[We are unable to send out an Update this week. We'll be back next week. Below are links to stories from other sources.]
Argentina: Falklands war redux?
http://ww4report.com/node/8359
Brazil as a Key Player
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6685
Argentina: Impunity Is Not Just a Memory
https://nacla.org/node/6415
Chile’s President-Elect Starts Cashing In
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2367-chiles-president-elect-starts-cashing-in
Chile: Will Presidential CEO Modify Regional Political Scenario?
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50407
Bolivia: Evo Morales launches "decolonization of judiciary"
http://ww4report.com/node/8351
U.S. Senator: FTA With Colombia by June
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/8310-us-congressman-we-will-sign-fta-with-colombia-before-june.html
Venezuela Creates Peasant Militias, Enacts Federal Government Council
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2375-venezuela-creates-peasant-militias-enacts-federal-government-council
Venezuela’s Revolution Faces Crucial Battles
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2373-venezuelas-revolution-faces-crucial-battles
Peru: No Justice for Indians in Amazon Massacre
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2372-peru-no-justice-for-indians-in-amazon-massacre-
The Disconcerting ‘Success’ of Nicaragua’s Anti-Poverty Programs
https://nacla.org/node/6421
El Salvador: Killings Bear Hallmarks of Death Squads
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2368-el-salvador-killings-bear-hallmarks-of-death-squads
Honduras iced from Latin American summit
http://ww4report.com/node/8358
Honduras: new government, same terror
http://ww4report.com/node/8338
Mexican government tilts to Sinaloa Cartel?
http://ww4report.com/node/8357
Mexico: Celebrating Indigenous Culture, Zapotec Autonomy and Uncontaminated Corn
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2364-mexico-celebrating-indigenous-culture-zapotec-autonomy-and-uncontaminated-corn-
Beer Globalization in Latin America: When Beer in Mexico is Dutch and Chicha in Colombia is Popular
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2371-globalization-of-beer-in-latin-america-when-mexican-beer-is-dutch-and-chicha-in-colombia-is-popular
The Undermining of Haitian Health Care: Setting the Stage for Disaster
https://nacla.org/node/6427
Contractors in Haiti Readying to Profit From Disaster?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/contractors-in-haiti-readying-to-profit-from-disaster/
Monday, February 22, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
WNU #1022: Haitians Protest and Organize
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1022, February 14, 2010
1. Haiti: Capital’s Residents Protest and Organize
2. Mexico: Unions Threaten General Strike
3. Honduras: 4 Campesinos Wounded in Land Dispute
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: Capital’s Residents Protest and Organize
A heavy rain fell on Port-au-Prince for about a half hour in the early morning of Feb. 11, drenching the estimated 1.1 million people who have been sleeping outdoors or in improvised shelters since a magnitude 7.0 earthquake destroyed or seriously damaged their homes on Jan. 12. This was the first heavy rain in Haiti’s capital and the surrounding area since the quake, which occurred during the dry season. More frequent rainstorms may come as early as March, and medical experts warn of a great increase in disease if better shelters aren’t constructed in time. Relief agencies say 22,000 tents have been distributed and another 50,000 are slated to be brought into the country; the Haitian official in charge of temporary shelter, Charles Clermont, said on Feb. 11 that he expected 400,000 tarps by Feb. 20. International institutions estimate that there are 310 spontaneous encampments in the Port-au-Prince area.
By around 6 am on Feb. 11 many residents had joined demonstrations denouncing the government of President René Préval for its failures in organizing relief. Préval “sleeps peacefully while the people are soaked,” they chanted. (Haiti Press Network 2/11/10; AlterPresse (Haiti) 2/11/10; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 2/11/10; Le Devoir (Montreal) 2/12/10, some from AFP) [Problems with food distribution provoked similar protests during the two weeks before; see Update #1021].
In at least one encampment, people have responded to lack of effective measures by the government and the relief agencies by “looking out for themselves,” according to the Associated Press wire service. Residents in a dry riverbed in the Marassa neighborhood, not far from the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in the north of the capital, have organized themselves into two communities. Each community has a security committee which watches out for the residents and even issues them ID tickets. (AP 2/11/10)
Although it is not clear from press reports how many communities have formed such committees, in a Feb. 7 statement the leftist labor organizing group Batay Ouvriye (Workers’ Struggle) called for the creation of more. Area residents should organize “autonomous committees to receive [the] aid and distribute it in the most effective manner,” the group advised. “The committees should build coordination between themselves, in a dynamic manner.” According to the statement, the failures of the government and the international community demonstrate once again that “[i]f we want to realize our own interests, we have no other choice--we need another state. We need our own state.” (Adital (Brazil) 2/11/10); BO statement 2/7/10 (in English, in Spanish))
On Feb. 11 the Metal Workers Union of São José dos Campos and the Region, an industrial center in Brazil’s São Paulo state, announced that the General Motors workers there had agreed to donate 1% of their pay to Batay Ouvriye. Other metal workers in the area have also donated: all together, more than 10,000 of the union’s members have given a total of about 380,000 reais ($204,740). “This money will be put directly into the hands of the workers,” union president Vivaldo Moreira Araújo said. “We’re not going to give anything to military troops or to the government. This is class solidarity to help the Haitian people reorganize themselves and reconstruct a free nation without imperialist occupation.” (Sindicato dos Metalurgicos de São José dos Campos e Região website 2/11/10)
*2. Mexico: Unions Threaten General Strike
On Feb. 14 a group of Mexican unions announced their intention to hold a general strike in 25 of the country’s 32 states on Mar. 16 if the government attempts to remove striking workers from the giant Cananea copper mine in Sonora state. Some 1,400 workers in Section 65 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) have maintained a strike at the facility—which is owned by the powerful Grupo México--since July 30, 2007.
Mexico's Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JFCA) declared the strike illegal last April, but a judge issued a temporary injunction suspending the JFCA decision [see Update #987]. On Feb. 11 this year, the First Circuit's Second Collegiate Labor Tribunal upheld the original JFCA decision, opening the way for Grupo México to fire all the workers and have the police seize the mine.
The SNTMMSRM is backed by unions in the independent National Workers Union (UNT), including the Telephone Workers Union of the Mexican Republic (STRM). The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), representing some 44,000 Mexico City area electrical workers who were suddenly laid off last October, has allied itself closely with the Section 65 strikers [see Update #1020]. The SME has called for “widespread civil disobedience” along with the general strike as an “overwhelming response to the federal government and its policies.” (El Universal (Mexico) 2/14/10; La Jornada (Mexico) 2/14/10; Prensa Latina 2/14/10)
*3. Honduras: 4 Campesinos Wounded in Land Dispute
Four campesinos were wounded, two with bullets, on Jan. 27 when police and private security guards attacked members of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) at the Río Aguán in Trujillo municipality, near La Ceiba in northern Honduras. Antonio Estrada was shot in his left eye, and Rosendo Reyes was hit in the leg; both were hospitalized in La Ceiba. The incident occurred the day Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa of the National Party (PN) began his four-year presidential term [see Update #1020].
