Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1009, October 25, 2009
1. Honduras: Talks Stall, Election in Doubt
2. Honduras: Poll Shows Growing Opposition to Coup
3. Honduras: Was the Coup Legal?
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
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: Talks Stall, Election in Doubt
On Oct. 23 negotiators for deposed Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales gave up on talks to end a four-month political crisis in Honduras. The negotiations had been “worn down” by the intransigence of de facto president Roberto Micheletti Bain’s government, Zelaya representative Mayra Mejía announced in Tegucigalpa.
Zelaya had already given up key points in the talks, which began on Oct. 7 with the support of the Organization of American States (OAS). His concessions included acceptance of a government of national reconciliation and the renunciation of calls for a national constituent assembly to rewrite the 1982 Constitution, a demand still strongly supported by grassroots organizations. But Micheletti’s representatives refused to negotiate seriously on Zelaya’s return to office before the scheduled Nov. 29 general elections, according to Zelaya’s representatives. Zelaya, who was deposed by a military coup on June 28, ends his four-year term on Jan. 27.
The de facto government’s intransigence was “a second coup d’état,” Zelaya said in an interview with the British network BBC on Oct. 25. He also charged that the military was subjecting him to “psychological torture” by playing loud music through the night outside the Brazilian embassy, where the deposed president has been living since slipping back into the country on Sept. 21. Supporters say the soldiers have also been shining stadium lights into the building. But in a interview with opposition radio station Radio Globo the same day, Zelaya said he still expected a solution: "I cannot give details of how this will be achieved, but Honduras cannot remain in this situation.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/24/09 from AFP, DPA, Reuters; Europa Press 10/25/09 via Yahoo; Bloomberg 10/23/09; Xinhua 10/26/09)
The de facto government apparently hopes to end the crisis by getting the US to recognize the results of the November elections. There is pressure for this in US governing circles. In an op-ed in the Washington Post on Oct. 17, former US secretary of state James A. Baker III (1989-1992) argued that “a free and fair election in Honduras would go a long way toward resolving the constitutional crisis there.” The US government should support the elections, he said, just as the administration of President George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) backed elections in Nicaragua under the leftist Sandinista government in 1990. (WP 10/17/09)
However, on Oct. 23, the Carter Center—an influential election-monitoring organization founded by former US president Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)—indicated that it wouldn’t observe the November elections unless the coup was reversed. (LJ 10/24/09 from AFP, DPA, Reuters)
Honduran opponents of the coup are calling for an election boycott. Independent presidential candidate Carlos H. Reyes and legislative deputy César Ham, presidential candidate of the small leftist Democratic Unification (UD), announced on Sept. 9 that they would refuse to participate in elections held under the coup regime [see Update #1004]. Most candidates of the two traditional parties, the National Party (PN) and the Liberal Party (PL), continue to campaign, but on Oct. 24 some 300 Liberal candidates for the National Congress and municipal posts, announced that they would boycott the election. Both Zelaya and Micheletti are members of the generally conservative PL.
The Nov. 29 elections are mandated to fill 2,896 positions, including the presidency, all 128 deputies in the National Congress, 20 deputies to represent Honduras in the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), 298 mayors and some 2,000 municipal officials. (El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 10/24/09)
*2. Honduras: Poll Shows Growing Opposition to Coup
On Oct. 23 the Washington, DC-based polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner released the results of a survey involving face-to-face interviews held Oct. 9-13 with 621 randomly selected Hondurans; the firm didn’t give the margin of error. According to the survey, 60% of Hondurans disapproved of the June 28 removal of President Manuel Zelaya from office, while only 38% approved. Some 19% rated Zelaya’s performance in office as “excellent” and another 48% as “good”; the poll showed 57% personally disapproving of Roberto Micheletti, de facto president since Zelaya’s overthrow, while 28% approved.
The pretext for the coup was a claim that Zelaya’s purpose in calling for a constituent assembly was to end the Constitution’s ban on second terms for presidents. According to the survey, Hondurans favor allowing re-election by a solid 55% to 43%, while 54% support holding a constituent assembly as a solution to the current crisis, with 43% opposed. While the Honduran right depicts Zelaya’s supporters as backers of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías, only 10% of Hondurans feel “warm” towards Chávez, while 83% have a negative impression, according to the survey. (Greenberg press release 10/23/09; Honduras Coup 2009 blog 10/24/09; Bloomberg 10/23/09)
The Greenberg poll, although based on a relatively small sampling, gives results similar to those from the two other polls published since the coup: a survey by the Costa Rican-based CID Gallup firm in early July and a poll the Tegucigalpa firm Consultants in Investigation of Markets and Public Opinion (COIMER & OP) conducted Aug. 23-29. The July CID Gallup survey showed a plurality of 46% opposing the coup, while the August COIMER & OP poll showed 52.7% against Zelaya’s removal, with only 17.4% supporting it (the rest didn’t answer). If the surveys are correct, opposition to the coup has grown steadily over the past four months, with a large majority now rejecting Zelaya’s removal. (Daily Kos 7/12/09; Narco News 10/6/09; Honduras Coup 2009 blog 10/7/09)
The coup regime regularly claims broad support. At the beginning of October, de facto president Micheletti told the ACAN-EFE news service that polls his government had taken showed that “87%, 90% say they are in agreement with” a state of siege he declared at the end of September. (ACAN-EFE 10/2/09) There are no reports indicating that the de facto government ever made these polls public.
*3. Honduras: Was the Coup Legal?
A number of legal experts have challenged an August report by the US Law Library of Congress claiming that the June 28 overthrow of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was in accordance with Honduras’ 1982 Constitution. Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) requested the report from the library and released it on Sept. 24, incorrectly attributing it to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS). It has been cited regularly since then by US supporters of the de facto Honduran government.
Critics of the 10-page report include some 13 deputies from the Honduran National Congress. In an Oct. 12 letter to the US Congress, the legislators said the study “is contradictory and suffers from a series of errors and biases that disqualify it as a correct and objective analysis of what has happened in our country.” They also noted that the only legal expert consulted by the study’s author, Senior Foreign Law Specialist Norma C. Gutierrez, was former Supreme Court justice Guillermo Pérez-Cadalso Arias, a coup supporter “who in Honduras is not considered an academic authority on the subject of constitutional law.” In an Oct. 22 opinion piece on the Forbes magazine website, Argentine attorney Viviana Krsticevic and Juan Méndez, a former president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, CIDH in Spanish), dismissed the report’s “[d]ubious legal reasoning” and its “thinly sourced analysis” that “gets many…basic facts wrong.”
The report argues that although the Constitution only gives the Honduran Congress the power to “disapprove” of a president, the legislators can interpret the Constitution to extend this power to removing the president from office. The report ignores a May 7, 2003 Honduran Supreme Court ruling that Congress cannot interpret the Constitution. The report’s arguments doesn't pass the "straight-face test," Notre Dame University law professor Doug Cassel said at an Oct. 22 briefing at Capitol Hill in DC. The nonprofit Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) had organized a meeting with the Law Library of Congress for that morning to discuss the report, but author Gutierrez and her assistant became "suddenly unavailable" the night before, according to WOLA’s Vicki Gass. At the meeting, the Law Library representatives agreed to produce a “frequently asked questions” document, Gass said, but not a retraction. (Schock press release 9/24/09; letter from Honduran deputies 10/12/09; Forbes 10/22/09; Honduras Coup 2009 10/16/09; Inter Press Service 10/22/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba
Community on the Airwaves: End to Dictatorship Media Law in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2166/1/
Presidential Elections in Uruguay: Former Guerrilla vs Neoliberal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2177/1/
The Neoliberal Crusade For Resources on Indigenous Lands in the Peruvian Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2167/1/
Peru: Gov't Seeks Legal Shield for Security Forces
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2163/68/
Colombia: Sexual Violence as Weapon of War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2168/68/
Colombian vice president investigated over paramilitary ties
http://ww4report.com/node/7850
Honduras: Zelaya's Delegates Urge OAS to Unblock Talks
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2170/68/
The Plot Thickens: Honduran Coup Regime and Landowning Elites Enlist the Support of Foreign Paramilitaries
https://nacla.org/node/6171
US State Department Officials Signal Moves Towards Recognizing November Elections in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2175/68/
Nickel for Your Life: Q'eqchi' Communities Take on Mining Companies in Guatemala
https://nacla.org/node/6177
The Truth Under the Earth: The Relationship Between Genocide and Femicide in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2174/1/
Guatemala intercepts narco-sub in 10-ton coke haul
http://ww4report.com/node/7858
Mexican Electrical Workers Union Fights for Its Life
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/labotz191009.html
Chronicle of a Tormenta Electrica, I
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross10192009.html
Chronicle of a Tormenta Electrica, II
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross10202009.html
Mexico's Union Bust Reveals Flaws in NAFTA
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6519
Justice Department nets 300 in raids on Michoacán's bloody "Familia"
http://ww4report.com/node/7859
Latest Chapter in the Case of the Cuban Five: U.S. Justice as a Political Weapon
https://nacla.org/node/6166
Terrorist released from immigration custody (it's OK, he's Cuban)
http://ww4report.com/node/7864
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, October 27, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
WNU #1008: Indigenous People Mark Oct. 12 With Protests
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1008, October 18, 2009
1. Latin America: Indigenous People Mark Oct. 12 With Protests
2. Mexico: Marchers Back Electrical Workers Union
3. Mexico: UN Reports on Attacks Against Rights Activists
4. Puerto Rico: General Strike Protests Layoffs
5. Links to alternative sources on: Trade, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, 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 http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Latin America: Indigenous Mark Oct. 12 With Protests
On Oct. 12 tens of thousands of indigenous people in the region marked 517 years since the arrival of European colonizer Christopher Columbus by protesting around current issues such as the seizure of traditional lands by businesses and the damage to the environment from mining and oil drilling.
