Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #997, July 12, 2009
1. Honduras: 2 Left Activists Murdered
2. Honduras: Army and Business Owners Wavering?
3. Honduras: Coup Reactions in US and Chile
4. Colombia: Katío Embera Leader Killed
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Honduras: 2 Left Activists Murdered
On the evening of July 11 a group of men entered the home of Honduran activist Roger Bados in the 6 de Mayo neighborhood of the northern city of San Pedro Sula and shot him dead. Bados was the former president of the union at a local cement factory and a member of the leftist Democratic Unification Party (UD) and of the Popular Bloc, a coalition of grassroots organizations active in the struggle against the military coup that overthrew President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales on June 28. Erasto Reyes, another grassroots leader, told the Venezula-based television network TeleSUR that the murder came at “a moment in which the political crisis is aggravating the security situation for leaders.” But he said the organizations will continue to carry out "peaceful, nonviolent” mobilizations. “We’re not letting down our guard; we’re continuing in the struggle.”
Ramón García, also a UD member, was killed the same night in the Callejones area of the western department of Santa Bárbara. Unknown persons ordered him to get out of a bus and killed him, according to a UD leader, Renán Valdés, who said that García’s sister and his nephew’s wife were also wounded. (TeleSUR 7/12/09) [Following our sources, we referred to the UD as the “Democratic Unification of Honduras (UDH)” in Update #995 and the supplement to #995.]
*2. Honduras: Army and Business Owners Wavering?
The appearance of unity within the Honduran military and the de facto government is deceptive, according to statements by Argentine deputy defense minister Alfredo Forti published in the Buenos Aires daily Clarín on July 11. “People with the rank of colonel have been sending messages to the outside saying that they’re at the limit of their ability to withstand the pressure and that they think a moment is coming when they’ll have to separate themselves from the current position because otherwise there might be a bloodbath,” said Forti, who was ambassador to Honduras from 2004 to 2007. "These are expressions of fractures within the armed forces. We don’t know if it’s because there are military people who support the Constitution or because they see it’s a situation that’s lost and they’re trying to find a way out.”
Forti put much of the blame for the situation on the business class, which he said “has an almost monopolistic control in many parts of the economy, and at the same time has a very strong influence on the two traditional parties, the Liberal Party and the National Party.” (Clarín 7/11/09)
Business owners have also been influencing politics by using bribes and threats to get employees to participate in demonstrations supporting the coup, according to dozens of calls made to the Radio Globo radio station on July 7. Callers to Radio Progreso in the northern city of El Progreso told similar stories about employees at maquiladoras (assembly plants producing largely for export), municipal offices and the Granitos and Terrazos construction material company. A woman said she was "offered food and 100 lempiras in cash [about $5] for wearing a white shirt.” Participants in demonstrations supporting the coup wear white shirts. (Inside Costa Rica 7/9/09)
But the business owners appeared to have had second thoughts about the coup once they had seen the level of popular resistance it generated. Radio Globo director David Romero told TeleSUR on July 5 that the business people that had promoted and financed the coup found that the crisis was greater than they expected. He said they had been pushing for a negotiated solution in a meeting of major business owners that morning. (Prensa Latina 7/5/09)
*3. Honduras: Coup Reactions in US and Chile
On July 11 seven US trade associations—including the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), the US Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel (USA-ITA) and the US Chamber of Commerce—sent a letter to US president Barack Obama on the situation in Honduras. The letter stressed the “particular importance” Honduras has “for the US textile and apparel supply chain” and called it “the linchpin to the Western Hemisphere supply chain for this sector. Honduras is the third largest market for U.S. textile mill products (U.S. exports were $1.4 billion in 2008), the fourth largest supplier of apparel to the US market and the largest [Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA)] supplier to the United States.”
The trade associations said nothing about restoring democracy or the constitutional order but emphasized the need for “[p]redictability and stability,” which “are absolutely critical to US companies, especially in these difficult economic times.” (Fibre2Fashion 7/11/09)
In contrast, a July 9 letter to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton signed by 35 Latin America experts from US universities insisted that “[a]nything less than the urgent restoration of President Manuel Zelaya to office would be an usurpation of the will of the Honduran people.” “[C]oncessions of any kind to the coup government…would create a terrible precedent, showing other anti-democratically minded and power-hungry individuals that it can be worthwhile to carry out a military coup in order to advance their political agendas,” warned the authors, who included Harvard emeritus professor John Womack, author and filmmaker Saul Landau, Central America expert Hector Perla, and authors and Central America experts Greg Grandin and Dana Frank. (El Financiero (Mexico) 7/9/09, some from Notimex; Common Dreams 7/9/09)
On July 10 the de facto government received support from a city council member in Santiago, Chile. “It appeared to be a common, ordinary coup” at first, Lucía Pinochet Hiriart said, according to the satirical and investigative Chilean weekly The Clinic, but later it turned out that “the one who wanted to carry out the coup d’état was Zelaya.” He “makes himself out to be the victim,” she said, but his own allegedly unconstitutional acts left the military no choice but to do “something unconstitutional.” Pinochet Hiriart, who represents the exclusive Vitacura neighborhood in eastern Santiago, is a daughter of late Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, who seized power from elected president Salvador Allende Gossens in a bloody 1973 coup. (Qué (Spain) 7/10/09 from EFE)
*4. Colombia: Katío Embera Leader Killed
Two men armed with pistols shot Colombian indigenous leader Héctor Betancur Domicó dead the night of July 6 as he was leaving the offices of an indigenous organization in Tierralta in the northwestern department of Córdoba. Betancur Domicó was the leader of the Katío Embera community of Changarra, one of 17 small communities in the region, which has a total population of about 5,000 Katío Embera. The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) reported that more than 1,254 indigenous people have been killed by armed groups in Colombia since January 2002. (La Raza (Chicago) 7/11/09 from AP)
The Bogotá daily El Tiempo reported on July 7 that prosecutors were investigating 1,603 military personnel, mostly from the 5th Division, in connection with 812 extrajudicial executions carried out during the last six years. The victims included "false positives"--civilians executed by the army and then presented as rebels killed in combat. Many were trade union activists or community leaders; others were victims of "social cleansing," the rounding up and killing of homeless people and other social outcasts. The Colombian military receives some $500 million a year in US assistance. (Latin American Herald Tribune 7/709 from EFE)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Chile: Alternative Media Have Their Network
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1975/68/
Ex-Bolivian "Minister of Cocaine" deported to face genocide charge
http://ww4report.com/node/7572
Peruvian provinces paralyzed by paro
http://ww4report.com/node/7552
New Peru cabinet tilts back to ruling party
http://ww4report.com/node/7552#comment-317435
Colombia's Stalled Trade Agreement
https://nacla.org/node/5972
Colombian bounty-hunters bring down Pablo Escobar's escaped hippopotamus
http://ww4report.com/node/7571
Zelaya to Honduran armed forces: "Stop the repression!"
http://ww4report.com/node/7545
Honduras: Zelaya supporters block roads; Chávez warns dialogue a "trap"
http://ww4report.com/node/7564
Honduras: non-dialogue in Costa Rica; real repression in Tegucigalpa
http://ww4report.com/node/7557
Costa Rica's Arias to mediate in Honduran crisis; US withdraws recognition?
http://ww4report.com/node/7553
Honduras Coup Government Detains Father of Boy Who Died in Protests
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/07/honduras-coup-government-detains-father-boy-who-died-protests
Honduran Teachers Defy Coup Government, Maintain Strike
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/07/honduran-teachers-defy-coup-government-maintain-strike
Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya Discusses Coup, Costa Rica Talks, U.S. Role and More
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1979/68/
Video Report: Honduran Coup Resistance Growing
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1976/68/
Video Reports: Honduras Under Siege, Clashes Turn Deadly
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1966/1/
Photo Essay - Tragedy in Honduras: Army Shoots and Kills Protesters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1967/1/
High Stakes for Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1972/1/
Honduras, Washington and Latin America: Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1978/1/
Showdown in 'Tegucigolpe'
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6250
Honduras: Zelaya's jet denied entry; military admits coup was "criminal"
http://ww4report.com/node/7539
LA Times op-ed: "non-coup" in Honduras
http://ww4report.com/node/7573
From Memory to Resistance, Children Bear Witness: HIJOS Celebrates 10 Years in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1980/1/
Mexico: Oaxaca Justice Condemns Innocent APPO Man for the Murder of Brad Will
http://www.narconews.com/Issue58/article3679.html
Oaxaca: activist gets prison in Brad Will case
http://ww4report.com/node/7569
Michoacán: "La Familia" strikes back hard at federales
http://ww4report.com/node/7570
The End of an Era: The Cold War in El Salvador and Cuba
https://nacla.org/node/5976
UN Cover-up in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1961/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, July 13, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
WNU #996: Protests and “Cold War” in Peru
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #996, July 5, 2009
1. Peru: Strikes, Protests and “Cold War”
2. Honduras: Activist Priest Forced to Hide
3. Haiti: Some Unions Back Down on Minimum Wage
4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Peru: Strikes, Protests and “Cold War”
Thousands of riders were stranded in Lima early on June 30 at the beginning of a 24-hour national strike by Peruvian urban transportation workers and owners. The strikers were protesting new regulations that were to take effect on July 1 and a new rate for fines that starts on July 21. In the southern Lima neighborhood of Villa El Salvador, a group of strikers hurled rocks at buses not honoring the strike call; police agents responded by shooting in the air, according to Radio Programas del Perú (RPP). In the north of the city some strikers stoned buses and burned tires; others used rocks to block the Carretera Central, which links Lima to the center of the country.
In Puno region, bordering Bolivia in the south, a group of strikers blocked various highways, but transportation was reportedly normal in neighboring Arequipa region. Omar Calderón, president of the Association of Urban Mass Transit Companies, said a total of 60,000 vehicles were idled nationwide. By the end of the strike on July 1, the police reported having arrested about 100 strikers in Lima. Motorcycle Taxi Drivers Confederation of Peru president Ricardo Alberga announced that his group planned another strike on July 7-9. (ADN (Spain) 6/30/09 from EFE; Qué (Spain) 7/1/09 from EFE)
A clash between campesinos and police on July 1 in San Tomás, capital of Chumbivilcas province in Cuzco region in southern Peru, left one protester dead and a police agent seriously injured. The campesinos had been holding an open-ended strike since the week before to protest the granting of mining concessions, which now occupy 70% of the area, and a Water Resources Law which declares water a national resource and regulates its use. The confrontation started when the police tried to remove protesters blocking a highway leading to the town. The protesters threw stones at the agents, who fired their weapons, killing campesino Remigio Mendoza Ancalla. Police commissar Herbert Montes de Oca received head injuries; he was taken to the local hospital in a coma but required special medical attention in another facility. Some 1,000 protesters surrounded the hospital for about 10 hours, preventing Montes de Oca’s evacuation by helicopter until the government agreed to send a high-level delegation on July 4 to hear the campesinos’ demands. (La República (Peru) 7/03/09; ADN 7/2/09; Qué 7/2/09)
The government of President Alan García is still shaken by a similar but much larger and deadlier confrontation on June 5 during protests over concessions and resources in Amazonian Peru; the incident, in Bagua province in the northern region of Amazonas, resulted in 24 deaths among the police and a disputed number of civilian deaths [see Update #992]. In a June 30 session of Congress, 56 legislators supported a censure vote against Prime Minister Yehude Simon and Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanilla. This was a majority of the about 100 Congress members present, but it fell a little short of the 61 votes (out of 120) required to remove the cabinet.
President García and his social democratic Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP) now claim they are engaged in what García called, in a June 28 newspaper article, a “continental cold war,” presumably because of alleged interference in Peru by leftist and left-leaning governments like those in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. Confirmation seemed to come during the June 30 transportation strike when a Venezuelan national was arrested driving protesters and carrying metal spikes and homemade weapons in his car. He was released after 48 hours for lack of evidence; local media described him as a cabdriver who has lived in Lima for years with his Peruvian family. (Prensa Latina 7/4/09; Qué 7/1/09 from EFE)
As of July 3 the Front in Defense of Life and Sovereignty, a coalition of social organizations and left-leaning parties, was planning a nationwide mobilization July 7-9 against the neoliberal economic model and for the cancellation of the nearly 100 decrees passed to implement a Free Trade Agreement (FTA, or TLC for its initials in Spanish) with the US. The protesters are also calling for the immediate resignation of Simon’s cabinet and the return of Alberto Pizango Chota, president of the Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep) and a leader of the indigenous protests in the Amazonian regions. (Prensa Latina 7/4/09; Adital 7/3/09)
*2. Honduras: Activist Priest Forced to Hide
Father José Andrés Tamayo, an activist Honduran priest who was the Central American recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for 2005, went into hiding shortly after the June 28 military coup that removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from power [see Update #995], according to phone calls he made on July 1 to New York’s Spanish-language daily El Diario-La Prensa and the US-based Catholic News Service.
On June 29 Tamayo joined a group of several hundred protesters who were taking seven rented buses from the eastern department of Olancho, where Tamayo is based, to Tegucigalpa to join ongoing demonstrations against the coup. When soldiers shot out the buses’ tires near the town of Los Limones, the protesters decided to block the road. During the night of June 30-July 1 the soldiers attacked, beating the protesters and firing their weapons “in all directions,” according to Tamayo, who escaped into a house and hid under a bed. Some protesters were arrested and taken to a police station, where they were beaten, stripped and threatened with shotguns before being released after four hours.