The MUCA members were trying to reoccupy land which they had been forced to leave in January. On Jan. 8 police arrested 30 campesinos while trying to remove them from land they were occupying. Some 150 police agents and 100 soldiers returned on Jan. 14 to remove the campesinos. The land has been the subject of a dispute between MUCA and three landowners, Miguel Facussé, René Morales and Reinaldo Canales, since 2006. MUCA charges that the landowners acquired the land illegally, since the National Agrarian Institute (INA) didn’t authorize the sale, and that they are violating the agrarian reform law by not using the land productively. In a press conference on Jan. 13, Francisco Funes, INA director in the government of former José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2010), said that the power of big landowners and repression against campesinos had increased since the military coup against Zelaya on June 28, 2009. (Adital 1/29/10 from MUCA 1/27/10; Vos el Soberano 2/14/10) [One of the landowners, Miguel Facussé, is the uncle of former president Carlos Flores Facussé (1998-2002) of the Liberal Party (PL), the owner of the daily La Tribuna and a strong supporter of the coup.]
On Feb. 11 the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat, a coalition of grassroots organizations that formed after the June 28 coup, issued a communiqué charging that President Lobo Sosa was planning to lay off a large number of public employees and that the National Association of Public Employees of Honduras (ANDEPH) had received threats that its current leadership might be replaced. The Lobo administration was on its way to “intensifying the application of the neoliberal model, which would allow [big business owners] to go on concentrating wealth at the cost of [labor] exploitation, and the theft and destruction of natural resources.” (Communiqué # 47, 2/11/10)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
Argentina: 'To Resist Is to Survive'
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5541/to_resist_is_to_survive/
Bolivia to launch Coca Colla —this one is really the real thing
http://ww4report.com/node/8332
Bolivia to launch Túpac Katari satellite with Chinese aid
http://ww4report.com/node/8331
Ecuador: Chevron Hires 12 PR Firms
http://www.naturalnews.com/028108_Chevron_Ecuador.html
Students as Spies: The Deep Politics of U.S.-Colombian Relations
https://nacla.org/node/6398
Colombia's Uribe Signs Security Pact with Honduras' Lobo
http://laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=351426&CategoryId=23558
Colombia: Magazine Closure Deals Major Blow to Investigative Reporting
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2360-colombia-magazine-closure-deals-major-blow-to-investigative-reporting
Colombia: Stop Abuses by Paramilitaries’ Successor Groups
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2352-colombia-stop-abuses-by-paramilitaries-successor-groups-
Colombia: deadly FARC ambush on gubernatorial candidate
http://ww4report.com/node/8337
184 Communes Currently in Formation in Venezuela
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2355-184-communes-currently-in-formation-in-venezuela
Costa Rica: Chinchilla to Join Club of Women Presidents
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2354-costa-rica-chinchilla-to-join-club-of-women-presidents
El Salvador: Appalling Situation in the Export Processing Zones
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2356-el-salvador-appalling-situation-in-the-export-processing-zones
History Repeats: Committee of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared of Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2359-history-repeats-committee-of-relatives-of-the-detained-disappeared-of-honduras
Interview: Tortured, Exiled Honduran Journalist Recalls His Experiences
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2362--interview-tortured-exiled-honduran-journalist-recalls-his-experiences
Mexico: Consumers Join Electrical Workers
https://nacla.org/node/6413
Ciudad Juarez: Murder Capital of the World
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6681
Ciudad Juárez marches against narco violence, militarization
http://ww4report.com/node/8333
After the Earthquake: One Thousand Tents for Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2357-one-thousand-tents-for-haiti
Humanitarian aid for Haiti — Not troops and occupation!
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/two-guest-articles-on-haiti/
The "Shock Doctrine" for Haiti
http://socialistworker.org/2010/02/08/shock-doctrine-for-haiti
Victims of Free Trade "Voodoo" (Haiti)
http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/27/free-trade-voodoo
From the NACLA Archives:
Haiti's Nightmare and the Lessons of History
https://nacla.org/node/6408
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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #1022, February 14, 2010
1. Haiti: Capital’s Residents Protest and Organize
2. Mexico: Unions Threaten General Strike
3. Honduras: 4 Campesinos Wounded in Land Dispute
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: Capital’s Residents Protest and Organize
A heavy rain fell on Port-au-Prince for about a half hour in the early morning of Feb. 11, drenching the estimated 1.1 million people who have been sleeping outdoors or in improvised shelters since a magnitude 7.0 earthquake destroyed or seriously damaged their homes on Jan. 12. This was the first heavy rain in Haiti’s capital and the surrounding area since the quake, which occurred during the dry season. More frequent rainstorms may come as early as March, and medical experts warn of a great increase in disease if better shelters aren’t constructed in time. Relief agencies say 22,000 tents have been distributed and another 50,000 are slated to be brought into the country; the Haitian official in charge of temporary shelter, Charles Clermont, said on Feb. 11 that he expected 400,000 tarps by Feb. 20. International institutions estimate that there are 310 spontaneous encampments in the Port-au-Prince area.
By around 6 am on Feb. 11 many residents had joined demonstrations denouncing the government of President René Préval for its failures in organizing relief. Préval “sleeps peacefully while the people are soaked,” they chanted. (Haiti Press Network 2/11/10; AlterPresse (Haiti) 2/11/10; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 2/11/10; Le Devoir (Montreal) 2/12/10, some from AFP) [Problems with food distribution provoked similar protests during the two weeks before; see Update #1021].
In at least one encampment, people have responded to lack of effective measures by the government and the relief agencies by “looking out for themselves,” according to the Associated Press wire service. Residents in a dry riverbed in the Marassa neighborhood, not far from the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in the north of the capital, have organized themselves into two communities. Each community has a security committee which watches out for the residents and even issues them ID tickets. (AP 2/11/10)
Although it is not clear from press reports how many communities have formed such committees, in a Feb. 7 statement the leftist labor organizing group Batay Ouvriye (Workers’ Struggle) called for the creation of more. Area residents should organize “autonomous committees to receive [the] aid and distribute it in the most effective manner,” the group advised. “The committees should build coordination between themselves, in a dynamic manner.” According to the statement, the failures of the government and the international community demonstrate once again that “[i]f we want to realize our own interests, we have no other choice--we need another state. We need our own state.” (Adital (Brazil) 2/11/10); BO statement 2/7/10 (in English, in Spanish))
On Feb. 11 the Metal Workers Union of São José dos Campos and the Region, an industrial center in Brazil’s São Paulo state, announced that the General Motors workers there had agreed to donate 1% of their pay to Batay Ouvriye. Other metal workers in the area have also donated: all together, more than 10,000 of the union’s members have given a total of about 380,000 reais ($204,740). “This money will be put directly into the hands of the workers,” union president Vivaldo Moreira Araújo said. “We’re not going to give anything to military troops or to the government. This is class solidarity to help the Haitian people reorganize themselves and reconstruct a free nation without imperialist occupation.” (Sindicato dos Metalurgicos de São José dos Campos e Região website 2/11/10)
*2. Mexico: Unions Threaten General Strike
On Feb. 14 a group of Mexican unions announced their intention to hold a general strike in 25 of the country’s 32 states on Mar. 16 if the government attempts to remove striking workers from the giant Cananea copper mine in Sonora state. Some 1,400 workers in Section 65 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) have maintained a strike at the facility—which is owned by the powerful Grupo México--since July 30, 2007.