In Santiago, Chile, thousands of people marched along Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue in the historic center and rallied in a nearby plaza as speakers denounced “the Spanish invasion” of the past and the repression of Mapuche activists by the current government [see Updates #979, 985]. The Mapuche are the country’s largest indigenous group, and Mapuche activists and their supporters have carried out civil disobedience to reclaim land they say was stolen from them in southern Chile. Mapuche speaker Manuel Calfío stressed that Santiago’s Mapuche residents supported the demands of their brothers and sisters in the south.
In Bolivia Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, called Oct. 12 a “day of mourning…not a day of celebration,” although Foreign Minister David Choquehuenca and legislators attended a Spanish Heritage Day ceremony at the Spanish embassy.
In Quito, an Ecuadorian indigenous leader, Lourdes Tibian, told the Ecuavisa television network that “the conditions of the indigenous peoples since the Spanish invasion haven’t changed at all down to the present.” The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), the main indigenous umbrella group, led nationwide protests from Aug. 27 to Oct. 5 over the autonomy of bilingual education and revisions to the water and mining laws; one person was killed in the Amazon region in the demonstrations. CONAIE and the government of President Rafael Correa are now in negotiations over the issues. (Univision 10/12/09 from AP)
Some 25,000 indigenous Colombians started a march on Oct. 12 from several towns and cities in the southwestern Valle del Cauca department that was to culminate in a demonstration of some 40,000 in the departmental capital, Cali. The main focus was on the environment, Feliciano Valencia, a leader of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), told reporters; the protest was called the “World Minga for the Liberation of Mother Earth and Against Global Warming.” “There has to be a very strong call to humanity, because life is at risk,” he said. (“Minga” comes from a Quechua word for collective work.) The marchers also protested the economic policies of President Alvaro Uribe and attacks on indigenous communities by leftist rebels, rightwing paramilitaries and drug traffickers despite the communities’ insistence that they are neutral in the conflicts [see Update #997].
The minga was promoting a “congress of the peoples” that the indigenous organizations are planning for next year, CRIC adviser Marcos Cueitia said. The congress, whose date and location are not yet set, will include “indigenous communities, Afro Colombian [communities], labor unions, campesinos, NGOs [nonprofit organizations], grassroots organizations. The goal is a country with a project that’s different from war, aggression and death.” (Agence France Presse 10/13/09; El Extra (Fort Worth, TX) 10/16/09 from Notimex; El Tiempo (Colombia) 10/15/09).
Several thousand indigenous activists, environmentalists, campesinos and students held protests across Panama demanding respect for their land rights and rejecting energy projects that they said fail to respect the autonomy of indigenous people and cause forced evictions. Indigenous protesters closed the border with Costa Rica for several hours in the morning at the Sixaola border crossing. In Panama City, indigenous leader Cecilio Guerra, who burned a Spanish flag close to the presidential palace, told reporters that over 21 hydroelectric concessions and nine mining projects are affecting indigenous communities. Representatives of the Ngobe-Buglé peoples and other campesinos sought a meeting with rightwing president Ricardo Martinelli, but the government would only allow six people in the delegation. The indigenous activists refused to accept this condition and waited outside the presidential palace for more than three hours before dispersing. (AFP 10/13/09; Servicio Informativo "Alai-amlatina" 10/15/09)
In Guatemala, 19-year-old protester Imer Boror was killed and two other protesters were wounded as Mayan indigenous people blocked entry points into Guatemala City to demonstrate against the government's mining policies. The killing, which took place on El Caminero Boulevard, in Mixco municipality, 22 km south of the capital, was part of a day of protests that an indigenous leader, Juana Mulul, called a "defense of Mother Earth and our territory." After Boror’s death, President Alvar Colom agreed to appoint a commission to meet with indigenous leaders. Aparicio Pérez of the Farmers Union Committee (CUC) said representatives would ask the government to annul mining, hydroelectric and cement concessions because "multinational companies are taking over natural resources, which have long been the source of life for rural families" [see Updates #999, 1003].
According to government statistics, 42% of Guatemala's 12 million inhabitants are indigenous; others estimate that over 60% are indigenous. (AFP 10/13/09; Adital 10/13/09; World War 4 Report 10/18/09)
*2. Mexico: Marchers Back Electrical Workers Union
At least 150,000 Mexicans joined a march from the Angel of Independence in downtown Mexico City to the central Zócalo Plaza in the late afternoon of Oct. 15 to protest the Oct. 10 seizure by Mexican soldiers and federal police of facilities of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC). Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s center-right administration decreed the liquidation of the company and terminated its employees as the security forces were occupying the plants [see Update #1007]. The number of workers laid off is now said to be more than 43,000.
The Oct. 15 demonstration was so large that protesters were already waiting in the mammoth Zócalo while marchers were still setting off from the starting point more than two miles away. The Angel of Independence circle was packed at the beginning of the march, and many demonstrators, including former Mexico City mayor and 2006 presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, started from other locations—the nearby statue of Diana the Hunter and points along the Paseo de la Reforma boulevard. The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), a 95-year-old independent union which represents the LFC’s active workers and about 23,000 retirees, estimated that more than 350,000 people took part in the protest; police put the number at about 150,000.
The speakers included leaders of various unions and legislative deputy Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, who in his long career has led the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and is now in the small leftist Workers Party (PT). They called for rescinding the LFC’s liquidation and expressed solidarity with the SME. The federal government says the company had to be closed because it was inefficient and lost too much money, but SME general secretary Martín Esparza Flores charges that President Calderón’s goal was to break the union and to pave the way for privatization of the LFC. According to the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada, the average pay for LFC workers was 6,000 pesos a month (about $455). (LJ 10/16/09; Agence France Presse 10/16/09)
During talks after the protest, the government offered to negotiate over finding employment for the workers if they would accept the liquidation, but at departmental assemblies on Oct. 17 the union leaders announced that they would continue their strategy of legal challenges and demonstrations. (LJ 10/18/09)
On Oct. 14 the United Steelworkers (USW), the largest industrial union in North America, expressed solidarity with the SME, which has called for support from unions in Mexico and other countries. “The actions of the Mexican government in using federal forces to take over the public utility, dismissing the workers and thereby effectively disbanding their union is an outrageous act of union busting,” USW international president Leo Gerard said. (USW press release 10/14/09)
*3. Mexico: UN Reports on Attacks Against Rights Activists
The Mexico Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) presented a report in Mexico City on Oct. 13 on the dangers facing human rights activists in Mexico. According to the report, “Defending Human Rights: Caught Between Commitment and Risk,” the OHCHR found 128 cases of aggression against activists from January 2006 to August 2009, including 10 murders. OHCHR staff visited 10 of Mexico's 32 states to compile the report, interviewing non-governmental organizations (NGOs), human rights defenders, victims of aggression, journalists and government authorities.
Noemí Ramírez, head of the nongovernmental Mexican Academy for Human Rights, told the Inter Press Service (IPS) that the situation of human rights defenders is "worrying." She laid much of the blame on the government of President Felipe Calderón of the center-right National Action Party (PAN). Violence has risen in the country since Calderón launched a massive “war on drugs” after taking office in December 2006. "The government has vilified the work of rights defenders,” she said. “There has been a serious deterioration in the situation under the present administration."
Incidents involving violence against human rights defenders include the murder of Raúl Lucas and Manuel Ponce, leaders of the Organization for the Future of the Mixteca Indigenous Peoples, whose bodies were found Feb. 21 in the southern state of Guerrero. They had been tortured and executed; the crimes remain unpunished. In the same month, the Tlachilollan Mountain Human Rights Center closed one of its offices in Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero, because of threats, intimidation and persecution of activists for indigenous peoples' rights. (IPS 10/14/09)
*4. Puerto Rico: General Strike Protests Layoffs
A one-day general strike protesting plans to lay off 16,970 of Puerto Rico’s 180,000 public employees in November shut down all state-owned enterprises and the island’s schools and colleges on Oct. 15; most private businesses reportedly remained open remained open, and ports and airports were said to be functioning normally. There were protests throughout Puerto Rico, with tens of thousands of people converging on San Juan's Plaza Las Américas, the biggest shopping mall in the Caribbean. Hundreds of trucks drove slowly around the Milla de Oro area honking their horns, while some employees of the companies along the way gathered at doors and windows to show their support for the protest. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” office worker Yadira de León told the Associated Press news service. “I support it because the situation is difficult [for the laid-off workers], but I have to work.” De León’s 11-year-old daughter was with her because the schools were closed.
Organizers said more than 100,000 people had participated in the San Juan demonstration, while the police declined to give an estimate. The general strike was backed by all the island’s main labor organizations, including the General Workers Union (UGT) and the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coalition. Economists said the Oct. 15 strike would cost the economy at least $32 million.
