[Due to other commitments, we are unable to send out an Update this week. We'll be back next week. Below are links to stories from other sources.]
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Paraguay Changes: Elections End 60 Years of Right Wing Rule
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1246/1/
Paraguay to join South America's anti-imperialist bloc?
http://ww4report.com/node/5388
Illegal Autonomy Referendum Deepens Division in Bolivia http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1251/1/
Ecuador Undergoes Mining Makeover
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1249/1/
Mistrial in FARC narco case —again
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5398
Haiti food crisis sparking new wave of "boat people"?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5397
NAFTA partners extend SPP at "Three Amigos" summit
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5399
Dissecting the North American Summit Joint Statement: Bush's Last Stand
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5178?utm_source=streamsend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=558651&utm_campaign=Dissecting%20the%20North%20American%20Summit%20Joint%20Statement%3A%20Bush%27s%20Last%20Stand
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
Monday, April 28, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
WNU #944: Colombian Paras Threaten Activists
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #944, April 20, 2008
1. Colombia: Paras Threaten Activists
2. Mexico: Bosses End Strike, Close Mine
3. Puerto Rico: FBI "Visits" Activists
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Nicargua, Guatemala, 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 weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Paras Threaten Activists
According to the US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN), the Northern Block of the Black Eagles, a rightwing paramilitary group, has threatened three activists in Tiquisio, a community in the northern Colombian department of Bolívar. The threat names Father Rafael Gallegos, Marta Lucía Torres and Said Echevez, members of Citizens Process for Tiquisio, and mentions their opposition to the "democratic security" policies of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Vélez. The government is promoting development of the area around Tiquisio by AngloGold Ashanti, a South African-based multinational gold mining company. CSN charges that the paramilitaries are seeking to force campesino communities off their lands "to make them available for the multinationals to extract gold."
CSN is asking for letters to tell US Congress members to oppose US support for these actions by the Colombian government; to AngloGold Ashanti's South American exploration manager, Chris Lodder (email slenahan@anglogoldashanti.com), telling him to stop the company's collaboration with paramilitary forces; and to President Uribe (email auribe@presidencia.gov.co, fax +57 1 566 2071) demanding protection for the activists, an investigation of the threats, and punishment for those responsible. (CSN alert 4/14/08)
On Apr. 15 a group of 63 Congress members sent a letter to Uribe asking him to reject publicly comments by his adviser, Jose Obdulio Gaviria, who had said that a Mar. 6 march for the victims of paramilitary violence [see Update #938, which erroneously gave the date as Mar. 8] was organized by "allied members" of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The letter said six grassroots leaders had been murdered since Obdulio Gaviria's comments, which specifically mentioned National State Crime Victims Movement leader Iván Cepeda Castro. Cepeda Castro attended a meeting on Apr. 15 at the Capitol in Washington, DC, coordinated by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. Speakers cited the violence in Colombia as a reason to oppose the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which Uribe and US president George W. Bush are seeking to have the US Congress approve. (Prensa Latina 4/16/08; El Tiempo (Bogotá) 4/17/08)
*2. Mexico: Bosses End Strike, Close Mine
After an eight-month strike, the Grupo México mining company has started to shut down its San Martín copper, silver and zinc mine in Sombrerete municipality in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, according to Jesús Jiménez, a delegate in Zacatecas and Jalisco for the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM). Jiménez said the company has already terminated 100 of the mine's 450 workers on a claim that the mining operation was unsustainable. The workers went on strike on July 30, 2007, as part of a strike over safety conditions that included the huge copper mine in Cananea, Sonora, and a mine in Taxco, Guerrero [see Update #911]. Grupo México has reportedly lost $120 million in revenues at San Martín since the strike began. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/18/08)
[Police and soldiers attempted to end the Cananea strike forcibly on Jan. 12; the union responded with an eight-hour national strike on Jan. 16--see Update #931]
The SNTMMRM has been organizing protests in Mexico City around safety issues at Grupo México mines and a demand that the company retrieve the bodies of miners killed in a methane explosion in the Pasta de Conchos mine in the northern state of Coahuila on Feb. 19, 2006; only two of the 65 bodies have been recovered. Miners in groups of 10 have stood holding signs from 9am to 6pm each weekday in intersections, plazas and major tourist sites like the Angel de la Independencia statue and the esplanade of the Bellas Artes building. The protests are in rotating shifts, with unionists coming to the capital for one week and then returning home. One of the signs shows a photograph of Grupo México president Germán Larrea Mota Velasco with the caption: "Through the fault of this murderer my dad isn't resting in peace and has left us orphans. Where is justice?" The company is suing the union over the sign for the "crime of discrimination"; the SNTMMRM says the company has also organized goons to attack the protesters. (LJ 4/19/08)
*3. Puerto Rico: FBI "Visits" Activists
Agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interviewed a number of Puerto Rican independence activists in a coordinated operation on Apr. 16 at their homes in San Juan, Yauco, Peñuelas, Bayamón and Guaynabo. The activists included Tania Delgado, Miguel Sánchez and Miguel Viqueira.
The agents "tried to interview Miguel Viqueira and Tania Delgado on their activities as independence supporters" and asked if they knew about actions by the rebel Popular Boricua Army (EPB)-Macheteros, according to attorney Alvin Couto. Agents also visited an alleged former Machetero leader, identified in different sources as "José Castillo" or "Papo Castillo." They told Castillo that they were aware of a plot to kill him and were legally required to inform him. Couto dismissed this as an "invention of the federal agents. No patriotic organization is going to make an attempt on the lives of others. This follows a policy of trying to create gossip and rumors to create anxiety and uncertainly" among pro-independence groups, he said.
