Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1034, May 23, 2010
1. Mexico: Electrical Workers Maintain Hunger Strike
2. Puerto Rico: Cops Beat Student Strikers at Sheraton
3. Haiti: Madrid Meeting Rejects “Humanitarian Alibi”
4. Links to alternative sources on: Trade, Economy, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Jamaica, 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. Mexico: Electrical Workers Maintain Hunger Strike
Five participants in an open-ended hunger strike by dozens of laid-off Mexican electrical workers were taken to the hospital on May 21 and 22 as the protest reached the four-week mark. About 68 hunger strikers remained camped out in Mexico City’s main plaza, the Zócalo, in the workers’ latest protest against President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s sudden liquidation of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10. More than 17,000 of the 44,000 laid-off LFC workers, represented by the 95-year-old Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), have rejected the government’s severance package, choosing to fight the closing with protests and lawsuits [see Update #1028].
The mass hunger strike began on Apr. 25 with 10 participants subsisting on a combination of water, honey and a nutrient solution; 10 more were to join them each day, although most of these were limiting their participation to 24 hours. Another 13 workers started a hunger strike in Toluca in nearby México state. Four of the 10 original strikers were still fasting in the Zócalo on May 22; of a group of 10 women who joined later, only one had dropped out. A total of 12 strikers had had to stop for medical reasons, including blood pressure alterations and kidney and gastrointestinal problems.
On May 22 the SME’s interior secretary, Humberto Montes de Oca, said the strike would continue despite the loss of strikers due to health problems. “There are a lot of compañeros waiting for us to give them the green light to join the strike,” he said. “The important thing is that the fast already has an impact on society, as a demonstration that there can be resistance to the government’s authoritarian acts.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/23/10, ___)
*2. Puerto Rico: Cops Beat Student Strikers at Sheraton
On May 18 union leaders in the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coalition claimed success for a 24-hour general strike they held that day to support students striking against a proposed $100 million cut in the budget of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) [see Update #1033]. The unionists said their members had shut down nine of the country’s 10 government centers, along with port operations in San Juan. Marcos Rodríguez-Ema, secretary for Gov. Luis Fortuño, denied the unionists’ claims, saying government offices were operating normally. The Cuban wire service Prensa Latina reported that traffic in the capital was greatly reduced, while the Spanish wire service EFE called the situation normal.
It seemed clear that the May 18 general strike was much less effective than an unprecedented one-day shutdown last Oct. 15, in which 100,000 to 200,000 people protested Gov. Fortuño’s plans to lay off 16,970 of Puerto Rico’s 180,000 public employees [see Update #1008]. But the May 18 action demonstrated growing public support for the students. Thousands of protesters gathered later in the day outside the gates of the university’s Río Piedras campus in San Juan, where the strike started on Apr. 21; 10 of the UPR’s 11 campuses are now participating in the action. Arturo Ríos, a member of the students’ negotiating committee, thanked the country’s working class for its support and criticized people who had initially called the students idealists and dreamers. “We’re not doing this capriciously,” he said, “but because we understand that it’s the most just [course of action], and no one’s going to stop us.” (Prensa Latina 5/18/10; EFE 5/18/10 via Univision TV)
The students have also won support from abroad. On May 19 Cuba’s National Assembly announced “the most complete solidarity with Puerto Rican youth and with the people [of Puerto Rico],” while some of the unions backing the May 18 general strike are affiliated with the two main US labor federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/20/10 from AFP)
The most violent incident so far in the UPR strike came on May 20 when about 100 students entered the Sheraton Hotel in San Juan’s Miramar Convention District to protest Gov. Fortuño’s presence at a fundraising dinner for the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP). The protesters sang and displayed banners in the entrance and then tried to go to the second floor, where the dinner was taking place. The riot police responded by beating protesters and spraying tear gas. Several people were injured, including union leaders Luisa Acevedo and José “Lole” Rodríguez Báez, and the daughter of actor Eugenio Monclova. The police grabbed a woman sitting near the entrance, apparently a tourist, and roughed her up. Hotel security reportedly asked the police to let the students go and to stop beating them in the hotel. There were five arrests. (El Reportero Las Vegas (Nevada) 5/20/10 from unidentified wire services; Argenpress.info (Argentina) 5/24/10 from correspondent)
*3. Haiti: Madrid Meeting Rejects “Humanitarian Alibi”
On May 16 European and Latin American social movements meeting in Madrid adopted a statement denouncing the US and European response to a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti as “the utilization of the humanitarian alibi with the sole goal of defending US geopolitical, economic and military interests, with the complicity of the European Union (EU).” The groups were meeting in the Fourth Assembly of Enlazando Alternativas (EA4, “Linking Alternatives”), held May 14-18 on the eve of a May 18 trade summit of EU and Latin American and Caribbean leaders in the Spanish capital. Haiti, which signed an economic partnership agreement with the EU in 2009, was expected to attend the summit.
The social movements’ statement called for respect for Haitian sovereignty; a three to five year moratorium on economic agreements signed by Haiti in the past; an end to the conditions traditionally imposed by the international financial institutions; an end to the use of military force as a response to the crisis; the “immediate, total, unconditional and real cancellation of the external debt”; and normalization of the status of all undocumented Haitian immigrants in the EU and the US.