If Gov. Luis Fortuño goes ahead with the November layoffs, the total job losses for the year will be above 21,000. The government laid off 7,816 employees in May but had to hire more than 3,000 temporary teachers and assistants when the school year started in August. Fortuño says the job cuts, expected to save $386 million, are necessary because the government faces a $3.2 billion deficit this year due to the world economic crisis, but economists say the cuts will prolong the recession. Union leaders accuse Fortuño of planning to privatize government services [see Update #1006]. (El Diario-La Prensa (New York) 10/15/09 from AP; Univision 10/15/09; Latin American Herald Tribune 10/16/09 from EFE)
In New York, with the largest community of people of Puerto Rican descent outside the island, labor unions and other groups held a press conference on the steps of City Hall on Oct. 15 to support the demands of the strikers. In the late afternoon, as many as 200 activists gathered in a heavy rain outside the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration office in midtown for a lively solidarity rally organized by the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights and other grassroots organizations. After the rally, protesters carried out a “huevazo,” hurling eggs at a poster with Gov. Fortuño’s picture. (Terra (Spain) 10/15/09 from EFE; eyewitness report)
Protests continued after Oct. 15. Members of the National Hostosian Independence Movement (MINH) demonstrated against the governor when he appeared at a ceremony at the Julita Ross amphitheater in Toa Baja on Oct. 17. The labor unions said on Oct. 16 that they planned to continue the struggle until they had overturned Law 7, which permits the layoffs. Methodist bishop Juan Vera, a spokesperson for protest organizers, warned that there may be another general strike. “The people are tired of so much abuse,” he told the Cuban news service Prensa Latina. (ED-LP 10/18/09 from AP; PL 10/16/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Trade, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
South American Countries Sign Articles of Agreement of BANCOSUR
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2156/68/
ALBA sanctions Honduras, moves towards new currency
http://ww4report.com/node/7840
Brazil Emerges as a Military Power
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6494?utm_source=streamsend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=6655371&utm_campaign=Brazil%20Emerges%20as%20a%20Military%20Power
Rio de Janeiro: 12 dead, chopper down as favela wars escalate
http://ww4report.com/node/7839
Peru: Gov't Seeks Legal Shield for Security Forces
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2163/68/
Colombia: army officer detained in massacre of indigenous people
http://ww4report.com/node/7836
Bogotá: kidnapping charges for student protesters?
http://ww4report.com/node/7837
Venezuelan Yukpa Indigenous Community Attacked, Two Murdered Following Land Grants
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2161/1/
Hugo Chávez: Iran aids Venezuela uranium exploration
http://ww4report.com/node/7838
Multipolar Machinations: Chávez Endeavors to 'Sow the Oil' with Russia and China
https://nacla.org/node/6159
The Property Waiver Regime: US Continues Punishing Land Reform in Nicaragua
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2158/1/
Honduras: Talks Seek Solution to 102-Day Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2155/68/
Honduran Accords Hung Up on Zelaya's Reinstatement
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/10/honduran-accords-hung-up-on-zelayas.html
Honduras De Facto Regime Opens Fire in Poor Neighborhoods: Youth and union members targeted by coup violence
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/10/honduras-de-facto-regime-opens-fire-in.html
Honduran Congressional Opinion, Part 2
http://hondurascoup2009.blogspot.com/2009/10/honduran-congressional-opinion-part-2.html
The Young Honduran Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2159/1/
Honduras: cocaine flights surge in wake of coup
http://ww4report.com/node/7822
Guatemala: one dead in anti-mine protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7841
Mexico Revs up War on Workers; Obama Shrugs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-faux/mexico-revs-up-war-on-wor_b_317924.html
A Spanish Company and National Action Party Members Hope to Exploit Luz y Fuerza's Fiber Optic Network
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/10/privatization-behind-calderons-attack-electricians-union
Mexico: Disappeared Anti-Mining Activist is Back Fighting
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2157/1/
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 #1008, October 18, 2009
1. Latin America: Indigenous People Mark Oct. 12 With Protests
2. Mexico: Marchers Back Electrical Workers Union
3. Mexico: UN Reports on Attacks Against Rights Activists
4. Puerto Rico: General Strike Protests Layoffs
5. Links to alternative sources on: Trade, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, 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 http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Latin America: Indigenous Mark Oct. 12 With Protests
On Oct. 12 tens of thousands of indigenous people in the region marked 517 years since the arrival of European colonizer Christopher Columbus by protesting around current issues such as the seizure of traditional lands by businesses and the damage to the environment from mining and oil drilling.
In Santiago, Chile, thousands of people marched along Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue in the historic center and rallied in a nearby plaza as speakers denounced “the Spanish invasion” of the past and the repression of Mapuche activists by the current government [see Updates #979, 985]. The Mapuche are the country’s largest indigenous group, and Mapuche activists and their supporters have carried out civil disobedience to reclaim land they say was stolen from them in southern Chile. Mapuche speaker Manuel Calfío stressed that Santiago’s Mapuche residents supported the demands of their brothers and sisters in the south.
In Bolivia Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, called Oct. 12 a “day of mourning…not a day of celebration,” although Foreign Minister David Choquehuenca and legislators attended a Spanish Heritage Day ceremony at the Spanish embassy.
In Quito, an Ecuadorian indigenous leader, Lourdes Tibian, told the Ecuavisa television network that “the conditions of the indigenous peoples since the Spanish invasion haven’t changed at all down to the present.” The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), the main indigenous umbrella group, led nationwide protests from Aug. 27 to Oct. 5 over the autonomy of bilingual education and revisions to the water and mining laws; one person was killed in the Amazon region in the demonstrations. CONAIE and the government of President Rafael Correa are now in negotiations over the issues. (Univision 10/12/09 from AP)
Some 25,000 indigenous Colombians started a march on Oct. 12 from several towns and cities in the southwestern Valle del Cauca department that was to culminate in a demonstration of some 40,000 in the departmental capital, Cali. The main focus was on the environment, Feliciano Valencia, a leader of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), told reporters; the protest was called the “World Minga for the Liberation of Mother Earth and Against Global Warming.” “There has to be a very strong call to humanity, because life is at risk,” he said. (“Minga” comes from a Quechua word for collective work.) The marchers also protested the economic policies of President Alvaro Uribe and attacks on indigenous communities by leftist rebels, rightwing paramilitaries and drug traffickers despite the communities’ insistence that they are neutral in the conflicts [see Update #997].
The minga was promoting a “congress of the peoples” that the indigenous organizations are planning for next year, CRIC adviser Marcos Cueitia said. The congress, whose date and location are not yet set, will include “indigenous communities, Afro Colombian [communities], labor unions, campesinos, NGOs [nonprofit organizations], grassroots organizations. The goal is a country with a project that’s different from war, aggression and death.” (Agence France Presse 10/13/09; El Extra (Fort Worth, TX) 10/16/09 from Notimex; El Tiempo (Colombia) 10/15/09).
Several thousand indigenous activists, environmentalists, campesinos and students held protests across Panama demanding respect for their land rights and rejecting energy projects that they said fail to respect the autonomy of indigenous people and cause forced evictions. Indigenous protesters closed the border with Costa Rica for several hours in the morning at the Sixaola border crossing. In Panama City, indigenous leader Cecilio Guerra, who burned a Spanish flag close to the presidential palace, told reporters that over 21 hydroelectric concessions and nine mining projects are affecting indigenous communities. Representatives of the Ngobe-Buglé peoples and other campesinos sought a meeting with rightwing president Ricardo Martinelli, but the government would only allow six people in the delegation. The indigenous activists refused to accept this condition and waited outside the presidential palace for more than three hours before dispersing. (AFP 10/13/09; Servicio Informativo "Alai-amlatina" 10/15/09)
In Guatemala, 19-year-old protester Imer Boror was killed and two other protesters were wounded as Mayan indigenous people blocked entry points into Guatemala City to demonstrate against the government's mining policies. The killing, which took place on El Caminero Boulevard, in Mixco municipality, 22 km south of the capital, was part of a day of protests that an indigenous leader, Juana Mulul, called a "defense of Mother Earth and our territory." After Boror’s death, President Alvar Colom agreed to appoint a commission to meet with indigenous leaders. Aparicio Pérez of the Farmers Union Committee (CUC) said representatives would ask the government to annul mining, hydroelectric and cement concessions because "multinational companies are taking over natural resources, which have long been the source of life for rural families" [see Updates #999, 1003].
According to government statistics, 42% of Guatemala's 12 million inhabitants are indigenous; others estimate that over 60% are indigenous. (AFP 10/13/09; Adital 10/13/09; World War 4 Report 10/18/09)
*2. Mexico: Marchers Back Electrical Workers Union
At least 150,000 Mexicans joined a march from the Angel of Independence in downtown Mexico City to the central Zócalo Plaza in the late afternoon of Oct. 15 to protest the Oct. 10 seizure by Mexican soldiers and federal police of facilities of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC). Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s center-right administration decreed the liquidation of the company and terminated its employees as the security forces were occupying the plants [see Update #1007]. The number of workers laid off is now said to be more than 43,000.
The Oct. 15 demonstration was so large that protesters were already waiting in the mammoth Zócalo while marchers were still setting off from the starting point more than two miles away. The Angel of Independence circle was packed at the beginning of the march, and many demonstrators, including former Mexico City mayor and 2006 presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, started from other locations—the nearby statue of Diana the Hunter and points along the Paseo de la Reforma boulevard. The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), a 95-year-old independent union which represents the LFC’s active workers and about 23,000 retirees, estimated that more than 350,000 people took part in the protest; police put the number at about 150,000.
The speakers included leaders of various unions and legislative deputy Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, who in his long career has led the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and is now in the small leftist Workers Party (PT). They called for rescinding the LFC’s liquidation and expressed solidarity with the SME. The federal government says the company had to be closed because it was inefficient and lost too much money, but SME general secretary Martín Esparza Flores charges that President Calderón’s goal was to break the union and to pave the way for privatization of the LFC. According to the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada, the average pay for LFC workers was 6,000 pesos a month (about $455). (LJ 10/16/09; Agence France Presse 10/16/09)
During talks after the protest, the government offered to negotiate over finding employment for the workers if they would accept the liquidation, but at departmental assemblies on Oct. 17 the union leaders announced that they would continue their strategy of legal challenges and demonstrations. (LJ 10/18/09)
On Oct. 14 the United Steelworkers (USW), the largest industrial union in North America, expressed solidarity with the SME, which has called for support from unions in Mexico and other countries. “The actions of the Mexican government in using federal forces to take over the public utility, dismissing the workers and thereby effectively disbanding their union is an outrageous act of union busting,” USW international president Leo Gerard said. (USW press release 10/14/09)
*3. Mexico: UN Reports on Attacks Against Rights Activists
The Mexico Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) presented a report in Mexico City on Oct. 13 on the dangers facing human rights activists in Mexico. According to the report, “Defending Human Rights: Caught Between Commitment and Risk,” the OHCHR found 128 cases of aggression against activists from January 2006 to August 2009, including 10 murders. OHCHR staff visited 10 of Mexico's 32 states to compile the report, interviewing non-governmental organizations (NGOs), human rights defenders, victims of aggression, journalists and government authorities.