Tamayo was in hiding when he made the calls. There have been several attempts against the priest’s life since 2001 because of his campaigns to protect the forests; he had been assigned bodyguards by the previous government, but they were apparently withdrawn after the coup. (Catholic News Service 7/1/09; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 7/2/09 from ED-LP; New America Media 7/2/09, translated from ED-LP)
With the de facto government clamping down on independent media and most international reporters concentrated in Tegucigalpa, there has been little coverage of repression in the countryside following the coup. "The country is heavily militarized, and there are reports of people imprisoned, detained and even disappeared," Pedro Landa, executive director of the Catholic charitable agency Caritas Honduras, said on July 1. A group of about 30 soldiers shut down Radio Progreso, a Jesuit-run station in the northern city of El Progreso, on June 28. The staff reopened the station the next day, despite threats from coup supporters. (CNS 7/1/09)
*3. Haiti: Some Unions Back Down on Minimum Wage
During the week of June 29 Haitian president René Préval and pro-business groups pushed hard to water down a bill Parliament passed in May to raise the minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97). Claiming that the wage increase would jeopardize the free trade zone (FTZ) factories--maquiladoras that assemble goods largely for export--Préval has proposed an increase to 125 gourdes for that sector [see Update #994]. On June 29 Préval met with journalists to explain his position. Jobs in the FTZ sector have grown from 8,000 in 2007 to 25,000 now, he said, and those jobs would be put at risk by a large wage increase. (AlterPresse 6/29/09)
Four labor organizations met with the Social Affairs Committee of the Parliament’s Chamber of Deputies on July 1 to discuss the issue. The Union Coordinating Committee, the General Workers Confederation (CGT) and the union at the Compagnie de Developpement Industriel S.A. (Codevi) plant in northeastern town of Ouanaminthe near the Dominican border all indicated that they were resigned to accepting a lower increase in the minimum wage in the hope of preventing layoffs. Etienne Romain from the Codevi union noted that his members’ current pay is 125 gourdes a day, so there would be no change for them. But workers from an industrial park on the highway to the Port-au-Prince airport insisted on the 200-gourde increase. One woman said she was ready to join the students, referring to militant demonstrations students have been holding in Port-au-Prince since June 3 to support the demand for 200 gourdes. (Haiti Press Network 7/2/09; Radio Métropole 7/2/09)
The concern with keeping maquiladora jobs in Haiti comes at a time when the sector has declined dramatically in the Caribbean Basin as a result of the economic downturn in the US and competition from Chinese factories. The share of the US import market held by the six countries in the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), a 2005 trade pact with the US, fell from 13.3% in 2004 to 9.8% in 2008. The worst hit was Haiti’s closest neighbor, the Dominican Republic, where apparel exports have fallen by more than half and 73,000 jobs have been lost since 2005. DR-CAFTA was promoted as a way to boost the region’s apparel industry and to counter competition from China. (NACLA Report on the Americas, July-August 2009)
Correction: Following our source, in Update #993 we reported incorrectly that the Codevi workers were receiving 350 gourdes a day. The Codevi union was first organized by the Batay Ouvriye (“Workers Struggle”) labor organization, but the current Codevi leadership is reportedly not affiliated with Batay Ouvriye, which fully supports the 200-gourde increase.
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
Peru approves controversial Amazon oil contract —in wake of uprising
http://ww4report.com/node/7533
Bolivia bashes Obama over trade sanctions
http://ww4report.com/node/7528
Colombia: ex-para warlord names top generals as collaborators
http://ww4report.com/node/7535
The Venezuelan Coup Revisited: Silencing the Evidence
https://nacla.org/node/5972
El Salvador: anti-mining organizer missing, foul play suspected
http://ww4report.com/node/7534
Honduras: Zelaya's jet denied entry; military admits coup was "criminal"
http://ww4report.com/node/7539
Honduran golpista: Obama a "little black man who knows nothing"
http://ww4report.com/node/7537#comment-317349
It's Not About Zelaya
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wilson040709.html
Bertha Oliva: Coup leaders reviving despotism of the 80s in bid to crush participatory democracy
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3967&updaterx=2009-07-03+13%3A35%3A38
OAS holds emergency session on Honduras; Ortega fears "blood-bath"
http://ww4report.com/node/7536
Honduras: de facto regime intransigent; US stance equivocal
http://ww4report.com/node/7527
Resistance continues in Honduras —despite state of emergency
http://ww4report.com/node/7525
Behind the Honduran Coup
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6225
Honduras: Regime Faces International Isolation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1953/1/
Honduras: Decree Suspends Basic Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1960/68/
Anti-Coup Protests Reported Across Honduras
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/07/anti-coup-protests-reported-across-honduras
Mexico’s Emerging Narco-State
https://nacla.org/node/5963
Mexico's Elections and the Deepening Crisis of Political Legitimacy
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6233
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #996, July 5, 2009
1. Peru: Strikes, Protests and “Cold War”
2. Honduras: Activist Priest Forced to Hide
3. Haiti: Some Unions Back Down on Minimum Wage
4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Peru: Strikes, Protests and “Cold War”
Thousands of riders were stranded in Lima early on June 30 at the beginning of a 24-hour national strike by Peruvian urban transportation workers and owners. The strikers were protesting new regulations that were to take effect on July 1 and a new rate for fines that starts on July 21. In the southern Lima neighborhood of Villa El Salvador, a group of strikers hurled rocks at buses not honoring the strike call; police agents responded by shooting in the air, according to Radio Programas del Perú (RPP). In the north of the city some strikers stoned buses and burned tires; others used rocks to block the Carretera Central, which links Lima to the center of the country.
In Puno region, bordering Bolivia in the south, a group of strikers blocked various highways, but transportation was reportedly normal in neighboring Arequipa region. Omar Calderón, president of the Association of Urban Mass Transit Companies, said a total of 60,000 vehicles were idled nationwide. By the end of the strike on July 1, the police reported having arrested about 100 strikers in Lima. Motorcycle Taxi Drivers Confederation of Peru president Ricardo Alberga announced that his group planned another strike on July 7-9. (ADN (Spain) 6/30/09 from EFE; Qué (Spain) 7/1/09 from EFE)
A clash between campesinos and police on July 1 in San Tomás, capital of Chumbivilcas province in Cuzco region in southern Peru, left one protester dead and a police agent seriously injured. The campesinos had been holding an open-ended strike since the week before to protest the granting of mining concessions, which now occupy 70% of the area, and a Water Resources Law which declares water a national resource and regulates its use. The confrontation started when the police tried to remove protesters blocking a highway leading to the town. The protesters threw stones at the agents, who fired their weapons, killing campesino Remigio Mendoza Ancalla. Police commissar Herbert Montes de Oca received head injuries; he was taken to the local hospital in a coma but required special medical attention in another facility. Some 1,000 protesters surrounded the hospital for about 10 hours, preventing Montes de Oca’s evacuation by helicopter until the government agreed to send a high-level delegation on July 4 to hear the campesinos’ demands. (La República (Peru) 7/03/09; ADN 7/2/09; Qué 7/2/09)
The government of President Alan García is still shaken by a similar but much larger and deadlier confrontation on June 5 during protests over concessions and resources in Amazonian Peru; the incident, in Bagua province in the northern region of Amazonas, resulted in 24 deaths among the police and a disputed number of civilian deaths [see Update #992]. In a June 30 session of Congress, 56 legislators supported a censure vote against Prime Minister Yehude Simon and Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanilla. This was a majority of the about 100 Congress members present, but it fell a little short of the 61 votes (out of 120) required to remove the cabinet.
President García and his social democratic Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP) now claim they are engaged in what García called, in a June 28 newspaper article, a “continental cold war,” presumably because of alleged interference in Peru by leftist and left-leaning governments like those in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. Confirmation seemed to come during the June 30 transportation strike when a Venezuelan national was arrested driving protesters and carrying metal spikes and homemade weapons in his car. He was released after 48 hours for lack of evidence; local media described him as a cabdriver who has lived in Lima for years with his Peruvian family. (Prensa Latina 7/4/09; Qué 7/1/09 from EFE)
As of July 3 the Front in Defense of Life and Sovereignty, a coalition of social organizations and left-leaning parties, was planning a nationwide mobilization July 7-9 against the neoliberal economic model and for the cancellation of the nearly 100 decrees passed to implement a Free Trade Agreement (FTA, or TLC for its initials in Spanish) with the US. The protesters are also calling for the immediate resignation of Simon’s cabinet and the return of Alberto Pizango Chota, president of the Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep) and a leader of the indigenous protests in the Amazonian regions. (Prensa Latina 7/4/09; Adital 7/3/09)
*2. Honduras: Activist Priest Forced to Hide
Father José Andrés Tamayo, an activist Honduran priest who was the Central American recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for 2005, went into hiding shortly after the June 28 military coup that removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from power [see Update #995], according to phone calls he made on July 1 to New York’s Spanish-language daily El Diario-La Prensa and the US-based Catholic News Service.
On June 29 Tamayo joined a group of several hundred protesters who were taking seven rented buses from the eastern department of Olancho, where Tamayo is based, to Tegucigalpa to join ongoing demonstrations against the coup. When soldiers shot out the buses’ tires near the town of Los Limones, the protesters decided to block the road. During the night of June 30-July 1 the soldiers attacked, beating the protesters and firing their weapons “in all directions,” according to Tamayo, who escaped into a house and hid under a bed. Some protesters were arrested and taken to a police station, where they were beaten, stripped and threatened with shotguns before being released after four hours.
Tamayo was in hiding when he made the calls. There have been several attempts against the priest’s life since 2001 because of his campaigns to protect the forests; he had been assigned bodyguards by the previous government, but they were apparently withdrawn after the coup. (Catholic News Service 7/1/09; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 7/2/09 from ED-LP; New America Media 7/2/09, translated from ED-LP)
With the de facto government clamping down on independent media and most international reporters concentrated in Tegucigalpa, there has been little coverage of repression in the countryside following the coup. "The country is heavily militarized, and there are reports of people imprisoned, detained and even disappeared," Pedro Landa, executive director of the Catholic charitable agency Caritas Honduras, said on July 1. A group of about 30 soldiers shut down Radio Progreso, a Jesuit-run station in the northern city of El Progreso, on June 28. The staff reopened the station the next day, despite threats from coup supporters. (CNS 7/1/09)
*3. Haiti: Some Unions Back Down on Minimum Wage
During the week of June 29 Haitian president René Préval and pro-business groups pushed hard to water down a bill Parliament passed in May to raise the minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97). Claiming that the wage increase would jeopardize the free trade zone (FTZ) factories--maquiladoras that assemble goods largely for export--Préval has proposed an increase to 125 gourdes for that sector [see Update #994]. On June 29 Préval met with journalists to explain his position. Jobs in the FTZ sector have grown from 8,000 in 2007 to 25,000 now, he said, and those jobs would be put at risk by a large wage increase. (AlterPresse 6/29/09)
Four labor organizations met with the Social Affairs Committee of the Parliament’s Chamber of Deputies on July 1 to discuss the issue. The Union Coordinating Committee, the General Workers Confederation (CGT) and the union at the Compagnie de Developpement Industriel S.A. (Codevi) plant in northeastern town of Ouanaminthe near the Dominican border all indicated that they were resigned to accepting a lower increase in the minimum wage in the hope of preventing layoffs. Etienne Romain from the Codevi union noted that his members’ current pay is 125 gourdes a day, so there would be no change for them. But workers from an industrial park on the highway to the Port-au-Prince airport insisted on the 200-gourde increase. One woman said she was ready to join the students, referring to militant demonstrations students have been holding in Port-au-Prince since June 3 to support the demand for 200 gourdes. (Haiti Press Network 7/2/09; Radio Métropole 7/2/09)
The concern with keeping maquiladora jobs in Haiti comes at a time when the sector has declined dramatically in the Caribbean Basin as a result of the economic downturn in the US and competition from Chinese factories. The share of the US import market held by the six countries in the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), a 2005 trade pact with the US, fell from 13.3% in 2004 to 9.8% in 2008. The worst hit was Haiti’s closest neighbor, the Dominican Republic, where apparel exports have fallen by more than half and 73,000 jobs have been lost since 2005. DR-CAFTA was promoted as a way to boost the region’s apparel industry and to counter competition from China. (NACLA Report on the Americas, July-August 2009)
Correction: Following our source, in Update #993 we reported incorrectly that the Codevi workers were receiving 350 gourdes a day. The Codevi union was first organized by the Batay Ouvriye (“Workers Struggle”) labor organization, but the current Codevi leadership is reportedly not affiliated with Batay Ouvriye, which fully supports the 200-gourde increase.