Mexico's Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JFCA) declared the strike illegal last April, but a judge issued a temporary injunction suspending the JFCA decision [see Update #987]. On Feb. 11 this year, the First Circuit's Second Collegiate Labor Tribunal upheld the original JFCA decision, opening the way for Grupo México to fire all the workers and have the police seize the mine.
The SNTMMSRM is backed by unions in the independent National Workers Union (UNT), including the Telephone Workers Union of the Mexican Republic (STRM). The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), representing some 44,000 Mexico City area electrical workers who were suddenly laid off last October, has allied itself closely with the Section 65 strikers [see Update #1020]. The SME has called for “widespread civil disobedience” along with the general strike as an “overwhelming response to the federal government and its policies.” (El Universal (Mexico) 2/14/10; La Jornada (Mexico) 2/14/10; Prensa Latina 2/14/10)
*3. Honduras: 4 Campesinos Wounded in Land Dispute
Four campesinos were wounded, two with bullets, on Jan. 27 when police and private security guards attacked members of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) at the Río Aguán in Trujillo municipality, near La Ceiba in northern Honduras. Antonio Estrada was shot in his left eye, and Rosendo Reyes was hit in the leg; both were hospitalized in La Ceiba. The incident occurred the day Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa of the National Party (PN) began his four-year presidential term [see Update #1020].
The MUCA members were trying to reoccupy land which they had been forced to leave in January. On Jan. 8 police arrested 30 campesinos while trying to remove them from land they were occupying. Some 150 police agents and 100 soldiers returned on Jan. 14 to remove the campesinos. The land has been the subject of a dispute between MUCA and three landowners, Miguel Facussé, René Morales and Reinaldo Canales, since 2006. MUCA charges that the landowners acquired the land illegally, since the National Agrarian Institute (INA) didn’t authorize the sale, and that they are violating the agrarian reform law by not using the land productively. In a press conference on Jan. 13, Francisco Funes, INA director in the government of former José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2010), said that the power of big landowners and repression against campesinos had increased since the military coup against Zelaya on June 28, 2009. (Adital 1/29/10 from MUCA 1/27/10; Vos el Soberano 2/14/10) [One of the landowners, Miguel Facussé, is the uncle of former president Carlos Flores Facussé (1998-2002) of the Liberal Party (PL), the owner of the daily La Tribuna and a strong supporter of the coup.]
On Feb. 11 the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat, a coalition of grassroots organizations that formed after the June 28 coup, issued a communiqué charging that President Lobo Sosa was planning to lay off a large number of public employees and that the National Association of Public Employees of Honduras (ANDEPH) had received threats that its current leadership might be replaced. The Lobo administration was on its way to “intensifying the application of the neoliberal model, which would allow [big business owners] to go on concentrating wealth at the cost of [labor] exploitation, and the theft and destruction of natural resources.” (Communiqué # 47, 2/11/10)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti
Argentina: 'To Resist Is to Survive'
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5541/to_resist_is_to_survive/
Bolivia to launch Coca Colla —this one is really the real thing
http://ww4report.com/node/8332
Bolivia to launch Túpac Katari satellite with Chinese aid
http://ww4report.com/node/8331
Ecuador: Chevron Hires 12 PR Firms
http://www.naturalnews.com/028108_Chevron_Ecuador.html
Students as Spies: The Deep Politics of U.S.-Colombian Relations
https://nacla.org/node/6398
Colombia's Uribe Signs Security Pact with Honduras' Lobo
http://laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=351426&CategoryId=23558
Colombia: Magazine Closure Deals Major Blow to Investigative Reporting
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2360-colombia-magazine-closure-deals-major-blow-to-investigative-reporting
Colombia: Stop Abuses by Paramilitaries’ Successor Groups
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2352-colombia-stop-abuses-by-paramilitaries-successor-groups-
Colombia: deadly FARC ambush on gubernatorial candidate
http://ww4report.com/node/8337
184 Communes Currently in Formation in Venezuela
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2355-184-communes-currently-in-formation-in-venezuela
Costa Rica: Chinchilla to Join Club of Women Presidents
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2354-costa-rica-chinchilla-to-join-club-of-women-presidents
El Salvador: Appalling Situation in the Export Processing Zones
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2356-el-salvador-appalling-situation-in-the-export-processing-zones
History Repeats: Committee of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared of Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2359-history-repeats-committee-of-relatives-of-the-detained-disappeared-of-honduras
Interview: Tortured, Exiled Honduran Journalist Recalls His Experiences
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2362--interview-tortured-exiled-honduran-journalist-recalls-his-experiences
Mexico: Consumers Join Electrical Workers
https://nacla.org/node/6413
Ciudad Juarez: Murder Capital of the World
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6681
Ciudad Juárez marches against narco violence, militarization
http://ww4report.com/node/8333
After the Earthquake: One Thousand Tents for Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2357-one-thousand-tents-for-haiti
Humanitarian aid for Haiti — Not troops and occupation!
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/two-guest-articles-on-haiti/
The "Shock Doctrine" for Haiti
http://socialistworker.org/2010/02/08/shock-doctrine-for-haiti
Victims of Free Trade "Voodoo" (Haiti)
http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/27/free-trade-voodoo
From the NACLA Archives:
Haiti's Nightmare and the Lessons of History
https://nacla.org/node/6408
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. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
WNU #1021: Groups Condemn US Militarization of Region
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1021, February 7, 2010
1. Latin America: Groups Condemn US Militarization
2. Haiti: Quake Victims Protest Food Distribution
3. Colombia: 40 Unionists Murdered in 2009
4. Puerto Rico: Activist Pleads Guilty in Wells Fargo Case
5. Links to alternative sources on: “Drug War,” Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, St. Lucia
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: Groups Condemn US Militarization
Meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Jan. 24-29 for the 10th annual World Social Forum, 24 Latin American social organizations issued a statement denouncing what they called a “new, aggressive escalation of imperialism.” The groups charged that there was an “expansion of the US military presence in the region” that “seeks, in addition to intimidating the political transformation processes in the region, to position [US] military force in strategic areas of great natural wealth.”
The statement cited the creation of seven new military bases with US participation in Colombia; Panama’s agreement to set up 11 bases, also with US involvement [see Update #1018]; and the “military invasion in the name of humanitarian aid after the catastrophe that occurred in Haiti,” a reference to the deployment of thousands of US troops to Port-au-Prince in response to a magnitude 7.0 earthquake there on Jan. 12. Further evidence of US militarization of the region includes, according to the statement, the reactivation of the US Navy’s Fourth Fleet in the South Atlantic and Caribbean, and “coup initiatives, such as occurred in Honduras [on June 28, 2009] with the logistical support of the US military base in Palmerola.”
