiapas Schoolteacher
4. Latin America: US Court Ruling Threatens Human Rights Suits
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Nicaragua: Korean Firm Accused in Attack on Maquila Workers
According to a report by a US-based labor rights monitoring group, the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), managers employed by the major Korean apparel firm Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd orchestrated an attack on laid-off Nicaraguan unionists and their supporters on Mar. 4 at two of the company’s plants in a “free trade zone” in Tipitapa municipality, Managua department. Sae-A supervisors reportedly promised workers 100 córdobas (about US$4.04), a production bonus and a free lunch if they broke up a rally and leafleting that about 30 workers were holding outside the two factories, EINS and Tecnotex, at the start of the workday. Some 300-350 workers came out of the plants and attacked the protesting unionists with metal pipes, belts and scissors, the WRC says, while police agents and plant security guards on the scene did nothing to stop the violence.
The two Sae-A factories are maquiladoras, assembly plants that benefit from tax and tariff exemptions while producing for North American retailers; the plants’ customers include Gear for Sports, Kohl’s, J.C. Penney, Target and Wal-Mart. The rally was sponsored by two newly formed unions, the United Effort Union at EINS and the Carlos Fonseca Amador Union at Tecnotex. The unions say plant management fired 16 of their officials and members between July 2012 and January 2013 in retaliation for union activities. (WRC report 3/8/13; The Nation 4/18/13) (Warehouse Workers United, a project of the US union federation Change to Win, has posted a video of the Mar. 4 incident on YouTube.)
On Mar. 13, leaders of three major Nicaraguan union confederations charged that the Solidarity Center--which is operated by the main US labor confederation, the AFL-CIO, and receives funding from the US government--was forming new unions that were being used to create instability in the maquiladoras. The general secretaries of the Sandinista Workers’ Central (CST), the United Confederation of Workers (CUT) and the Confederation of Union Unity (CUS) blamed Solidarity Center activities for the violence outside the EINS and Tecnotex plants on Mar. 4. The US unionists were “trying to get brands such as Nike, Adidas, and Levi’s to stop contracting work to Nicaraguan factories and return the jobs to the US,” CST general secretary Roberto González said. The leaders of the three confederations said they were prepared to do what was necessary to preserve the 105,000 jobs in Nicaragua’s FTZ factories. (Nicaragua News Bulletin 3/19/13)
Sae-A is also active in Guatemala and Haiti. It’s the lead tenant in the Caracol Industrial Park, a 617-acre complex in northeastern Haiti which opened for business last Oct. 22; promoters said it will bring as many as 65,000 jobs to the country. The US government, which gives special trade preferences to apparel assembled in Haiti, contributed $124 million to the Caracol project. (World War 4 Report 11/7/12) According to an article in the New York Times last July, Sae-A began moving its operations to Nicaragua after being pressured in 2010 to let workers form a union at its Guatemalan maquiladoras. A Sae-A adviser told the Times that the company was making plans to move that production on to Haiti once US trade preferences for Nicaragua expire in 2014 [see Update #1138].