The EA4 specifically condemned what it called plans to “transform Haiti into a single free trade zone, fully exploiting its inexpensive workforce and its natural resources.” Free trade zones (FTZs) are industrial parks for tax-exempt assembly plants that produce mainly for export, known in Spanish as maquiladoras. The labor organizing group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”) has charged that there are plans to build FTZs at the relatively remote areas outside Port-au-Prince, like Corail–Cesselesse, where the government of Haitian president René Préval has been moving people left homeless by the earthquake [see Update #1029]. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 5/17/10; EA4 statement via AlterPresse 5/17/10)
Protests against the Préval government [see Update #1033] continued on May 17 when thousands of people demonstrated at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince. One person received a bullet wound during the protest, which was sponsored by a number of political parties. Many of the parties have been enemies in the past, including the Organization of the People in Struggle (OPL) and the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004). (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 5/17/10, 5/19/20)
The protests have also drawn in grassroots organizations not affiliated with the parties. One of these, the Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP), called on May 20 for the parties to be excluded from the mobilizations. “[T]here are 10,000 reasons to mobilize against the people in power,” the group said in a statement, but since Préval took office in 2006 these opposition parties “have never missed a chance to take their piece of the cake while the people died of hunger and the country’s sovereignty was mocked with the presence of the MINUSTAH”--the 9,000-member United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti that has occupied the country since 2004. (AlterPresse 5/20/10)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Trade, Economy, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Jamaica, Haiti
Neoliberalism Alive and Well, as Trade Deals Inked Between EU, Latin America
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6007/unions_oppose_latin_american-european_union_free_trade_deal/
Inter-American Development Bank Megaprojects: Displacement and Forced Migration
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/2421
UNASUR: An Emerging Geopolitical Force
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2502--unasur-an-emerging-geopolitical-force-
Argentina: indigenous march arrives in capital
http://ww4report.com/node/8648
Bolivia: Elections Deepen Local Democracy
https://nacla.org/node/6579
Bolivian Government Negotiates Internal Conflicts
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2499-bolivian-government-negotiates-internal-conflicts
Amazon Indigenous Communities Plan 1,000-km March in Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2496-amazon-indigenous-communities-plan-1000-km-march-in-bolivia
Peru: oil companies banned from uncontacted tribes' reserve
http://ww4report.com/node/8649
Decision Delayed Over Ecuador's New Water Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2495--decision-delayed-over-ecuadors-new-water-law
Ecuador: Correa Looks to Reopen Unpopular Mining Project in Junin
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2500--correa-looks-to-reopen-unpopular-mining-project-in-junin
Two-time Honduran dictator Oswaldo López Arellano dies a free man
http://ww4report.com/node/8647
Honduras drops World Court case against Brazil
http://ww4report.com/node/8646
Scientists Find Elevated Levels of Potentially Toxic Metals in Some Guatemalans Living Near Goldcorp-owned Mine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2501--scientists-find-elevated-levels-of-potentially-toxic-metals-in-some-guatemalans-living-near-goldcorp-owned-mine
Oaxaca: The Ongoing Extermination of San Juan Copala’s Autonomous Triquis (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2494-oaxaca-the-on-going-extermination-of-san-juan-copalas-autonomous-triquis
Oaxaca: Triqui indigenous leader assassinated (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/8650
Calderón scolds US on guns, immigration; Fox News slaps back (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/8640
More claims: Mexican government tilts to Sinaloa Cartel
http://ww4report.com/node/8639
Mexico: general shot in presumed "mugging" linked to cartels, "dirty war"?
http://ww4report.com/node/8638
Jamaica to extradite "Shower Posse" kingpin; trouble feared
http://www.globalganjareport.com/content/jamaica-to-extradite-shower-posse-kingpin-trouble-feared
State of emergency in Jamaica
http://globalganjareport.com/content/state-of-emergency-in-jamaica
Urban warfare breaks out in Jamaica
http://ww4report.com/node/8656
Poverty-Wage Assembly Plants as Development Strategy in Haiti: An Interview with the Center for the Promotion of Women Workers
http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/another-haiti-possible/poverty-wage-assembly-plants-development-strategy-haiti-interview-center-prom
Haiti's State Phone Company Finally Privatized
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2497-haitis-state-phone-company-finally-privatized
Empty Promises and Empty Bellies: Bill Clinton’s Doubletalk on Haitian Agriculture
https://nacla.org/node/6576
Haiti according to Haiti: International Aid as Colonialism – By Raúl Zibechi
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/2396
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, May 25, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
WNU #1033: Puerto Rican Cops Try to Isolate Students
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1033, May 16, 2010
1. Puerto Rico: Cops Try to Isolate Student Strikers
2. Haiti: Monsanto Offers “Poisoned Present”?
3. Haiti: Anti-Préval Protests Continue
4. Honduras: Campesinos Evicted in Aguán Valley
5. Costa Rica: Limón Port to Be Privatized
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Puerto Rico
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: Cops Try to Isolate Student Strikers
Police agents took control of the entrances to the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) in San Juan on the morning of May 14 in an effort to cut off student protesters on the campus from their supporters outside [see Update #1031]. The action came one day after an assembly of some 2,000 students voted to continue an open-ended strike that started on Apr. 21 at Río Piedras, the largest of the UPR’s 11 campuses, to protest plans for a $100 million cut to the annual budget of the public university, which has a student body of about 65,000.
The protesters accused the police of violating an unspoken agreement to avoid confrontations with the dozens of students who had been occupying the campus. Incidents broke out when supporters tried to get food past the police to the strikers inside the university gates; one parent, Luis A. Torres Mulle, was beaten and handcuffed by the police as he tried to bring food to his son. This was "an act of brutality by the same government that wants to finish off the students’ just struggle, a just, legal and democratic struggle by means of a legal and legitimate assembly,” Torres Mulle told the Guaynabo-based daily Primera Hora.
The May 13 student assembly, called by the Students General Council, voted to continue the strike until the university administration agreed to demands for limiting tuition increases to 4% and for keeping the university out of Public-Private Alliances (APP), a partial privatization program favored by Gov. Luis Fortuño, a leader of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP). UPR president José Ramón de la Torre had hoped that the assembly would agree to let classes resume while negotiations continued.