The groups signing the statement included Vía Campesina (Campesino Way), World March of Women, Jubilee South, Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST), the Honduran National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat and a number of national and regional labor and grassroots organizations. (Adital 2/4/10; EFE 1/29/10)
“Humanitarian aid, yes! Military occupation, no!” was one of the slogans when Argentine leftist parties and groups marched in Buenos Aires on Feb. 5 from the Plaza Italia to the US embassy to protest the presence of foreign troops in Haiti, both US troops and the 9,000-member Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Argentina supplies hundreds of the MINUSTAH soldiers. (Adital 2/4/10; Terra 2/5/10 from Noticias Argentinas)
*2. Haiti: Quake Victims Protest Food Distribution
On Feb. 3 several hundred Haitians marched in Pétionville, a generally well-to-do suburb southeast of Port-au-Prince, to protest what they said was corruption in the distribution of food to survivors of a Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the capital and surrounding cities. The demonstrators said Pétionville mayor Claire Lydie Parent was illegally charging 150 gourdes (about $3.77) each for the coupons now being used to organize distribution of food. The protest began in front of the military academy on the Route de Frères and then moved to an encampment outside the mayor’s office.
Port-au-Prince metropolitan area residents charge that aid distribution has been slow and chaotic. Although tons of food have come to Haiti from international relief efforts, many survivors had received little or no aid more than three weeks after the earthquake. On Feb. 3 US marines were guarding long lines of hundreds of people waiting in the hot sun outside food distribution centers in Pétionville, in the capital and in the western suburb of Carrefour. To keep men from taking all the food, aid agencies had started limiting distribution to women, but the Haitian media noted that the women seemed exhausted after transporting the heavy bags of rice.
A week earlier, a similar protest broke out in the city of Léogane, west of Port-au-Prince, near the quake’s epicenter.
The protests in Pétionville resumed on Feb. 7 as demonstrators, mostly women, banged on plastic buckets and waved branches and palm fronds outside the mayor’s office. "I’m hungry, I’m dying of hunger,” a protester said. “Lydie Parent keeps the rice and doesn't give us anything. They never go distribute where we live. ” "If the police shoot at us, we’ll burn everything," the protesters chanted, but the police didn’t intervene. (Haiti Press Network 2/3/10; Radio Métropole 2/4/10; Reuters 2/7/10)
*3. Colombia: 40 Unionists Murdered in 2009
There continues to be a “systematic policy of violation of human rights, of violation of union rights” in Colombia, Alberto Vanegas, head of the Human Rights and Solidarity Department of the country’s main labor federation, the Unitary Workers Central (CUT), charged on Feb. 4 at the start of a two-day conference in the northwestern city of Medellín in Antioquia department. According to the union movement, 40 union leaders and activists were killed in Colombia during 2009, a slight improvement over the 49 killed the year before. Vanegas told the Spanish wire service EFE that "60% of the trade unionists killed worldwide are Colombians.”
“More than a number, this is a whole genocide against the union movement,” Vanegas said. According to the CUT, 2,721 unionists have been murdered since 1986; 573 of the murders have occurred since August 2002, when current Colombian president Álvaro Uribe took office. Just 2% of the murders have been punished, the unions charge. Some 150 people attended the conference, the Second National Meeting of Victims of Anti-Union Violence; about half were relatives of murdered union members, while the rest included representatives of human rights groups and United Nations agencies. The first conference was held in 2007 in the northern city of Barranquilla. (EFE 2/4/10; Latin American Herald Tribune 2/4/10 from EFE)
*4. Puerto Rico: Activist Pleads Guilty in Wells Fargo Case
On Feb. 5 Puerto Rican independence activist Avelino González Claudio, a suspected leader of the rebel Popular Boricua Army (EPB)-Macheteros, pleaded guilty in US District Court in Hartford, Connecticut, to charges in the 1983 armed robbery of $7.1 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, one of the largest robberies in US history. González Claudio, arrested in Puerto Rico in 2008 after 22 years in hiding [see Update #934], was charged with conspiracy to commit robbery and transportation of stolen money out of the country, allegedly to finance Machetero activities. According to US intelligence, most of the money ended up in Cuba.
The maximum sentence is 15 years, but in a plea agreement US attorneys recommended a seven-year sentence and a fine not to exceed $10,000. González Claudio was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease while in prison in Connecticut. His lawyer, James Bergenn, charges that correctional authorities refused to provide González Claudio with medicine until this January. The Hartford Courant reported that the defendant “appeared gaunt and emaciated” while in court, “and the disease had taken such hold that he was barely able to speak.” Sentencing is scheduled for later this year.
Two other suspects have never been captured: González Claudio’s brother Norberto and Víctor Gerena, a Wells Fargo driver at the time of the robbery. (Hartford Courant 2/5/10 (only 2/6/10 version is on line); Primera Hora (Puerto Rico) 2/5/10 from AP)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: “Drug War,” Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, St. Lucia
Drug Surveillance Drones Frequent Flyers in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2344-drug-surveillance-drones-frequent-flyers-in-latin-america
High School Diploma Programs in Argentina: Learning on the Move
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/2348-high-school-diploma-programs-in-argentina-learning-on-the-move
Bolivia inaugurates indigenous autonomy
http://ww4report.com/node/8317
Judge: missionaries' suit can proceed against Chiquita in Colombia killings
http://ww4report.com/node/8313
Colombia: Stop Abuses by Paramilitaries’ Successor Groups
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2352-colombia-stop-abuses-by-paramilitaries-successor-groups-
Colombia: VP called to respond to "parapolitics" allegations
http://ww4report.com/node/8323
US-Colombia joint operation nabs suspected Mexican capos
http://ww4report.com/node/8322
Four Injured in Air Force Bombing in Northern Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2349-four-injured-in-air-force-bombing-in-northern-colombia
US Intelligence Report Classifies Venezuela as “Anti-US Leader”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2351-us-intelligence-report-classifies-venezuela-as-anti-us-leader
El Salvador: Activists Link Mining Company to Recent Murders
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2343-el-salvador-activists-link-mining-company-to-recent-murders
Salvadoran Anti-Mining Activists Risk Their Lives by Taking On ‘Free Trade’
https://nacla.org/node/6389
Honduras names "Truth Commission" —as rights abuses continue
http://ww4report.com/node/8319
Honduras: A Lobo in Sheep's Clothing?
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5509
Canadian Mining and Popular Resistance in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2345-canadian-mining-and-popular-resistance-in-honduras
Guatemala: anti-mine activist detained, "un-arrested"
http://ww4report.com/node/8310
Guatemala: municipal trade unionist murdered
http://ww4report.com/node/8309
Mexico: massacres in Mazatlán, Michoacán
http://ww4report.com/node/8318
Mexican politicos urge drastic drug war measures
http://ww4report.com/node/8311
White House asks Congress for $410 million under Merida Initiative (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/8312
Haiti: After the Catastrophe, What Are the Perspectives?