*2. Guatemala: Victims Challenge Suspension of Ríos Montt Trial
Both supporters and opponents of former Guatemalan dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) took to the streets of Guatemala City on Apr. 20 in response to the abrupt decision two days earlier to suspend his trial for genocide allegedly committed against indigenous people during the country's 36-year civil war. Human rights activists marched to the Constitutionality Court (CC), where the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH) had filed a complaint on Apr. 19 against the suspension. “We’re asking for a court free of pressures, one which can say whether or not there was genocide and crimes against humanity,” CALDH director Juan Fernando Soto explained. Meanwhile, friends and relatives of soldiers marched in the Lourdes neighborhood in Zona 16, putting decals on cars reading: “I love the Army of Guatemala” and “We Guatemalans don’t commit genocide.” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala City) 4/21/13)
The historic trial, which also targeted Ríos Montt’s former intelligence chief, Gen. José Rodríguez, was halted on Apr. 18 shortly before the judges were to begin deliberations on a verdict. High Risk Cases Court judge Carol Patricia Flores Polanco, who was recused from the case in November 2011, entered the courtroom and announced that the Third Criminal Appeals Court had reinstated her as judge in the case, replacing current judge Yasmín Barrios. Judge Flores said the case would have to start over again and all the proceedings in the 17 months since she was recused would be annulled, including the testimony of dozens of members of the Mayan Ixil group who were victims or witnesses of military atrocities. Prosecutors, victims and human rights defenders immediately announced that they would appeal, and Judge Barrios insisted that the trial would continue. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/19/13 from correspondent; PL 4/20/13)
Many observers were skeptical about the legal rationale for the suspension. On Apr. 16, two days before the decision, a public declaration appeared warning of the “imminent danger that political violence might reappear” because of the polarization allegedly caused by the case; it was signed by two former vice presidents, two negotiators of the 1996 peace accords that ended the civil war, a former rebel leader and various former cabinet ministers. On Apr. 18 the United Nations-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) issued a press release calling the declaration “an unjustifiable threat against the court”; 1992 Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum called on the government to provide security for the witnesses, prosecutors and judges. (Siglo 21 (Guatemala City) 4/19/13 from EFE)
“[B]ehind the decision stands secret intervention by Guatemala’s current president and death threats delivered to judges and prosecutors by associates of Guatemala’s army,” US investigative journalist Allan Nairn reported on Apr. 18, shortly after the suspension was announced. Nairn had been tentatively scheduled to appear as an expert witness on Apr. 15; he covered the counterinsurgency in the early 1980s and interviewed current president Otto Pérez Molina, then an army major known as “Tito Arias” commanding troops in the Ixil region, at the time [see Update #1171].
Guatemala’s rulers had agreed to allow the trial to take place “because political forces were such that they had to,” Nairn wrote, “and because they thought that they could get away with sacrificing Ríos Montt to save their own skins.” But their thinking changed when former military engineer Hugo Ramiro Leonardo Reyes gave testimony implicating Pérez Molina in the atrocities that occurred under the Ríos Montt dictatorship. Nairn’s planned testimony was cancelled, since he too could implicate the president, he said. Then “Guatemala's army and oligarchy rallied…. They started to feel that they had no political need to sacrifice Ríos Montt… On Apr. 16 Pérez Molina said publicly that the case was a threat to peace. On Apr. 18, today, the Ríos Montt genocide case was suspended.” (News and Comment 4/18/13; Democracy Now! 4/19/13)
The Ixil witnesses and survivors weren’t about to give up in the face of the suspension, according to Claudia Samayoa, coordinator of the Unit for Protection of Human Rights Defenders of Guatemala (UDEFEGUA). When the decision was announced on Apr. 18, she told the Mexican daily La Jornada, “the indigenous people in the courtroom didn’t cry. We cried; the indigenous people didn’t. Later they explained to us that for them this cancellation, although illegal, is hardly even a setback. They told us: ‘We’ve survived worse. We’ve finally been able to speak out, and we’ll be able to overcome this setback.’” (LJ 4/19/13)
*3. Mexico: Thousands March for Release of Chiapas Schoolteacher
Some 15,000 protesters marched in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, capital of the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, on Apr. 19 to demand the release of Alberto Patishtán Gómez, an indigenous schoolteacher who has been serving a 60-year sentence since 2000 for his alleged involvement in the killing of seven police agents in El Bosque municipality in June of that year. Patishtán is a supporter of the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). Actions demanding his release have taken place in at least 11 countries over the past year [see Update #1129].
About 7,000 of the marchers were indigenous Mayans; most of these belonged, like Patishtán himself, to the Tzotzil group. Another 8,000 were teachers from Section 7 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE); they were also protesting changes in the educational system being carried out by the administration of Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto [see Update #1172]. The protesters, accompanied by flutes, guitars and drums, tied up the center of Tuxtla for three hours.