University workers’ unions are backing the students; the budget cuts would end tuition exemptions for some groups of employees. There has also been strong support from Puerto Rico’s artistic community, including such popular musicians as Ricky Martin and Calle 13’s Residente. On May 13 playwright Roberto Ramos-Perea announced his support for the strikers, calling Fortuño’s government “dictatorial.” Artists and others demonstrated in front of the Río Piedras campus on May 16 to show support for the protesters, and one group of parents managed to throw bags with drinking water, roast chicken and other food into the campus. Also on May 16, Amnesty International (AI) reportedly called on the UPR administration to withdraw the police and allow the protesters access to food and water. (EFE 5/13/10 via terra.com; EFE 5/14/10 via Telemundo Atlanta; Primera Hora 5/16/10)
Labor and grassroots organizations opposed to Fortuño’s austerity policies are calling for a 24-hour general strike on May 18 to show support for the students. (Primera Hora 5/15/10)
*2. Haiti: Monsanto Offers “Poisoned Present”?
At a May 12 press conference Haitian agriculture minister Joanas Gué announced that the government had accepted a “gift of 475,947 kg [about 523.6 US tons] of hybrid corn seeds along with 2,067 kg of vegetable seeds” from the Monsanto Company, a US-based biotechnology multinational that produces genetically modified organisms (GMO). He denied that the seeds were genetically modified.
Jean-Yves Urfié, a retired chemistry professor and Catholic priest, had written an article charging that Monsanto was offering GMO seeds, which he called “a poisoned present to Haitian peasants,” since “to have the right to sow again later, it will be necessary to pay Monsanto royalties each time.” He said the seeds had been distributed in Gonaïves, Kenscoff, Pétionville, Cabaret, Arcahaie, Croix-des-Bouquets and Mirebalais. On May 13, after the press conference, Urfié published a letter withdrawing his original charge. He explained that “according to a credible agronomist, there was a real offer of 400 [metric] tons of GMO seeds, but Minister Gué personally rejected this offer.” (AlterPresse (Haiti) 5/13/10, 5/14/10)
The Monsanto controversy came as questions increased about other donations made after a Jan. 12 earthquake killed some 230,000 people and destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area. An investigation by CBS News found that most of the hundreds of millions of dollars raised by five US charities--CARE, Catholic Relief Services, the Red Cross, the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund and the separate Clinton Foundation Haiti Fund—had still not reached Haiti four months after the earthquake. CARE had spent about 25% of the $444 million it raised, while Catholic Relief Services had spent just 8%. The charities said they were keeping the money for long-term projects. CBS calculated that enough had been raised to give “a check for $37,000” to each family made homeless by the quake. (CBS News 5/12/10; Center for Economic Policy and Research blog 5/13/10)
On May 14 France Hurtubise, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Haiti, announced that the office now estimates the number people left homeless by the quake at 1.7 million, up from previous estimates of 1.5 million. Most have been living in improvised shelters in informal encampments around the city. Hurtubise claimed that 235,000 people had been moved to new camps in the area and that 60,000 tents had been distributed to homeless families. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 5/14/10)
Correction: This item originally omitted the name of Agriculture Minister Gué.
*3. Haiti: Anti-Préval Protests Continue
Several thousand people marched in Port-au-Prince on May 10 in the latest and largest in a series of demonstrations against the government of Haitian President René Garcia Préval [see Update #1032]. The protesters started from various neighborhoods in the capital, including St. Jean Bosco, Bel Air and Carrefour Feuilles, and converged on the ruins of the National Palace. A confrontation with the police started when the protesters approached the National Palace’s security perimeter; shots were fired, and police agents dispersed the demonstration with tear gas. Some people reportedly took advantage of the confusion to steal cell phones, jewels and money in the Champ-de-Mars park and along Capois Street; the police arrested seven people. Organizers charged that the trouble was caused by infiltrators sent in to disrupt the demonstration.
The protesters demanded the repeal of a law extending a state of emergency and a law conditionally extending Préval’s term past Feb. 7, 2011. Many also called for Préval’s removal, and supporters of the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004) demanded their leader’s return to the country from his exile in South Africa. Lavalas supporters were the largest group in the demonstration, which also included members of such political groups as the Fusion party and the Alternative coalition. Critics have charged that the alliance organizing the anti-Préval demonstrations is “unnatural” because it brings together longtime enemies like Aristide supporter René Civil and such Aristide opponents as Hervé Saint-Hilus, Evans Paul and Serge Gilles.
There were smaller demonstrations on May 10 in Miragoâne in the southwestern department of Nippes, in Cap-Haïtien in the North department, and in Jacmel in the Southeast department. Protesters demonstrated in Petit-Goâve, in the southwestern part of the West department, on May 13. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse 5/10/10; Radio Métropole 5/11/10, __; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 5/13/10)
*4. Honduras: Campesinos Evicted in Aguán Valley
The Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) reported that during the week of May 10 the police and military forcibly removed campesinos from at least four cooperatives in the northern Atlantic region of Honduras. The police evicted campesinos from the San Isidro cooperative on May 10 and left about 100 agents at the site to keep the campesinos from returning. On May 12 security guards working for landowners René Morales and Miguel Facussé, along with some 60 police agents and soldiers, removed campesinos from the El Despertar in the Aguán River Valley, according to one of the campesinos. The Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH) reported that police and soldiers evacuated the San Esteban and Trinidad cooperatives on May 13.