FBI spokesperson Harry Rodríguez acknowledged that agents had visited people because they "might have information about investigations that are under way." Reports that the activists had been treated with "hostility" were a matter of "perception," Rodríguez said. (Note by El Nuevo Día staffer Pedro Bosque Pérez 4/17/08 posted on Univision forum; El Diario-La Prensa 4/17/08 from correspondent, print version only)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Argentina: From Sweat Shop to Co-op
http://news.nacla.org/2008/04/17/from-sweat-shop-to-co-op/
Chilean Diplomat's Book Critiques Washington's Rush to War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1227/1/
Chile passes Tibet resolution, Mapuche heartened
http://ww4report.com/node/5380
Elections in Paraguay: Indigenous Woman on Course for Senate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1226/68/
Porto Alegre's Participatory Budgeting at a Crossroads
http://news.nacla.org/2008/04/14/porto-alegre’s-participatory-budgeting-at-a-crossroads/
Colombia: conscientious objector freed following protests
http://ww4report.com/node/5363
Colombia: Open Letter To Nancy Pelosi and the US Congress
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1224/1/
Colombia's Three Amigos Rustle Up Support for Free Trade Deal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1222/68/
Venezuela to nationalize steel company
http://ww4report.com/node/5362
Massive Show Of Support For Venezuelan President Chavez On Coup Anniversary
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1221/68/
Manitoba First Nation appeals to Chávez in pipeline fight
http://ww4report.com/node/5376
South America Looks to Create NATO-Style Defense Council
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1225/1/
Nicaragua headed for General Assembly presidency; US, Colombia miffed
http://ww4report.com/node/5368
US pushes police powers at Salvador "anti-gang" summit
http://ww4report.com/node/5378
Guatemala: bishop recieves death threats for defending campesinos
http://ww4report.com/node/5364
Mexico: Pemex protests paralyze congress
http://ww4report.com/node/5379
Boss of Mexico's feared "Zetas" busted in Guatemala
http://ww4report.com/node/5367
"Wild West bloodbath" in Ciudad Juárez
http://ww4report.com/node/5365
Madison Avenue exploits Mexican irredentism
http://ww4report.com/node/5366
Border Land Battle Pits Development against Human Rights
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5142
Two Chicken Stories: NAFTA's Real Winners and Losers
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5159
U.S.-Latin America: The Intersection of Trade and Security
www.americas.irc-online.org/am/5148
Latin America: Food or Fuel--That Is the Burning Question
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1223/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #944, April 20, 2008
1. Colombia: Paras Threaten Activists
2. Mexico: Bosses End Strike, Close Mine
3. Puerto Rico: FBI "Visits" Activists
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Nicargua, Guatemala, 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 weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Paras Threaten Activists
According to the US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN), the Northern Block of the Black Eagles, a rightwing paramilitary group, has threatened three activists in Tiquisio, a community in the northern Colombian department of Bolívar. The threat names Father Rafael Gallegos, Marta Lucía Torres and Said Echevez, members of Citizens Process for Tiquisio, and mentions their opposition to the "democratic security" policies of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Vélez. The government is promoting development of the area around Tiquisio by AngloGold Ashanti, a South African-based multinational gold mining company. CSN charges that the paramilitaries are seeking to force campesino communities off their lands "to make them available for the multinationals to extract gold."
CSN is asking for letters to tell US Congress members to oppose US support for these actions by the Colombian government; to AngloGold Ashanti's South American exploration manager, Chris Lodder (email slenahan@anglogoldashanti.com), telling him to stop the company's collaboration with paramilitary forces; and to President Uribe (email auribe@presidencia.gov.co, fax +57 1 566 2071) demanding protection for the activists, an investigation of the threats, and punishment for those responsible. (CSN alert 4/14/08)
On Apr. 15 a group of 63 Congress members sent a letter to Uribe asking him to reject publicly comments by his adviser, Jose Obdulio Gaviria, who had said that a Mar. 6 march for the victims of paramilitary violence [see Update #938, which erroneously gave the date as Mar. 8] was organized by "allied members" of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The letter said six grassroots leaders had been murdered since Obdulio Gaviria's comments, which specifically mentioned National State Crime Victims Movement leader Iván Cepeda Castro. Cepeda Castro attended a meeting on Apr. 15 at the Capitol in Washington, DC, coordinated by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. Speakers cited the violence in Colombia as a reason to oppose the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which Uribe and US president George W. Bush are seeking to have the US Congress approve. (Prensa Latina 4/16/08; El Tiempo (Bogotá) 4/17/08)
*2. Mexico: Bosses End Strike, Close Mine
After an eight-month strike, the Grupo México mining company has started to shut down its San Martín copper, silver and zinc mine in Sombrerete municipality in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, according to Jesús Jiménez, a delegate in Zacatecas and Jalisco for the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM). Jiménez said the company has already terminated 100 of the mine's 450 workers on a claim that the mining operation was unsustainable. The workers went on strike on July 30, 2007, as part of a strike over safety conditions that included the huge copper mine in Cananea, Sonora, and a mine in Taxco, Guerrero [see Update #911]. Grupo México has reportedly lost $120 million in revenues at San Martín since the strike began. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/18/08)
[Police and soldiers attempted to end the Cananea strike forcibly on Jan. 12; the union responded with an eight-hour national strike on Jan. 16--see Update #931]
The SNTMMRM has been organizing protests in Mexico City around safety issues at Grupo México mines and a demand that the company retrieve the bodies of miners killed in a methane explosion in the Pasta de Conchos mine in the northern state of Coahuila on Feb. 19, 2006; only two of the 65 bodies have been recovered. Miners in groups of 10 have stood holding signs from 9am to 6pm each weekday in intersections, plazas and major tourist sites like the Angel de la Independencia statue and the esplanade of the Bellas Artes building. The protests are in rotating shifts, with unionists coming to the capital for one week and then returning home. One of the signs shows a photograph of Grupo México president Germán Larrea Mota Velasco with the caption: "Through the fault of this murderer my dad isn't resting in peace and has left us orphans. Where is justice?" The company is suing the union over the sign for the "crime of discrimination"; the SNTMMRM says the company has also organized goons to attack the protesters. (LJ 4/19/08)
*3. Puerto Rico: FBI "Visits" Activists
Agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interviewed a number of Puerto Rican independence activists in a coordinated operation on Apr. 16 at their homes in San Juan, Yauco, Peñuelas, Bayamón and Guaynabo. The activists included Tania Delgado, Miguel Sánchez and Miguel Viqueira.