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/haiti040210.html
Haiti Earthquake : A human economic seism has been shaking Haiti particularly since the Duvaliers
http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article9237
Haitian school hoping to reopen with a little help from Tribeca
http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_354/haitianschool.html
Unnatural Devastation in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2350--unnatural-devastation-in-haiti-
Haiti: The Impacts of Militarized Aid
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/2346-the-impacts-of-militarized-aid
"Haitian Communities Need to Be Involved in the Distribution"
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson060210.html
Somali pirates to aid Haitian earthquake victims?
http://ww4report.com/node/8308
St. Lucia: Life After the Lomé Convention
https://nacla.org/node/6392
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 #1021, February 7, 2010
1. Latin America: Groups Condemn US Militarization
2. Haiti: Quake Victims Protest Food Distribution
3. Colombia: 40 Unionists Murdered in 2009
4. Puerto Rico: Activist Pleads Guilty in Wells Fargo Case
5. Links to alternative sources on: “Drug War,” Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, St. Lucia
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: Groups Condemn US Militarization
Meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Jan. 24-29 for the 10th annual World Social Forum, 24 Latin American social organizations issued a statement denouncing what they called a “new, aggressive escalation of imperialism.” The groups charged that there was an “expansion of the US military presence in the region” that “seeks, in addition to intimidating the political transformation processes in the region, to position [US] military force in strategic areas of great natural wealth.”
The statement cited the creation of seven new military bases with US participation in Colombia; Panama’s agreement to set up 11 bases, also with US involvement [see Update #1018]; and the “military invasion in the name of humanitarian aid after the catastrophe that occurred in Haiti,” a reference to the deployment of thousands of US troops to Port-au-Prince in response to a magnitude 7.0 earthquake there on Jan. 12. Further evidence of US militarization of the region includes, according to the statement, the reactivation of the US Navy’s Fourth Fleet in the South Atlantic and Caribbean, and “coup initiatives, such as occurred in Honduras [on June 28, 2009] with the logistical support of the US military base in Palmerola.”
The groups signing the statement included Vía Campesina (Campesino Way), World March of Women, Jubilee South, Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST), the Honduran National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat and a number of national and regional labor and grassroots organizations. (Adital 2/4/10; EFE 1/29/10)
“Humanitarian aid, yes! Military occupation, no!” was one of the slogans when Argentine leftist parties and groups marched in Buenos Aires on Feb. 5 from the Plaza Italia to the US embassy to protest the presence of foreign troops in Haiti, both US troops and the 9,000-member Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Argentina supplies hundreds of the MINUSTAH soldiers. (Adital 2/4/10; Terra 2/5/10 from Noticias Argentinas)
*2. Haiti: Quake Victims Protest Food Distribution
On Feb. 3 several hundred Haitians marched in Pétionville, a generally well-to-do suburb southeast of Port-au-Prince, to protest what they said was corruption in the distribution of food to survivors of a Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the capital and surrounding cities. The demonstrators said Pétionville mayor Claire Lydie Parent was illegally charging 150 gourdes (about $3.77) each for the coupons now being used to organize distribution of food. The protest began in front of the military academy on the Route de Frères and then moved to an encampment outside the mayor’s office.
Port-au-Prince metropolitan area residents charge that aid distribution has been slow and chaotic. Although tons of food have come to Haiti from international relief efforts, many survivors had received little or no aid more than three weeks after the earthquake. On Feb. 3 US marines were guarding long lines of hundreds of people waiting in the hot sun outside food distribution centers in Pétionville, in the capital and in the western suburb of Carrefour. To keep men from taking all the food, aid agencies had started limiting distribution to women, but the Haitian media noted that the women seemed exhausted after transporting the heavy bags of rice.
A week earlier, a similar protest broke out in the city of Léogane, west of Port-au-Prince, near the quake’s epicenter.
The protests in Pétionville resumed on Feb. 7 as demonstrators, mostly women, banged on plastic buckets and waved branches and palm fronds outside the mayor’s office. "I’m hungry, I’m dying of hunger,” a protester said. “Lydie Parent keeps the rice and doesn't give us anything. They never go distribute where we live. ” "If the police shoot at us, we’ll burn everything," the protesters chanted, but the police didn’t intervene. (Haiti Press Network 2/3/10; Radio Métropole 2/4/10; Reuters 2/7/10)
*3. Colombia: 40 Unionists Murdered in 2009
There continues to be a “systematic policy of violation of human rights, of violation of union rights” in Colombia, Alberto Vanegas, head of the Human Rights and Solidarity Department of the country’s main labor federation, the Unitary Workers Central (CUT), charged on Feb. 4 at the start of a two-day conference in the northwestern city of Medellín in Antioquia department. According to the union movement, 40 union leaders and activists were killed in Colombia during 2009, a slight improvement over the 49 killed the year before. Vanegas told the Spanish wire service EFE that "60% of the trade unionists killed worldwide are Colombians.”
“More than a number, this is a whole genocide against the union movement,” Vanegas said. According to the CUT, 2,721 unionists have been murdered since 1986; 573 of the murders have occurred since August 2002, when current Colombian president Álvaro Uribe took office. Just 2% of the murders have been punished, the unions charge. Some 150 people attended the conference, the Second National Meeting of Victims of Anti-Union Violence; about half were relatives of murdered union members, while the rest included representatives of human rights groups and United Nations agencies. The first conference was held in 2007 in the northern city of Barranquilla. (EFE 2/4/10; Latin American Herald Tribune 2/4/10 from EFE)
*4. Puerto Rico: Activist Pleads Guilty in Wells Fargo Case
On Feb. 5 Puerto Rican independence activist Avelino González Claudio, a suspected leader of the rebel Popular Boricua Army (EPB)-Macheteros, pleaded guilty in US District Court in Hartford, Connecticut, to charges in the 1983 armed robbery of $7.1 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, one of the largest robberies in US history. González Claudio, arrested in Puerto Rico in 2008 after 22 years in hiding [see Update #934], was charged with conspiracy to commit robbery and transportation of stolen money out of the country, allegedly to finance Machetero activities. According to US intelligence, most of the money ended up in Cuba.
The maximum sentence is 15 years, but in a plea agreement US attorneys recommended a seven-year sentence and a fine not to exceed $10,000. González Claudio was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease while in prison in Connecticut. His lawyer, James Bergenn, charges that correctional authorities refused to provide González Claudio with medicine until this January. The Hartford Courant reported that the defendant “appeared gaunt and emaciated” while in court, “and the disease had taken such hold that he was barely able to speak.” Sentencing is scheduled for later this year.
Two other suspects have never been captured: González Claudio’s brother Norberto and Víctor Gerena, a Wells Fargo driver at the time of the robbery. (Hartford Courant 2/5/10 (only 2/6/10 version is on line); Primera Hora (Puerto Rico) 2/5/10 from AP)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: “Drug War,” Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, St. Lucia
Drug Surveillance Drones Frequent Flyers in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2344-drug-surveillance-drones-frequent-flyers-in-latin-america
High School Diploma Programs in Argentina: Learning on the Move
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/2348-high-school-diploma-programs-in-argentina-learning-on-the-move
Bolivia inaugurates indigenous autonomy
http://ww4report.com/node/8317
Judge: missionaries' suit can proceed against Chiquita in Colombia killings
http://ww4report.com/node/8313
Colombia: Stop Abuses by Paramilitaries’ Successor Groups
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2352-colombia-stop-abuses-by-paramilitaries-successor-groups-
Colombia: VP called to respond to "parapolitics" allegations
http://ww4report.com/node/8323
US-Colombia joint operation nabs suspected Mexican capos
http://ww4report.com/node/8322
Four Injured in Air Force Bombing in Northern Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2349-four-injured-in-air-force-bombing-in-northern-colombia
US Intelligence Report Classifies Venezuela as “Anti-US Leader”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2351-us-intelligence-report-classifies-venezuela-as-anti-us-leader
El Salvador: Activists Link Mining Company to Recent Murders
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2343-el-salvador-activists-link-mining-company-to-recent-murders
Salvadoran Anti-Mining Activists Risk Their Lives by Taking On ‘Free Trade’
https://nacla.org/node/6389
Honduras names "Truth Commission" —as rights abuses continue
http://ww4report.com/node/8319
Honduras: A Lobo in Sheep's Clothing?