MUCA and Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa signed an agreement on Apr. 18 that was supposed to bring an end to tensions over land in the Aguán Valley [see Update #1029]. But CODEH predicted on May 15 that “the tension will continue…if the causes which created it remain unchanged, including the complicity of the judicial personnel with the region’s big landowners; the lack of transparency and independence in the judicial system will go on being a bottleneck in finding solutions to conflicts.” (Adital 5/13/10 with information from Defensoresenlinea.com; Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 5/15/10 from Comunicaciones-SJ, 5/15/10 from CODEH)
On May 13 the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), Honduras’ main coalition of labor and grassroots organizations, sponsored an event at the Hibueras Institute in Tegucigalpa to show support for a hunger strike, then in its 17th day, by laid-off workers of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH). University rector Julieta Castellanos has dismissed some 180 workers; the hunger strikers also blame her for the imprisonment of 16 leaders of the UNAH Workers Union (SITRAUNAH) at the end of March.
Castellanos is a member of a Truth Commission that the Lobo government has set up to produce a report on the coup carried out by the military June 28, 2009 and the human rights violations associated with it. “I don’t understand how it is that this lady is on the so-called Truth Commission,” SITRAUNAH general secretary Wilfredo Zelaya Galo said on May 13, “since she’s a human rights violator and is violating the rights and guarantees of each of the laid-off workers.” (Adital 5/13/10 with information from Defensoresenlinea.com; Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 5/15/10)
*5. Costa Rica: Limón Port to Be Privatized
On May 7 the management of the Limón and Moín ports on Costa Rica’s Atlantic coast signed an agreement with the de facto leadership of the dockworkers union to distribute $137 million among 1,400 workers as compensation for the privatization of the ports. The agreement ends a nearly four-year struggle against the government’s plan to sell off the Board of Port Administration and Economic Development of the Atlantic Shelf (JAPDEVA), which manages the two ports. In January the leftist leadership of the JAPDEVA Workers Union (SINTRAJAP) was replaced in what the union leaders called a coup d’état, paving the way for the privatization agreement [see Update #1026]. Negotiating the accord was the last act of Álvaro González, labor minister in the administration of former president Oscar Arias, whose term ended on May 8; he was succeeded by President Laura Chinchilla Miranda, a member of Arias’ National Liberation Party (PLN). (La Nación (Costa Rica) 5/11/10)
Some of the former SINTRAJAP leaders were among the 28 people arrested during an Apr. 29 demonstration in Limón and Moín in which seven trucks were set on fire, three police agents received gunshot wounds, and many people were beaten or affected by tear gas. The protest was part of a national day of demonstrations against the Arias government’s labor policies. Albino Vargas, general secretary of the National Association of Public and Private Employees (ANEP), noted that there had been no problems anywhere in the country except, “curiously,” in Limón. The ANEP website blamed the violence on infiltrators and suggested that the goal was “to provoke panic, imprisonments and death” to create a situation where the privatization would be accepted. (La Nación 4/29/10; El País (Costa Rica) 4/30/10)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Puerto Rico
War Crimes against Women: A Private Hell (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/2111
Indians Warn of War Against Amazon Mega-dam in Brazil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2492-indians-warn-of-war-against-amazon-mega-dam-in-brazil
Brazil: Eviction from Rio's Slums Echoes Dark Past
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2487-brazil-eviction-from-rios-slums-echoes-dark-past-
Bolivia: six dead, one abducted in presumed narco attack
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8627
Taking Stock of Canada’s Mining Industry: Ecuadorian Landmark Lawsuit Challenges Canadian Mining Impunity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2485--taking-stock-of-canadas-mining-industry-ecuadorian-landmark-lawsuit-challenges-canadian-mining-impunity
Colombia: paramilitary chief says he supported Uribe's election
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8618
Colombia: wave of deadly attacks on education workers
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8619
Colombia: indigenous communities targeted in war —again
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8620
Colombia to go Green in May 30 presidential race?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8621
Ecuador: indigenous movement scores victory in water struggle —for now
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8628
San Juan Copola: The Roots of the Violence (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/2187
Mexican Authorities Must Help Community Under Siege by Armed Group
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2491-mexican-authorities-must-help-community-under-siege-by-armed-group
Oaxaca: Aftermath of the Ambush
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2490-oaxaca-aftermath-of-the-ambush
Mexicans Protest Toxic Waste Plant
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2486-mexicans-protest-toxic-waste-plant
Cuba: Democracy Promotion Programs under Fire as Fallout from Spy Arrest Continues
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/cuba-archives-43/2488-cuba-democracy-promotion-programs-under-fire-as-fallout-from-spy-arrest-continues
Of Donors and Disasters (Haiti)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/2077
Haitian Earthquake Survivors Need Social and Economic Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2489-haitian-earthquake-survivors-need-social-and-economic-rights
Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beverly-bell/haitian-farmers-commit-to_b_578807.html
Five Years Later: Remembering Filiberto Ojeda Ríos
https://nacla.org/node/6568
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 #1033, May 16, 2010
1. Puerto Rico: Cops Try to Isolate Student Strikers
2. Haiti: Monsanto Offers “Poisoned Present”?
3. Haiti: Anti-Préval Protests Continue
4. Honduras: Campesinos Evicted in Aguán Valley
5. Costa Rica: Limón Port to Be Privatized
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Puerto Rico
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: Cops Try to Isolate Student Strikers
Police agents took control of the entrances to the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) in San Juan on the morning of May 14 in an effort to cut off student protesters on the campus from their supporters outside [see Update #1031]. The action came one day after an assembly of some 2,000 students voted to continue an open-ended strike that started on Apr. 21 at Río Piedras, the largest of the UPR’s 11 campuses, to protest plans for a $100 million cut to the annual budget of the public university, which has a student body of about 65,000.
The protesters accused the police of violating an unspoken agreement to avoid confrontations with the dozens of students who had been occupying the campus. Incidents broke out when supporters tried to get food past the police to the strikers inside the university gates; one parent, Luis A. Torres Mulle, was beaten and handcuffed by the police as he tried to bring food to his son. This was "an act of brutality by the same government that wants to finish off the students’ just struggle, a just, legal and democratic struggle by means of a legal and legitimate assembly,” Torres Mulle told the Guaynabo-based daily Primera Hora.