The agents "tried to interview Miguel Viqueira and Tania Delgado on their activities as independence supporters" and asked if they knew about actions by the rebel Popular Boricua Army (EPB)-Macheteros, according to attorney Alvin Couto. Agents also visited an alleged former Machetero leader, identified in different sources as "José Castillo" or "Papo Castillo." They told Castillo that they were aware of a plot to kill him and were legally required to inform him. Couto dismissed this as an "invention of the federal agents. No patriotic organization is going to make an attempt on the lives of others. This follows a policy of trying to create gossip and rumors to create anxiety and uncertainly" among pro-independence groups, he said.
FBI spokesperson Harry Rodríguez acknowledged that agents had visited people because they "might have information about investigations that are under way." Reports that the activists had been treated with "hostility" were a matter of "perception," Rodríguez said. (Note by El Nuevo Día staffer Pedro Bosque Pérez 4/17/08 posted on Univision forum; El Diario-La Prensa 4/17/08 from correspondent, print version only)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Argentina: From Sweat Shop to Co-op
http://news.nacla.org/2008/04/17/from-sweat-shop-to-co-op/
Chilean Diplomat's Book Critiques Washington's Rush to War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1227/1/
Chile passes Tibet resolution, Mapuche heartened
http://ww4report.com/node/5380
Elections in Paraguay: Indigenous Woman on Course for Senate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1226/68/
Porto Alegre's Participatory Budgeting at a Crossroads
http://news.nacla.org/2008/04/14/porto-alegre’s-participatory-budgeting-at-a-crossroads/
Colombia: conscientious objector freed following protests
http://ww4report.com/node/5363
Colombia: Open Letter To Nancy Pelosi and the US Congress
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1224/1/
Colombia's Three Amigos Rustle Up Support for Free Trade Deal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1222/68/
Venezuela to nationalize steel company
http://ww4report.com/node/5362
Massive Show Of Support For Venezuelan President Chavez On Coup Anniversary
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1221/68/
Manitoba First Nation appeals to Chávez in pipeline fight
http://ww4report.com/node/5376
South America Looks to Create NATO-Style Defense Council
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1225/1/
Nicaragua headed for General Assembly presidency; US, Colombia miffed
http://ww4report.com/node/5368
US pushes police powers at Salvador "anti-gang" summit
http://ww4report.com/node/5378
Guatemala: bishop recieves death threats for defending campesinos
http://ww4report.com/node/5364
Mexico: Pemex protests paralyze congress
http://ww4report.com/node/5379
Boss of Mexico's feared "Zetas" busted in Guatemala
http://ww4report.com/node/5367
"Wild West bloodbath" in Ciudad Juárez
http://ww4report.com/node/5365
Madison Avenue exploits Mexican irredentism
http://ww4report.com/node/5366
Border Land Battle Pits Development against Human Rights
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5142
Two Chicken Stories: NAFTA's Real Winners and Losers
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5159
U.S.-Latin America: The Intersection of Trade and Security
www.americas.irc-online.org/am/5148
Latin America: Food or Fuel--That Is the Burning Question
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1223/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, April 14, 2008
WNU #943: Colombian Campesino Murdered, Haitian Protests Spread
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #943, April 13, 2008
1. Colombia: Campesino Leader Murdered
2. Haiti: Food Protests Spread
3. Haiti: The World Reacts to Protests
4. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, 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 weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Campesino Leader Murdered
On Mar. 30, unidentified assailants shot to death campesino community leader Gerardo Antonio Ciro as he was returning to his home in the rural community of El Jordán in Cocorna municipality, in the eastern region of Antioquia department, Colombia. Community members said they did not hear any gunshots, so they believe the killers may have used a silencer on the gun. Ciro was an active and nationally recognized leader of his community and of the Association of Small-scale and Medium-scale Producers of Eastern Antioquia (ASOPROA). His efforts with ASOPROA to help community members hold on to their land and protect themselves against forced displacement were not well received by government and military officials, who tried to link Ciro to armed guerrilla groups. Those accusations made Ciro a target of the paramilitary groups whose members act as guides in Colombian military operations and as prosecution witnesses in criminal cases.
In February 2006 the Corporación Jurídica Libertad (Legal Freedom Corporation) asked the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to step in and seek guarantees from the Colombian government for the protection of threatened community leaders and residents of eastern Antioquia, including Ciro. Ciro had received death threats from local paramilitaries since at least 2002, and was forced to leave his community for a period between 2002 and 2005. The threats continued after his return. On Jan. 6, 2006, his son received a written death threatening the Ciro family and other families who had protested the Colombian army's Oct. 13, 2005 execution of a neighbor, Ubaldo Antonio Buitrago Giraldo. Five of the families fled the community following the death threats. (Corporación Jurídica Libertad 4/1/08)
*2. Haiti: Food Protests Spread
Protests that started in the southwestern Haitian city of Les Cayes on Apr. 3 over the high cost of food and other staples erupted again with new force on Apr. 7. This followed a two-day lull in the disturbances, which had spread to several other cities and resulted in four deaths [see Update #942].
In Les Cayes on Apr. 7 a crowd attacked a building belonging to Senator Jean Gabriel Fortuné, who had charged that drug dealers and political groups infiltrated the earlier protests. Haitian police and soldiers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) turned back the protesters, who then looted a store belonging to Fortuné's wife. Protesters said a worker in a nearby church was killed when he was hit by a bullet during the incident; this brought the total of deaths in the protests to five. In Jérémie, west of Les Cayes on Haiti's southwestern peninsula, police agents used nightsticks and tear gas to disperse several hundred rock-throwing protesters. Some of the demonstrators called for the removal of the MINUSTAH troops and the return of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was forced out of office in 2004. Other protesters were supporting rightwing former military officer Guy Philippe, who led the armed uprising that precipitated Aristide's ouster.