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5509
Canadian Mining and Popular Resistance in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2345-canadian-mining-and-popular-resistance-in-honduras
Guatemala: anti-mine activist detained, "un-arrested"
http://ww4report.com/node/8310
Guatemala: municipal trade unionist murdered
http://ww4report.com/node/8309
Mexico: massacres in Mazatlán, Michoacán
http://ww4report.com/node/8318
Mexican politicos urge drastic drug war measures
http://ww4report.com/node/8311
White House asks Congress for $410 million under Merida Initiative (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/8312
Haiti: After the Catastrophe, What Are the Perspectives?
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/haiti040210.html
Haiti Earthquake : A human economic seism has been shaking Haiti particularly since the Duvaliers
http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article9237
Haitian school hoping to reopen with a little help from Tribeca
http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_354/haitianschool.html
Unnatural Devastation in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2350--unnatural-devastation-in-haiti-
Haiti: The Impacts of Militarized Aid
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/2346-the-impacts-of-militarized-aid
"Haitian Communities Need to Be Involved in the Distribution"
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson060210.html
Somali pirates to aid Haitian earthquake victims?
http://ww4report.com/node/8308
St. Lucia: Life After the Lomé Convention
https://nacla.org/node/6392
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, February 2, 2010
WNU #1020: Mexican Electrical Workers Start Sit-In
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1020, January 31, 2010
1. Mexico: Electrical Workers Start Sit-In
2. Honduras: Zelaya Goes, the Struggle Remains
3. US: Maximum Sentence for SOA Protesters
4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US
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: Electrical Workers Start Sit-In
In Mexico’s first major demonstration of 2010, on Jan. 29 thousands of unionists and campesinos marched from the Angel of Independence in Mexico City to the city’s main plaza, the Zócalo, continuing a tradition of annual protests against the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the federal government’s neoliberal economic policies. The demonstration was focused on the high cost of living, and the demands included an emergency pay raise to counter the effects of the world economic crisis. Another goal was to show support for the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), whose 44,000 active members were laid off when President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s administration suddenly liquidated the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10 [see Update #1015].
The march was led by the SME; the National Campesino Confederation (CNC), which is close to the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI); and the National Workers Union (UNT), Mexico’s second-largest union federation. There was also a protest in Cuernavaca, Morelos, south of Mexico City, where more than 2,000 people rallied in the main plaza; participants were largely SME members and their families. Hundreds of teachers from the militant Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) and members of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) held a march and rally in Oaxaca city, capital of the southern state of Oaxaca. In the southeastern state of Chiapas, some 200 members of the Independent Regional Campesino Movement blocked the Pan American highway for four hours.
Late-January protests against NAFTA started with a demonstration in Mexico City in 2003 [see Update #933]. This year—the bicentennial of Mexico’s war of independence from Spain and the centennial of the country’s social revolution—the emphasis was on bringing together the struggles of unionists, campesinos and other sectors. The march’s title was “Build Unity Among Those Below.” At the conclusion, SME general secretary Martín Esparza Flores announced that the electrical workers were starting an encampment in the Zócalo as an open-ended protest to press their fight against the layoffs. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/29/10 from Notimex, 1/30/10; La Crónica de Hoy (Mexico) 1/30/10)
By Jan. 31 the SME’s encampment occupied about half the plaza. At a rally that day, Esparza said the protesters would hold workshops in the Zócalo, work on outreach and prepare strategies for a “social congress” to be held on Feb. 5 in the central state of Querétaro. The encampment would grow, he told the crowd. Sergio Tolano, secretary of Section 65 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM), announced that workers from his local and the SME would do a joint educational tour in northern Mexico. Section 65 represents miners at the giant Cananea copper mine in Sonora state, where workers have been on strike for more than two years [see Update #998]. Two SME officials reported on their visit to the US, where they said they’d received offers of support from the AFL-CIO and unions in San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento and other California cities. (LJ 2/1/10)
Some SME members have been carrying out more militant actions without the union’s support. In a number of places around Mexico City, workers have set up barricades to prevent the removal of equipment from LFC installations by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the country’s other government-owned energy utility; when President Calderón liquidated the LFC in October, he put the company under the CFE’s control. On Jan. 8 the police arrested three of the protesters, charging them with “crimes against the nation’s consumption and wealth.” The union has called on the militants to remove the barricades. (Narco News 1/14/10)
*2. Honduras: Zelaya Goes, the Struggle Remains
Thousands of Hondurans marched from Tegucigalpa to the nearby Toncontín International Airport on Jan. 27 to send off deposed president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales on the last day of his official four-year term. Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup on June 28, 2009 and flown out of the country, but he managed to return to Honduras secretly in September and took asylum in the Brazilian embassy, under threat of arrest by the de facto regime that had seized power [see Update #1005]. Incoming president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa arranged for Zelaya to fly to the Dominican Republic on Jan. 27 without interference from the military.
The website Habla Honduras reported that 350,000 coup opponents were at the airport for the farewell, but most sources didn’t give a crowd estimate. The Guadalajara, Mexico daily El Informador, apparently using a report from the Agence France Presse wire service, said simply that this was one of the largest opposition demonstrations since the coup.
Before leaving, Zelaya arranged for his presidential sash—which the outgoing president normally gives to his or her successor—to be turned over to three members of the opposition: labor leader Juan Barahano, a little boy and a grandmother. The crowd chanted slogans calling for a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the 1982 Honduran Constitution, a popular demand that apparently helped trigger the coup. Someone created a poster for the occasion with a cartoon of Zelaya leaving and saying: “I’m going…but the struggle remains.” (Honduras Habla 1/29/10; Vos el Soberano 1/27/10; El Informador 1/27/10)
Honduran labor and grassroots organizations responded to the June 28 coup by coming together in a coalition, the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat. In mid-January some 80 of the resistance leaders, including Juan Barahona, Carlos H. Reyes, Rafael Alegría, Bertha Cáceres and Carlos Eduardo Reina, met in the small city of Siguatepeque and reaffirmed the need to maintain unity and not be divided by party politics. In a Jan. 7 communiqué, the National Front reiterated its commitment to continuing the struggle for the Constituent Assembly and denounced the Honduran oligarchy’s “blatant intention to destroy the social conquests that have cost so much to the organized popular sectors.” Among the oligarchy’s plans, according to the National Front, is a reduction of the real minimum wage; the repeal of a law for teachers’ labor rights; an end to free public education; the devaluation of the national currency, the lempira; and privatization of state enterprises and public employees’ pensions.