Noemí Ramírez, head of the nongovernmental Mexican Academy for Human Rights, told the Inter Press Service (IPS) that the situation of human rights defenders is "worrying." She laid much of the blame on the government of President Felipe Calderón of the center-right National Action Party (PAN). Violence has risen in the country since Calderón launched a massive “war on drugs” after taking office in December 2006. "The government has vilified the work of rights defenders,” she said. “There has been a serious deterioration in the situation under the present administration."
Incidents involving violence against human rights defenders include the murder of Raúl Lucas and Manuel Ponce, leaders of the Organization for the Future of the Mixteca Indigenous Peoples, whose bodies were found Feb. 21 in the southern state of Guerrero. They had been tortured and executed; the crimes remain unpunished. In the same month, the Tlachilollan Mountain Human Rights Center closed one of its offices in Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero, because of threats, intimidation and persecution of activists for indigenous peoples' rights. (IPS 10/14/09)
*4. Puerto Rico: General Strike Protests Layoffs
A one-day general strike protesting plans to lay off 16,970 of Puerto Rico’s 180,000 public employees in November shut down all state-owned enterprises and the island’s schools and colleges on Oct. 15; most private businesses reportedly remained open remained open, and ports and airports were said to be functioning normally. There were protests throughout Puerto Rico, with tens of thousands of people converging on San Juan's Plaza Las Américas, the biggest shopping mall in the Caribbean. Hundreds of trucks drove slowly around the Milla de Oro area honking their horns, while some employees of the companies along the way gathered at doors and windows to show their support for the protest. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” office worker Yadira de León told the Associated Press news service. “I support it because the situation is difficult [for the laid-off workers], but I have to work.” De León’s 11-year-old daughter was with her because the schools were closed.
Organizers said more than 100,000 people had participated in the San Juan demonstration, while the police declined to give an estimate. The general strike was backed by all the island’s main labor organizations, including the General Workers Union (UGT) and the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coalition. Economists said the Oct. 15 strike would cost the economy at least $32 million.
If Gov. Luis Fortuño goes ahead with the November layoffs, the total job losses for the year will be above 21,000. The government laid off 7,816 employees in May but had to hire more than 3,000 temporary teachers and assistants when the school year started in August. Fortuño says the job cuts, expected to save $386 million, are necessary because the government faces a $3.2 billion deficit this year due to the world economic crisis, but economists say the cuts will prolong the recession. Union leaders accuse Fortuño of planning to privatize government services [see Update #1006]. (El Diario-La Prensa (New York) 10/15/09 from AP; Univision 10/15/09; Latin American Herald Tribune 10/16/09 from EFE)
In New York, with the largest community of people of Puerto Rican descent outside the island, labor unions and other groups held a press conference on the steps of City Hall on Oct. 15 to support the demands of the strikers. In the late afternoon, as many as 200 activists gathered in a heavy rain outside the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration office in midtown for a lively solidarity rally organized by the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights and other grassroots organizations. After the rally, protesters carried out a “huevazo,” hurling eggs at a poster with Gov. Fortuño’s picture. (Terra (Spain) 10/15/09 from EFE; eyewitness report)
Protests continued after Oct. 15. Members of the National Hostosian Independence Movement (MINH) demonstrated against the governor when he appeared at a ceremony at the Julita Ross amphitheater in Toa Baja on Oct. 17. The labor unions said on Oct. 16 that they planned to continue the struggle until they had overturned Law 7, which permits the layoffs. Methodist bishop Juan Vera, a spokesperson for protest organizers, warned that there may be another general strike. “The people are tired of so much abuse,” he told the Cuban news service Prensa Latina. (ED-LP 10/18/09 from AP; PL 10/16/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Trade, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
South American Countries Sign Articles of Agreement of BANCOSUR
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2156/68/
ALBA sanctions Honduras, moves towards new currency
http://ww4report.com/node/7840
Brazil Emerges as a Military Power
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6494?utm_source=streamsend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=6655371&utm_campaign=Brazil%20Emerges%20as%20a%20Military%20Power
Rio de Janeiro: 12 dead, chopper down as favela wars escalate
http://ww4report.com/node/7839
Peru: Gov't Seeks Legal Shield for Security Forces
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2163/68/
Colombia: army officer detained in massacre of indigenous people
http://ww4report.com/node/7836
Bogotá: kidnapping charges for student protesters?
http://ww4report.com/node/7837
Venezuelan Yukpa Indigenous Community Attacked, Two Murdered Following Land Grants
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2161/1/
Hugo Chávez: Iran aids Venezuela uranium exploration
http://ww4report.com/node/7838
Multipolar Machinations: Chávez Endeavors to 'Sow the Oil' with Russia and China
https://nacla.org/node/6159
The Property Waiver Regime: US Continues Punishing Land Reform in Nicaragua
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2158/1/
Honduras: Talks Seek Solution to 102-Day Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2155/68/
Honduran Accords Hung Up on Zelaya's Reinstatement
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/10/honduran-accords-hung-up-on-zelayas.html
Honduras De Facto Regime Opens Fire in Poor Neighborhoods: Youth and union members targeted by coup violence
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/10/honduras-de-facto-regime-opens-fire-in.html
Honduran Congressional Opinion, Part 2
http://hondurascoup2009.blogspot.com/2009/10/honduran-congressional-opinion-part-2.html
The Young Honduran Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2159/1/
Honduras: cocaine flights surge in wake of coup
http://ww4report.com/node/7822
Guatemala: one dead in anti-mine protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7841
Mexico Revs up War on Workers; Obama Shrugs
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-faux/mexico-revs-up-war-on-wor_b_317924.html
A Spanish Company and National Action Party Members Hope to Exploit Luz y Fuerza's Fiber Optic Network
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/10/privatization-behind-calderons-attack-electricians-union
Mexico: Disappeared Anti-Mining Activist is Back Fighting
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2157/1/
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, October 13, 2009
WNU #1007: Mexican Government Fires 41,000 Electrical Workers
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1007, October 11, 2009
1. Mexico: Government Fires 41,000 Workers
2. Haiti: Soros and Mevs Group to Build Maquila Park
3. Cuba: CIA Papers on Posada Released
4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, 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 http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: Government Fires 41,000 Workers
At around 11 pm the night of Oct. 10, Mexican soldiers and federal police agents occupied facilities of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) in Mexico City and several central Mexican states, reportedly using force to remove workers on the night shift. About an hour later Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s center-right administration published a decree liquidating the company and terminating some 41,000 active employees. The decree promised respect for the workers’ labor rights: the government said it would guarantee severance pay and pensions, at an estimated cost of some $20 billion pesos ($1.512 billion).
The independent Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), which represents about 43,000 active workers and 23,000 retirees, had warned in late September that the government might attempt to seize the facilities [see Update #1006]. But the military and police operation on a Saturday night seemed to take SME leaders by surprise. The leaders had met with President Calderón’s private secretary, Luis Felipe Bravo Mena, on Oct. 8 and were expecting a response from the president on Oct. 12.
The SME leadership moved quickly to mobilize supporters. Thousands of unionists gathered in front of the SME headquarters on Insurgentes Avenue in Mexico City on Oct. 11 as union general secretary Martín Esparza Flores announced that the SME would challenge the government decree in Mexican courts on constitutional grounds and would also appeal to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, CIDH in Spanish) and the International Labor Organization (ILO). He advised laid-off employees not to sign up for the severance pay--which might be used to indicate they had accepted their terminations--but instead to file individual challenges to the layoffs.
Esparza Flores denied that the union would try to sabotage operations of the LFC, which provides power to the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), and México, Morelos, Puebla and Hidalgo states, but he called for mobilizations. The union announced a major march on Oct. 15 from the Angel of Independence to the Zócalo, the capital’s giant central plaza.
The government claimed the LFC’s liquidation was necessary because the company was wasteful and inefficient. According to the government, expenses per unit of power were at least 176% higher than for the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE), the other government-owned company; the CFE provides power to the rest of the country and was expected to take over the LFC’s operations. Business leaders were quick to support the government’s actions. “Every company has two roads: either you’re efficient or you die,” Miguel Marón Manzur, president the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry (Canacintra), said on Oct. 11.
But former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador—a center-left leader who officially lost the national presidency to Calderón in 2006 in a narrow race—rejected the government’s claims and announced his support for the SME. López Obrador is countering Calderón’s austerity measures with his own legislative proposals, which he says would save about 200 billion pesos ($15.12 billion) by taxing the rich and cutting government waste and salaries for high officials. Union supporters have charged that the LFC liquidation is the first step in a plan by Calderón and the business associations to privatize the entire state-owned power system.
Calderón also has a political goal, according to Dan La Botz, editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis. “[T]he government wants to eliminate [a union] which has been the leading force in organizing to oppose the Calderón government's economic policies,” La Botz wrote on Oct. 11. As of Oct. 5 the government had suspended recognition of the union’s current leadership, citing what it said were irregularities in the SME’s July election, in which Esparza barely edged out challenger Alejandro Muñoz Reséndiz by a 27,010-26,658 vote.
“This is a turning point,” La Botz wrote on Oct. 11. “The Mexican government's attack on the Mexican Electrical Workers Union--a union central to resisting government policies and building labor and social movement coalitions, and located in Mexico City, which is the center of political opposition to the government--may well turn out to be a watershed event in the country's recent history.” He noted that solidarity activists can protest the government’s actions by writing to President Calderón at felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx with a copy to the SME at sinmexel@sme.org.mx. (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/11/09, __; El Universal (Mexico City) 10/11/09, __, __; MRZine 10/11/09; Wall Street Journal 10/6/09)
Correction: The headline for this item originally read "Mexico: Government Fires 43,000 Workers." It should have read the same as the headline in the table of contents--"41,000."