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico
Peru approves controversial Amazon oil contract —in wake of uprising
http://ww4report.com/node/7533
Bolivia bashes Obama over trade sanctions
http://ww4report.com/node/7528
Colombia: ex-para warlord names top generals as collaborators
http://ww4report.com/node/7535
The Venezuelan Coup Revisited: Silencing the Evidence
https://nacla.org/node/5972
El Salvador: anti-mining organizer missing, foul play suspected
http://ww4report.com/node/7534
Honduras: Zelaya's jet denied entry; military admits coup was "criminal"
http://ww4report.com/node/7539
Honduran golpista: Obama a "little black man who knows nothing"
http://ww4report.com/node/7537#comment-317349
It's Not About Zelaya
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wilson040709.html
Bertha Oliva: Coup leaders reviving despotism of the 80s in bid to crush participatory democracy
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3967&updaterx=2009-07-03+13%3A35%3A38
OAS holds emergency session on Honduras; Ortega fears "blood-bath"
http://ww4report.com/node/7536
Honduras: de facto regime intransigent; US stance equivocal
http://ww4report.com/node/7527
Resistance continues in Honduras —despite state of emergency
http://ww4report.com/node/7525
Behind the Honduran Coup
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6225
Honduras: Regime Faces International Isolation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1953/1/
Honduras: Decree Suspends Basic Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1960/68/
Anti-Coup Protests Reported Across Honduras
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/07/anti-coup-protests-reported-across-honduras
Mexico’s Emerging Narco-State
https://nacla.org/node/5963
Mexico's Elections and the Deepening Crisis of Political Legitimacy
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6233
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
WNU #995 supplement: Resistance Grows in Honduras
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #995 supplement, June 30, 2009
1. Resistance on Day 2 of the Coup
2. Resistance Grows on Day 3
3. Zelaya, the Referendum and the Social Movements
4. Links to alternative sources
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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Resistance on Day 2 of the Coup
Despite a 9pm to 6am curfew, Hondurans protesting a June 28 military coup against President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales remained outside the Presidential House in Tegucigalpa the night of June 28-29. In the afternoon of June 29 heavily armed soldiers using shields dispersed most of the demonstrators in a few minutes; some youths remained and some threw stones, but they fled after the soldiers began firing in the air. Protesters a few blocks away weren’t “so peaceful,” according to a local leader. Youths there had erected barricades and were burning tires; they hurled rocks and bottles at the soldiers, who used tear gas and rubber bullets on the crowd but were forced to retreat at least three times. The military said 15 soldiers and 15 officers were injured in the Tegucigalpa confrontations, which lasted about two hours; protest organizers reported 276 injured on their side. (La Jornada (Mexico) 6/30/09 from correspondent ; BBC 6/29/09; AFP 6/30/09)
A student at the protests told the Mexican daily La Jornada that more people would have been out in the streets except that “the majority think President Zelaya resigned. The media have been kidnapped, and we, the people, have been too,” she added. The de facto government had taken independent radio stations off the air, along with television networks like the US-based CNN and the Venezuela-based TeleSUR. Radio América, one of the remaining local stations, didn’t report the protests—it simply advised motorists to avoid certain roads, without explaining that they were blocked by protesters. “I’m not interested in having communism here,” the student added. “I’m a student, I love peace and I’m a Christian. But I can’t be complicitous in this robbery.“
With the news blacked out nationwide and electricity interrupted in different areas, it was difficult for reporters to determine what was happening outside the capital. Grassroots organizations said protesters were marching and blocking roads in Colón and Atlántida departments. Some 10,000 campesinos were reportedly trying to get to Tegucigalpa from Olancho, Zelaya’s home region, but were stopped at military roadblocks. There were also unconfirmed reports of military battalions that were refusing to support the coup. (LJ 6/29/09; Milenio (Mexico) 8/29/09 from Notimex)
Labor activists driving in the middle of the day on June 29 near San Pedro Sula, the country’s second largest city, said there were protests against the coup in every town they passed, and that that progressive forces had captured the Puente de la Democracia in the city of El Progreso and had liberated the independent station Radio Progreso. Another activist reported that 15,000 people demonstrated in San Pedro Sula and that there were protests in El Progreso and La Lima. (Personal communications to the Update)
*2. Resistance Grows on Day 3
The French wire service AFP reported that the protests grew on June 30 as all three of the country’s labor federations joined with organizations of campesinos, youth, the unemployed, street vendors, lesbians and gays, and other sectors in an open-ended general strike that the groups said they would maintain until Zelaya was returned to power. [The teachers’ unions had started the strike on June 29; see Update #995]. Organizers said at least 10,000 people were taking part in pro-Zelaya protests in the capital, as well as in other protests around the country; AFP put the number of demonstrators in Tegucigalpa at 2,000. A legislative deputy from the lefitist Democratic Unification of Honduras (UPH), Marvin Ponde, said thousands of anti-coup protesters trying to come to the capital by bus had been stopped at military roadblocks. They had set out from Santa Bárbara in the northwest; Danlí, Juticalpa and Catacamas in the east; and Choluteca in the south.
Violent clashes clashes were reported outside the Presidential House and in other parts of Tegucigalpa, where protesters erected barricades and battled security forces with rocks and bottles; the number of injuries was unknown. Similar actions reportedly took place in other cities.
Supporters of the de facto government held their own demonstration in the capital’s Parque Central, with an attendance of 10,000, according to organizers. (AFP 6/30/09, English and Spanish; Diario Colatino (El Salvador) 6/30/09 from PL; El Universal (Mexico) 6/30/09)
*3. Zelaya, the Referendum and the Social Movements
Zelaya is a business owner who was elected president in November 2005 as the candidate of the centrist Liberal Party of Honduras (PLH), which along with the National Party of Honduras (PNH) has led the coup against him. Despite his conservative background, “[t]he grassroots movement has been Zelaya’s fundamental ally and has remained firm in its rejection of the coup,” members of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) told the Brazil-based Adital grassroots news service. (Adital 6/29/09)
“You have to understand that Honduras’ political class is extremely backwards,” Rafael Alegría, the local leader of the international group Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”) explained to La Jornada on June 29. “What Zelaya has done has just been little reforms. He isn’t a socialist or a revolutionary, but these reforms, which didn’t harm the oligarchy at all, have been enough for them to attack him furiously.” Another reason for grassroots opposition to the coup, according to the OFRANEH members, is “a tremendous aversion to the armed forces in Honduras. Not many people forget that 20 years ago the soldiers controlled things from cement factories to food production to their own bank. For many, their return to power implies an historic step back that will have incalculable consequences for the country.” (Adital 6/29/09; LJ 6/30/09)
The military and the de facto government say the coup was necessary to keep Zelaya from holding a nonbinding referendum on June 28 about rewriting the Constitution. US media have generally repeated without qualification the claim that the referendum would clear the way for Zelaya to extend his term, which ends Jan. 27, 2010, by eliminating the 1982 Constitution’s provision that presidents can only serve one four-year term.
The referendum would in fact have simply asked voters whether the Nov. 29 general elections--for the president, three vice presidents, 128 legislative deputies and 298 municipal governments--should also include a “fourth ballot box” to elect a Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution. For Zelaya to extend his term, the Constituent Assembly would have to meet, approve a Constitution and have it ratified by the voters before the president turns over power to his successor on Jan. 27. Zelaya has denied that he would seek to stay in office past January, although he said he might try to run again in the future if the Constitution was changed to permit reelection. His government claimed that 400,000 people signed the petitions to initiate the referendum. (The Nation (US) 6/30/09; El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 6/25/09 from EFE; EFE 6/27/09) [Honduras’ total population is about 7.5 million.]
According to the Honduras correspondent of the Argentine daily Clarín, the coup supporters say that if the referendum had passed, Zelaya was going to cancel the presidential elections, extend his term, close down the Congress and seize power “in the best style of [Venezuelan president Hugo] Chávez.” "None of this [scenario] could be confirmed,” the correspondent remarked. (Clarín 6/30/09)
The Chicago-based People's Weekly World reported on its website that Zelaya “had been building relationships with the [UDH], the only leftwing party registered to participate in Honduran national elections. Most observers expected Zelaya to swing his support to Democratic Unification candidate César Ham [Peña]” in the November elections. (PWW 6/29/09)
The National Police told the Mexican wire service Notimex on June 28 that Ham was killed that morning when he resisted arrest [see Update #995]. The report was false. He fled the country, saying there was an arrest order for him and Marcos Burgos, head of the government’s Permanent Commission on Contingencies (COPECO). On the evening of June 29 the two men landed at El Salvador’s Comalapa airport for a connecting flight to Nicaragua. They thanked El Salvador’s leftist Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN) and Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes for their help. (Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 6/29/09)
Correction: Following our source, in Update #995 we incorrectly called the teachers’ union federation “the Front of Teachers Organizations (FOM).” The correct name is Federation of Teachers Organizations of Honduras (FOMH).
*4. Links to alternative sources on the Coup
Honduras: will coup d'etat stand?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7507
Zelaya Says He Will Return to Honduras on Thursday
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/06/zelaya-says-he-will-return-honduras-thursday
Honduras: countdown to confrontation?
http://ww4report.com/node/7513
Honduras' First Full Day Under Coup Rule
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/06/honduras-first-full-day-under-coup-rule
Latin American Nations Begin Economic and Political Blockade Against Coup Government
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/06/latin-american-nations-begin-economic-and-political-blockade-agains
Honduran Coup Turns Violent, Sanctions Imposed
https://nacla.org/node/5955
Honduras: Protests Continue as Obama, Regional Leaders Respond
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1946/68/
Honduras: Old Coup Strategy, Different Stage
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1938/1/
Showdown in Honduras: The Rise, Repression and Uncertain Future of the Coup
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1941/1/
Take Action: Stand in Solidarity with the People of Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1947/1/
Coup in Honduras: President Zelaya Ousted by Military
https://nacla.org/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #995 supplement, June 30, 2009
1. Resistance on Day 2 of the Coup
2. Resistance Grows on Day 3
3. Zelaya, the Referendum and the Social Movements
4. Links to alternative sources
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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Resistance on Day 2 of the Coup
Despite a 9pm to 6am curfew, Hondurans protesting a June 28 military coup against President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales remained outside the Presidential House in Tegucigalpa the night of June 28-29. In the afternoon of June 29 heavily armed soldiers using shields dispersed most of the demonstrators in a few minutes; some youths remained and some threw stones, but they fled after the soldiers began firing in the air. Protesters a few blocks away weren’t “so peaceful,” according to a local leader. Youths there had erected barricades and were burning tires; they hurled rocks and bottles at the soldiers, who used tear gas and rubber bullets on the crowd but were forced to retreat at least three times. The military said 15 soldiers and 15 officers were injured in the Tegucigalpa confrontations, which lasted about two hours; protest organizers reported 276 injured on their side. (La Jornada (Mexico) 6/30/09 from correspondent ; BBC 6/29/09; AFP 6/30/09)
A student at the protests told the Mexican daily La Jornada that more people would have been out in the streets except that “the majority think President Zelaya resigned. The media have been kidnapped, and we, the people, have been too,” she added. The de facto government had taken independent radio stations off the air, along with television networks like the US-based CNN and the Venezuela-based TeleSUR. Radio América, one of the remaining local stations, didn’t report the protests—it simply advised motorists to avoid certain roads, without explaining that they were blocked by protesters. “I’m not interested in having communism here,” the student added. “I’m a student, I love peace and I’m a Christian. But I can’t be complicitous in this robbery.“
With the news blacked out nationwide and electricity interrupted in different areas, it was difficult for reporters to determine what was happening outside the capital. Grassroots organizations said protesters were marching and blocking roads in Colón and Atlántida departments. Some 10,000 campesinos were reportedly trying to get to Tegucigalpa from Olancho, Zelaya’s home region, but were stopped at military roadblocks. There were also unconfirmed reports of military battalions that were refusing to support the coup. (LJ 6/29/09; Milenio (Mexico) 8/29/09 from Notimex)
Labor activists driving in the middle of the day on June 29 near San Pedro Sula, the country’s second largest city, said there were protests against the coup in every town they passed, and that that progressive forces had captured the Puente de la Democracia in the city of El Progreso and had liberated the independent station Radio Progreso. Another activist reported that 15,000 people demonstrated in San Pedro Sula and that there were protests in El Progreso and La Lima. (Personal communications to the Update)
*2. Resistance Grows on Day 3
The French wire service AFP reported that the protests grew on June 30 as all three of the country’s labor federations joined with organizations of campesinos, youth, the unemployed, street vendors, lesbians and gays, and other sectors in an open-ended general strike that the groups said they would maintain until Zelaya was returned to power. [The teachers’ unions had started the strike on June 29; see Update #995]. Organizers said at least 10,000 people were taking part in pro-Zelaya protests in the capital, as well as in other protests around the country; AFP put the number of demonstrators in Tegucigalpa at 2,000. A legislative deputy from the lefitist Democratic Unification of Honduras (UPH), Marvin Ponde, said thousands of anti-coup protesters trying to come to the capital by bus had been stopped at military roadblocks. They had set out from Santa Bárbara in the northwest; Danlí, Juticalpa and Catacamas in the east; and Choluteca in the south.
Violent clashes clashes were reported outside the Presidential House and in other parts of Tegucigalpa, where protesters erected barricades and battled security forces with rocks and bottles; the number of injuries was unknown. Similar actions reportedly took place in other cities.
Supporters of the de facto government held their own demonstration in the capital’s Parque Central, with an attendance of 10,000, according to organizers. (AFP 6/30/09, English and Spanish; Diario Colatino (El Salvador) 6/30/09 from PL; El Universal (Mexico) 6/30/09)
*3. Zelaya, the Referendum and the Social Movements
Zelaya is a business owner who was elected president in November 2005 as the candidate of the centrist Liberal Party of Honduras (PLH), which along with the National Party of Honduras (PNH) has led the coup against him. Despite his conservative background, “[t]he grassroots movement has been Zelaya’s fundamental ally and has remained firm in its rejection of the coup,” members of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) told the Brazil-based Adital grassroots news service. (Adital 6/29/09)
“You have to understand that Honduras’ political class is extremely backwards,” Rafael Alegría, the local leader of the international group Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”) explained to La Jornada on June 29. “What Zelaya has done has just been little reforms. He isn’t a socialist or a revolutionary, but these reforms, which didn’t harm the oligarchy at all, have been enough for them to attack him furiously.” Another reason for grassroots opposition to the coup, according to the OFRANEH members, is “a tremendous aversion to the armed forces in Honduras. Not many people forget that 20 years ago the soldiers controlled things from cement factories to food production to their own bank. For many, their return to power implies an historic step back that will have incalculable consequences for the country.” (Adital 6/29/09; LJ 6/30/09)
The military and the de facto government say the coup was necessary to keep Zelaya from holding a nonbinding referendum on June 28 about rewriting the Constitution. US media have generally repeated without qualification the claim that the referendum would clear the way for Zelaya to extend his term, which ends Jan. 27, 2010, by eliminating the 1982 Constitution’s provision that presidents can only serve one four-year term.
The referendum would in fact have simply asked voters whether the Nov. 29 general elections--for the president, three vice presidents, 128 legislative deputies and 298 municipal governments--should also include a “fourth ballot box” to elect a Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution. For Zelaya to extend his term, the Constituent Assembly would have to meet, approve a Constitution and have it ratified by the voters before the president turns over power to his successor on Jan. 27. Zelaya has denied that he would seek to stay in office past January, although he said he might try to run again in the future if the Constitution was changed to permit reelection. His government claimed that 400,000 people signed the petitions to initiate the referendum. (The Nation (US) 6/30/09; El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 6/25/09 from EFE; EFE 6/27/09) [Honduras’ total population is about 7.5 million.]