The march coincided with a visit to the nearby town of Navenchauc by President Peña Nieto, who was promoting his “National Crusade Against Hunger” [see Update #1165]; the guest of honor for the event was former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011). “We believe and we’re convinced by the facts that this is a crusade against the hungry,” speakers at the march charged. “We, the indigenous peoples and campesinos, are indeed hungry, but hungry for truth and justice in the case of the Acteal [where 45 indigenous people were massacred in December 1997, see Update #1117], hungry for the immediate and unconditional release of our brother Alberto.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/20/13)
*4. Latin America: US Court Ruling Threatens Human Rights Suits
In a unanimous decision issued on Apr. 17, the US Supreme Court sharply restricted the use of the 1789 Alien Tort Statute for foreign nationals to sue for human rights violations that took place outside the US. The case at issue, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, was brought by 12 Nigerians now living in the US; they charged that Royal Dutch Petroleum (better known as Royal Dutch Shell) and other oil companies with a presence in the US conspired with the Nigerian government to commit human rights violations against Nigerians protesting environmental damage by the companies. Five of the justices rejected the suit on the grounds that it violated the “presumption of extraterritoriality”—that is, the principle that the US will generally not meddle in the legal affairs of other countries—and that a minor presence of a foreign corporation in the US was not enough to entitle a foreigner to sue that company in the US.
The four more liberal justices agreed to reject the case, but held that suits could be brought under the Alien Tort Statute when the alleged violations took place in the US, the defendant was a US national, or the violation “substantially and adversely” affected a US interest.
Although the decision concerned violations that occurred in Africa, the use of the 1789 statute in human rights cases has been closely associated with Latin America. The first human rights suit brought under the statute, Filártiga v. Peña–Irala (1980), involved the torture and murder of a youth in Paraguay by the Asunción police inspector general. The first Supreme Court ruling on the Alien Tort Statute, Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (2004), dealt with the case of a Mexican doctor who was abducted to the US by a Mexican employed by the US government; the court ruled against the plaintiff, Humberto Alvarez Machain, but agreed that he had the right to bring the suit under the Alien Tort law. Other suits filed under the law include Xuncax v. Gramajo and Ortiz v. Gramajo (both in 1991), which charged former Guatemalan defense minister Gen. Héctor Alejandro Gramajo Morales with atrocities in the 1980s; Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola Company (2001), which accused Coca-Cola of collaborating with death squads to kill, threaten and intimidate workers at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia starting in the 1990s; and Estate of Rodríguez v. Drummond Co (2002), which charged that the Alabama-based Drummond Co. Inc. coal company was responsible for the murders of three unionists in Colombia in 2001 [see Updates #753, 737, 599, 1163].
Chiquita Brands International Inc is currently facing an Alien Tort Statute suit, In Re: Chiquita Brands International (2007), charging that the company colluded with Colombian paramilitaries in the killing of banana workers and political organizers. After the Kiobel decision was announced, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Terry Collingsworth, told a reporter that he expects the Chiquita case to go forward despite the Supreme Court ruling. “The court has added an element to bringing these cases that requires that you demonstrate a US connection,” he said. “I expect it added a step that we will be able to satisfy.” But the Apr. 17 ruling clearly is a big setback for human rights advocates. “Kiobel appears to be part of an ongoing campaign to roll the clock back to the 1950s or even earlier,” Creighton Law School professor Patrick Borchers wrote on Apr. 19. “Unless Congress steps in to fix the problem, the [Alien Tort Statute] is now close to a dead letter.” (The Jurist 4/17/13, 4/19/13; Thomson Reuters News & Insight 4/18/13)
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Tremendous Pharmaceutical Profits or Totally Protected Plunder? (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9369
Argentina: No to Mining
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4247-argentina-no-to-mining
Brazil: Carandiru Massacre Trial Must End Long Legacy of Impunity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4236-brazil-carandiru-massacre-trial-must-end-long-legacy-of-impunity