*2. Haiti: Soros and Mevs Group to Build Maquila Park
On Oct. 6 Haiti’s WIN Group conglomerate and the US-based Soros Economic Development Fund announced plans to build a $45 million industrial park named “West Indies Free Zone” near Port-au-Prince’s impoverished Cité Soleil neighborhood. The 1.2 million square foot facility, to be completed in 2012, will “offer tax, customs and processing advantages to tenants” and is expected “to create 25,000 jobs and improve the standard of living for the 300,000 residents” of Cité Soleil, according to a WIN Group press release. The free trade zone’s executives “are already in preliminary discussions with North American and European apparel manufacturers.”
The press release describes the WIN Group, owned by the wealthy and powerful Mevs family, as a stakeholder in “warehousing and storage, port operations and ethanol processing,” and in SHODECOSA, “the largest privately owned industrial and commercial park in Haiti.” The Soros Economic Development Fund, founded by US billionaire financier George Soros in 1997, is a nonprofit foundation which says its mission is to alleviate poverty and community deterioration. (Reuters 10/6/09)
The West Indies Free Zone announcement followed a two-day conference by foreign investors the previous week and a visit to Haiti on Oct. 2 by former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), now the United Nations special envoy to the country. Clinton, the husband of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, has been promoting investment in tax-exempt plants assembling for export, which are known as maquiladoras in Spanish. "The investment climate [in Haiti] is much warmer than the temperature in this room," Canadian ambassador Gilles Rivard remarked at the conference, which drew representatives from North American apparel firms--Gap, Levi Strauss and American Eagle Outfitters—and from Citibank and Scotiabank. The New York Times correspondent noted that “Haiti's extremely low labor costs, comparable to those in Bangladesh," are what “make it so appealing.” (NYT 10/5/09)
Interest in Haiti’s maquiladora sector seems to have grown after the government turned back efforts earlier this year to raise the minimum wage in the industry to 200 gourdes a day (about $4.97). The projections of growth in the sector come in the midst of a dramatic decline in maquiladora production in the Caribbean and Central America due to Chinese competition and the economic crisis in the US, the industry’s main market [see Update #1005].
*3. Cuba: CIA Papers on Posada Released
The Washington, DC-based investigative nonprofit National Security Archive released several documents on Oct. 6 written by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1965 and 1966 about its Cuban-born longtime “asset” Luis Posada Carriles, who currently lives in Miami under indictment after entering the US illegally in 2005 [see Update #985]. The Archive’s Peter Kornbluh obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The documents show that in the middle 1960s Posada was reporting to the CIA about the activities of other rightwing Cubans, including the late Jorge Mas Canosa, who founded the influential Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) in the 1980s. In July 1965 Posada reported that he had completed two 10-pound Limpet bombs for a Mas Canosa operation against Soviet and Cuban ships in the port of Veracruz, Mexico, using eight pounds of Pentolite explosives and a pencil detonator. Current CANF president Francisco Hernandez told the Associated Press that he found the story difficult to believe. “The fact of the matter is that Jorge was never a man who believed in terrorism,” Hernandez said.
Posada’s CIA handler, Grover Lythcott, described Posada as "not a typical 'boom and bang' type of individual." Posada was "acutely aware of the international implications of ill-planned or over-enthusiastic activities against Cuba," Lythcott wrote. A CIA personnel record suggested that Posada would be "excellent for use in [a] responsible civil position in [Cuba] should the present government fall." Posada was subsequently implicated in several terrorist acts, including the 1976 bombing of Cubana de Aviación flight 455, in which 73 people were killed. Kornbluh released the documents on Oct. 6 to coincide with the 33rd anniversary of the bombing, which Posada has been repeatedly accused of masterminding. (National Security Archive electronic briefing 10/6/09; AP 10/6/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Bolivia to buy Chinese jets for drug war
http://ww4report.com/node/7813
Bolivia - Constantino Lima: The Other Politics Born of Everyday Experience
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2145/1/
Peru: workers strike at Chinese-owned iron mine
http://ww4report.com/node/7812
Duke Energy and the Disappearing Waters of Peru
https://nacla.org/node/6149
Ecuador: CONAIE and Correa Begin Dialogue
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2146/1/
Ecuador: Left Turn?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2150/1/
Colombia: "signs of corruption" in rebel jailbreak
http://ww4report.com/node/7814
L.A. Times to Colombia: Prosecute Corporate Supporters of Terrorism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2147/68/
Chavez Re-launches Venezuela’s Flagship “Barrio Adentro” Healthcare Program
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2148/68/
Poll: Wide Majority of Hondurans Oppose Coup d’Etat, Want Zelaya Back
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3511/poll-wide-majority-hondurans-oppose-coup-d’etat-want-zelaya-back
Honduras: Anti-Coup Resistance Movement "Firmly United"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2147/68/
Washington Plays Both Sides on Honduran Coup
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2143/68/
Writing on the Wall in Honduras: Graffiti from the Coup Resistance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2153/1/
Honduras "importing" Colombian paras as mercenaries?
http://ww4report.com/node/7816
Honduras: resistance movement protests media crackdown
http://ww4report.com/node/7815
Honduras: right-wing propaganda machine in pro-coup offensive
http://ww4report.com/node/7799
Honduras: claims and counter-claims over Zelaya anti-Semitism
http://ww4report.com/node/7798
Pittsburgh is Honduras
http://ww4report.com/node/7803
Action Alert: Community Leader Murdered by Private Security Guards in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2149/68/
The Zetas and the Kaibiles: A Mexican Hit Squad Reconnects with its Guatemalan Trainers
https://nacla.org/node/6152
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 #1007, October 11, 2009
1. Mexico: Government Fires 41,000 Workers
2. Haiti: Soros and Mevs Group to Build Maquila Park
3. Cuba: CIA Papers on Posada Released
4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, 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 http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: Government Fires 41,000 Workers
At around 11 pm the night of Oct. 10, Mexican soldiers and federal police agents occupied facilities of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) in Mexico City and several central Mexican states, reportedly using force to remove workers on the night shift. About an hour later Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s center-right administration published a decree liquidating the company and terminating some 41,000 active employees. The decree promised respect for the workers’ labor rights: the government said it would guarantee severance pay and pensions, at an estimated cost of some $20 billion pesos ($1.512 billion).
The independent Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), which represents about 43,000 active workers and 23,000 retirees, had warned in late September that the government might attempt to seize the facilities [see Update #1006]. But the military and police operation on a Saturday night seemed to take SME leaders by surprise. The leaders had met with President Calderón’s private secretary, Luis Felipe Bravo Mena, on Oct. 8 and were expecting a response from the president on Oct. 12.
The SME leadership moved quickly to mobilize supporters. Thousands of unionists gathered in front of the SME headquarters on Insurgentes Avenue in Mexico City on Oct. 11 as union general secretary Martín Esparza Flores announced that the SME would challenge the government decree in Mexican courts on constitutional grounds and would also appeal to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, CIDH in Spanish) and the International Labor Organization (ILO). He advised laid-off employees not to sign up for the severance pay--which might be used to indicate they had accepted their terminations--but instead to file individual challenges to the layoffs.
Esparza Flores denied that the union would try to sabotage operations of the LFC, which provides power to the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), and México, Morelos, Puebla and Hidalgo states, but he called for mobilizations. The union announced a major march on Oct. 15 from the Angel of Independence to the Zócalo, the capital’s giant central plaza.
The government claimed the LFC’s liquidation was necessary because the company was wasteful and inefficient. According to the government, expenses per unit of power were at least 176% higher than for the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE), the other government-owned company; the CFE provides power to the rest of the country and was expected to take over the LFC’s operations. Business leaders were quick to support the government’s actions. “Every company has two roads: either you’re efficient or you die,” Miguel Marón Manzur, president the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry (Canacintra), said on Oct. 11.
But former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador—a center-left leader who officially lost the national presidency to Calderón in 2006 in a narrow race—rejected the government’s claims and announced his support for the SME. López Obrador is countering Calderón’s austerity measures with his own legislative proposals, which he says would save about 200 billion pesos ($15.12 billion) by taxing the rich and cutting government waste and salaries for high officials. Union supporters have charged that the LFC liquidation is the first step in a plan by Calderón and the business associations to privatize the entire state-owned power system.
Calderón also has a political goal, according to Dan La Botz, editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis. “[T]he government wants to eliminate [a union] which has been the leading force in organizing to oppose the Calderón government's economic policies,” La Botz wrote on Oct. 11. As of Oct. 5 the government had suspended recognition of the union’s current leadership, citing what it said were irregularities in the SME’s July election, in which Esparza barely edged out challenger Alejandro Muñoz Reséndiz by a 27,010-26,658 vote.
“This is a turning point,” La Botz wrote on Oct. 11. “The Mexican government's attack on the Mexican Electrical Workers Union--a union central to resisting government policies and building labor and social movement coalitions, and located in Mexico City, which is the center of political opposition to the government--may well turn out to be a watershed event in the country's recent history.” He noted that solidarity activists can protest the government’s actions by writing to President Calderón at felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx with a copy to the SME at sinmexel@sme.org.mx. (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/11/09, __; El Universal (Mexico City) 10/11/09, __, __; MRZine 10/11/09; Wall Street Journal 10/6/09)
Correction: The headline for this item originally read "Mexico: Government Fires 43,000 Workers." It should have read the same as the headline in the table of contents--"41,000."