The May 13 student assembly, called by the Students General Council, voted to continue the strike until the university administration agreed to demands for limiting tuition increases to 4% and for keeping the university out of Public-Private Alliances (APP), a partial privatization program favored by Gov. Luis Fortuño, a leader of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP). UPR president José Ramón de la Torre had hoped that the assembly would agree to let classes resume while negotiations continued.
University workers’ unions are backing the students; the budget cuts would end tuition exemptions for some groups of employees. There has also been strong support from Puerto Rico’s artistic community, including such popular musicians as Ricky Martin and Calle 13’s Residente. On May 13 playwright Roberto Ramos-Perea announced his support for the strikers, calling Fortuño’s government “dictatorial.” Artists and others demonstrated in front of the Río Piedras campus on May 16 to show support for the protesters, and one group of parents managed to throw bags with drinking water, roast chicken and other food into the campus. Also on May 16, Amnesty International (AI) reportedly called on the UPR administration to withdraw the police and allow the protesters access to food and water. (EFE 5/13/10 via terra.com; EFE 5/14/10 via Telemundo Atlanta; Primera Hora 5/16/10)
Labor and grassroots organizations opposed to Fortuño’s austerity policies are calling for a 24-hour general strike on May 18 to show support for the students. (Primera Hora 5/15/10)
*2. Haiti: Monsanto Offers “Poisoned Present”?
At a May 12 press conference Haitian agriculture minister Joanas Gué announced that the government had accepted a “gift of 475,947 kg [about 523.6 US tons] of hybrid corn seeds along with 2,067 kg of vegetable seeds” from the Monsanto Company, a US-based biotechnology multinational that produces genetically modified organisms (GMO). He denied that the seeds were genetically modified.
Jean-Yves Urfié, a retired chemistry professor and Catholic priest, had written an article charging that Monsanto was offering GMO seeds, which he called “a poisoned present to Haitian peasants,” since “to have the right to sow again later, it will be necessary to pay Monsanto royalties each time.” He said the seeds had been distributed in Gonaïves, Kenscoff, Pétionville, Cabaret, Arcahaie, Croix-des-Bouquets and Mirebalais. On May 13, after the press conference, Urfié published a letter withdrawing his original charge. He explained that “according to a credible agronomist, there was a real offer of 400 [metric] tons of GMO seeds, but Minister Gué personally rejected this offer.” (AlterPresse (Haiti) 5/13/10, 5/14/10)
The Monsanto controversy came as questions increased about other donations made after a Jan. 12 earthquake killed some 230,000 people and destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area. An investigation by CBS News found that most of the hundreds of millions of dollars raised by five US charities--CARE, Catholic Relief Services, the Red Cross, the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund and the separate Clinton Foundation Haiti Fund—had still not reached Haiti four months after the earthquake. CARE had spent about 25% of the $444 million it raised, while Catholic Relief Services had spent just 8%. The charities said they were keeping the money for long-term projects. CBS calculated that enough had been raised to give “a check for $37,000” to each family made homeless by the quake. (CBS News 5/12/10; Center for Economic Policy and Research blog 5/13/10)
On May 14 France Hurtubise, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Haiti, announced that the office now estimates the number people left homeless by the quake at 1.7 million, up from previous estimates of 1.5 million. Most have been living in improvised shelters in informal encampments around the city. Hurtubise claimed that 235,000 people had been moved to new camps in the area and that 60,000 tents had been distributed to homeless families. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 5/14/10)
Correction: This item originally omitted the name of Agriculture Minister Gué.
*3. Haiti: Anti-Préval Protests Continue
Several thousand people marched in Port-au-Prince on May 10 in the latest and largest in a series of demonstrations against the government of Haitian President René Garcia Préval [see Update #1032]. The protesters started from various neighborhoods in the capital, including St. Jean Bosco, Bel Air and Carrefour Feuilles, and converged on the ruins of the National Palace. A confrontation with the police started when the protesters approached the National Palace’s security perimeter; shots were fired, and police agents dispersed the demonstration with tear gas. Some people reportedly took advantage of the confusion to steal cell phones, jewels and money in the Champ-de-Mars park and along Capois Street; the police arrested seven people. Organizers charged that the trouble was caused by infiltrators sent in to disrupt the demonstration.
The protesters demanded the repeal of a law extending a state of emergency and a law conditionally extending Préval’s term past Feb. 7, 2011. Many also called for Préval’s removal, and supporters of the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004) demanded their leader’s return to the country from his exile in South Africa. Lavalas supporters were the largest group in the demonstration, which also included members of such political groups as the Fusion party and the Alternative coalition. Critics have charged that the alliance organizing the anti-Préval demonstrations is “unnatural” because it brings together longtime enemies like Aristide supporter René Civil and such Aristide opponents as Hervé Saint-Hilus, Evans Paul and Serge Gilles.
There were smaller demonstrations on May 10 in Miragoâne in the southwestern department of Nippes, in Cap-Haïtien in the North department, and in Jacmel in the Southeast department. Protesters demonstrated in Petit-Goâve, in the southwestern part of the West department, on May 13. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse 5/10/10; Radio Métropole 5/11/10, __; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 5/13/10)
*4. Honduras: Campesinos Evicted in Aguán Valley
The Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) reported that during the week of May 10 the police and military forcibly removed campesinos from at least four cooperatives in the northern Atlantic region of Honduras. The police evicted campesinos from the San Isidro cooperative on May 10 and left about 100 agents at the site to keep the campesinos from returning. On May 12 security guards working for landowners René Morales and Miguel Facussé, along with some 60 police agents and soldiers, removed campesinos from the El Despertar in the Aguán River Valley, according to one of the campesinos. The Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH) reported that police and soldiers evacuated the San Esteban and Trinidad cooperatives on May 13.