Meanwhile, Port-au-Prince was paralyzed as students demonstrated and thousands of people hurled rocks and set up burning barricades near the National Palace and in the Martissant and Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhoods. The windshields of more than a hundred vehicles were broken. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse 4/7/08)
On the morning of Apr. 8 crowds in Port-au-Prince attacked the National Palace itself, forcing open the main gate. MINUSTAH troops responded with rubber bullets, wounding several people, including Jean-Jacques Augustin, a reporter and photographer for the daily Le Matin. For the rest of the day, traffic was blocked in the capital as thousands of people erected flaming barricades and trashed and looted stores, public offices, restaurants and gas stations throughout the metropolitan area. In Champ-de-Mars the Air France office was damaged, National Credit Bank vehicles were set on fire and windshields were smashed on private cars. Crowds hurled rocks at stores along the highway in Delmas, while the National Old Age Insurance office was partly burned in Pétionville and the Le Matin office was attacked with rocks. Police agents largely gave up all efforts to stop the crowds, and MINUSTAH tried to take over police work in the capital. (AHP 4/8/08)
On Apr. 9 President René Garcia Préval addressed the nation, ordering the protesters to stop and proposing longterm measures for increasing domestic production of staples like rice and other foods. "Instead of subsidizing the price of food products coming from abroad, we'd rather subsidize national production," he said. "I propose that the price of fertilizer be subsidized by 50% and even more." (AHP 4/8/08; Haiti Support Group News Briefs 4/10/08 from Reuters) What was described as a "precarious calm" took hold in the capital after Préval's speech, but protests against against lavichè ("expensive life") continued on Apr. 10 in Jérémie, in the central city of Hinche, in Mirebalais in the east, in Gonaïves in the northwest, in Jacmel in the southeast, and in Petit-Goâve and Miragoâne in the south. (AlterPresse 4/11/08)
Although no deaths were reported after Apr. 7, the French group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had treated 31 injured people, including 15 with gunshot wounds, in its hospitals in Port-au-Prince from Apr. 7 to Apr. 10. The majority of the patients were treated at Trinité hospital on Apr. 8, the day of the most intense protests in the capital. (HSG 4/10/08 from MSF) As commercial activities slowly resumed on Apr. 11, extensive damage was reported, with more than 20 gas stations vandalized in the Port-au-Prince area. (AlterPresse 4/11/08)
On Apr. 12 President Préval announced emergency measures to bring down the price of food. He said a sack of rice would be reduced to $43 from the current $51, a decrease of about 15%. The government is to put up $5 of the $8 reduction, while private business are to supply the remaining $3. The reduction is for one month and affects the 30,000 tons of rice currently on the market.
Despite the new measures, a Senate no-confidence vote later in the day forced Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis from office, with 16 of the 27 senators voting against the government; one supported Alexis, and 10 were absent. Préval must now propose a replacement. Also on Apr. 12, MINUSTAH troops reportedly fired tear gas at protesters in central Port-au-Prince, and a United Nations police agent from Nigerian who was dressed in civilian clothes was shot dead by unknown assailants near the capital's cathedral. (HSG 4/12/08 from Reuters, AFP; AlterPresse 4/12/08)
*3. Haiti: The World Reacts to Protests
After a week of disturbances in Haiti over the high cost of living, on Apr. 11 the Organization of American States (OAS) announced that in about two weeks it would supply $1 million for the purchase of food. France offered 1 million euros (about $1.5 million). On Apr. 10 Brazil, which leads the MINUSTAH troops, announced that it would ship 14 tons of food by a Brazilian Air Force Boeing KC-137/707, in coordination with the World Food Program (WFP), to arrive on Apr. 11. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías made a dramatically larger commitment, announcing on Apr. 12 that his government would send 364 tons of emergency food aid, including beef, chicken, milk, cooking oil and lentils. (AlterPresse 4/11/08; Brazilian government press release 4/10/08; HSG 4/12/08 from AFP)
Uruguayan journalist Raúl Zibechi described international reaction to the events in Haiti as "silence" in comparison to the conservative media's condemnations of China for repression in Tibet and the progressive Latin American media's condemnations of Colombia for its Mar. 1 attack on a rebel camp in Ecuador [see Update #937]. He suggested the left's response was influenced by the fact that the MINUSTAH forces are largely supplied by center-left South American governments: 1,211 soldiers from Brazil, 1,147 from Uruguay, 562 from Argentina and 502 from Chile.
In the 1980s Haiti produced 95% of the rice it consumed, Zibechi said; now, after 20 years of neoliberal trade policies, Haiti imports 80% of its rice from the US. According to Didier Dominique from the Haitian labor group Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle"), the destruction of the country's agricultural sector was part of a plan to transform Haiti into a source of cheap labor for assembly plants in "free trade zones." (Servicio Informativo "alai-amlatina" 4/11/08)
At the Apr. 10 opening of the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington, DC, World Bank president Robert Zoellick held up a piece of bread and a sack of rice and warned that the increase in the prices of basic foods could wipe out gains in combatting world poverty over the last seven years. Zoellick, a former US trade representative, noted that food protests had broken out in countries as far apart as Pakistan, Argentina, Mexico, Egypt and Haiti, and attributed much of the problem to the growing use of farmlands to produce biocombustibles like ethanol instead of food crops. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/11/08 from correspondents)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1218/1/
Brazil: Action Alert: Tension Erupts in Raposa Serra do Sol
http://www.rainforestfoundation.org/?q=en/node/157
Protesters Target Canada's Iamgold in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1210/1/
Ecuador's Oil Change: An Exporter's Historic Proposal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1211/1/
Ecuador's Yasuni Park: Oil Exploration or Nature Protection?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1215/68/
Bush introduces Colombia FTA amid political hoo-hah
http://ww4report.com/node/5341
Colombia-US: Fight Over Trade Deal Is On
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1213/68/
Action Alert: Stop the Colombia Free Trade Agreement http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/colombia_fta08/855uwbir47nxemb6
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1212/1/
FARC denies medical mission access to Ingrid Betancourt
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5342
Community Radio Announcers Killed in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1219/68/
Mexico - US: NAFTA Renegotiation - Promise or Mirage?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1216/68/
Mexico: Pemex privatization advances
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5340
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #943, April 13, 2008
1. Colombia: Campesino Leader Murdered
2. Haiti: Food Protests Spread
3. Haiti: The World Reacts to Protests
4. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, 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 weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Colombia: Campesino Leader Murdered
On Mar. 30, unidentified assailants shot to death campesino community leader Gerardo Antonio Ciro as he was returning to his home in the rural community of El Jordán in Cocorna municipality, in the eastern region of Antioquia department, Colombia. Community members said they did not hear any gunshots, so they believe the killers may have used a silencer on the gun. Ciro was an active and nationally recognized leader of his community and of the Association of Small-scale and Medium-scale Producers of Eastern Antioquia (ASOPROA). His efforts with ASOPROA to help community members hold on to their land and protect themselves against forced displacement were not well received by government and military officials, who tried to link Ciro to armed guerrilla groups. Those accusations made Ciro a target of the paramilitary groups whose members act as guides in Colombian military operations and as prosecution witnesses in criminal cases.