*2. Haiti: Soros and Mevs Group to Build Maquila Park
On Oct. 6 Haiti’s WIN Group conglomerate and the US-based Soros Economic Development Fund announced plans to build a $45 million industrial park named “West Indies Free Zone” near Port-au-Prince’s impoverished Cité Soleil neighborhood. The 1.2 million square foot facility, to be completed in 2012, will “offer tax, customs and processing advantages to tenants” and is expected “to create 25,000 jobs and improve the standard of living for the 300,000 residents” of Cité Soleil, according to a WIN Group press release. The free trade zone’s executives “are already in preliminary discussions with North American and European apparel manufacturers.”
The press release describes the WIN Group, owned by the wealthy and powerful Mevs family, as a stakeholder in “warehousing and storage, port operations and ethanol processing,” and in SHODECOSA, “the largest privately owned industrial and commercial park in Haiti.” The Soros Economic Development Fund, founded by US billionaire financier George Soros in 1997, is a nonprofit foundation which says its mission is to alleviate poverty and community deterioration. (Reuters 10/6/09)
The West Indies Free Zone announcement followed a two-day conference by foreign investors the previous week and a visit to Haiti on Oct. 2 by former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), now the United Nations special envoy to the country. Clinton, the husband of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, has been promoting investment in tax-exempt plants assembling for export, which are known as maquiladoras in Spanish. "The investment climate [in Haiti] is much warmer than the temperature in this room," Canadian ambassador Gilles Rivard remarked at the conference, which drew representatives from North American apparel firms--Gap, Levi Strauss and American Eagle Outfitters—and from Citibank and Scotiabank. The New York Times correspondent noted that “Haiti's extremely low labor costs, comparable to those in Bangladesh," are what “make it so appealing.” (NYT 10/5/09)
Interest in Haiti’s maquiladora sector seems to have grown after the government turned back efforts earlier this year to raise the minimum wage in the industry to 200 gourdes a day (about $4.97). The projections of growth in the sector come in the midst of a dramatic decline in maquiladora production in the Caribbean and Central America due to Chinese competition and the economic crisis in the US, the industry’s main market [see Update #1005].
*3. Cuba: CIA Papers on Posada Released
The Washington, DC-based investigative nonprofit National Security Archive released several documents on Oct. 6 written by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1965 and 1966 about its Cuban-born longtime “asset” Luis Posada Carriles, who currently lives in Miami under indictment after entering the US illegally in 2005 [see Update #985]. The Archive’s Peter Kornbluh obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The documents show that in the middle 1960s Posada was reporting to the CIA about the activities of other rightwing Cubans, including the late Jorge Mas Canosa, who founded the influential Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) in the 1980s. In July 1965 Posada reported that he had completed two 10-pound Limpet bombs for a Mas Canosa operation against Soviet and Cuban ships in the port of Veracruz, Mexico, using eight pounds of Pentolite explosives and a pencil detonator. Current CANF president Francisco Hernandez told the Associated Press that he found the story difficult to believe. “The fact of the matter is that Jorge was never a man who believed in terrorism,” Hernandez said.
Posada’s CIA handler, Grover Lythcott, described Posada as "not a typical 'boom and bang' type of individual." Posada was "acutely aware of the international implications of ill-planned or over-enthusiastic activities against Cuba," Lythcott wrote. A CIA personnel record suggested that Posada would be "excellent for use in [a] responsible civil position in [Cuba] should the present government fall." Posada was subsequently implicated in several terrorist acts, including the 1976 bombing of Cubana de Aviación flight 455, in which 73 people were killed. Kornbluh released the documents on Oct. 6 to coincide with the 33rd anniversary of the bombing, which Posada has been repeatedly accused of masterminding. (National Security Archive electronic briefing 10/6/09; AP 10/6/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Bolivia to buy Chinese jets for drug war
http://ww4report.com/node/7813
Bolivia - Constantino Lima: The Other Politics Born of Everyday Experience
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2145/1/
Peru: workers strike at Chinese-owned iron mine
http://ww4report.com/node/7812
Duke Energy and the Disappearing Waters of Peru
https://nacla.org/node/6149
Ecuador: CONAIE and Correa Begin Dialogue
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2146/1/
Ecuador: Left Turn?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2150/1/
Colombia: "signs of corruption" in rebel jailbreak
http://ww4report.com/node/7814
L.A. Times to Colombia: Prosecute Corporate Supporters of Terrorism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2147/68/
Chavez Re-launches Venezuela’s Flagship “Barrio Adentro” Healthcare Program
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2148/68/
Poll: Wide Majority of Hondurans Oppose Coup d’Etat, Want Zelaya Back
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3511/poll-wide-majority-hondurans-oppose-coup-d’etat-want-zelaya-back
Honduras: Anti-Coup Resistance Movement "Firmly United"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2147/68/
Washington Plays Both Sides on Honduran Coup
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2143/68/
Writing on the Wall in Honduras: Graffiti from the Coup Resistance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2153/1/
Honduras "importing" Colombian paras as mercenaries?
http://ww4report.com/node/7816
Honduras: resistance movement protests media crackdown
http://ww4report.com/node/7815
Honduras: right-wing propaganda machine in pro-coup offensive
http://ww4report.com/node/7799
Honduras: claims and counter-claims over Zelaya anti-Semitism
http://ww4report.com/node/7798
Pittsburgh is Honduras
http://ww4report.com/node/7803
Action Alert: Community Leader Murdered by Private Security Guards in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2149/68/
The Zetas and the Kaibiles: A Mexican Hit Squad Reconnects with its Guatemalan Trainers
https://nacla.org/node/6152
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, October 6, 2009
WNU #1006: Puerto Rican Unions Plan Strike
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1006, October 4, 2009
1. Puerto Rico: Plan 1-Day Strike Against Layoffs
2. Mexico: Government to Bust Electrical Workers?
3. Honduras: Maquila Owners Call for Intervention
4. Brazil: Activists Call for End of Haiti Occupation
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, 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 http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Puerto Rico: Plan 1-Day Strike Against Layoffs
Four Puerto Rican union leaders chained themselves to the gates of the Fortaleza, the governor’s official residence, in San Juan on Sept. 28 to protest plans to lay off 16,970 of the island’s 180,000 public employees. About 30 other unionists set up what they called a “Camp of Dignity and Shame” outside the 16th-century fortress. After a brief scuffle, police agents dispersed the group, which included members of the General Workers Union (UGT) and Robert Pagán, president of Local 1996SPT of the US-based Service Employers International Union (SEIU). No arrests or injuries were reported. Pagán promised that this was just the first of “dozens of civil disobedience actions” against the layoffs.
In a separate incident on the same day, a protester threw an egg at Gov. Luis Fortuño during a public event in the coastal city of Fajardo. The egg missed the governor, and the man who threw it was detained, but the incident inspired protesters to throw what they called “the avenging egg” at effigies of Fortuño during demonstrations later in the week.
The main mobilization in the campaign against the layoffs is planned for Oct. 15, when virtually the whole labor movement of the island—the UGT, the Workers Federation and the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coalition--has scheduled a one-day strike. Activists are also planning a march on Oct. 17, the United Nations’ International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Meanwhile, struggles are continuing in communities like Villas del Sol, in Toa Baja near San Juan, where residents are fighting efforts to evict them from land where they’ve lived for years.
The layoffs, most of which will take effect on Nov. 6, follow some 8,000 layoffs in May. The hardest hit will be the Department of Education, slated to lose 7,249 employees, followed by Transportation and Public Works, with 1,522 layoffs, and the Economic Development Administration, with 681. Carlos García, president of the Restructuring and Fiscal Stabilization Council (JREF), acknowledged that with the layoffs Puerto Rico’s unemployment rate will rise to 17%.
Gov. Fortuño said the job cuts, expected to save $386 million, are necessary because the government faces a $3.2 billion deficit this year, largely as a result of the US economic crisis, which has also led to austerity measures in state governments in the US itself. Without the layoffs, Fortuño claimed, the Puerto Rican government would have to shut down by Christmas. (Associated Press 9/29/09; SEIU blog 9/29/09; Primera Hora (Puerto Rico) 10/4/09; La Raza (Chicago) 10/1/09 from EFE; Servicio Informativo “alai-amlatina” 10/2/09)
Activists charge that the conservative governor is using the layoffs as a step towards privatizing government services. On June 5 the movement against the cutbacks mobilized tens of thousands of people in one of the largest demonstrations in recent Puerto Rican history [see Update #992]. One notable feature of the protests is the unity among different unions, just a year after a bitter struggle between the SEIU and the independent Teachers' Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR) [see Update #965].
*2. Mexico: Government to Bust Electrical Workers?
Members of the independent Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) were guarding the Mexico City facilities of the state-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) to make sure the federal government could not “throw the switch and blame the workers,” union president Martín Esparza Flores said after a labor forum in the capital on Oct. 3. The union charged on Sept. 29 that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s center-right administration was contemplating a quasi-military occupation of the plants within a week on the pretext that the SME was planning to cause a blackout. The LFC provides power for the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), and México, Morelos, Puebla and Hidalgo states.
The union denied any intention to sabotage the system; the SME was calling for resistance through mobilizations and marches, Esparza Flores said. The militant union has been a leading force in the National Front Against Privatization and other movements fighting the government’s neoliberal economic policies.
Labor Secretary Javier Lozano Alarcón has refused to recognize Esparza Flores as president of the union following an election this year that was challenged by Alejandro Muñoz Reséndiz, who heads the small dissident group Union Transparency. Lozano could declare the election invalid, leaving the union without official leaders. The secretary of labor used a similar tactic with the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM), leading to a three-year struggle that remains unresolved [see Update #998]. The move against the SME leadership came as the government was reducing the power company’s budget and was calling for a change in management and for the complete restructuring of the company.