According to the Honduras correspondent of the Argentine daily Clarín, the coup supporters say that if the referendum had passed, Zelaya was going to cancel the presidential elections, extend his term, close down the Congress and seize power “in the best style of [Venezuelan president Hugo] Chávez.” "None of this [scenario] could be confirmed,” the correspondent remarked. (Clarín 6/30/09)
The Chicago-based People's Weekly World reported on its website that Zelaya “had been building relationships with the [UDH], the only leftwing party registered to participate in Honduran national elections. Most observers expected Zelaya to swing his support to Democratic Unification candidate César Ham [Peña]” in the November elections. (PWW 6/29/09)
The National Police told the Mexican wire service Notimex on June 28 that Ham was killed that morning when he resisted arrest [see Update #995]. The report was false. He fled the country, saying there was an arrest order for him and Marcos Burgos, head of the government’s Permanent Commission on Contingencies (COPECO). On the evening of June 29 the two men landed at El Salvador’s Comalapa airport for a connecting flight to Nicaragua. They thanked El Salvador’s leftist Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN) and Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes for their help. (Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 6/29/09)
Correction: Following our source, in Update #995 we incorrectly called the teachers’ union federation “the Front of Teachers Organizations (FOM).” The correct name is Federation of Teachers Organizations of Honduras (FOMH).
*4. Links to alternative sources on the Coup
Honduras: will coup d'etat stand?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7507
Zelaya Says He Will Return to Honduras on Thursday
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/06/zelaya-says-he-will-return-honduras-thursday
Honduras: countdown to confrontation?
http://ww4report.com/node/7513
Honduras' First Full Day Under Coup Rule
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/06/honduras-first-full-day-under-coup-rule
Latin American Nations Begin Economic and Political Blockade Against Coup Government
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/06/latin-american-nations-begin-economic-and-political-blockade-agains
Honduran Coup Turns Violent, Sanctions Imposed
https://nacla.org/node/5955
Honduras: Protests Continue as Obama, Regional Leaders Respond
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1946/68/
Honduras: Old Coup Strategy, Different Stage
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1938/1/
Showdown in Honduras: The Rise, Repression and Uncertain Future of the Coup
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1941/1/
Take Action: Stand in Solidarity with the People of Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1947/1/
Coup in Honduras: President Zelaya Ousted by Military
https://nacla.org/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, June 29, 2009
WNU #995: Resistance and Repression in Honduras Coup
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #995, June 28, 2009
1. Honduras: Resistance and Repression in Coup
2. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, 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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Honduras: Resistance and Repression in Coup
According to the Venezuela-based TeleSUR television network, thousands of Hondurans took to the streets of Tegucigalpa the morning of June 28 to demonstrate against the military’s removal of President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales several hours earlier in a dispute over a non-binding referendum the president was planning to hold that day. TeleSUR showed footage of protesters at the Presidential Palace and other locations arguing with heavily armed soldiers, sometimes blocking their way or otherwise defying them. Ignoring a curfew imposed by the de facto government, the protesters said they would remain in the streets until Zelaya returns to office. (TeleSUR 6/28/09, __)
According to a report from the Italian wire service ANSA, soldiers used tear gas in an effort to disperse the hundreds of protesters at the Presidential Palace. Soldiers reportedly threatened journalists, pointing rifles at them. Meanwhile, tanks were seen patrolling the streets while Air Force planes flew overhead. (ANSA 6/28/09)
Electricity was cut in parts of Tegucigalpa, and most TV stations carried cartoons and soccer matches--while advising people to stay home. Churches cancelled Sunday services. The Honduran daily La Tribuna, which opposed the referendum, reported “relative calm” in the capital in one of its internet postings on June 28; the paper’s very next posting said that two of its staff, a reporter and a photographer, had been assaulted by demonstrators angry at the paper’s publisher, former president Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé (1998-2002). (La Tribuna 6/28/09, __) Many Hondurans countered the news blackout by passing information to each other and to international sources through Twitter and other internet social networks. (Jueventud Rebelde (Cuba) 6/28/09)
In the northwestern city of San Pedro Sula, the second largest Honduran city, students from the University Reform Front (FRU) and others tried to proceed with the referendum, but soldiers stopped them; several students were arrested, and their parents were unable to learn where they were taken. There were demonstrations in the third largest city, the northern port of La Ceiba, where protesters scuffled with soldiers who were seizing election materials. (Diario Tiempo (Honduras) 6/28/09)
The June 28 referendum was to determine whether the Nov. 29 elections for president, legislators and mayors should also include a “fourth ballot box” to establish a Constituent Assembly empowered to reform the Constitution. Opponents charge that Zelaya--elected in November 2005 as the candidate of the centrist Liberal Party of Honduras (PLH)-- was just seeking to end the Constitution’s provision that presidents can only serve one four-year term. But unions and other social movements that have demonstrated against policies of Zelaya’s government in the past strongly supported the president’s call for a Constituent Assembly.
On June 10 hundreds of unionists, students, teachers and indigenous people had marched to the Congress building in Tegucigalpa calling for the legislators to back the referendum. “The people, aware, defend the Constituent [Assembly],” they chanted. The march included members of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), which blocked roads in a 12-day mobilization in February against government policies on forest exploitation [see Update #981]. (Diario Tiempo 6/11/09)
Also strongly supporting the referendum was the Front of Teachers Organizations (FOM); the country’s 48,000 teachers carried out a series of militant actions in January and February to demand back pay that they said the government owed them [see Updates #975, 979]. On June 26 FOM director Eulogio Chávez called on teachers to help organize the referendum in their schools. (La Tribuna 6/27/09) On June 28 Chávez joined the demonstrators outside the Presidential Palace to protest the coup; he announced a general strike to start on June 29 and to continue until Zelaya had returned. (El Financiero (Mexico) 6/28/09, some from Notimex)
The Spanish-based website Rebelión reported that there were arrest orders out for leaders of COPINH and the Popular Bloc Coordinating Committee following the coup. These leaders included Marvin Ponce, Andrés Pabón, César Hans and Rafael Alegría, who is on the coordinating committee of the international campesino organization Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”). Juan Barahona, Carlos Humberto Reyes, Cuter Castillo, Berta Cáceres and Salvador Súñiga were also reportedly being sought, although warrants hadn’t been issued for them. (Rebelión 6/28/09)
The National Police said that César Ham Peña, a legislative deputy for the leftist Democratic Unification of Honduras, was killed the morning of June 28 when a squad came to arrest him at his home. Police sources claimed that he had confronted the squad with a pistol and had to be killed. Ham was one of the main organizers of the referendum. (El Financiero 6/28/09, some from Notimex; NarcoNews 6/28/09, some from Notimex)
*2. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
UN: coca cultivation declines in Colombia, balloons in Bolivia, Peru
http://ww4report.com/node/7482
A Thaw in U.S.-Bolivia Relations?
https://nacla.org/node/5917
Health Care and Democracy: A Look at the Venezuelan Healthcare System
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1925/1/
Venezuelan Marxist statement in solidarity with Iran protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7491
Italian mafia "foreign minister" busted in Venezuela
http://ww4report.com/node/7481
Interview with Irma and Herbert: Members of El Salvador's Radio Zurda
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1926/1/
El Salvador: Promises, Perils and Reality
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1928/68/
Coup d'etat in Honduras; Latin anti-imperialist bloc pledges resistance
http://ww4report.com/node/7504
Demand a Call from Barack Obama for the Reinstatement of Honduran President Zelaya
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1928/68/
Honduras: President Overthrown in Military Coup
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1930/1/
Military Coup Underway in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1929/1/
ALERT - Military Coup in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1927/1/
Honduras on edge as president defies courts, military
http://ww4report.com/node/7498
Mexico: Calderón sees "historic crossroads" in narco war
http://ww4report.com/node/7497
'A Great Feeling of Love': Hilda and Che
https://nacla.org/node/5908
Haiti's Elections: "Beat the Dog Too Hard..."
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1931/68/
Colombia: Spying in the Name of 'Democratic Security'
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1922/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #995, June 28, 2009
1. Honduras: Resistance and Repression in Coup
2. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, 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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Honduras: Resistance and Repression in Coup
According to the Venezuela-based TeleSUR television network, thousands of Hondurans took to the streets of Tegucigalpa the morning of June 28 to demonstrate against the military’s removal of President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales several hours earlier in a dispute over a non-binding referendum the president was planning to hold that day. TeleSUR showed footage of protesters at the Presidential Palace and other locations arguing with heavily armed soldiers, sometimes blocking their way or otherwise defying them. Ignoring a curfew imposed by the de facto government, the protesters said they would remain in the streets until Zelaya returns to office. (TeleSUR 6/28/09, __)
According to a report from the Italian wire service ANSA, soldiers used tear gas in an effort to disperse the hundreds of protesters at the Presidential Palace. Soldiers reportedly threatened journalists, pointing rifles at them. Meanwhile, tanks were seen patrolling the streets while Air Force planes flew overhead. (ANSA 6/28/09)
Electricity was cut in parts of Tegucigalpa, and most TV stations carried cartoons and soccer matches--while advising people to stay home. Churches cancelled Sunday services. The Honduran daily La Tribuna, which opposed the referendum, reported “relative calm” in the capital in one of its internet postings on June 28; the paper’s very next posting said that two of its staff, a reporter and a photographer, had been assaulted by demonstrators angry at the paper’s publisher, former president Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé (1998-2002). (La Tribuna 6/28/09, __) Many Hondurans countered the news blackout by passing information to each other and to international sources through Twitter and other internet social networks. (Jueventud Rebelde (Cuba) 6/28/09)
In the northwestern city of San Pedro Sula, the second largest Honduran city, students from the University Reform Front (FRU) and others tried to proceed with the referendum, but soldiers stopped them; several students were arrested, and their parents were unable to learn where they were taken. There were demonstrations in the third largest city, the northern port of La Ceiba, where protesters scuffled with soldiers who were seizing election materials. (Diario Tiempo (Honduras) 6/28/09)
The June 28 referendum was to determine whether the Nov. 29 elections for president, legislators and mayors should also include a “fourth ballot box” to establish a Constituent Assembly empowered to reform the Constitution. Opponents charge that Zelaya--elected in November 2005 as the candidate of the centrist Liberal Party of Honduras (PLH)-- was just seeking to end the Constitution’s provision that presidents can only serve one four-year term. But unions and other social movements that have demonstrated against policies of Zelaya’s government in the past strongly supported the president’s call for a Constituent Assembly.
On June 10 hundreds of unionists, students, teachers and indigenous people had marched to the Congress building in Tegucigalpa calling for the legislators to back the referendum. “The people, aware, defend the Constituent [Assembly],” they chanted. The march included members of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), which blocked roads in a 12-day mobilization in February against government policies on forest exploitation [see Update #981]. (Diario Tiempo 6/11/09)
Also strongly supporting the referendum was the Front of Teachers Organizations (FOM); the country’s 48,000 teachers carried out a series of militant actions in January and February to demand back pay that they said the government owed them [see Updates #975, 979]. On June 26 FOM director Eulogio Chávez called on teachers to help organize the referendum in their schools. (La Tribuna 6/27/09) On June 28 Chávez joined the demonstrators outside the Presidential Palace to protest the coup; he announced a general strike to start on June 29 and to continue until Zelaya had returned. (El Financiero (Mexico) 6/28/09, some from Notimex)
The Spanish-based website Rebelión reported that there were arrest orders out for leaders of COPINH and the Popular Bloc Coordinating Committee following the coup. These leaders included Marvin Ponce, Andrés Pabón, César Hans and Rafael Alegría, who is on the coordinating committee of the international campesino organization Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”). Juan Barahona, Carlos Humberto Reyes, Cuter Castillo, Berta Cáceres and Salvador Súñiga were also reportedly being sought, although warrants hadn’t been issued for them. (Rebelión 6/28/09)
The National Police said that César Ham Peña, a legislative deputy for the leftist Democratic Unification of Honduras, was killed the morning of June 28 when a squad came to arrest him at his home. Police sources claimed that he had confronted the squad with a pistol and had to be killed. Ham was one of the main organizers of the referendum. (El Financiero 6/28/09, some from Notimex; NarcoNews 6/28/09, some from Notimex)
*2. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
UN: coca cultivation declines in Colombia, balloons in Bolivia, Peru
http://ww4report.com/node/7482
A Thaw in U.S.-Bolivia Relations?
https://nacla.org/node/5917
Health Care and Democracy: A Look at the Venezuelan Healthcare System
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1925/1/
Venezuelan Marxist statement in solidarity with Iran protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7491
Italian mafia "foreign minister" busted in Venezuela
http://ww4report.com/node/7481
Interview with Irma and Herbert: Members of El Salvador's Radio Zurda
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1926/1/
El Salvador: Promises, Perils and Reality
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1928/68/
Coup d'etat in Honduras; Latin anti-imperialist bloc pledges resistance
http://ww4report.com/node/7504
Demand a Call from Barack Obama for the Reinstatement of Honduran President Zelaya
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1928/68/
Honduras: President Overthrown in Military Coup
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1930/1/
Military Coup Underway in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1929/1/
ALERT - Military Coup in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1927/1/
Honduras on edge as president defies courts, military
http://ww4report.com/node/7498
Mexico: Calderón sees "historic crossroads" in narco war
http://ww4report.com/node/7497
'A Great Feeling of Love': Hilda and Che
https://nacla.org/node/5908
Haiti's Elections: "Beat the Dog Too Hard..."
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1931/68/
Colombia: Spying in the Name of 'Democratic Security'
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1922/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
WNU #994: Guatemalans Protest Gold Mine
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #994, June 21, 2009
1. Guatemala: Protesters Burn Mine Equipment
2. Dominican Republic: Judge Blocks Cement Factory
3. Haiti: 2 Killed in Protest, Electoral Clash
4. Links to alternative sources on: Bank of South, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Guatemala: Protesters Burn Mine Equipment
Indigenous Mam set fire to a pickup truck and an exploration drill rig on June 12 at the Marlin gold mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacán municipality in the western Guatemalan department of San Marcos, according to media reports. The protesters said the mine—operated by Montana Exploradora de Guatemala, SA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Canadian mining company Goldcorp Inc.—had illegally placed its equipment on their land, endangering their water supply, and that they had been asking for two weeks for the company to move the equipment.