In February 2006 the Corporación Jurídica Libertad (Legal Freedom Corporation) asked the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to step in and seek guarantees from the Colombian government for the protection of threatened community leaders and residents of eastern Antioquia, including Ciro. Ciro had received death threats from local paramilitaries since at least 2002, and was forced to leave his community for a period between 2002 and 2005. The threats continued after his return. On Jan. 6, 2006, his son received a written death threatening the Ciro family and other families who had protested the Colombian army's Oct. 13, 2005 execution of a neighbor, Ubaldo Antonio Buitrago Giraldo. Five of the families fled the community following the death threats. (Corporación Jurídica Libertad 4/1/08)
*2. Haiti: Food Protests Spread
Protests that started in the southwestern Haitian city of Les Cayes on Apr. 3 over the high cost of food and other staples erupted again with new force on Apr. 7. This followed a two-day lull in the disturbances, which had spread to several other cities and resulted in four deaths [see Update #942].
In Les Cayes on Apr. 7 a crowd attacked a building belonging to Senator Jean Gabriel Fortuné, who had charged that drug dealers and political groups infiltrated the earlier protests. Haitian police and soldiers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) turned back the protesters, who then looted a store belonging to Fortuné's wife. Protesters said a worker in a nearby church was killed when he was hit by a bullet during the incident; this brought the total of deaths in the protests to five. In Jérémie, west of Les Cayes on Haiti's southwestern peninsula, police agents used nightsticks and tear gas to disperse several hundred rock-throwing protesters. Some of the demonstrators called for the removal of the MINUSTAH troops and the return of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was forced out of office in 2004. Other protesters were supporting rightwing former military officer Guy Philippe, who led the armed uprising that precipitated Aristide's ouster.
Meanwhile, Port-au-Prince was paralyzed as students demonstrated and thousands of people hurled rocks and set up burning barricades near the National Palace and in the Martissant and Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhoods. The windshields of more than a hundred vehicles were broken. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse 4/7/08)
On the morning of Apr. 8 crowds in Port-au-Prince attacked the National Palace itself, forcing open the main gate. MINUSTAH troops responded with rubber bullets, wounding several people, including Jean-Jacques Augustin, a reporter and photographer for the daily Le Matin. For the rest of the day, traffic was blocked in the capital as thousands of people erected flaming barricades and trashed and looted stores, public offices, restaurants and gas stations throughout the metropolitan area. In Champ-de-Mars the Air France office was damaged, National Credit Bank vehicles were set on fire and windshields were smashed on private cars. Crowds hurled rocks at stores along the highway in Delmas, while the National Old Age Insurance office was partly burned in Pétionville and the Le Matin office was attacked with rocks. Police agents largely gave up all efforts to stop the crowds, and MINUSTAH tried to take over police work in the capital. (AHP 4/8/08)
On Apr. 9 President René Garcia Préval addressed the nation, ordering the protesters to stop and proposing longterm measures for increasing domestic production of staples like rice and other foods. "Instead of subsidizing the price of food products coming from abroad, we'd rather subsidize national production," he said. "I propose that the price of fertilizer be subsidized by 50% and even more." (AHP 4/8/08; Haiti Support Group News Briefs 4/10/08 from Reuters) What was described as a "precarious calm" took hold in the capital after Préval's speech, but protests against against lavichè ("expensive life") continued on Apr. 10 in Jérémie, in the central city of Hinche, in Mirebalais in the east, in Gonaïves in the northwest, in Jacmel in the southeast, and in Petit-Goâve and Miragoâne in the south. (AlterPresse 4/11/08)
Although no deaths were reported after Apr. 7, the French group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had treated 31 injured people, including 15 with gunshot wounds, in its hospitals in Port-au-Prince from Apr. 7 to Apr. 10. The majority of the patients were treated at Trinité hospital on Apr. 8, the day of the most intense protests in the capital. (HSG 4/10/08 from MSF) As commercial activities slowly resumed on Apr. 11, extensive damage was reported, with more than 20 gas stations vandalized in the Port-au-Prince area. (AlterPresse 4/11/08)
On Apr. 12 President Préval announced emergency measures to bring down the price of food. He said a sack of rice would be reduced to $43 from the current $51, a decrease of about 15%. The government is to put up $5 of the $8 reduction, while private business are to supply the remaining $3. The reduction is for one month and affects the 30,000 tons of rice currently on the market.