The SME says that Muñoz Reséndiz and some 20-30 other Union Transparency members attacked the union's headquarters in Mexico City on Sept. 23, taking money, checkbooks and records. They were supported by about 150 other people who were not members of the union, some of them armed, according to the SME. (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/4/09; Mexican Labor News and Analysis September 2009, Vol. 14, #8)
*3. Honduras: Maquila Owners Call for Intervention
As of Oct. 4 Hondurans’ free speech and assembly rights remained suspended under a 45-day state of siege declared by de facto president Roberto Micheletti a week earlier. The general secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS), Chilean diplomat José Miguel Insulza, was scheduled to visit Tegucigalpa on Oct. 7 with a delegation of about 10 foreign ministers to negotiate a resolution to the crisis that began more than 100 days earlier with a June 28 military coup against President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales. The deposed president has been staying in the Brazilian embassy since his surprise return to the country on Sept. 21. (Agence France Presse 10/4/09)
Plans for a resolution generally center on the San José Accord, a proposal from Costa Rican president Oscar Arias for Zelaya to return to office until his term expires on Jan. 27 but with a coalition government and an agreement not to pursue calls for a constituent assembly to rewrite the 1982 Constitution. Zelaya has generally agreed to the plan, but the grassroots movement against the coup rejects any compromise on the constituent assembly.
A new variant of the San José Accord is being promoted by Adolfo Facussé, president of the National Association of Industries of Honduras (ANDI). He claims his proposal is backed by other powerful business owners and that Micheletti has shown interest. Under the “Facussé Plan,” Micheletti would step down “with honor” and Zelaya would return to office but would stay under house arrest while awaiting trial on corruption charges. The proposal also includes a multinational force with troops from Canada, Colombia and Panama, all countries with conservative governments closely allied to the US. The occupying force would “be charged with watching out that [Zelaya] complies” with the agreement, Facussé told the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada in an interview published on Sept. 30. The foreign troops would “strictly limit the capacities of this gentlemen,” he said. “[T]hey’ll just come to help and then will go back home.”
The US has identified Facussé as an important backer of the coup. In August he called for resistance to international economic sanctions imposed after the coup, “because it’s better to eat tortillas and beans for year than to return to the situation we were in before, under the influence of Mr. Chávez”—a reference to leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías, an ally of Zelaya. Since August, however, owners of the country’s maquiladoras (tax-exempt plants assembling products for export) have grown increasingly nervous about the economic situation. Facussé himself was deported from the US when he attempted to visit Miami on Sept. 12 [see Updates #1002, 1004, 1005].
In the La Jornada interview Facussé insisted that he was friends with Zelaya and had backed Honduras’ participation in Petrocaribe, Chávez’s system for supplying discounted Venezuelan oil to the Caribbean Basin. “I invited the Venezuelans here,” Facussé said. “I supported Zelaya on the Bolivarian Alliance”—the Chávez-initiated Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America trade bloc (ALBA, formerly the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America). The La Jornada correspondent noted that Facussé, who is of Palestinian origin, is related to the late Schafik Handal, a leader of the leftist Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN), which now holds the presidency of El Salvador. (LJ 9/30/09)
In an article posted at the website of the US magazine The Nation on June 30, just two days after the coup, New York University professor Greg Grandin wrote that what the US government “might be angling for in Honduras could be the ‘Haiti Option.’ In 1994 Bill Clinton worked to restore Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide after he was deposed in a coup, but only on the condition that Aristide would support IMF [International Monetary Fund] and World Bank policies.” (The Nation 6/30/09) Aristide’s restoration in 1994 included a military occupation by more than 20,000 US troops. The US occupied Haiti again in March 2004 after Aristide’s second removal from office, but the US troops were replaced in June 2004 by a multinational force headed by Brazil. The force remains there five years later [see Update #1005].
*4. Brazil: Activists Call for End of Haiti Occupation
Brazilian organizations were planning to deliver an open letter to the United Nations (UN) Information Center in the Itamaraty Palace in Rio de Janeiro on Oct. 5 opposing the continued presence of Brazilian troops in Haiti. Afterwards the activists were to hold a solidarity event with hip hop presentations in the Largo Carioca plaza in downtown Rio. The UN Security Council is expected to renew the mandate for the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), now five years old, sometime before Oct. 15.
Brazilian economist Sandra Quintela, from the Institute of Alternative Policies for the Southern Cone (Pacs), told the Brazilian activist news service Adital that there have been repeated reports of abuses and human rights violations by Brazilian soldiers against Haitians. She called Haiti a “field for experimentation” which provided Brazilian troops with training for actions in impoverished urban neighborhoods like the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. She also noted the connection of the occupation to a Sept. 17 accord between Brazil and the US encouraging Brazilian business operations in Haiti’s maquiladora sector [see Update #1005]. Maintaining UN troops in Haiti costs a total of $600 million a year, the open letter notes. “[T]his amount is more than what would be necessary to resolve the population’s fundamental problems: lack of energy, food, housing, education and employment.” (Adital 10/2/09)
In other news, on Oct. 1 activists held a demonstration, “400 Plates and Spoons on the Esplanade,” at the Chamber of Deputies building in Brasilia to support Constitutional Amendment Proposal 047/2003, which would include the right to food in the Constitution’s Article 6. Renato Maluf, president of the National Alimentary Security Council (Consea), gave the Chamber’s acting president, Marco Maia of the Workers Party (PT), a petition with more than 45,000 signatures supporting the amendment. The Senate has already passed the measure, which has also been approved by a Chamber of Deputies special committee. Supporters want the Chamber to approve the amendment in time for Oct. 16, World Food Day. (Adital 10/1/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Argentina: ex-prez charged with blocking terror blast probe
http://ww4report.com/node/7787
Argentine Folk Legend Mercedes Sosa Hospitalized - Watch Her Sing 'Gracias A La Vida'
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2140/68/
Argentina: Dubious Past? No Problem for Private Security Firms
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2142/1/
Bolivia: cocaleros clash with indigenous people
http://ww4report.com/node/7776
Peru: government discovers evidence of an "uncontacted" tribe
http://ww4report.com/node/7793
Ecuador's indigenous movement mobilizes to defend water
http://ww4report.com/node/7792
Ecuador’s Indigenous Movement Mobilizes for the Water
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2135/68/
Ecuadorians Protest New Water Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2136/1/
Ecuador: Police Attack Indigenous Protesters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2141/68/
U.S. Base Access in Colombia Prompts Increase in South American Defense Spending
https://nacla.org/node/6144
There Is Much to Do: An Interview With Hugo Chavez
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091012/grandin
Honduras Coup Regime Suspends Constitutional Rights, Closes Media, Threatens Brazil: Will Obama Admin Break Its Silence?
https://nacla.org/node/6139
Honduras: coup regime backs off from emergency decree
http://ww4report.com/node/7777
Honduras: Regime Gives Signs of Easing Up after Stiffening Stance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2137/68/
Honduran Crisis Explodes: Persecution and Panic-Buying Under Coup Crackdown
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/09/honduran-crisis-explodes-persecution.html
NGOs and Faith Groups Call on Honduran Government: Respect Civil Liberties and Human Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2134/68/
Live from Honduras: An Interview with Berta Caceres
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2133/1/
Honduras: The threat of a Haiti-style foreign military occupation
http://links.org.au/node/1284
Recent Killings Linked to Canadian-owned Nickel Mine in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2138/1/
Guatemala: killings linked to Canadian mineral interest?
http://ww4report.com/node/7791
Chiapas: indigenous victory over mineral interest
http://ww4report.com/node/7790
Mexican environmental leader killed
http://ww4report.com/node/7785
Mexico: mothers of the disappeared march in Tijuana
http://ww4report.com/node/7784
Mexico: Is a Social Explosion in the Wings?
https://nacla.org/node/6141
Muckraking in Latin America: Upside Down World Receives Three Project Censored Awards This Year
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2139/1/
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 #1006, October 4, 2009
1. Puerto Rico: Plan 1-Day Strike Against Layoffs
2. Mexico: Government to Bust Electrical Workers?
3. Honduras: Maquila Owners Call for Intervention
4. Brazil: Activists Call for End of Haiti Occupation
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, 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 http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Puerto Rico: Plan 1-Day Strike Against Layoffs
Four Puerto Rican union leaders chained themselves to the gates of the Fortaleza, the governor’s official residence, in San Juan on Sept. 28 to protest plans to lay off 16,970 of the island’s 180,000 public employees. About 30 other unionists set up what they called a “Camp of Dignity and Shame” outside the 16th-century fortress. After a brief scuffle, police agents dispersed the group, which included members of the General Workers Union (UGT) and Robert Pagán, president of Local 1996SPT of the US-based Service Employers International Union (SEIU). No arrests or injuries were reported. Pagán promised that this was just the first of “dozens of civil disobedience actions” against the layoffs.
In a separate incident on the same day, a protester threw an egg at Gov. Luis Fortuño during a public event in the coastal city of Fajardo. The egg missed the governor, and the man who threw it was detained, but the incident inspired protesters to throw what they called “the avenging egg” at effigies of Fortuño during demonstrations later in the week.
The main mobilization in the campaign against the layoffs is planned for Oct. 15, when virtually the whole labor movement of the island—the UGT, the Workers Federation and the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coalition--has scheduled a one-day strike. Activists are also planning a march on Oct. 17, the United Nations’ International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Meanwhile, struggles are continuing in communities like Villas del Sol, in Toa Baja near San Juan, where residents are fighting efforts to evict them from land where they’ve lived for years.
The layoffs, most of which will take effect on Nov. 6, follow some 8,000 layoffs in May. The hardest hit will be the Department of Education, slated to lose 7,249 employees, followed by Transportation and Public Works, with 1,522 layoffs, and the Economic Development Administration, with 681. Carlos García, president of the Restructuring and Fiscal Stabilization Council (JREF), acknowledged that with the layoffs Puerto Rico’s unemployment rate will rise to 17%.