MUCA and Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa signed an agreement on Apr. 18 that was supposed to bring an end to tensions over land in the Aguán Valley [see Update #1029]. But CODEH predicted on May 15 that “the tension will continue…if the causes which created it remain unchanged, including the complicity of the judicial personnel with the region’s big landowners; the lack of transparency and independence in the judicial system will go on being a bottleneck in finding solutions to conflicts.” (Adital 5/13/10 with information from Defensoresenlinea.com; Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 5/15/10 from Comunicaciones-SJ, 5/15/10 from CODEH)
On May 13 the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), Honduras’ main coalition of labor and grassroots organizations, sponsored an event at the Hibueras Institute in Tegucigalpa to show support for a hunger strike, then in its 17th day, by laid-off workers of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH). University rector Julieta Castellanos has dismissed some 180 workers; the hunger strikers also blame her for the imprisonment of 16 leaders of the UNAH Workers Union (SITRAUNAH) at the end of March.
Castellanos is a member of a Truth Commission that the Lobo government has set up to produce a report on the coup carried out by the military June 28, 2009 and the human rights violations associated with it. “I don’t understand how it is that this lady is on the so-called Truth Commission,” SITRAUNAH general secretary Wilfredo Zelaya Galo said on May 13, “since she’s a human rights violator and is violating the rights and guarantees of each of the laid-off workers.” (Adital 5/13/10 with information from Defensoresenlinea.com; Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 5/15/10)
*5. Costa Rica: Limón Port to Be Privatized
On May 7 the management of the Limón and Moín ports on Costa Rica’s Atlantic coast signed an agreement with the de facto leadership of the dockworkers union to distribute $137 million among 1,400 workers as compensation for the privatization of the ports. The agreement ends a nearly four-year struggle against the government’s plan to sell off the Board of Port Administration and Economic Development of the Atlantic Shelf (JAPDEVA), which manages the two ports. In January the leftist leadership of the JAPDEVA Workers Union (SINTRAJAP) was replaced in what the union leaders called a coup d’état, paving the way for the privatization agreement [see Update #1026]. Negotiating the accord was the last act of Álvaro González, labor minister in the administration of former president Oscar Arias, whose term ended on May 8; he was succeeded by President Laura Chinchilla Miranda, a member of Arias’ National Liberation Party (PLN). (La Nación (Costa Rica) 5/11/10)
Some of the former SINTRAJAP leaders were among the 28 people arrested during an Apr. 29 demonstration in Limón and Moín in which seven trucks were set on fire, three police agents received gunshot wounds, and many people were beaten or affected by tear gas. The protest was part of a national day of demonstrations against the Arias government’s labor policies. Albino Vargas, general secretary of the National Association of Public and Private Employees (ANEP), noted that there had been no problems anywhere in the country except, “curiously,” in Limón. The ANEP website blamed the violence on infiltrators and suggested that the goal was “to provoke panic, imprisonments and death” to create a situation where the privatization would be accepted. (La Nación 4/29/10; El País (Costa Rica) 4/30/10)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Puerto Rico
War Crimes against Women: A Private Hell (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/2111
Indians Warn of War Against Amazon Mega-dam in Brazil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2492-indians-warn-of-war-against-amazon-mega-dam-in-brazil
Brazil: Eviction from Rio's Slums Echoes Dark Past
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2487-brazil-eviction-from-rios-slums-echoes-dark-past-
Bolivia: six dead, one abducted in presumed narco attack
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8627
Taking Stock of Canada’s Mining Industry: Ecuadorian Landmark Lawsuit Challenges Canadian Mining Impunity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2485--taking-stock-of-canadas-mining-industry-ecuadorian-landmark-lawsuit-challenges-canadian-mining-impunity
Colombia: paramilitary chief says he supported Uribe's election
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8618
Colombia: wave of deadly attacks on education workers
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8619
Colombia: indigenous communities targeted in war —again
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8620
Colombia to go Green in May 30 presidential race?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8621
Ecuador: indigenous movement scores victory in water struggle —for now
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8628
San Juan Copola: The Roots of the Violence (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/2187
Mexican Authorities Must Help Community Under Siege by Armed Group
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2491-mexican-authorities-must-help-community-under-siege-by-armed-group
Oaxaca: Aftermath of the Ambush
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2490-oaxaca-aftermath-of-the-ambush
Mexicans Protest Toxic Waste Plant
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2486-mexicans-protest-toxic-waste-plant
Cuba: Democracy Promotion Programs under Fire as Fallout from Spy Arrest Continues
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/cuba-archives-43/2488-cuba-democracy-promotion-programs-under-fire-as-fallout-from-spy-arrest-continues
Of Donors and Disasters (Haiti)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/2077
Haitian Earthquake Survivors Need Social and Economic Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/2489-haitian-earthquake-survivors-need-social-and-economic-rights
Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beverly-bell/haitian-farmers-commit-to_b_578807.html
Five Years Later: Remembering Filiberto Ojeda Ríos
https://nacla.org/node/6568
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:
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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
WNU #1032: Haitians Protest “Emergency Law”
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1032, May 9, 2010
1. Haiti: Opposition Protests “Emergency Law”
2. Haiti: Phone Company Privatized--to Vietnamese
3. Mexico: Women’s Groups Call for Cancún Boycott
4. Argentina: Death Flight Pilot Extradited
5. Colombia: FARC Frees Moncayo and Calvo
6. Links to alternative sources on: Mercosur, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Puerto Rico
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: Opposition Protests “Emergency Law”
On the night of Apr. 15-16 the Haitian Senate approved an 18-month extension of the state of emergency that President René Préval decreed after a Jan. 12 earthquake killed some 230,000 people and devastated the capital area. The “emergency law,” which had been approved by the Chamber of Deputies one week earlier, would take effect once Préval had it published in the official government gazette, Le Moniteur.