700 Indigenous People Occupy Brazilian House of Representatives
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4237-700-indigenous-people-occupy-brazilian-house-of-representatives
Brazil: indigenous people occupy Congress
http://ww4report.com/node/12209
Sinaloa Cartel kingpin nabbed in Colombia
http://ww4report.com/node/12197
Colombia: narco-terrorist card in political play
http://ww4report.com/node/12202
Colombia dropped from human rights 'blacklist'
http://ww4report.com/node/12201
Maduro’s Venezuela Remains an Inconvenient Example of Democracy
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/18/maduro%E2%80%99s-venezuela-remains-inconvenient-example-democracy
Venezuelan Oppostion Turns to Violence in the Face of Election Defeat
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/4238-venezuelan-oppostion-turns-to-violence-in-the-face-of-election-defeat
Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro Sworn in, Promises "a Revolution of the Revolution"
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8703
Venezuela’s Electoral Council Approves Audit of 100 Percent of Votes
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8683
“The Capacity not to Stop Dreaming”: An Interview with María Suárez Toro (Central America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4244-the-capacity-not-to-stop-dreaming-an-interview-with-maria-suarez-toro-
Honduras: top prosecutor suspended amid violence
http://ww4report.com/node/12196
BREAKING NEWS: The Genocide Trial of General Efrain Rios Montt Has Just Been Suspended: A firsthand behind-the-scenes account of how Guatemala's current President and threats of violence killed the case
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/04/breaking-news-genocide-trial-of-general.html
Genocide Trial of Former Dictator Ríos Montt Suspended After Intervention by Guatemalan President
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4245-genocide-trial-of-former-dictator-rios-montt-suspended-after-intervention-by-guatemalan-president
Community Leader Daniel Pedro Mateo Kidnapped and Murdered in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4239-community-leader-daniel-pedro-mateo-kidnapped-and-murdered-in-guatemala
Mexico: Airport Threatens Farmworkers Again in Atenco
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4234-mexico-airport-threatens-farmworkers-again-in-atenco
Mexico: narco-violence from Yucatan to Rio Grande
http://ww4report.com/node/12198
Is the IOM Underestimating the Impact of Forced Evictions? (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/is-the-iom-underestimating-the-impact-of-forced-evictions
Photo Essay: Profit and Violence in the Name of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/17/photo-essay-profit-and-violence-name-comprehensive-immigration-reform
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1173, April 21, 2013
1. Nicaragua: Korean Firm Accused in Attack on Maquila Workers
2. Guatemala: Victims Challenge Suspension of Ríos Montt Trial
3. Mexico: Thousands March for Release of Chiapas Schoolteacher
4. Latin America: US Court Ruling Threatens Human Rights Suits
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Nicaragua: Korean Firm Accused in Attack on Maquila Workers
According to a report by a US-based labor rights monitoring group, the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), managers employed by the major Korean apparel firm Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd orchestrated an attack on laid-off Nicaraguan unionists and their supporters on Mar. 4 at two of the company’s plants in a “free trade zone” in Tipitapa municipality, Managua department. Sae-A supervisors reportedly promised workers 100 córdobas (about US$4.04), a production bonus and a free lunch if they broke up a rally and leafleting that about 30 workers were holding outside the two factories, EINS and Tecnotex, at the start of the workday. Some 300-350 workers came out of the plants and attacked the protesting unionists with metal pipes, belts and scissors, the WRC says, while police agents and plant security guards on the scene did nothing to stop the violence.
The two Sae-A factories are maquiladoras, assembly plants that benefit from tax and tariff exemptions while producing for North American retailers; the plants’ customers include Gear for Sports, Kohl’s, J.C. Penney, Target and Wal-Mart. The rally was sponsored by two newly formed unions, the United Effort Union at EINS and the Carlos Fonseca Amador Union at Tecnotex. The unions say plant management fired 16 of their officials and members between July 2012 and January 2013 in retaliation for union activities. (WRC report 3/8/13; The Nation 4/18/13) (Warehouse Workers United, a project of the US union federation Change to Win, has posted a video of the Mar. 4 incident on YouTube.)