Gov. Fortuño said the job cuts, expected to save $386 million, are necessary because the government faces a $3.2 billion deficit this year, largely as a result of the US economic crisis, which has also led to austerity measures in state governments in the US itself. Without the layoffs, Fortuño claimed, the Puerto Rican government would have to shut down by Christmas. (Associated Press 9/29/09; SEIU blog 9/29/09; Primera Hora (Puerto Rico) 10/4/09; La Raza (Chicago) 10/1/09 from EFE; Servicio Informativo “alai-amlatina” 10/2/09)
Activists charge that the conservative governor is using the layoffs as a step towards privatizing government services. On June 5 the movement against the cutbacks mobilized tens of thousands of people in one of the largest demonstrations in recent Puerto Rican history [see Update #992]. One notable feature of the protests is the unity among different unions, just a year after a bitter struggle between the SEIU and the independent Teachers' Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR) [see Update #965].
*2. Mexico: Government to Bust Electrical Workers?
Members of the independent Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) were guarding the Mexico City facilities of the state-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) to make sure the federal government could not “throw the switch and blame the workers,” union president Martín Esparza Flores said after a labor forum in the capital on Oct. 3. The union charged on Sept. 29 that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s center-right administration was contemplating a quasi-military occupation of the plants within a week on the pretext that the SME was planning to cause a blackout. The LFC provides power for the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), and México, Morelos, Puebla and Hidalgo states.
The union denied any intention to sabotage the system; the SME was calling for resistance through mobilizations and marches, Esparza Flores said. The militant union has been a leading force in the National Front Against Privatization and other movements fighting the government’s neoliberal economic policies.
Labor Secretary Javier Lozano Alarcón has refused to recognize Esparza Flores as president of the union following an election this year that was challenged by Alejandro Muñoz Reséndiz, who heads the small dissident group Union Transparency. Lozano could declare the election invalid, leaving the union without official leaders. The secretary of labor used a similar tactic with the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM), leading to a three-year struggle that remains unresolved [see Update #998]. The move against the SME leadership came as the government was reducing the power company’s budget and was calling for a change in management and for the complete restructuring of the company.
The SME says that Muñoz Reséndiz and some 20-30 other Union Transparency members attacked the union's headquarters in Mexico City on Sept. 23, taking money, checkbooks and records. They were supported by about 150 other people who were not members of the union, some of them armed, according to the SME. (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/4/09; Mexican Labor News and Analysis September 2009, Vol. 14, #8)
*3. Honduras: Maquila Owners Call for Intervention
As of Oct. 4 Hondurans’ free speech and assembly rights remained suspended under a 45-day state of siege declared by de facto president Roberto Micheletti a week earlier. The general secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS), Chilean diplomat José Miguel Insulza, was scheduled to visit Tegucigalpa on Oct. 7 with a delegation of about 10 foreign ministers to negotiate a resolution to the crisis that began more than 100 days earlier with a June 28 military coup against President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales. The deposed president has been staying in the Brazilian embassy since his surprise return to the country on Sept. 21. (Agence France Presse 10/4/09)
Plans for a resolution generally center on the San José Accord, a proposal from Costa Rican president Oscar Arias for Zelaya to return to office until his term expires on Jan. 27 but with a coalition government and an agreement not to pursue calls for a constituent assembly to rewrite the 1982 Constitution. Zelaya has generally agreed to the plan, but the grassroots movement against the coup rejects any compromise on the constituent assembly.
A new variant of the San José Accord is being promoted by Adolfo Facussé, president of the National Association of Industries of Honduras (ANDI). He claims his proposal is backed by other powerful business owners and that Micheletti has shown interest. Under the “Facussé Plan,” Micheletti would step down “with honor” and Zelaya would return to office but would stay under house arrest while awaiting trial on corruption charges. The proposal also includes a multinational force with troops from Canada, Colombia and Panama, all countries with conservative governments closely allied to the US. The occupying force would “be charged with watching out that [Zelaya] complies” with the agreement, Facussé told the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada in an interview published on Sept. 30. The foreign troops would “strictly limit the capacities of this gentlemen,” he said. “[T]hey’ll just come to help and then will go back home.”
The US has identified Facussé as an important backer of the coup. In August he called for resistance to international economic sanctions imposed after the coup, “because it’s better to eat tortillas and beans for year than to return to the situation we were in before, under the influence of Mr. Chávez”—a reference to leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías, an ally of Zelaya. Since August, however, owners of the country’s maquiladoras (tax-exempt plants assembling products for export) have grown increasingly nervous about the economic situation. Facussé himself was deported from the US when he attempted to visit Miami on Sept. 12 [see Updates #1002, 1004, 1005].
In the La Jornada interview Facussé insisted that he was friends with Zelaya and had backed Honduras’ participation in Petrocaribe, Chávez’s system for supplying discounted Venezuelan oil to the Caribbean Basin. “I invited the Venezuelans here,” Facussé said. “I supported Zelaya on the Bolivarian Alliance”—the Chávez-initiated Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America trade bloc (ALBA, formerly the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America). The La Jornada correspondent noted that Facussé, who is of Palestinian origin, is related to the late Schafik Handal, a leader of the leftist Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN), which now holds the presidency of El Salvador. (LJ 9/30/09)
In an article posted at the website of the US magazine The Nation on June 30, just two days after the coup, New York University professor Greg Grandin wrote that what the US government “might be angling for in Honduras could be the ‘Haiti Option.’ In 1994 Bill Clinton worked to restore Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide after he was deposed in a coup, but only on the condition that Aristide would support IMF [International Monetary Fund] and World Bank policies.” (The Nation 6/30/09) Aristide’s restoration in 1994 included a military occupation by more than 20,000 US troops. The US occupied Haiti again in March 2004 after Aristide’s second removal from office, but the US troops were replaced in June 2004 by a multinational force headed by Brazil. The force remains there five years later [see Update #1005].
*4. Brazil: Activists Call for End of Haiti Occupation
Brazilian organizations were planning to deliver an open letter to the United Nations (UN) Information Center in the Itamaraty Palace in Rio de Janeiro on Oct. 5 opposing the continued presence of Brazilian troops in Haiti. Afterwards the activists were to hold a solidarity event with hip hop presentations in the Largo Carioca plaza in downtown Rio. The UN Security Council is expected to renew the mandate for the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), now five years old, sometime before Oct. 15.
Brazilian economist Sandra Quintela, from the Institute of Alternative Policies for the Southern Cone (Pacs), told the Brazilian activist news service Adital that there have been repeated reports of abuses and human rights violations by Brazilian soldiers against Haitians. She called Haiti a “field for experimentation” which provided Brazilian troops with training for actions in impoverished urban neighborhoods like the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. She also noted the connection of the occupation to a Sept. 17 accord between Brazil and the US encouraging Brazilian business operations in Haiti’s maquiladora sector [see Update #1005]. Maintaining UN troops in Haiti costs a total of $600 million a year, the open letter notes. “[T]his amount is more than what would be necessary to resolve the population’s fundamental problems: lack of energy, food, housing, education and employment.” (Adital 10/2/09)
In other news, on Oct. 1 activists held a demonstration, “400 Plates and Spoons on the Esplanade,” at the Chamber of Deputies building in Brasilia to support Constitutional Amendment Proposal 047/2003, which would include the right to food in the Constitution’s Article 6. Renato Maluf, president of the National Alimentary Security Council (Consea), gave the Chamber’s acting president, Marco Maia of the Workers Party (PT), a petition with more than 45,000 signatures supporting the amendment. The Senate has already passed the measure, which has also been approved by a Chamber of Deputies special committee. Supporters want the Chamber to approve the amendment in time for Oct. 16, World Food Day. (Adital 10/1/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Argentina: ex-prez charged with blocking terror blast probe
http://ww4report.com/node/7787
Argentine Folk Legend Mercedes Sosa Hospitalized - Watch Her Sing 'Gracias A La Vida'
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2140/68/
Argentina: Dubious Past? No Problem for Private Security Firms
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2142/1/
Bolivia: cocaleros clash with indigenous people
http://ww4report.com/node/7776
Peru: government discovers evidence of an "uncontacted" tribe
http://ww4report.com/node/7793
Ecuador's indigenous movement mobilizes to defend water
http://ww4report.com/node/7792
Ecuador’s Indigenous Movement Mobilizes for the Water
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2135/68/
Ecuadorians Protest New Water Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2136/1/
Ecuador: Police Attack Indigenous Protesters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2141/68/
U.S. Base Access in Colombia Prompts Increase in South American Defense Spending
https://nacla.org/node/6144
There Is Much to Do: An Interview With Hugo Chavez
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091012/grandin
Honduras Coup Regime Suspends Constitutional Rights, Closes Media, Threatens Brazil: Will Obama Admin Break Its Silence?
https://nacla.org/node/6139
Honduras: coup regime backs off from emergency decree
http://ww4report.com/node/7777
Honduras: Regime Gives Signs of Easing Up after Stiffening Stance
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2137/68/
Honduran Crisis Explodes: Persecution and Panic-Buying Under Coup Crackdown
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/09/honduran-crisis-explodes-persecution.html
NGOs and Faith Groups Call on Honduran Government: Respect Civil Liberties and Human Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2134/68/
Live from Honduras: An Interview with Berta Caceres
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2133/1/
Honduras: The threat of a Haiti-style foreign military occupation
http://links.org.au/node/1284
Recent Killings Linked to Canadian-owned Nickel Mine in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2138/1/
Guatemala: killings linked to Canadian mineral interest?
http://ww4report.com/node/7791
Chiapas: indigenous victory over mineral interest
http://ww4report.com/node/7790
Mexican environmental leader killed
http://ww4report.com/node/7785
Mexico: mothers of the disappeared march in Tijuana
http://ww4report.com/node/7784
Mexico: Is a Social Explosion in the Wings?
https://nacla.org/node/6141
Muckraking in Latin America: Upside Down World Receives Three Project Censored Awards This Year
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2139/1/
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
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