Despite the new measures, a Senate no-confidence vote later in the day forced Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis from office, with 16 of the 27 senators voting against the government; one supported Alexis, and 10 were absent. Préval must now propose a replacement. Also on Apr. 12, MINUSTAH troops reportedly fired tear gas at protesters in central Port-au-Prince, and a United Nations police agent from Nigerian who was dressed in civilian clothes was shot dead by unknown assailants near the capital's cathedral. (HSG 4/12/08 from Reuters, AFP; AlterPresse 4/12/08)
*3. Haiti: The World Reacts to Protests
After a week of disturbances in Haiti over the high cost of living, on Apr. 11 the Organization of American States (OAS) announced that in about two weeks it would supply $1 million for the purchase of food. France offered 1 million euros (about $1.5 million). On Apr. 10 Brazil, which leads the MINUSTAH troops, announced that it would ship 14 tons of food by a Brazilian Air Force Boeing KC-137/707, in coordination with the World Food Program (WFP), to arrive on Apr. 11. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías made a dramatically larger commitment, announcing on Apr. 12 that his government would send 364 tons of emergency food aid, including beef, chicken, milk, cooking oil and lentils. (AlterPresse 4/11/08; Brazilian government press release 4/10/08; HSG 4/12/08 from AFP)
Uruguayan journalist Raúl Zibechi described international reaction to the events in Haiti as "silence" in comparison to the conservative media's condemnations of China for repression in Tibet and the progressive Latin American media's condemnations of Colombia for its Mar. 1 attack on a rebel camp in Ecuador [see Update #937]. He suggested the left's response was influenced by the fact that the MINUSTAH forces are largely supplied by center-left South American governments: 1,211 soldiers from Brazil, 1,147 from Uruguay, 562 from Argentina and 502 from Chile.
In the 1980s Haiti produced 95% of the rice it consumed, Zibechi said; now, after 20 years of neoliberal trade policies, Haiti imports 80% of its rice from the US. According to Didier Dominique from the Haitian labor group Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle"), the destruction of the country's agricultural sector was part of a plan to transform Haiti into a source of cheap labor for assembly plants in "free trade zones." (Servicio Informativo "alai-amlatina" 4/11/08)
At the Apr. 10 opening of the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington, DC, World Bank president Robert Zoellick held up a piece of bread and a sack of rice and warned that the increase in the prices of basic foods could wipe out gains in combatting world poverty over the last seven years. Zoellick, a former US trade representative, noted that food protests had broken out in countries as far apart as Pakistan, Argentina, Mexico, Egypt and Haiti, and attributed much of the problem to the growing use of farmlands to produce biocombustibles like ethanol instead of food crops. (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/11/08 from correspondents)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1218/1/
Brazil: Action Alert: Tension Erupts in Raposa Serra do Sol
http://www.rainforestfoundation.org/?q=en/node/157
Protesters Target Canada's Iamgold in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1210/1/
Ecuador's Oil Change: An Exporter's Historic Proposal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1211/1/
Ecuador's Yasuni Park: Oil Exploration or Nature Protection?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1215/68/
Bush introduces Colombia FTA amid political hoo-hah
http://ww4report.com/node/5341
Colombia-US: Fight Over Trade Deal Is On
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1213/68/
Action Alert: Stop the Colombia Free Trade Agreement http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/colombia_fta08/855uwbir47nxemb6
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1212/1/
FARC denies medical mission access to Ingrid Betancourt
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5342
Community Radio Announcers Killed in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1219/68/
Mexico - US: NAFTA Renegotiation - Promise or Mirage?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1216/68/
Mexico: Pemex privatization advances
http://www.ww4report.com/node/5340
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
WNU #942: Haitian Protesters Demand Food
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #942, April 6, 2008
1. Haiti: Protesters Demand Food
2. Haiti: Protesters Blame UN for Death
3. Mexico: Border Activists Arrested
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: Protesters Demand Food
Some 5,000 protesters shut down the southern Haitian city of Les Cayes on Apr. 3 in a dramatic demonstration against President René Préval's government for failing to slow the rising cost of food and other staple products; they also protested the local administration's failure to maintain roads. From early in the morning people barricaded streets with burning tires, forcing stores, banks and schools to close down in the city, the country's third largest. While many people demonstrated peacefully, others looted food and containers of cement from trucks and warehouses. Some protesters raided the offices of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in the Breset neighborhood, carrying away computers and other office equipment. Two MINUSTAH vehicles were set on fire.
Official sources said on Apr. 3 that there were no major injuries in the Les Cayes protests, and MINUSTAH spokesperson Fred Blaise claimed that crowds were under control by the end of the day. Sources in Les Cayes gave a different story, reporting that the disturbances continued into Apr. 4 and that two people were shot dead and 18 were injured, 12 of them by bullets, during the 48 hours of demonstrations. Some people put the number of the dead at four; one of those killed was said to be named Jean Baptiste Zary. There were conflicting reports on who was responsible for the shooting, although some people in Les Cayes blamed soldiers trying to drive back the demonstrators. On Apr. 4 Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis confirmed one death.
Demonstrations against the high cost of living--lavichè ("expensive life") in Creole--broke out in other areas. Hundreds protested on Apr. 3 in Gonaïves on the northwest coast. The protests there were largely peaceful, but United Nations workers were evacuated to a police base, and five people were injured with rocks as protesters tired to force the Frabre Geffrard high school's administration to let the students join the demonstrations. Gonaïves is Haiti's fourth largest city. Protests started in the southern city of Petit-Goâve on Apr. 4 as demonstrators tried to close schools and bring out students. Students marched in downtown Port-au-Prince the same day to protest the cost of living.
As in other parts of the world, food prices have been rising sharply in Haiti, where 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. In Port-au-Prince the cost of rice, beans, condensed milk and fruit has gone up some 50% from a year ago, while the cost of spaghetti has doubled.