On Mar. 13, leaders of three major Nicaraguan union confederations charged that the Solidarity Center--which is operated by the main US labor confederation, the AFL-CIO, and receives funding from the US government--was forming new unions that were being used to create instability in the maquiladoras. The general secretaries of the Sandinista Workers’ Central (CST), the United Confederation of Workers (CUT) and the Confederation of Union Unity (CUS) blamed Solidarity Center activities for the violence outside the EINS and Tecnotex plants on Mar. 4. The US unionists were “trying to get brands such as Nike, Adidas, and Levi’s to stop contracting work to Nicaraguan factories and return the jobs to the US,” CST general secretary Roberto González said. The leaders of the three confederations said they were prepared to do what was necessary to preserve the 105,000 jobs in Nicaragua’s FTZ factories. (Nicaragua News Bulletin 3/19/13)
Sae-A is also active in Guatemala and Haiti. It’s the lead tenant in the Caracol Industrial Park, a 617-acre complex in northeastern Haiti which opened for business last Oct. 22; promoters said it will bring as many as 65,000 jobs to the country. The US government, which gives special trade preferences to apparel assembled in Haiti, contributed $124 million to the Caracol project. (World War 4 Report 11/7/12) According to an article in the New York Times last July, Sae-A began moving its operations to Nicaragua after being pressured in 2010 to let workers form a union at its Guatemalan maquiladoras. A Sae-A adviser told the Times that the company was making plans to move that production on to Haiti once US trade preferences for Nicaragua expire in 2014 [see Update #1138].
*2. Guatemala: Victims Challenge Suspension of Ríos Montt Trial
Both supporters and opponents of former Guatemalan dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) took to the streets of Guatemala City on Apr. 20 in response to the abrupt decision two days earlier to suspend his trial for genocide allegedly committed against indigenous people during the country's 36-year civil war. Human rights activists marched to the Constitutionality Court (CC), where the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH) had filed a complaint on Apr. 19 against the suspension. “We’re asking for a court free of pressures, one which can say whether or not there was genocide and crimes against humanity,” CALDH director Juan Fernando Soto explained. Meanwhile, friends and relatives of soldiers marched in the Lourdes neighborhood in Zona 16, putting decals on cars reading: “I love the Army of Guatemala” and “We Guatemalans don’t commit genocide.” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala City) 4/21/13)
The historic trial, which also targeted Ríos Montt’s former intelligence chief, Gen. José Rodríguez, was halted on Apr. 18 shortly before the judges were to begin deliberations on a verdict. High Risk Cases Court judge Carol Patricia Flores Polanco, who was recused from the case in November 2011, entered the courtroom and announced that the Third Criminal Appeals Court had reinstated her as judge in the case, replacing current judge Yasmín Barrios. Judge Flores said the case would have to start over again and all the proceedings in the 17 months since she was recused would be annulled, including the testimony of dozens of members of the Mayan Ixil group who were victims or witnesses of military atrocities. Prosecutors, victims and human rights defenders immediately announced that they would appeal, and Judge Barrios insisted that the trial would continue. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/19/13 from correspondent; PL 4/20/13)
Many observers were skeptical about the legal rationale for the suspension. On Apr. 16, two days before the decision, a public declaration appeared warning of the “imminent danger that political violence might reappear” because of the polarization allegedly caused by the case; it was signed by two former vice presidents, two negotiators of the 1996 peace accords that ended the civil war, a former rebel leader and various former cabinet ministers. On Apr. 18 the United Nations-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) issued a press release calling the declaration “an unjustifiable threat against the court”; 1992 Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum called on the government to provide security for the witnesses, prosecutors and judges. (Siglo 21 (Guatemala City) 4/19/13 from EFE)
“[B]ehind the decision stands secret intervention by Guatemala’s current president and death threats delivered to judges and prosecutors by associates of Guatemala’s army,” US investigative journalist Allan Nairn reported on Apr. 18, shortly after the suspension was announced. Nairn had been tentatively scheduled to appear as an expert witness on Apr. 15; he covered the counterinsurgency in the early 1980s and interviewed current president Otto Pérez Molina, then an army major known as “Tito Arias” commanding troops in the Ixil region, at the time [see Update #1171].