According to the Canadian-based Rights Action organization, as of June 19 Goldcorp had successfully pressured the Guatemalan government into bringing charges against seven local residents in relation to the incident. There have been reports of other efforts to intimidate organizers. Javier de León, a leader of the Association of Integral Development of San Miguel Ixtahuacán (ADISMI), said he received two threatening text messages by cell phone on June 12. (Reuters 6/15/09; Rights Action alerts 6/15/09, 6/19/09)
Indigenous Guatemalans have demonstrated repeatedly against the Marlin mine since it began operations in 2005 with a $45 million loan from the World Bank. In January 2005, campesinos in Sololá department tried to block the passage of equipment for the mine through their territory; public security forces shot one protester dead. In March of that year, two guards for the Marlin mine killed San Miguel de Ixtahuacán resident Alvaro Benigno [see Updates #781, 792].
San Miguel de Ixtahuacán residents aren’t alone in opposing the mining operations. At a June 19 meeting with legislative deputy Rosa María de Frade, the mayors of 11 municipalities in San Marcos department said they opposed granting any concessions to Montana Exploradora. “All that [the Marlin mine] has created is confrontation between brothers, and deceptions, and the lands of the humble people of San Miguel Ixtahuacán have been taken over,” said Sipacapa mayor Delfino Temaj. De Frade was promoting reforms to the mining law that she said would protect the environment while ensuring payments of royalties to local communities. “Montana can give us royalties of 50%, but we reject it,” Temaj said. He wondered “what we can do with the money in our pockets if the water sources are dried out.” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 6/20/09)
*2. Dominican Republic: Judge Blocks Cement Factory
On June 19 Judge Sarah Enríquez Marín of the Administrative Litigation Court of the National District (Santo Domingo) ordered the Consorcio Minero Dominicano mining company to suspend construction of a cement factory it was building near the town of Gonzalo, in Sabana Grande de Boyá municipality in the northeastern Dominican province of Monte Plata. She issued the order in relation to a complaint the United Communities Movement of Peasant Workers (MCCU) and the environmental group Espeleogrupo had filed on May 20 against the Environment Ministry charging that the ministry had granted Consorcio Minero Dominicano the license for the plant illegally.
Judge Enríquez Marín cited possible damage to the environment as her reason for ordering the suspension and gave the plaintiffs 30 days to substantiate their complaint. The company’s lawyers said they would appeal. (El Nuevo Diario (Dominican Republic) 6/19/09; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 6/20/09 from El Diario-La Prensa (NY))
The factory site is near Los Haitises National Park, the second largest source of natural water in the country. Environmentalists and area residents have been protesting the plant for months, charging that it will displace local campesinos and degrade the water supply [see Update #993]. Residents of Gonzalo celebrated the judge’s decision, as did youths who have maintained an encampment near the site since May 16. Lawyers indicated that the suspension, although temporary, has set a legal precedent. (El Panorama Diario (Dominican Republic) 6/20/09)
*3. Haiti: 2 Killed in Protest, Electoral Clash
On June 12 Haitian president René Préval finally responded to a bill Parliament has passed to raise the minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97). The pay hike, the first since 2003, cleared the Senate on May 5 [see Update #993]. In an official letter to the presidents of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, Préval repeated claims of Haitian business associations that the wage increase would jeopardize the subcontracting sector, the free trade zone (FTZ) factories that assemble goods largely for export. He proposed an increase to 125 gourdes for that sector, and called on Parliament to be open to negotiations on the measure. (Haiti Press Network 6/17/09; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 6/18/09)
Students from the State University of Haiti (UEH) continued the militant protests in Port-au-Prince that they began on June 3 to demand that Préval make the full wage increase official by promulgating it in the government gazette, Le Moniteur. Early on the morning of June 17, students used burning tires to create barricades near the Medical School and other parts of the university. As on previous occasions, Haitian police and police agents from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) used tear gas in an attempt to disperse the protesters. The students seized a MINUSTAH police car and set it on fire; the agents fled the vehicle. Protesters also burned a bus and smashed windshields with rocks. UEH protests began earlier in the year over curriculum changes, but the demands now include the minimum wage increase and the removal of MINUSTAH, a Brazilian-led 8,000-member military and police operation that has been in Haiti since June 2004. (Radio Métropole 6/17/09, 6/18/09; AlterPresse (Haiti) 6/17/09)
Anger at MINUSTAH intensified on June 18 when supporters of the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004) accused Brazilian soldiers of the shooting death of an unidentified young man outside the Port-au-Prince cathedral. Lavalas supporters had attended a funeral service there for Father Gérard Jean-Juste, a well-known Catholic priest and Aristide sympathizer. According to witnesses, the MINUSTAH soldiers had been firing in the air, although it is not clear why. An angry demonstration followed in which protesters smashed windshields; the action ended with protesters carrying the young man’s body to the National Palace, the president’s official residence. (AlterPresse 6/18/09)
Jean-Juste, who died in Florida on May 27 after a long illness, had run a popular food distribution service at his church in Port-au-Prince and was a founder of the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami. He was imprisoned in July 2005 by the interim government that was put in place after Aristide was forced from office in February 2004; Jean-Juste was released in January 2006 to undergo treatment for leukemia and pneumonia in the US [see Update #835].
At least one person died in clashes during a runoff for a third of the Senate seats on June 21. The victim--identified as Jean Pierre Wilfrid, a supporter of the social democratic Fusion party--was reportedly killed in an altercation with supporters of the Lespwa (“Hope”) party of President Préval. (AlterPresse 6/21/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Bank of South, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
South American Nations Agree on Technical Rules for Bank of the South
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6175
Argentina's Community Media Fights for Access and Legal Reform
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6159
Popular Communication in the MST
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6185
World Bank Drops Loan to Brazilian Cattle Giant
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1907/68/
US National Intelligence office sees Islamic extremism in Bolivia
http://ww4report.com/node/7450
Massacre in the Amazon (Peru)
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6191
Indigenous Protest and State Violence in the Peruvian Amazon - How the Media Misrepresents
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1912/68/
Peru: "The Order Was to Kill Us"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1909/68/
Peru: land decrees overturned in victory for indigenous movement
http://ww4report.com/node/7459
Peru: eyewitness account of Amazon massacre published
http://ww4report.com/node/7466
Peru recalls ambassador from Bolivia over Amazon crisis
http://ww4report.com/node/7449
Peru clamps down on indigenous organizations
http://ww4report.com/node/7448
Peru: prime minister to step down in bid to defuse Amazon crisis
http://ww4report.com/node/7444
Interview with Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa
https://nacla.org/node/5900
Appalachia and Colombia: The People Behind the Coal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1908/1/
Quinoa Plants a Seed for Food Revolution in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1913/1/
UN report: Colombian army "killed civilians"
http://ww4report.com/node/7462
Colombia's high court denies extradition of FARC "jailer"
http://ww4report.com/node/7461
Venezuelan Government: Separatist Opposition Uses Paramilitaries for Destabilization
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1916/68/
Chávez backs Ahmadinejad amid Iranian protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7451
El Salvador: Promises, Perils and Reality
https://nacla.org/node/5892
Gangs, Security and Criminalization: Youth Experiences of Violence in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1914/1/
NAFTA'S Serfs: From Wage Slavery to Debt Slavery (Mexico)
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6190
Radio Ñomndaa, The Word of the Water (Mexico)
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6164
Obama's Cartel Trust Busters (Mexico)
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6176
More troops to Mexico's "Golden Triangle" as confused violence spreads
http://ww4report.com/node/7442
Michoacán: narco-terror attack on ambulance
http://ww4report.com/node/7460
Mexican village revolts against cellphone antennae
http://ww4report.com/node/7465
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #994, June 21, 2009
1. Guatemala: Protesters Burn Mine Equipment
2. Dominican Republic: Judge Blocks Cement Factory
3. Haiti: 2 Killed in Protest, Electoral Clash
4. Links to alternative sources on: Bank of South, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Guatemala: Protesters Burn Mine Equipment
Indigenous Mam set fire to a pickup truck and an exploration drill rig on June 12 at the Marlin gold mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacán municipality in the western Guatemalan department of San Marcos, according to media reports. The protesters said the mine—operated by Montana Exploradora de Guatemala, SA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Canadian mining company Goldcorp Inc.—had illegally placed its equipment on their land, endangering their water supply, and that they had been asking for two weeks for the company to move the equipment.
According to the Canadian-based Rights Action organization, as of June 19 Goldcorp had successfully pressured the Guatemalan government into bringing charges against seven local residents in relation to the incident. There have been reports of other efforts to intimidate organizers. Javier de León, a leader of the Association of Integral Development of San Miguel Ixtahuacán (ADISMI), said he received two threatening text messages by cell phone on June 12. (Reuters 6/15/09; Rights Action alerts 6/15/09, 6/19/09)
Indigenous Guatemalans have demonstrated repeatedly against the Marlin mine since it began operations in 2005 with a $45 million loan from the World Bank. In January 2005, campesinos in Sololá department tried to block the passage of equipment for the mine through their territory; public security forces shot one protester dead. In March of that year, two guards for the Marlin mine killed San Miguel de Ixtahuacán resident Alvaro Benigno [see Updates #781, 792].
San Miguel de Ixtahuacán residents aren’t alone in opposing the mining operations. At a June 19 meeting with legislative deputy Rosa María de Frade, the mayors of 11 municipalities in San Marcos department said they opposed granting any concessions to Montana Exploradora. “All that [the Marlin mine] has created is confrontation between brothers, and deceptions, and the lands of the humble people of San Miguel Ixtahuacán have been taken over,” said Sipacapa mayor Delfino Temaj. De Frade was promoting reforms to the mining law that she said would protect the environment while ensuring payments of royalties to local communities. “Montana can give us royalties of 50%, but we reject it,” Temaj said. He wondered “what we can do with the money in our pockets if the water sources are dried out.” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 6/20/09)
*2. Dominican Republic: Judge Blocks Cement Factory
On June 19 Judge Sarah Enríquez Marín of the Administrative Litigation Court of the National District (Santo Domingo) ordered the Consorcio Minero Dominicano mining company to suspend construction of a cement factory it was building near the town of Gonzalo, in Sabana Grande de Boyá municipality in the northeastern Dominican province of Monte Plata. She issued the order in relation to a complaint the United Communities Movement of Peasant Workers (MCCU) and the environmental group Espeleogrupo had filed on May 20 against the Environment Ministry charging that the ministry had granted Consorcio Minero Dominicano the license for the plant illegally.
Judge Enríquez Marín cited possible damage to the environment as her reason for ordering the suspension and gave the plaintiffs 30 days to substantiate their complaint. The company’s lawyers said they would appeal. (El Nuevo Diario (Dominican Republic) 6/19/09; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 6/20/09 from El Diario-La Prensa (NY))
The factory site is near Los Haitises National Park, the second largest source of natural water in the country. Environmentalists and area residents have been protesting the plant for months, charging that it will displace local campesinos and degrade the water supply [see Update #993]. Residents of Gonzalo celebrated the judge’s decision, as did youths who have maintained an encampment near the site since May 16. Lawyers indicated that the suspension, although temporary, has set a legal precedent. (El Panorama Diario (Dominican Republic) 6/20/09)
*3. Haiti: 2 Killed in Protest, Electoral Clash
On June 12 Haitian president René Préval finally responded to a bill Parliament has passed to raise the minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97). The pay hike, the first since 2003, cleared the Senate on May 5 [see Update #993]. In an official letter to the presidents of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, Préval repeated claims of Haitian business associations that the wage increase would jeopardize the subcontracting sector, the free trade zone (FTZ) factories that assemble goods largely for export. He proposed an increase to 125 gourdes for that sector, and called on Parliament to be open to negotiations on the measure. (Haiti Press Network 6/17/09; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 6/18/09)
Students from the State University of Haiti (UEH) continued the militant protests in Port-au-Prince that they began on June 3 to demand that Préval make the full wage increase official by promulgating it in the government gazette, Le Moniteur. Early on the morning of June 17, students used burning tires to create barricades near the Medical School and other parts of the university. As on previous occasions, Haitian police and police agents from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) used tear gas in an attempt to disperse the protesters. The students seized a MINUSTAH police car and set it on fire; the agents fled the vehicle. Protesters also burned a bus and smashed windshields with rocks. UEH protests began earlier in the year over curriculum changes, but the demands now include the minimum wage increase and the removal of MINUSTAH, a Brazilian-led 8,000-member military and police operation that has been in Haiti since June 2004. (Radio Métropole 6/17/09, 6/18/09; AlterPresse (Haiti) 6/17/09)
Anger at MINUSTAH intensified on June 18 when supporters of the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004) accused Brazilian soldiers of the shooting death of an unidentified young man outside the Port-au-Prince cathedral. Lavalas supporters had attended a funeral service there for Father Gérard Jean-Juste, a well-known Catholic priest and Aristide sympathizer. According to witnesses, the MINUSTAH soldiers had been firing in the air, although it is not clear why. An angry demonstration followed in which protesters smashed windshields; the action ended with protesters carrying the young man’s body to the National Palace, the president’s official residence. (AlterPresse 6/18/09)
Jean-Juste, who died in Florida on May 27 after a long illness, had run a popular food distribution service at his church in Port-au-Prince and was a founder of the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami. He was imprisoned in July 2005 by the interim government that was put in place after Aristide was forced from office in February 2004; Jean-Juste was released in January 2006 to undergo treatment for leukemia and pneumonia in the US [see Update #835].