Thirteen senators voted for the new law, while two opposed it and one abstained; 11 senators boycotted the Apr. 15-16 session, charging that the vote’s outcome was already decided. Sen. Hector Amacacis, who supported the law, said that before the vote a meeting was held at a Western embassy “to push the members of Parliament” to approve the law. “The foreigners put all their weight into the balance to get the law adopted,” he said.
In addition to extending the state of emergency, the new law formally establishes an Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (CIRH) to oversee projects funded by the nearly $10 billion pledged by various countries at an international donors meeting on Mar. 31 in New York [see Update #1028]. Of the CIRH’s 16 members, nine are foreigners and just seven come from Haiti. The commission’s co-presidents are current Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive and former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), now the United Nations (UN) special envoy for Haiti [see Update #1026].
The law also significantly expands the powers of the Haitian government’s executive branch, authorizing the president to approve contracts without bids, to requisition private land to build camps for people displaced by the earthquake, and to evacuate the displaced from their current camps. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/16/10; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 4/17/10)
On May 5 Préval, whose five-year term ends on Feb. 7, 2011, sent Parliament a proposal to modify article 232 of the 2008 electoral law so that if new elections can’t be held before the end of November, he would remain in office until as late as May 14, 2011. Other elected officials would also have their terms extended. Préval, the UN and the US have been pushing for national elections in the fall that would combine this year’s presidential election with legislative elections that were scheduled for Feb. 28 but were postponed because of the earthquake [see Update #1028]. [Due to delays in the presidential elections scheduled for 2005, Préval didn’t take office until May 14, 2006.] (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 5/5/10)
Préval’s moves ceding Haitian sovereignty to foreign officials and increasing his own power have provided an opening for the political opposition. On Apr. 12, three days before the emergency law came before the Senate, a number of opposition parties--including the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004), the Union party, the Union of Democratic Haitian Citizens for Development and Education (UCCADE), and the Alternative coalition—announced the formation of a new coalition, Tèt Kole (literally “heads close together”). Two of the coalition’s most prominent spokespersons are longtime opponents. René Civil is the leader of the militantly pro-Aristide Popular Power Youth (JPP), while former radio commentator and Port-au-Prince mayor Evans Paul (“K-Plim”), a leader of the Democratic Unity Committee (KID), worked to drive Aristide from office in 2004. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse (AHP) 4/12/10; Radio Métropole 4/12/10)
The coalition has held a series of demonstrations against the emergency law. On Apr. 27 protesters banged on pots and pans in Cap Haïtien to demand Préval’s departure, while more than 200 members of different organizations marched in the streets of Miragoane the same day. Some 500 protesters marched again in Miragoane on Apr. 30. Several thousand reportedly marched in Jacmel on May 1 in a protest sponsored by the Regional Coordinating Committee of Organizations of the Southeast (CROS). Lavalas members marched in Cap Haïtien on May 1, but another group of protesters claiming to represent a different branch of Lavalas reportedly attacked them with stones and bottles. There have also been protests in Léogane, Hinche, Cayes, Saint Marc, Gonaïve and Port-au-Prince. (Radio Métropole 4/27/10, 4/30/10, 5/1/10)
Most of the Tèt Kole parties apparently plan to run in the elections this fall. In contrast, an Apr. 19 statement from the leftist Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle,” BO) dismissed the elections as a “maneuver…to mask the dictatorship of the ruling classes.” The group has called for building a grassroots movement to fight for a new political and social system. (“Nou ale,” BO statement 4/19/10)
*2. Haiti: Phone Company Privatized--to Vietnamese
On Apr. 29 the Vietnamese telecommunications company Viettel formally acquired 60% of the shares in Haiti’s state-owned phone company, Télécommunications d'Haïti (Haiti Téléco) [see Update #1016]. Central Bank president Charles Castel said the company, which escaped the privatization process that led to the sell-off of several state enterprises in the 1990s, was constantly in the red and required monthly subsidies from the government. According to Téléco director Michel Presumé, the company had “more than 5,000 employees who weren’t doing anything.” “A lot of them spent more time in the radio stations than in their places of employment,” he added, presumably referring to workers giving interviews about their opposition to the company’s privatization.
Viettel representative Nguyen Khac Chung said the Vietnamese company already operates in several countries, including Cambodia and Laos. The Haitian government will continue to own 40% of the shares in Téléco, which will now be known as Natcom. (Radio Métropole 4/30/10)
The only result of the sale will be the enrichment of Viettel, Haitian economist Camille Chalmers, executive secretary of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), said on May 6. He noted that Téléco was very profitable as recently as the early 1990s, adding that privatization programs hadn’t benefited the general population in countries like Bolivia and Venezuela, which were now doing the opposite---nationalizing private companies. (AHP 5/6/10)
*3. Mexico: Women’s Groups Call for Cancún Boycott
Civil Pact for Life, Liberty and the Rights of Women of Mexico, an association of 90 groups, held a rally in Mexico City on May 5 to call for a boycott of the seaside resort city of Cancún in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo as a protest against the state government’s anti-choice policies. Like more than half of Mexico’s 31 states, Quintana Roo recently passed a strict anti-abortion law. The protesters charged that the state, governed by the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), acts “as if it was a church.” “Get your rosaries out of our ovaries,” they chanted.