After initially blaming the protests in Les Cayes on drug dealers and smugglers, on Apr. 4 Prime Minister Alexis announced that "the government is in solidarity with the population, which is proving to be worried about the high cost of living." He said the government would immediately disburse 400 million gourdes (about $10.43 million) for soup kitchens and a program providing jobs in maintaining the sanitation system. For the longer term he promised a package of programs to reduce the cost of living, including 65 million gourdes ($1.51 million) for sanitation, 400 million gourdes ($10.43 million) for micro-credit through the National Bank and local lenders, 90 million gourdes ($2.34 million) in agricultural production, and 44 million gourdes ($1.14 million) for food programs in schools and universities. (Globe and Mail (Toronto) 4/4/08 from AP; Haiti Support Network News Briefs 4/4/08 from AP; AlterPresse 4/3/08, 4/4/08, 4/4/08, 4/5/08; Agence Haïtienne de Presse (AHP) 4/4/08)
In March unnamed sources reported that the government was planning to ask Parliament to raise the minimum wage to 150 gourdes ($3.90) a day, about double the current level. The leftist labor movement Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle") charges that the plan shows the "antipopular and corrupt character of the current government." The group had called for a minimum wage of 350-450 gourdes in 2003, during the government of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide. According to the Haitian internet news service AlterPresse, unnamed "other labor organizations" support the government's plan for 150 gourdes. (AlterPresse 3/25/08) [The minimum wage only directly impacts the relatively small number of Haitians employed in the formal sector.]
*2. Haiti: Protesters Blame UN for Death
On Apr. 2 some 400 people demonstrated in Ouanaminthe, a city in eastern Haiti that shares the border with the Dominican city of Dajabón, to press demands for justice from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the Haitian judicial system in the death of 20-year-old student Emanne Saintilmont a month earlier. The Committee for Justice for Emanne blamed MINUSTAH soldiers for the young man's death and accused local officials and judges of corruption. Agents of the National Police of Haiti intervened to keep the crowd from approaching the local MINUSTAH office, although the demonstrators succeeded in delivering a letter of protest to officials there. (AlterPresse 4/3/08 from Solidarite Fwontalye/Service Jésuite aux Réfugiés et Migrants press release 4/2/08)
*3. Mexico: Border Activists Arrested
On the evening of Apr. 3 Mexican federal police agents arrested two activists in the northern state of Chihuahua for their roles in militant protests blocking federal highways: Cipriana Jurado Herrera, a leader in the movement demanding justice for the more than 450 young women killed in the Ciudad Juárez area since the 1990s; and Carlos Chávez Quevedo, a leader in the National Agrodynamic Organization (OAN), which has protested high electricity rates for pumping from the wells that area farmers use for irrigation. Both activists were released on bail the night of Apr. 4 after some 50 people staged a sit-in in front of the federal judicial office in Ciudad Juárez.
Chávez founded the OAN in collaboration with another farmer activist, Armando Villarreal Martha, who was murdered on Mar. 14 in broad daylight by a group of heavily armed men [see Update #939]. Jurado--who was charged with participation in a blockade of the Santa Fe international bridge in July 2007 to demand the return of missing women--is the director of the Center for Investigation and Worker Solidarity (CISO) and has been active in cross-border solidarity work with US groups. She had spoken out strongly the week before her arrest against President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's use of federal troops against organized crime. "[W]e have had experiences that at the checkpoints violations of the community's human rights have been committed," she said [see Updates #916, 927]. Upon her release, Jurado charged that the government was using repression against social leaders to intimidate them, especially to prevent protests against the possible privatization of parts of the state oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/5/08, 4/6/08; SouthWest Organizing Project 4/4/08)
As of Mar. 30, the military was investigating 16 soldiers in the shooting deaths of four young men in Santiago de los Caballeros, Badiraguato, in the western state of Sinaloa, on Mar. 26. The soldiers opened fire on the men as they were driving a van to a party; two other passengers were wounded. All the victims were unarmed. (LJ 3/31/08)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Argentina: Farmers Declare One-Month Truce
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1208/68/
Argentina: Empty Shelves, Drowned Chicks as Farm Strike Rages
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1204/68/
Argentina: Farm Strike Exposes Fernández's Weak Flank
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1200/68/
Expansion of Biotechnology in Brazil Brings Violence
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5070
Where the Asphalt Ends: Bogota's Periferies
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5057
Paraguay: Elections, Yellow Fever, and a Meddling Ambassador
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5067
How Green is the Latin American Left? A Look at Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1203/1/
Ecuadorian Parliament OKs Ban on Foreign Military Bases
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1209/68/
Military Crisis in South America: The Results of Plan Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1206/1/
Colombia's Gold Bonanza: Canadian Mining Leads to "Economic Forced Displacement"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1202/1/
Colombia: soldiers arrested in Peace Community massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/5316
Crisis along the Rio Dulce in Guatemala: The Death of Mario Caal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1205/1/
Latin American Food Fights
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5124
Energy Integration and Security in Latin America and the Caribbean
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5109
Presidential Candidates on Trade
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5065
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #942, April 6, 2008
1. Haiti: Protesters Demand Food
2. Haiti: Protesters Blame UN for Death
3. Mexico: Border Activists Arrested
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: Protesters Demand Food
Some 5,000 protesters shut down the southern Haitian city of Les Cayes on Apr. 3 in a dramatic demonstration against President René Préval's government for failing to slow the rising cost of food and other staple products; they also protested the local administration's failure to maintain roads. From early in the morning people barricaded streets with burning tires, forcing stores, banks and schools to close down in the city, the country's third largest. While many people demonstrated peacefully, others looted food and containers of cement from trucks and warehouses. Some protesters raided the offices of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in the Breset neighborhood, carrying away computers and other office equipment. Two MINUSTAH vehicles were set on fire.
Official sources said on Apr. 3 that there were no major injuries in the Les Cayes protests, and MINUSTAH spokesperson Fred Blaise claimed that crowds were under control by the end of the day. Sources in Les Cayes gave a different story, reporting that the disturbances continued into Apr. 4 and that two people were shot dead and 18 were injured, 12 of them by bullets, during the 48 hours of demonstrations. Some people put the number of the dead at four; one of those killed was said to be named Jean Baptiste Zary. There were conflicting reports on who was responsible for the shooting, although some people in Les Cayes blamed soldiers trying to drive back the demonstrators. On Apr. 4 Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis confirmed one death.