At least one person died in clashes during a runoff for a third of the Senate seats on June 21. The victim--identified as Jean Pierre Wilfrid, a supporter of the social democratic Fusion party--was reportedly killed in an altercation with supporters of the Lespwa (“Hope”) party of President Préval. (AlterPresse 6/21/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Bank of South, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
South American Nations Agree on Technical Rules for Bank of the South
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6175
Argentina's Community Media Fights for Access and Legal Reform
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6159
Popular Communication in the MST
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6185
World Bank Drops Loan to Brazilian Cattle Giant
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1907/68/
US National Intelligence office sees Islamic extremism in Bolivia
http://ww4report.com/node/7450
Massacre in the Amazon (Peru)
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6191
Indigenous Protest and State Violence in the Peruvian Amazon - How the Media Misrepresents
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1912/68/
Peru: "The Order Was to Kill Us"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1909/68/
Peru: land decrees overturned in victory for indigenous movement
http://ww4report.com/node/7459
Peru: eyewitness account of Amazon massacre published
http://ww4report.com/node/7466
Peru recalls ambassador from Bolivia over Amazon crisis
http://ww4report.com/node/7449
Peru clamps down on indigenous organizations
http://ww4report.com/node/7448
Peru: prime minister to step down in bid to defuse Amazon crisis
http://ww4report.com/node/7444
Interview with Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa
https://nacla.org/node/5900
Appalachia and Colombia: The People Behind the Coal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1908/1/
Quinoa Plants a Seed for Food Revolution in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1913/1/
UN report: Colombian army "killed civilians"
http://ww4report.com/node/7462
Colombia's high court denies extradition of FARC "jailer"
http://ww4report.com/node/7461
Venezuelan Government: Separatist Opposition Uses Paramilitaries for Destabilization
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1916/68/
Chávez backs Ahmadinejad amid Iranian protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7451
El Salvador: Promises, Perils and Reality
https://nacla.org/node/5892
Gangs, Security and Criminalization: Youth Experiences of Violence in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1914/1/
NAFTA'S Serfs: From Wage Slavery to Debt Slavery (Mexico)
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6190
Radio Ñomndaa, The Word of the Water (Mexico)
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6164
Obama's Cartel Trust Busters (Mexico)
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6176
More troops to Mexico's "Golden Triangle" as confused violence spreads
http://ww4report.com/node/7442
Michoacán: narco-terror attack on ambulance
http://ww4report.com/node/7460
Mexican village revolts against cellphone antennae
http://ww4report.com/node/7465
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, June 15, 2009
WNU #993: Haitian Students Protest for Minimum Wage
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #993, June 14, 2009
1. Haiti: Students Protest for Minimum Wage
2. Dominican Republic: Campesinos Protest Cement Factory
3. Peru: Radio Silenced, Legislators Suspended
4. In Other News: Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua
5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: Students Protest for Minimum Wage
On June 3 students from the State University of Haiti (UEH) began a series of militant demonstrations to protest the failure of President René Préval to promulgate a measure raising the minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97)--the first increase since 2003. Although Parliament finished the process of approving the measure on May 4, it will not become law until it is approved by the president and published in the official gazette, Le Moniteur [see Update #989]. Students from various UEH faculties have been protesting over academic issues at different times since February [see Update #983].
From June 3 through June 5 hundreds of students blocked streets in downtown Port-au-Prince, hurled rocks and set vehicles on fire. The protesters targeted the area near the National Palace, the president’s official residence, along with the offices of the Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty (FOKAL), an educational group linked to US financier George Soros which Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis headed before she was named prime minister in 2008 [see Update #954]. Rock-throwing students shut the foundation down in incidents on June 3 and June 4.
According to witnesses, Haitian police agents and elements from the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) repressed the demonstrations brutally, indiscriminately launching tear gas grenades and firing warning shots in the air. Ludger Laguerre, a student in the UEH Department of Social Work, was hit in the head by a police bullet on June 4; he was taken to the UEH hospital, but his injuries were not considered dangerous. On June 5 the police hit a 10-year-old boy in his right shoulder as they fired warning shots, and Radio Métropole reported that a man was shot in the leg when an off-duty police agent fired at a crowd after being pelted with stones.
Tear gas filled the downtown area during the protests. Three students from a primary school were hospitalized after breathing the fumes on June 4, and two women fainted. Security forces reportedly fired tear gas into the UEH hospital when some of Laguerre’s friends went there to inquire about his condition. According to one witness, the hospital wards were filled with the fumes and parents were forced to run out of the building carrying sick and injured children. The National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) described this as a “barbaric intervention by the forces of order.” (Alterpresse 6/4/09, 6/5/09, __; Haiti Support Group (HSG) News Briefs 6/4/09 from AP, 6/6/09 from AP; HSG press release 6/9/09; Radio France Internationale (RFI) 6/10/09)
On June 5 several media employees were injured by people that Haiti’s Alterpresse news website described as “demonstrators appearing to be students.” An employee of the Télé Haïti TV station required eight stitches on his head after his vehicle was hit by a stream of rocks. A photojournalist from the daily Le Nouvelliste was struck in the arm by a rock. (Alterpresse 6/5/09)
On June 8 the government released eight of 24 people arrested during the protest on June 4, but this did little to placate the demonstrators, who smashed windshields outside the Port-au-Prince civil tribunal building. According to the UEH’s attorney, Aviol Fleurant, the remaining 16 prisoners included three high school students, two mechanics who had been in their garage at the time of the protest, and three passersby. (Alterpresse 6/9/09; Agence Haïtienne de Presse 6/8/09)
By June 9 students from other schools had joined the UEH protesters. Several thousand people marched through the Champ de Mars plaza, near the National Palace, and along Christophe Avenue, despite the efforts of the security forces to stop them. The protesters paralyzed the entire center of the city with flaming barricades and showers of rocks, and many businesses shut down. Again the police responded with tear gas. Local residents, medical personnel and school authorities expressed anger at the police. “To obey the political authorities, they’re even ready to poison the babies,” a nurse from the UEH hospital complained, referring to the tear gas. (AHP 6/9/09; Radio Métropole 6/10/09)
The protests are the latest in a series of embarrassments for the Préval government. The president has now promised to send Parliament a statement by June 17 explaining his position on the minimum wage increase. Four days later, on June 21, polls will open for runoff elections for a third of the Senate; the first round, on Apr. 19, was marked by violence and massive abstention [see Update #986].
Employers have been campaigning heavily against the wage increase, arguing that the current exceptionally low wages attract assembly plants to the country. The Haiti Industries Association (ADIH) claims half of the 25,000 workers in Haiti’s apparel industry would lose their jobs if the new minimum wage went into effect. Supporters of the wage increase counter this by pointing to the Compagnie de Developpement Industriel S.A. (Codevi) plant in the Haitian town of Ouanaminthe near the border with the Dominican Republic; the workers there get 350 gourdes a day, the result of a labor organizing drive in 2004-2005 [see Update #785]. Supporters insist that even with the increase Haitian workers would still be competitive with the 200,000 workers in similar industries in the Dominican Republic, where the assembly sector has a minimum wage of about $5.50 a day. (Alterpresse 6/9/09; RFI 6/10/09; Adital 6/12/09)
*2. Dominican Republic: Campesinos Protest Cement Factory
Youths and campesinos in a protest encampment at the edge of Los Haitises National Park in the eastern Dominican Republic reported on June 11 that they were being surrounded by military units and that they feared they might be attacked. This report followed a June 10 attack by National Police on the encampment, where dozens of protesters have been staying since May 16 in an effort to prevent the construction of a cement factory near the town of Gonzalo, in Sabana Grande de Boyá municipality, Monte Plata province. The agents removed a barricade the protesters had set up to block trucks going to the factory site. There was one unconfirmed report that the police fired shots during the June 10 incident and wounded several protesters.
In Santo Domingo on June 10 police agents blocked a march by dozens of representatives of campesino and environmental organizations as they tried to reach the National Palace to deliver a letter protesting the cement factory to President Leonel Fernández.
The protests began in response to a decision by Environmental Minister Jaime David Fernández Mirabal to grant a concession to Consorcio Minero Dominicano , SA--a mining company that also produces cooking oil and other commodities--to extract limestone from sedimentary rocks to manufacture cement at Gonzalo. Environmentalists, geologists and local residents say the factory would displace 500 peasant families and degrade the water from Los Haitises, the second largest source of natural water in the country, which benefits more than 1 million people. Student groups, leftists, the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) and the environmental commission of the Catholic Church have all come out against the project. Activists in the US can protest by contacting the Dominican Embassy in Washington (telephone 202-332-6280, fax 202-265-8057, email embassy@us.serex.gov.do). (La Opinión (Los Angeles) 6/11/09 from El Diario-La Prensa correspondent; La Nación Dominicana 6/11/09; Socialist Worker (US) 5/28/09)
*3. Peru: Radio Silenced, Legislators Suspended
On June 8 Peru’s Transportation and Communication Ministry (MTC) cancelled the license of Radio La Voz de Bagua, a family-owned radio station with a signal of 100 watts in Utcubamba province in the Amazonas region in the north of the country. The MTC cited technical issues with the station’s equipment, but La Voz news director Carlos Flores Burgos dismissed this as “a lie.” The station is based in the area where dozens of people died on June 5 in a confrontation between police and indigenous protesters [see Update #992], and Flores said the station had made it possible for members of the public to report alleged abuses by security forces. After the June 5 killings, Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas accused the station of agitating the situation and called for sanctions against it, while Congress members Aurelio Pastor, Jorge Del Castillo and Mauricio Mulde, all from the Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP) of President Alan García, accused La Voz and Flores of supporting and inciting violence.
The Press and Society Institute of Peru (IPYS), an organization of independent journalists, questioned the license cancellation and said it might be a “reprisal.” (Radio Programas del Perú (RPP) 6/12/09; Los Andes (Puno, Peru) 6/13/08; La República (Peru) 6/13/09)
On June 12 the Peruvian Congress, which is dominated by the PAP, voted a 120-day suspension for seven legislators from the opposition Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP) of Ollanta Humala for having staged a protest in the legislature’s chamber in support of the Amazonian indigenous protesters. The suspended Congress members were María Sumire, Hilaria Supa, Nancy Obregón, Juana Huancahuari, Cayo Galindo, Yaneth Cajahuanca and Rafael Vásquez. The suspension was approved 58-18 with one abstention; voting with the PAP for the suspension was National Unity and the Alliance for the Future of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), convicted of human rights abuses on Apr. 7 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The protests in the Congress began on June 10 after the legislators voted to suspend indefinitely decrees on drilling, mining and land use that had sparked the indigenous protests. The PNP members called for the decrees to be repealed rather than suspended, and nine PNP legislators began a fast to protest the vote. A total of 22 Congress members from the PNP and left groups stayed in the chamber overnight and prevented Congress from holding a session the morning of June 11. The protesters finally left later to join a march in Lima, part of a day of nationwide strikes and mobilizations in support of the indigenous demands. (Correo (Lima) 6/12/09; La Raza (Chicago) 6/13/09 from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 6/12/09 from Reuters, AFP, DPA; AFP 6/12/09; NACLA 4/15/09)
*4. In Other News: Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua
On June 3 the Brazilian Senate approved a bill regulating government transfers of land in the Amazon region. The bill—Conversion Bill 09 (PLV 09/2009, originally MP 458/09)—was passed by the Chamber of Deputies in May and awaits the signature of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. The Catholic Church’s Pastoral Commission on Land (CPT), Greenpeace, WWF-Brasil (the Brazilian affiliate of the World Wildlife Fund) and other groups say some articles in the measure will enable companies and individuals to keep lands they seized illegally. The law “especially benefits people who should be on trial for usurping areas covered by the agrarian reform,” according to Greenpeace. The groups are urging people to call on Lula (phone +61-3411.1200, +61-3411.1201 or email at https://sistema.planalto.gov.br/falepr2/index.php) to veto the articles. (Adital 6/12/09)… German author Günter Grass, Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú and eight other Nobel Prize winners have joined supporters filing amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs with the US Supreme Court seeking to overturn the 2001 convictions of five Cuban men (known as the “Cuban Five”) charged with spying against the US [see Updates #824, 863). Eleven other groups, including legislators from the European Parliament, also have filed briefs, and a panel of the United Nations Human Rights Commission has condemned the original trial for the men; this was the first time the group ever condemned a US judicial proceeding. The Supreme Court may rule by the end of June on whether to hear the Cubans’ appeal. (Miami Herald 6/9/09)… The governments of many developed countries will in effect boycott a conference the United Nations is holding in New York June 24-26 to discuss the impact of the global financial crisis on developing countries. The developed countries object to efforts by the General Assembly president—Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, who was foreign minister for Nicaragua’s leftist government in the 1980s—to have the conference discuss reforming such bodies as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "You can't have a few calling the shots and others suffering the consequences of their decisions,” D’Escoto said to the British daily Financial Times about the major powers. “If they were more frank, they should say might is right." His one-year term ends in September. (FT 6/7/09)
Update June 15: Today the Supreme Court declined without comment to review the case of the “Cuban Five.” (Reuters 6/15/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Argentina: Charlie abandoned his chocolate factory
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1897/68/
Fallen Banker with Ties to Citigroup Involved in Shooting of Brazilian Landless Workers
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6140
Moving Forward: The Fourth Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples (Peru)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1903/1/
Blood at the Blockade: Peru's Indigenous Uprising
https://nacla.org/node/5879
Video: 60 Die in Peru Rainforest Protest
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1902/68/
Emergency Action: Stop Police Violence Against Amazon Defenders / Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1898/68/
Massacre in Peru: Photo Essay and Dispatch on the Bloody Conflict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1896/1/
Peru: ‘Police Are Throwing Bodies in the River,’ Say Native Protesters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1901/1/
Peru: congress suspends decrees on Amazon resources as protests mount
http://ww4report.com/node/7422
New Military Base in Colombia Would Spread Pentagon Reach Throughout Latin America
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6148
Avila TV Venezuela: Revolutionizing Television
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1904/1/
Venezuela's Media Quake
https://nacla.org/node/5888
Nicaragua grants asylum to Peruvian indigenous leader
http://ww4report.com/node/7420
Nicaragua: Miskito elders declare independence
http://ww4report.com/node/7421
Eating to Dream: A Tortillería in Oaxaca
https://nacla.org/node/5878
Ciudad Juárez mourns assassinated activist academic
http://ww4report.com/node/7412
Mexico: arrest in reporter's death
http://ww4report.com/node/7426
Mexico: Monterrey cops lose cell phones
http://ww4report.com/node/7425
House and Senate Pass New Military Aid to Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6122
May Biodiversity Report from the Americas Program
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6121
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #993, June 14, 2009
1. Haiti: Students Protest for Minimum Wage
2. Dominican Republic: Campesinos Protest Cement Factory
3. Peru: Radio Silenced, Legislators Suspended
4. In Other News: Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua
5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: Students Protest for Minimum Wage
On June 3 students from the State University of Haiti (UEH) began a series of militant demonstrations to protest the failure of President René Préval to promulgate a measure raising the minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97)--the first increase since 2003. Although Parliament finished the process of approving the measure on May 4, it will not become law until it is approved by the president and published in the official gazette, Le Moniteur [see Update #989]. Students from various UEH faculties have been protesting over academic issues at different times since February [see Update #983].