The US-based Honduras Coup 2009 blog wrote on Jan. 22: “While much of the English-language press has remained focused on the drama of negotiating a dignified exit for President Zelaya, and on the attempts to distance Lobo Sosa from [de facto president Roberto] Micheletti, it is arguable that what will ultimately be most significant for the possibility of effective political transformation in Honduras will be what happens with the resistance.” (Honduras Coup 2009 1/22/10; National Front Communiqué #44, 1/7/10)
*3. US: Maximum Sentence for SOA Protesters
US federal magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth in Columbus, Georgia, surprised observers on Jan. 25 by sentencing three activists to six-month prison terms for trespassing on the US Army's Fort Benning base; this is the maximum sentence for the offense. Nancy Gwin of Syracuse, New York, Father Louie Vitale of Oakland, California, and Ken Hayes of Austin, Texas, were arrested on Nov. 22 as part of an annual protest outside the base against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), which has trained many of the hemisphere’s worst human rights violators [see Update #1013]. A fourth defendant, Michael Walli of Washington, DC, refused to appear for the trial, and Judge Faircloth issued a warrant for his arrest. Walli had told the court during his November arraignment that he would not pay any bail and that he would not voluntarily return for the trial. "I walk out and it's goodbye," he told the judge.
The sentences were much stiffer than the two-month prison terms Judge Faircloth handed down to five activists in 2009 for the same offense [see Update #977]. “It’s the harshest we’ve seen for a very long time,” said Eric LeCompte, event coordinator with SOA Watch, which coordinates the annual protests. “I mean, I’m stunned by the sentences.” (SOA Watch press release 1/25/10; Columbus (Georgia) Ledger Enquirer 1/25/10) This was the second offense at the base for at least one of the defendants: Father Vitale served a three-month sentence in 2002 for an earlier protest. (Las Vegas Review-Journal 4/12/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US
New Developmental Extractivism in South America
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6658
Will Chile's Move to the Right Open Up Its Political System?
https://nacla.org/node/6375
Rio de Janeiro: Control of the Poor Seen as Crucial for the Olympics (Brazil)
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6656
Bolivia: Unprecedented Gender Parity in Cabinet
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2342-bolivia-unprecedented-gender-parity-in-cabinet-
Ecuador's President Correa Faces Off With Indigenous and Social Movements
https://nacla.org/node/6378
Ecuador: Indigenous Radio Station Spared Closure
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2340-ecuador-indigenous-radio-station-spared-closure-
White House drops "Plan Colombia" nomenclature
http://ww4report.com/node/8291
Colombia: indigenous communities targeted in war —again
http://ww4report.com/node/8290
Washington war crimes ambassador says US unlikely to join ICC (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/8262
Venezuela denies Colombian charges of military incursions
http://ww4report.com/node/8292
Indigenous Peoples in El Salvador Commemorate 1932 Massacre
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/2338-indigenous-peoples-in-el-salvador-commemorate-1932-massacre-
Honduras meets the new boss; struggle continues
http://ww4report.com/node/8284
Honduras: Lobo Sworn In; Zelaya Heads into Exile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2341-honduras-lobo-sworn-in-zelaya-heads-into-exile
New Honduras President Must Order Investigation Into Rights Abuses
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2336-new-honduras-president-must-order-investigation-into-rights-abuses
Honduras’ Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo: Another Disaster for Central American Democracy Waiting in the Wing
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2337--honduras-porfirio-pepe-lobo-another-disaster-for-central-american-democracy-waiting-in-the-wing-
Honduras Slideshow: Inside the World’s Newest Police State
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5385/slideshow_inside_the_worlds_newest_police_state/
Chiapas: Mariano Abarca Lives, and the Struggle Continues
http://www.narconews.com/Issue63/article4023.html
Ciudad Juárez prepares monument to femicide victims
http://ww4report.com/node/8283
Ciudad Juárez: massacre targets high school kids
http://ww4report.com/node/8282
Mexico: border militarization continues in 2010
http://ww4report.com/node/8274
Mexico: Oaxacan activist still imprisoned in Brad Will case
http://ww4report.com/node/8145#comment-318133
Arrest of Alleged U.S. Spy Sets Back U.S.-Cuba Relations
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6652
Guantánamo and GEO Group Ready for Haitians
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6655
Violence in Haiti —from police and "peacekeepers"
http://ww4report.com/node/8270
Helping Haiti: Our dollars aren't enough
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8273
Haiti and the Jews: forgotten history
http://ww4report.com/node/8272
CIP Analysts Look at Obama's First Year
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6669
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 #1020, January 31, 2010
1. Mexico: Electrical Workers Start Sit-In
2. Honduras: Zelaya Goes, the Struggle Remains
3. US: Maximum Sentence for SOA Protesters
4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US
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: Electrical Workers Start Sit-In
In Mexico’s first major demonstration of 2010, on Jan. 29 thousands of unionists and campesinos marched from the Angel of Independence in Mexico City to the city’s main plaza, the Zócalo, continuing a tradition of annual protests against the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the federal government’s neoliberal economic policies. The demonstration was focused on the high cost of living, and the demands included an emergency pay raise to counter the effects of the world economic crisis. Another goal was to show support for the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), whose 44,000 active members were laid off when President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s administration suddenly liquidated the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10 [see Update #1015].
The march was led by the SME; the National Campesino Confederation (CNC), which is close to the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI); and the National Workers Union (UNT), Mexico’s second-largest union federation. There was also a protest in Cuernavaca, Morelos, south of Mexico City, where more than 2,000 people rallied in the main plaza; participants were largely SME members and their families. Hundreds of teachers from the militant Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) and members of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) held a march and rally in Oaxaca city, capital of the southern state of Oaxaca. In the southeastern state of Chiapas, some 200 members of the Independent Regional Campesino Movement blocked the Pan American highway for four hours.
Late-January protests against NAFTA started with a demonstration in Mexico City in 2003 [see Update #933]. This year—the bicentennial of Mexico’s war of independence from Spain and the centennial of the country’s social revolution—the emphasis was on bringing together the struggles of unionists, campesinos and other sectors. The march’s title was “Build Unity Among Those Below.” At the conclusion, SME general secretary Martín Esparza Flores announced that the electrical workers were starting an encampment in the Zócalo as an open-ended protest to press their fight against the layoffs. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/29/10 from Notimex, 1/30/10; La Crónica de Hoy (Mexico) 1/30/10)
By Jan. 31 the SME’s encampment occupied about half the plaza. At a rally that day, Esparza said the protesters would hold workshops in the Zócalo, work on outreach and prepare strategies for a “social congress” to be held on Feb. 5 in the central state of Querétaro. The encampment would grow, he told the crowd. Sergio Tolano, secretary of Section 65 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM), announced that workers from his local and the SME would do a joint educational tour in northern Mexico. Section 65 represents miners at the giant Cananea copper mine in Sonora state, where workers have been on strike for more than two years [see Update #998]. Two SME officials reported on their visit to the US, where they said they’d received offers of support from the AFL-CIO and unions in San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento and other California cities. (LJ 2/1/10)
Some SME members have been carrying out more militant actions without the union’s support. In a number of places around Mexico City, workers have set up barricades to prevent the removal of equipment from LFC installations by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the country’s other government-owned energy utility; when President Calderón liquidated the LFC in October, he put the company under the CFE’s control. On Jan. 8 the police arrested three of the protesters, charging them with “crimes against the nation’s consumption and wealth.” The union has called on the militants to remove the barricades. (Narco News 1/14/10)
*2. Honduras: Zelaya Goes, the Struggle Remains
Thousands of Hondurans marched from Tegucigalpa to the nearby Toncontín International Airport on Jan. 27 to send off deposed president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales on the last day of his official four-year term. Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup on June 28, 2009 and flown out of the country, but he managed to return to Honduras secretly in September and took asylum in the Brazilian embassy, under threat of arrest by the de facto regime that had seized power [see Update #1005]. Incoming president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa arranged for Zelaya to fly to the Dominican Republic on Jan. 27 without interference from the military.