Guatemala’s rulers had agreed to allow the trial to take place “because political forces were such that they had to,” Nairn wrote, “and because they thought that they could get away with sacrificing Ríos Montt to save their own skins.” But their thinking changed when former military engineer Hugo Ramiro Leonardo Reyes gave testimony implicating Pérez Molina in the atrocities that occurred under the Ríos Montt dictatorship. Nairn’s planned testimony was cancelled, since he too could implicate the president, he said. Then “Guatemala's army and oligarchy rallied…. They started to feel that they had no political need to sacrifice Ríos Montt… On Apr. 16 Pérez Molina said publicly that the case was a threat to peace. On Apr. 18, today, the Ríos Montt genocide case was suspended.” (News and Comment 4/18/13; Democracy Now! 4/19/13)
The Ixil witnesses and survivors weren’t about to give up in the face of the suspension, according to Claudia Samayoa, coordinator of the Unit for Protection of Human Rights Defenders of Guatemala (UDEFEGUA). When the decision was announced on Apr. 18, she told the Mexican daily La Jornada, “the indigenous people in the courtroom didn’t cry. We cried; the indigenous people didn’t. Later they explained to us that for them this cancellation, although illegal, is hardly even a setback. They told us: ‘We’ve survived worse. We’ve finally been able to speak out, and we’ll be able to overcome this setback.’” (LJ 4/19/13)
*3. Mexico: Thousands March for Release of Chiapas Schoolteacher
Some 15,000 protesters marched in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, capital of the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, on Apr. 19 to demand the release of Alberto Patishtán Gómez, an indigenous schoolteacher who has been serving a 60-year sentence since 2000 for his alleged involvement in the killing of seven police agents in El Bosque municipality in June of that year. Patishtán is a supporter of the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). Actions demanding his release have taken place in at least 11 countries over the past year [see Update #1129].
About 7,000 of the marchers were indigenous Mayans; most of these belonged, like Patishtán himself, to the Tzotzil group. Another 8,000 were teachers from Section 7 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE); they were also protesting changes in the educational system being carried out by the administration of Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto [see Update #1172]. The protesters, accompanied by flutes, guitars and drums, tied up the center of Tuxtla for three hours.
The march coincided with a visit to the nearby town of Navenchauc by President Peña Nieto, who was promoting his “National Crusade Against Hunger” [see Update #1165]; the guest of honor for the event was former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011). “We believe and we’re convinced by the facts that this is a crusade against the hungry,” speakers at the march charged. “We, the indigenous peoples and campesinos, are indeed hungry, but hungry for truth and justice in the case of the Acteal [where 45 indigenous people were massacred in December 1997, see Update #1117], hungry for the immediate and unconditional release of our brother Alberto.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/20/13)
*4. Latin America: US Court Ruling Threatens Human Rights Suits
In a unanimous decision issued on Apr. 17, the US Supreme Court sharply restricted the use of the 1789 Alien Tort Statute for foreign nationals to sue for human rights violations that took place outside the US. The case at issue, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, was brought by 12 Nigerians now living in the US; they charged that Royal Dutch Petroleum (better known as Royal Dutch Shell) and other oil companies with a presence in the US conspired with the Nigerian government to commit human rights violations against Nigerians protesting environmental damage by the companies. Five of the justices rejected the suit on the grounds that it violated the “presumption of extraterritoriality”—that is, the principle that the US will generally not meddle in the legal affairs of other countries—and that a minor presence of a foreign corporation in the US was not enough to entitle a foreigner to sue that company in the US.
The four more liberal justices agreed to reject the case, but held that suits could be brought under the Alien Tort Statute when the alleged violations took place in the US, the defendant was a US national, or the violation “substantially and adversely” affected a US interest.
Although the decision concerned violations that occurred in Africa, the use of the 1789 statute in human rights cases has been closely associated with Latin America. The first human rights suit brought under the statute, Filártiga v. Peña–Irala (1980), involved the torture and murder of a youth in Paraguay by the Asunción police inspector general. The first Supreme Court ruling on the Alien Tort Statute, Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (2004), dealt with the case of a Mexican doctor who was abducted to the US by a Mexican employed by the US government; the court ruled against the plaintiff, Humberto Alvarez Machain, but agreed that he had the right to bring the suit under the Alien Tort law. Other suits filed under the law include Xuncax v. Gramajo and Ortiz v. Gramajo (both in 1991), which charged former Guatemalan defense minister Gen. Héctor Alejandro Gramajo Morales with atrocities in the 1980s; Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola Company (2001), which accused Coca-Cola of collaborating with death squads to kill, threaten and intimidate workers at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia starting in the 1990s; and Estate of Rodríguez v. Drummond Co (2002), which charged that the Alabama-based Drummond Co. Inc. coal company was responsible for the murders of three unionists in Colombia in 2001 [see Updates #753, 737, 599, 1163].