From June 3 through June 5 hundreds of students blocked streets in downtown Port-au-Prince, hurled rocks and set vehicles on fire. The protesters targeted the area near the National Palace, the president’s official residence, along with the offices of the Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty (FOKAL), an educational group linked to US financier George Soros which Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis headed before she was named prime minister in 2008 [see Update #954]. Rock-throwing students shut the foundation down in incidents on June 3 and June 4.
According to witnesses, Haitian police agents and elements from the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) repressed the demonstrations brutally, indiscriminately launching tear gas grenades and firing warning shots in the air. Ludger Laguerre, a student in the UEH Department of Social Work, was hit in the head by a police bullet on June 4; he was taken to the UEH hospital, but his injuries were not considered dangerous. On June 5 the police hit a 10-year-old boy in his right shoulder as they fired warning shots, and Radio Métropole reported that a man was shot in the leg when an off-duty police agent fired at a crowd after being pelted with stones.
Tear gas filled the downtown area during the protests. Three students from a primary school were hospitalized after breathing the fumes on June 4, and two women fainted. Security forces reportedly fired tear gas into the UEH hospital when some of Laguerre’s friends went there to inquire about his condition. According to one witness, the hospital wards were filled with the fumes and parents were forced to run out of the building carrying sick and injured children. The National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) described this as a “barbaric intervention by the forces of order.” (Alterpresse 6/4/09, 6/5/09, __; Haiti Support Group (HSG) News Briefs 6/4/09 from AP, 6/6/09 from AP; HSG press release 6/9/09; Radio France Internationale (RFI) 6/10/09)
On June 5 several media employees were injured by people that Haiti’s Alterpresse news website described as “demonstrators appearing to be students.” An employee of the Télé Haïti TV station required eight stitches on his head after his vehicle was hit by a stream of rocks. A photojournalist from the daily Le Nouvelliste was struck in the arm by a rock. (Alterpresse 6/5/09)
On June 8 the government released eight of 24 people arrested during the protest on June 4, but this did little to placate the demonstrators, who smashed windshields outside the Port-au-Prince civil tribunal building. According to the UEH’s attorney, Aviol Fleurant, the remaining 16 prisoners included three high school students, two mechanics who had been in their garage at the time of the protest, and three passersby. (Alterpresse 6/9/09; Agence Haïtienne de Presse 6/8/09)
By June 9 students from other schools had joined the UEH protesters. Several thousand people marched through the Champ de Mars plaza, near the National Palace, and along Christophe Avenue, despite the efforts of the security forces to stop them. The protesters paralyzed the entire center of the city with flaming barricades and showers of rocks, and many businesses shut down. Again the police responded with tear gas. Local residents, medical personnel and school authorities expressed anger at the police. “To obey the political authorities, they’re even ready to poison the babies,” a nurse from the UEH hospital complained, referring to the tear gas. (AHP 6/9/09; Radio Métropole 6/10/09)
The protests are the latest in a series of embarrassments for the Préval government. The president has now promised to send Parliament a statement by June 17 explaining his position on the minimum wage increase. Four days later, on June 21, polls will open for runoff elections for a third of the Senate; the first round, on Apr. 19, was marked by violence and massive abstention [see Update #986].
Employers have been campaigning heavily against the wage increase, arguing that the current exceptionally low wages attract assembly plants to the country. The Haiti Industries Association (ADIH) claims half of the 25,000 workers in Haiti’s apparel industry would lose their jobs if the new minimum wage went into effect. Supporters of the wage increase counter this by pointing to the Compagnie de Developpement Industriel S.A. (Codevi) plant in the Haitian town of Ouanaminthe near the border with the Dominican Republic; the workers there get 350 gourdes a day, the result of a labor organizing drive in 2004-2005 [see Update #785]. Supporters insist that even with the increase Haitian workers would still be competitive with the 200,000 workers in similar industries in the Dominican Republic, where the assembly sector has a minimum wage of about $5.50 a day. (Alterpresse 6/9/09; RFI 6/10/09; Adital 6/12/09)
*2. Dominican Republic: Campesinos Protest Cement Factory
Youths and campesinos in a protest encampment at the edge of Los Haitises National Park in the eastern Dominican Republic reported on June 11 that they were being surrounded by military units and that they feared they might be attacked. This report followed a June 10 attack by National Police on the encampment, where dozens of protesters have been staying since May 16 in an effort to prevent the construction of a cement factory near the town of Gonzalo, in Sabana Grande de Boyá municipality, Monte Plata province. The agents removed a barricade the protesters had set up to block trucks going to the factory site. There was one unconfirmed report that the police fired shots during the June 10 incident and wounded several protesters.
In Santo Domingo on June 10 police agents blocked a march by dozens of representatives of campesino and environmental organizations as they tried to reach the National Palace to deliver a letter protesting the cement factory to President Leonel Fernández.
The protests began in response to a decision by Environmental Minister Jaime David Fernández Mirabal to grant a concession to Consorcio Minero Dominicano , SA--a mining company that also produces cooking oil and other commodities--to extract limestone from sedimentary rocks to manufacture cement at Gonzalo. Environmentalists, geologists and local residents say the factory would displace 500 peasant families and degrade the water from Los Haitises, the second largest source of natural water in the country, which benefits more than 1 million people. Student groups, leftists, the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) and the environmental commission of the Catholic Church have all come out against the project. Activists in the US can protest by contacting the Dominican Embassy in Washington (telephone 202-332-6280, fax 202-265-8057, email embassy@us.serex.gov.do). (La Opinión (Los Angeles) 6/11/09 from El Diario-La Prensa correspondent; La Nación Dominicana 6/11/09; Socialist Worker (US) 5/28/09)
*3. Peru: Radio Silenced, Legislators Suspended
On June 8 Peru’s Transportation and Communication Ministry (MTC) cancelled the license of Radio La Voz de Bagua, a family-owned radio station with a signal of 100 watts in Utcubamba province in the Amazonas region in the north of the country. The MTC cited technical issues with the station’s equipment, but La Voz news director Carlos Flores Burgos dismissed this as “a lie.” The station is based in the area where dozens of people died on June 5 in a confrontation between police and indigenous protesters [see Update #992], and Flores said the station had made it possible for members of the public to report alleged abuses by security forces. After the June 5 killings, Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas accused the station of agitating the situation and called for sanctions against it, while Congress members Aurelio Pastor, Jorge Del Castillo and Mauricio Mulde, all from the Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP) of President Alan García, accused La Voz and Flores of supporting and inciting violence.
The Press and Society Institute of Peru (IPYS), an organization of independent journalists, questioned the license cancellation and said it might be a “reprisal.” (Radio Programas del Perú (RPP) 6/12/09; Los Andes (Puno, Peru) 6/13/08; La República (Peru) 6/13/09)
On June 12 the Peruvian Congress, which is dominated by the PAP, voted a 120-day suspension for seven legislators from the opposition Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP) of Ollanta Humala for having staged a protest in the legislature’s chamber in support of the Amazonian indigenous protesters. The suspended Congress members were María Sumire, Hilaria Supa, Nancy Obregón, Juana Huancahuari, Cayo Galindo, Yaneth Cajahuanca and Rafael Vásquez. The suspension was approved 58-18 with one abstention; voting with the PAP for the suspension was National Unity and the Alliance for the Future of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), convicted of human rights abuses on Apr. 7 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The protests in the Congress began on June 10 after the legislators voted to suspend indefinitely decrees on drilling, mining and land use that had sparked the indigenous protests. The PNP members called for the decrees to be repealed rather than suspended, and nine PNP legislators began a fast to protest the vote. A total of 22 Congress members from the PNP and left groups stayed in the chamber overnight and prevented Congress from holding a session the morning of June 11. The protesters finally left later to join a march in Lima, part of a day of nationwide strikes and mobilizations in support of the indigenous demands. (Correo (Lima) 6/12/09; La Raza (Chicago) 6/13/09 from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 6/12/09 from Reuters, AFP, DPA; AFP 6/12/09; NACLA 4/15/09)
*4. In Other News: Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua
On June 3 the Brazilian Senate approved a bill regulating government transfers of land in the Amazon region. The bill—Conversion Bill 09 (PLV 09/2009, originally MP 458/09)—was passed by the Chamber of Deputies in May and awaits the signature of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. The Catholic Church’s Pastoral Commission on Land (CPT), Greenpeace, WWF-Brasil (the Brazilian affiliate of the World Wildlife Fund) and other groups say some articles in the measure will enable companies and individuals to keep lands they seized illegally. The law “especially benefits people who should be on trial for usurping areas covered by the agrarian reform,” according to Greenpeace. The groups are urging people to call on Lula (phone +61-3411.1200, +61-3411.1201 or email at https://sistema.planalto.gov.br/falepr2/index.php) to veto the articles. (Adital 6/12/09)… German author Günter Grass, Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú and eight other Nobel Prize winners have joined supporters filing amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs with the US Supreme Court seeking to overturn the 2001 convictions of five Cuban men (known as the “Cuban Five”) charged with spying against the US [see Updates #824, 863). Eleven other groups, including legislators from the European Parliament, also have filed briefs, and a panel of the United Nations Human Rights Commission has condemned the original trial for the men; this was the first time the group ever condemned a US judicial proceeding. The Supreme Court may rule by the end of June on whether to hear the Cubans’ appeal. (Miami Herald 6/9/09)… The governments of many developed countries will in effect boycott a conference the United Nations is holding in New York June 24-26 to discuss the impact of the global financial crisis on developing countries. The developed countries object to efforts by the General Assembly president—Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, who was foreign minister for Nicaragua’s leftist government in the 1980s—to have the conference discuss reforming such bodies as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "You can't have a few calling the shots and others suffering the consequences of their decisions,” D’Escoto said to the British daily Financial Times about the major powers. “If they were more frank, they should say might is right." His one-year term ends in September. (FT 6/7/09)
Update June 15: Today the Supreme Court declined without comment to review the case of the “Cuban Five.” (Reuters 6/15/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Argentina: Charlie abandoned his chocolate factory
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1897/68/
Fallen Banker with Ties to Citigroup Involved in Shooting of Brazilian Landless Workers
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6140
Moving Forward: The Fourth Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples (Peru)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1903/1/
Blood at the Blockade: Peru's Indigenous Uprising
https://nacla.org/node/5879
Video: 60 Die in Peru Rainforest Protest
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1902/68/
Emergency Action: Stop Police Violence Against Amazon Defenders / Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1898/68/
Massacre in Peru: Photo Essay and Dispatch on the Bloody Conflict
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1896/1/
Peru: ‘Police Are Throwing Bodies in the River,’ Say Native Protesters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1901/1/
Peru: congress suspends decrees on Amazon resources as protests mount
http://ww4report.com/node/7422
New Military Base in Colombia Would Spread Pentagon Reach Throughout Latin America
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6148
Avila TV Venezuela: Revolutionizing Television
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1904/1/
Venezuela's Media Quake
https://nacla.org/node/5888
Nicaragua grants asylum to Peruvian indigenous leader
http://ww4report.com/node/7420
Nicaragua: Miskito elders declare independence
http://ww4report.com/node/7421
Eating to Dream: A Tortillería in Oaxaca
https://nacla.org/node/5878
Ciudad Juárez mourns assassinated activist academic
http://ww4report.com/node/7412
Mexico: arrest in reporter's death
http://ww4report.com/node/7426
Mexico: Monterrey cops lose cell phones
http://ww4report.com/node/7425
House and Senate Pass New Military Aid to Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6122
May Biodiversity Report from the Americas Program
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6121
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://americas.irc-online.org/
http://nacla.org/articles
http://upsidedownworld.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. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
WNU #992: Puerto Ricans Protest Layoffs
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #992, June 7, 2009
1. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Layoffs
2. Guatemala: Campesinos Block Roads, Demand Land
3. Peru: Groups Condemn Killing of Protesters
4. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Layoffs
In one of the largest demonstrations in recent Puerto Rican history, tens of thousands of people marched in front of the Capitol building in San Juan on June 5 to protest plans by Gov. Luis Fortuño of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP) to lay off about 30,000 government workers and to privatize some public services. Estimates of participation ranged from 50,000 to 100,000. Many public employees attended despite veiled threats of reprisals if they were absent from work on June 5; supervisors had been drawing up lists of people who planned to take the day off.
Fortuño, who was elected by a wide margin last November [see Update #967], faces a growing movement against his economic policies. The Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL), a coalition of 22 unions, brought out an estimated 30,000 workers to protest the government’s policies during this year’s May 1 march for International Workers’ Day [see Update #988]. For the June 5 mobilization the FASyL was joined by a broad range of groups, including student and women’s organizations, environmental and religious groups, and the main opposition parties. Participants included Héctor Ferrer, president of the centrist Popular Democratic Party (PPD); Juan Dalmau, secretary general of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP); actors René Monclova and Ineabelle Colón; and Denise Quiñones, Miss Universe 2001. The coalition’s spokesperson was Methodist bishop Juan Vera, while the Catholic Conference of Bishops issued a press release in solidarity with laid-off workers.