The website Habla Honduras reported that 350,000 coup opponents were at the airport for the farewell, but most sources didn’t give a crowd estimate. The Guadalajara, Mexico daily El Informador, apparently using a report from the Agence France Presse wire service, said simply that this was one of the largest opposition demonstrations since the coup.
Before leaving, Zelaya arranged for his presidential sash—which the outgoing president normally gives to his or her successor—to be turned over to three members of the opposition: labor leader Juan Barahano, a little boy and a grandmother. The crowd chanted slogans calling for a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the 1982 Honduran Constitution, a popular demand that apparently helped trigger the coup. Someone created a poster for the occasion with a cartoon of Zelaya leaving and saying: “I’m going…but the struggle remains.” (Honduras Habla 1/29/10; Vos el Soberano 1/27/10; El Informador 1/27/10)
Honduran labor and grassroots organizations responded to the June 28 coup by coming together in a coalition, the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat. In mid-January some 80 of the resistance leaders, including Juan Barahona, Carlos H. Reyes, Rafael Alegría, Bertha Cáceres and Carlos Eduardo Reina, met in the small city of Siguatepeque and reaffirmed the need to maintain unity and not be divided by party politics. In a Jan. 7 communiqué, the National Front reiterated its commitment to continuing the struggle for the Constituent Assembly and denounced the Honduran oligarchy’s “blatant intention to destroy the social conquests that have cost so much to the organized popular sectors.” Among the oligarchy’s plans, according to the National Front, is a reduction of the real minimum wage; the repeal of a law for teachers’ labor rights; an end to free public education; the devaluation of the national currency, the lempira; and privatization of state enterprises and public employees’ pensions.
The US-based Honduras Coup 2009 blog wrote on Jan. 22: “While much of the English-language press has remained focused on the drama of negotiating a dignified exit for President Zelaya, and on the attempts to distance Lobo Sosa from [de facto president Roberto] Micheletti, it is arguable that what will ultimately be most significant for the possibility of effective political transformation in Honduras will be what happens with the resistance.” (Honduras Coup 2009 1/22/10; National Front Communiqué #44, 1/7/10)
*3. US: Maximum Sentence for SOA Protesters
US federal magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth in Columbus, Georgia, surprised observers on Jan. 25 by sentencing three activists to six-month prison terms for trespassing on the US Army's Fort Benning base; this is the maximum sentence for the offense. Nancy Gwin of Syracuse, New York, Father Louie Vitale of Oakland, California, and Ken Hayes of Austin, Texas, were arrested on Nov. 22 as part of an annual protest outside the base against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), which has trained many of the hemisphere’s worst human rights violators [see Update #1013]. A fourth defendant, Michael Walli of Washington, DC, refused to appear for the trial, and Judge Faircloth issued a warrant for his arrest. Walli had told the court during his November arraignment that he would not pay any bail and that he would not voluntarily return for the trial. "I walk out and it's goodbye," he told the judge.
The sentences were much stiffer than the two-month prison terms Judge Faircloth handed down to five activists in 2009 for the same offense [see Update #977]. “It’s the harshest we’ve seen for a very long time,” said Eric LeCompte, event coordinator with SOA Watch, which coordinates the annual protests. “I mean, I’m stunned by the sentences.” (SOA Watch press release 1/25/10; Columbus (Georgia) Ledger Enquirer 1/25/10) This was the second offense at the base for at least one of the defendants: Father Vitale served a three-month sentence in 2002 for an earlier protest. (Las Vegas Review-Journal 4/12/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US
New Developmental Extractivism in South America
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6658
Will Chile's Move to the Right Open Up Its Political System?
https://nacla.org/node/6375
Rio de Janeiro: Control of the Poor Seen as Crucial for the Olympics (Brazil)
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6656
Bolivia: Unprecedented Gender Parity in Cabinet
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2342-bolivia-unprecedented-gender-parity-in-cabinet-
Ecuador's President Correa Faces Off With Indigenous and Social Movements
https://nacla.org/node/6378
Ecuador: Indigenous Radio Station Spared Closure
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2340-ecuador-indigenous-radio-station-spared-closure-
White House drops "Plan Colombia" nomenclature
http://ww4report.com/node/8291
Colombia: indigenous communities targeted in war —again
http://ww4report.com/node/8290
Washington war crimes ambassador says US unlikely to join ICC (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/8262
Venezuela denies Colombian charges of military incursions
http://ww4report.com/node/8292
Indigenous Peoples in El Salvador Commemorate 1932 Massacre
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/2338-indigenous-peoples-in-el-salvador-commemorate-1932-massacre-
Honduras meets the new boss; struggle continues
http://ww4report.com/node/8284
Honduras: Lobo Sworn In; Zelaya Heads into Exile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2341-honduras-lobo-sworn-in-zelaya-heads-into-exile
New Honduras President Must Order Investigation Into Rights Abuses
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2336-new-honduras-president-must-order-investigation-into-rights-abuses
Honduras’ Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo: Another Disaster for Central American Democracy Waiting in the Wing
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2337--honduras-porfirio-pepe-lobo-another-disaster-for-central-american-democracy-waiting-in-the-wing-
Honduras Slideshow: Inside the World’s Newest Police State
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5385/slideshow_inside_the_worlds_newest_police_state/
Chiapas: Mariano Abarca Lives, and the Struggle Continues
http://www.narconews.com/Issue63/article4023.html
Ciudad Juárez prepares monument to femicide victims
http://ww4report.com/node/8283
Ciudad Juárez: massacre targets high school kids
http://ww4report.com/node/8282
Mexico: border militarization continues in 2010
http://ww4report.com/node/8274
Mexico: Oaxacan activist still imprisoned in Brad Will case
http://ww4report.com/node/8145#comment-318133
Arrest of Alleged U.S. Spy Sets Back U.S.-Cuba Relations
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6652
Guantánamo and GEO Group Ready for Haitians
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6655
Violence in Haiti —from police and "peacekeepers"
http://ww4report.com/node/8270
Helping Haiti: Our dollars aren't enough
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8273
Haiti and the Jews: forgotten history
http://ww4report.com/node/8272
CIP Analysts Look at Obama's First Year
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6669
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/
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