Demonstrations against the high cost of living--lavichè ("expensive life") in Creole--broke out in other areas. Hundreds protested on Apr. 3 in Gonaïves on the northwest coast. The protests there were largely peaceful, but United Nations workers were evacuated to a police base, and five people were injured with rocks as protesters tired to force the Frabre Geffrard high school's administration to let the students join the demonstrations. Gonaïves is Haiti's fourth largest city. Protests started in the southern city of Petit-Goâve on Apr. 4 as demonstrators tried to close schools and bring out students. Students marched in downtown Port-au-Prince the same day to protest the cost of living.
As in other parts of the world, food prices have been rising sharply in Haiti, where 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. In Port-au-Prince the cost of rice, beans, condensed milk and fruit has gone up some 50% from a year ago, while the cost of spaghetti has doubled.
After initially blaming the protests in Les Cayes on drug dealers and smugglers, on Apr. 4 Prime Minister Alexis announced that "the government is in solidarity with the population, which is proving to be worried about the high cost of living." He said the government would immediately disburse 400 million gourdes (about $10.43 million) for soup kitchens and a program providing jobs in maintaining the sanitation system. For the longer term he promised a package of programs to reduce the cost of living, including 65 million gourdes ($1.51 million) for sanitation, 400 million gourdes ($10.43 million) for micro-credit through the National Bank and local lenders, 90 million gourdes ($2.34 million) in agricultural production, and 44 million gourdes ($1.14 million) for food programs in schools and universities. (Globe and Mail (Toronto) 4/4/08 from AP; Haiti Support Network News Briefs 4/4/08 from AP; AlterPresse 4/3/08, 4/4/08, 4/4/08, 4/5/08; Agence Haïtienne de Presse (AHP) 4/4/08)
In March unnamed sources reported that the government was planning to ask Parliament to raise the minimum wage to 150 gourdes ($3.90) a day, about double the current level. The leftist labor movement Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle") charges that the plan shows the "antipopular and corrupt character of the current government." The group had called for a minimum wage of 350-450 gourdes in 2003, during the government of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide. According to the Haitian internet news service AlterPresse, unnamed "other labor organizations" support the government's plan for 150 gourdes. (AlterPresse 3/25/08) [The minimum wage only directly impacts the relatively small number of Haitians employed in the formal sector.]
*2. Haiti: Protesters Blame UN for Death
On Apr. 2 some 400 people demonstrated in Ouanaminthe, a city in eastern Haiti that shares the border with the Dominican city of Dajabón, to press demands for justice from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the Haitian judicial system in the death of 20-year-old student Emanne Saintilmont a month earlier. The Committee for Justice for Emanne blamed MINUSTAH soldiers for the young man's death and accused local officials and judges of corruption. Agents of the National Police of Haiti intervened to keep the crowd from approaching the local MINUSTAH office, although the demonstrators succeeded in delivering a letter of protest to officials there. (AlterPresse 4/3/08 from Solidarite Fwontalye/Service Jésuite aux Réfugiés et Migrants press release 4/2/08)
*3. Mexico: Border Activists Arrested
On the evening of Apr. 3 Mexican federal police agents arrested two activists in the northern state of Chihuahua for their roles in militant protests blocking federal highways: Cipriana Jurado Herrera, a leader in the movement demanding justice for the more than 450 young women killed in the Ciudad Juárez area since the 1990s; and Carlos Chávez Quevedo, a leader in the National Agrodynamic Organization (OAN), which has protested high electricity rates for pumping from the wells that area farmers use for irrigation. Both activists were released on bail the night of Apr. 4 after some 50 people staged a sit-in in front of the federal judicial office in Ciudad Juárez.
Chávez founded the OAN in collaboration with another farmer activist, Armando Villarreal Martha, who was murdered on Mar. 14 in broad daylight by a group of heavily armed men [see Update #939]. Jurado--who was charged with participation in a blockade of the Santa Fe international bridge in July 2007 to demand the return of missing women--is the director of the Center for Investigation and Worker Solidarity (CISO) and has been active in cross-border solidarity work with US groups. She had spoken out strongly the week before her arrest against President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's use of federal troops against organized crime. "[W]e have had experiences that at the checkpoints violations of the community's human rights have been committed," she said [see Updates #916, 927]. Upon her release, Jurado charged that the government was using repression against social leaders to intimidate them, especially to prevent protests against the possible privatization of parts of the state oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). (La Jornada (Mexico) 4/5/08, 4/6/08; SouthWest Organizing Project 4/4/08)
As of Mar. 30, the military was investigating 16 soldiers in the shooting deaths of four young men in Santiago de los Caballeros, Badiraguato, in the western state of Sinaloa, on Mar. 26. The soldiers opened fire on the men as they were driving a van to a party; two other passengers were wounded. All the victims were unarmed. (LJ 3/31/08)
More breaking stories from alternative sources:
Argentina: Farmers Declare One-Month Truce
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1208/68/
Argentina: Empty Shelves, Drowned Chicks as Farm Strike Rages
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1204/68/
Argentina: Farm Strike Exposes Fernández's Weak Flank
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1200/68/
Expansion of Biotechnology in Brazil Brings Violence
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5070
Where the Asphalt Ends: Bogota's Periferies
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5057
Paraguay: Elections, Yellow Fever, and a Meddling Ambassador
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5067
How Green is the Latin American Left? A Look at Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1203/1/
Ecuadorian Parliament OKs Ban on Foreign Military Bases
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1209/68/
Military Crisis in South America: The Results of Plan Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1206/1/
Colombia's Gold Bonanza: Canadian Mining Leads to "Economic Forced Displacement"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1202/1/
Colombia: soldiers arrested in Peace Community massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/5316
Crisis along the Rio Dulce in Guatemala: The Death of Mario Caal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1205/1/
Latin American Food Fights
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5124
Energy Integration and Security in Latin America and the Caribbean
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5109
Presidential Candidates on Trade
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5065
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.newsvine.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, new from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