The organizers called the protest a “National Assembly of the People”; the demonstration became a mass meeting which adopted a declaration including demands from the various constituent groups. The protesters said they would continue the struggle with educational events and Assemblies of the People in each of the island’s 78 municipalities.
Fortuño says Puerto Rico is facing a $3.2 billion deficit this year, largely because of the US economic crisis, and that this can only be reduced through layoffs and cutbacks. The layoffs started with an announcement in late May by Carlos García, president of the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico (GDB, BGF in Spanish), that 10,400 employees would be let go. (Univision 6/5/09 from AP; Primera Hora (Puerto Rico) 6/5/09, __, __; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 6/6/09 from EFE)
*2. Guatemala: Campesinos Block Roads, Demand Land
Thousands of Guatemalan campesinos blocked roads at seven or more sites on June 4 in a nationwide protest organized by the Committee for Campesino Development (Codeca) to demand that the government carry out agrarian reform, provide agricultural products for about 25,000 campesinos, buy land for cultivation and forgive debts that some campesinos incurred by taking out bank loans to buy land. Codeca spokesperson Mauro Bay said the campesinos had been making these requests of President Alvaro Colom’s government since Feb. 5, 2008 but had received no response. Presidential spokesperson Fernando Barillas said the government had offered to meet with Codeca leaders about the demands but Codeca had turned down the offer.
Campesinos blocked roads in at least seven departments: Mazatenango and Retalhuleu in the south, Suchitepéquez in the southwest, Totonicapán and Quetzaltenango in the west, and Alta Verapaz and Petén in the north. Some 500 campesinos blocked a bridge in El Zarco, Retalhuleu. A caravan of motorcyclists tried to break through, but campesinos with clubs blocked them; agents from the National Civil Police (PNC) were then called in. About 3,000 farmers from three communities in Suchitepéquez blocked the Pacific highway at a place known as Cocales. In Cuatro Caminos, Totonicapán, 800 local people cut off the road with rocks and boards, creating a 6 km line of vehicles and infuriating motorists. In Quetzaltenango, residents of five villages in Colomba municipality closed off a highway leading to the Mexico border, and many passengers walked kilometers to transfer to other buses.
Five Codeca leaders met with Agricultural Affairs Secretary Juan Alfredo de León in Guatemala City during the day. In the afternoon they agreed to suspend the actions and continue the dialogue on June 16. (Prensa Latina 6/4/09; ADN (Spain) 6/4/09 from EFE; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 6/4/09, 6/5/09)
*3. Peru: Groups Condemn Killing of Protesters
On June 5 Peru’s largest labor confederation, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), condemned what it called “the slaughter ordered by the government of President Alan García,” referring to the deaths of at least 20 police agents and indigenous protesters earlier that day when police tried to break up a demonstration blocking a road in Bagua province in the northern region of Amazonas. The CGTP called for Congress to repeal the decrees on drilling, mining and land rights that Amazonian indigenous groups had been protesting since Apr. 9. The labor group had held a one-day national strike on May 26 to support the demands of the Amazonian indigenous group leading the protests, the Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep) [see Update #991]. (CGTP press release 6/5/09)
A June 5 statement by the Andean Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI) said “56 days of peaceful indigenous struggle and of supposed dialogues and negotiations…ended in the usual bullets, the same bullets as in more than 500 years of oppression.” The group, including organizations in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, called for indigenous people to hold sit-ins in front of Peruvian embassies and for United Nations (UN) agencies and international organizations like Amnesty International (AI) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) to “send missions immediately to Peru to stop this violence and to see that indigenous rights are respected.” (CAOI statement 6/5/09 via Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales)
Colombian human rights and grassroots organizations planned a demonstration at the Peruvian embassy in Bogotá for the afternoon of June 8. Indigenous and other organizations in Mexico were to send an open letter to President García demanding the "cancellation of the international accords—like the FTA [Free Trade Agreement, TLC in Spanish]—that bring violence to the life of the Peruvian indigenous peoples.” The decrees the indigenous people oppose are part of a package intended to bring Peru into compliance with an FTA with the US that went into effect this year. On June 8 the London-based nonprofit Survival International called for petroleum companies to suspend their operations in the Amazon region until the situation is resolved. Peruvian organizations are planning a march in Lima on June 11 in solidarity with the indigenous protesters. (Adital 6/8/09)
Meanwhile, the Peruvian government may be using the events as a pretext for cracking down on opposition legislators in the Congress, which is dominated by García’s social democratic Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP). On June 6 Elizabeth León, vice president of the Congress’s Ethics Commission, said the commission would investigate whether there were grounds to take action against Congress members who had supported Alberto Pizango Chota, the Aidesep president. Pizango reportedly went into hiding after the June killings. (24 Horas Libre (Peru) 6/7/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
The Rainforest’s Cry: Amazon Uprising and Opposing Perspectives of Development in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1888/1/
Peru: protesters seize Camisea pipeline valves, pledge to resist army
http://ww4report.com/node/7400
Peru: 25 dead as National Police attack Amazon road blockade
http://ww4report.com/node/7406
50 Days of Protest and One Massacre in the Peruvian Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1895/1/
Peru: dozens decamp in jungle jailbreak
http://ww4report.com/node/7398
Peru: Amazon uprising spreads
http://ww4report.com/node/7411
Colombia biofuel production linked to human rights violations
http://ww4report.com/node/7405
Colombia: ex-senator sentenced in Uribe bribery scheme
http://ww4report.com/node/7404
Colombian para operative sentenced in Texas
http://ww4report.com/node/7403
Colombia to train Baja California state police
http://ww4report.com/node/7407
Colombia’s Fascist Attack on Academic Freedom
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1887/1/
Colombians Build Support for a Constitutional Referendum for Water
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1885/1/
Álvaro Uribe, Otra Vez? Colombia's Re-election Debate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1889/68/
El Salvador Inaugurates its First Leftist Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1894/68/
Interview: Members of University Front of Roque Dalton from the National University of El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1891/1/
The Struggle Against Impunity in Guatemala Continues: 31st Anniversary of the Panzós Massacre
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1893/68/
Guatemala's "Twitter Revolution"
https://nacla.org/node/5874
Obama's Choice: Human Rights First or Plan Mexico
https://nacla.org/node/5866
OAS Opens Doors to Cuba Without Conditions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1892/68/
Father Gérard Jean-Juste: The People's Priest (1946-2009)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1890/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources: http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request.
Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #992, June 7, 2009
1. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Layoffs
2. Guatemala: Campesinos Block Roads, Demand Land
3. Peru: Groups Condemn Killing of Protesters
4. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Puerto Rico: Thousands Protest Layoffs
In one of the largest demonstrations in recent Puerto Rican history, tens of thousands of people marched in front of the Capitol building in San Juan on June 5 to protest plans by Gov. Luis Fortuño of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP) to lay off about 30,000 government workers and to privatize some public services. Estimates of participation ranged from 50,000 to 100,000. Many public employees attended despite veiled threats of reprisals if they were absent from work on June 5; supervisors had been drawing up lists of people who planned to take the day off.
Fortuño, who was elected by a wide margin last November [see Update #967], faces a growing movement against his economic policies. The Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL), a coalition of 22 unions, brought out an estimated 30,000 workers to protest the government’s policies during this year’s May 1 march for International Workers’ Day [see Update #988]. For the June 5 mobilization the FASyL was joined by a broad range of groups, including student and women’s organizations, environmental and religious groups, and the main opposition parties. Participants included Héctor Ferrer, president of the centrist Popular Democratic Party (PPD); Juan Dalmau, secretary general of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP); actors René Monclova and Ineabelle Colón; and Denise Quiñones, Miss Universe 2001. The coalition’s spokesperson was Methodist bishop Juan Vera, while the Catholic Conference of Bishops issued a press release in solidarity with laid-off workers.
The organizers called the protest a “National Assembly of the People”; the demonstration became a mass meeting which adopted a declaration including demands from the various constituent groups. The protesters said they would continue the struggle with educational events and Assemblies of the People in each of the island’s 78 municipalities.
Fortuño says Puerto Rico is facing a $3.2 billion deficit this year, largely because of the US economic crisis, and that this can only be reduced through layoffs and cutbacks. The layoffs started with an announcement in late May by Carlos García, president of the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico (GDB, BGF in Spanish), that 10,400 employees would be let go. (Univision 6/5/09 from AP; Primera Hora (Puerto Rico) 6/5/09, __, __; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 6/6/09 from EFE)
*2. Guatemala: Campesinos Block Roads, Demand Land
Thousands of Guatemalan campesinos blocked roads at seven or more sites on June 4 in a nationwide protest organized by the Committee for Campesino Development (Codeca) to demand that the government carry out agrarian reform, provide agricultural products for about 25,000 campesinos, buy land for cultivation and forgive debts that some campesinos incurred by taking out bank loans to buy land. Codeca spokesperson Mauro Bay said the campesinos had been making these requests of President Alvaro Colom’s government since Feb. 5, 2008 but had received no response. Presidential spokesperson Fernando Barillas said the government had offered to meet with Codeca leaders about the demands but Codeca had turned down the offer.
Campesinos blocked roads in at least seven departments: Mazatenango and Retalhuleu in the south, Suchitepéquez in the southwest, Totonicapán and Quetzaltenango in the west, and Alta Verapaz and Petén in the north. Some 500 campesinos blocked a bridge in El Zarco, Retalhuleu. A caravan of motorcyclists tried to break through, but campesinos with clubs blocked them; agents from the National Civil Police (PNC) were then called in. About 3,000 farmers from three communities in Suchitepéquez blocked the Pacific highway at a place known as Cocales. In Cuatro Caminos, Totonicapán, 800 local people cut off the road with rocks and boards, creating a 6 km line of vehicles and infuriating motorists. In Quetzaltenango, residents of five villages in Colomba municipality closed off a highway leading to the Mexico border, and many passengers walked kilometers to transfer to other buses.
Five Codeca leaders met with Agricultural Affairs Secretary Juan Alfredo de León in Guatemala City during the day. In the afternoon they agreed to suspend the actions and continue the dialogue on June 16. (Prensa Latina 6/4/09; ADN (Spain) 6/4/09 from EFE; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 6/4/09, 6/5/09)
*3. Peru: Groups Condemn Killing of Protesters
On June 5 Peru’s largest labor confederation, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), condemned what it called “the slaughter ordered by the government of President Alan García,” referring to the deaths of at least 20 police agents and indigenous protesters earlier that day when police tried to break up a demonstration blocking a road in Bagua province in the northern region of Amazonas. The CGTP called for Congress to repeal the decrees on drilling, mining and land rights that Amazonian indigenous groups had been protesting since Apr. 9. The labor group had held a one-day national strike on May 26 to support the demands of the Amazonian indigenous group leading the protests, the Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep) [see Update #991]. (CGTP press release 6/5/09)
A June 5 statement by the Andean Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI) said “56 days of peaceful indigenous struggle and of supposed dialogues and negotiations…ended in the usual bullets, the same bullets as in more than 500 years of oppression.” The group, including organizations in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, called for indigenous people to hold sit-ins in front of Peruvian embassies and for United Nations (UN) agencies and international organizations like Amnesty International (AI) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) to “send missions immediately to Peru to stop this violence and to see that indigenous rights are respected.” (CAOI statement 6/5/09 via Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales)
Colombian human rights and grassroots organizations planned a demonstration at the Peruvian embassy in Bogotá for the afternoon of June 8. Indigenous and other organizations in Mexico were to send an open letter to President García demanding the "cancellation of the international accords—like the FTA [Free Trade Agreement, TLC in Spanish]—that bring violence to the life of the Peruvian indigenous peoples.” The decrees the indigenous people oppose are part of a package intended to bring Peru into compliance with an FTA with the US that went into effect this year. On June 8 the London-based nonprofit Survival International called for petroleum companies to suspend their operations in the Amazon region until the situation is resolved. Peruvian organizations are planning a march in Lima on June 11 in solidarity with the indigenous protesters. (Adital 6/8/09)
Meanwhile, the Peruvian government may be using the events as a pretext for cracking down on opposition legislators in the Congress, which is dominated by García’s social democratic Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP). On June 6 Elizabeth León, vice president of the Congress’s Ethics Commission, said the commission would investigate whether there were grounds to take action against Congress members who had supported Alberto Pizango Chota, the Aidesep president. Pizango reportedly went into hiding after the June killings. (24 Horas Libre (Peru) 6/7/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
The Rainforest’s Cry: Amazon Uprising and Opposing Perspectives of Development in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1888/1/
Peru: protesters seize Camisea pipeline valves, pledge to resist army
http://ww4report.com/node/7400
Peru: 25 dead as National Police attack Amazon road blockade
http://ww4report.com/node/7406
50 Days of Protest and One Massacre in the Peruvian Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1895/1/
Peru: dozens decamp in jungle jailbreak
http://ww4report.com/node/7398
Peru: Amazon uprising spreads
http://ww4report.com/node/7411
Colombia biofuel production linked to human rights violations
http://ww4report.com/node/7405
Colombia: ex-senator sentenced in Uribe bribery scheme
http://ww4report.com/node/7404
Colombian para operative sentenced in Texas
http://ww4report.com/node/7403
Colombia to train Baja California state police
http://ww4report.com/node/7407
Colombia’s Fascist Attack on Academic Freedom
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1887/1/
Colombians Build Support for a Constitutional Referendum for Water
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1885/1/
Álvaro Uribe, Otra Vez? Colombia's Re-election Debate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1889/68/
El Salvador Inaugurates its First Leftist Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1894/68/
Interview: Members of University Front of Roque Dalton from the National University of El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1891/1/
The Struggle Against Impunity in Guatemala Continues: 31st Anniversary of the Panzós Massacre
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1893/68/
Guatemala's "Twitter Revolution"
https://nacla.org/node/5874
Obama's Choice: Human Rights First or Plan Mexico
https://nacla.org/node/5866
OAS Opens Doors to Cuba Without Conditions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1892/68/
Father Gérard Jean-Juste: The People's Priest (1946-2009)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1890/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources: http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request.
Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
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