Chiquita Brands International Inc is currently facing an Alien Tort Statute suit, In Re: Chiquita Brands International (2007), charging that the company colluded with Colombian paramilitaries in the killing of banana workers and political organizers. After the Kiobel decision was announced, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Terry Collingsworth, told a reporter that he expects the Chiquita case to go forward despite the Supreme Court ruling. “The court has added an element to bringing these cases that requires that you demonstrate a US connection,” he said. “I expect it added a step that we will be able to satisfy.” But the Apr. 17 ruling clearly is a big setback for human rights advocates. “Kiobel appears to be part of an ongoing campaign to roll the clock back to the 1950s or even earlier,” Creighton Law School professor Patrick Borchers wrote on Apr. 19. “Unless Congress steps in to fix the problem, the [Alien Tort Statute] is now close to a dead letter.” (The Jurist 4/17/13, 4/19/13; Thomson Reuters News & Insight 4/18/13)
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti
Tremendous Pharmaceutical Profits or Totally Protected Plunder? (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9369
Argentina: No to Mining
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4247-argentina-no-to-mining
Brazil: Carandiru Massacre Trial Must End Long Legacy of Impunity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4236-brazil-carandiru-massacre-trial-must-end-long-legacy-of-impunity
700 Indigenous People Occupy Brazilian House of Representatives
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4237-700-indigenous-people-occupy-brazilian-house-of-representatives
Brazil: indigenous people occupy Congress
http://ww4report.com/node/12209
Sinaloa Cartel kingpin nabbed in Colombia
http://ww4report.com/node/12197
Colombia: narco-terrorist card in political play
http://ww4report.com/node/12202
Colombia dropped from human rights 'blacklist'
http://ww4report.com/node/12201
Maduro’s Venezuela Remains an Inconvenient Example of Democracy
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/18/maduro%E2%80%99s-venezuela-remains-inconvenient-example-democracy
Venezuelan Oppostion Turns to Violence in the Face of Election Defeat
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/4238-venezuelan-oppostion-turns-to-violence-in-the-face-of-election-defeat
Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro Sworn in, Promises "a Revolution of the Revolution"
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8703
Venezuela’s Electoral Council Approves Audit of 100 Percent of Votes
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8683
“The Capacity not to Stop Dreaming”: An Interview with María Suárez Toro (Central America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4244-the-capacity-not-to-stop-dreaming-an-interview-with-maria-suarez-toro-
Honduras: top prosecutor suspended amid violence
http://ww4report.com/node/12196
BREAKING NEWS: The Genocide Trial of General Efrain Rios Montt Has Just Been Suspended: A firsthand behind-the-scenes account of how Guatemala's current President and threats of violence killed the case
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/04/breaking-news-genocide-trial-of-general.html
Genocide Trial of Former Dictator Ríos Montt Suspended After Intervention by Guatemalan President
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4245-genocide-trial-of-former-dictator-rios-montt-suspended-after-intervention-by-guatemalan-president
Community Leader Daniel Pedro Mateo Kidnapped and Murdered in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4239-community-leader-daniel-pedro-mateo-kidnapped-and-murdered-in-guatemala
Mexico: Airport Threatens Farmworkers Again in Atenco
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4234-mexico-airport-threatens-farmworkers-again-in-atenco
Mexico: narco-violence from Yucatan to Rio Grande
http://ww4report.com/node/12198
Is the IOM Underestimating the Impact of Forced Evictions? (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/is-the-iom-underestimating-the-impact-of-forced-evictions
Photo Essay: Profit and Violence in the Name of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/17/photo-essay-profit-and-violence-name-comprehensive-immigration-reform
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
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