Mexican women’s groups have focused on the case of a pregnant 11-year-old indigenous girl in Quintana Roo. The girl, known as “Amalia,” says she was raped and impregnated by her stepfather when she was 10. She is now being forced to have the baby, although even under the new state law a rape victim can still choose to abort.
Marta Lamas, from the Elective Reproduction Information Group, and journalist and activist Lydia Cacho have charged that the local branch of the Mexican government’s family welfare agency, Integral Family Development (DIF), sent Amalia to a clinic run by the anti-abortion group Provida instead of directing her to a state health agency where she would have been told her options. After passing the 12th week of pregnancy, Amalia could no longer get an abortion even in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), which passed a law in April 2007 permitting elective abortion through the first three months [see Update #959]. The activists say the pregnancy is highly dangerous for Amalia, not only because of her age but also because her family is impoverished and she suffers from the effects of malnutrition.
[Lydia Cacho is the author of a 2005 book on a child prostitution ring in Cancún and its powerful backers; the exposé’s publication led to her arrest and abduction by Puebla state authorities in December 2005; see Update #904.]
According to Unicef and the state health authorities, the rate of reported sexual abuse cases in Quintana Roo is almost three times the average for Mexico. In 2009, 881 minors became pregnant through rape in the state, while the number this year is already 458. (New York Times 5/6/10 from AP; Diario de Yucatán (Mexico) 5/6/10 from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/19/10)
*4. Argentina: Death Flight Pilot Extradited
Spanish authorities extradited former Argentine military pilot Juan Alberto Poch to Argentina on May 5 to face charges that he flew some of the "death flights" in which as many as 1,000 opponents of Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship were thrown from planes into the Atlantic. He is specifically charged in the “kidnapping, disappearance, torture and murder” of the journalist and writer Rodolfo Walsh, the Swedish youth Dagmar Hagelin, and French nuns Alice Domón and Leonie Duquet.
Spanish police arrested Poch on Sept. 21 at the airport in Valencia as he was piloting a plane for Transavia, an airline owned by KLM and Air France [see Update #1005]. His coworkers had turned him in because he bragged about his role in the death flights and tried to justify the killings.
On May 4 Argentine authorities arrested José (“Joe”) Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, the dictatorship’s economy minister from 1976 to 1981, in connection with the kidnapping of Federico Gutheim and his son Miguel Gutheim. The Gutheims were allegedly held captive for five months until they agreed to give up control of their cotton export company to a firm approved by the economy ministry. Martínez de Hoz, who is 84, is being held in a private clinic due to poor health, but an attorney, Rodolfo Yanzón, has filed a complaint charging that Martínez de Hoz is following what Yanzón called the “great Pinochet” strategy. Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s dictator from 1973 to 1990, avoided trial in his later years by claiming serious health problems. (Associated Press 5/6/10; Clarín (Argentina) 5/6/10, 5/8/10)
*5. Colombia: FARC Frees Moncayo and Calvo
Two Colombian soldiers, Sgt. Pablo Emilio Moncayo and Pvt. Josué Daniel Calvo, returned to their hometowns on Apr. 15 following their release by the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and more than two weeks of rest and medical tests in Bogotá. Calvo, who was freed by the FARC on Mar. 28 after 11 months in captivity, was greeted by family, friends and the departmental governor in Popayán, capital the southwestern department of Cauca, while Moncayo, who was released on Mar. 30, arrived at Sandoná in the southwestern department of Nariño accompanied by his parents and other family members.
Along with José Libio Martínez Estrada, who remains in captivity, Moncayo is the soldier who has spent the most time as prisoner of the FARC; he and Martínez were captured in a rebel attack on an army base on Dec. 21, 1997. Moncayo is especially well-known because his father, the schoolteacher Gustavo Moncayo, carried out a "walk for peace" for several years to call for the government and the FARC to negotiate his son’s release [see Update #1018].
Shortly after being freed, Sgt. Moncayo thanked his father, the “indefatigable” Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba, Colombians for Peace, the Catholic Church and the International Red Cross for their work in arranging his release. “I want to thank the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa,” he added, “because he called for the guerrillas to make a gesture of peace with my handover. Also I want to thank the efforts of the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and of Brasil, [Luiz Inácio] Lula da Silva.” (EFE 4/15/10 via terra.com (Spain); Venezuelanalysis.com 4/1/10 via Upside Down World)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Mercosur, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Puerto Rico
South America: Mercosur’s Cooperatives in an Age of Integration
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/2480-south-america-mercosurs-cooperatives-in-an-age-of-integration
Paraguay: Controversy Over Troop Deployment
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2477-paraguay-controversy-over-troop-deployment
Paraguay paranoid as guerillas re-emerge
http://ww4report.com/node/8598
Second rancher sentenced for killing of activist nun in Brazilian Amazon
http://ww4report.com/node/8590
Bolivia Nationalizes Energy Firms
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2479--bolivia-nationalises-energy-firms-
Bolivia: Morales Faces First Workers Protests
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2481-bolivia-bolivia-morales-faces-first-workers-protests
Strikes across Bolivia in Evo Morales' first showdown with labor
http://ww4report.com/node/8593
Evo Morales delivers Cochabamba climate summit resolutions to United Nations
http://ww4report.com/node/8594
Otto Reich speaks at Capitol Hill Evo-bashing session
http://ww4report.com/node/8595
Bolivia: five military chiefs cited in "Black October" violence
http://ww4report.com/node/8596
Bolivia cracks down on "Norwegian Cartel"
http://ww4report.com/node/8597
Peru: Spanish oil giant targets "uncontacted" peoples' rainforest
http://ww4report.com/node/8589
Peru: Sendero establishes new command for Upper Huallaga
http://ww4report.com/node/8599
Ecuador: The Debate in the Streets
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2483-ecuador-the-debate-in-the-streets-
Ecuador: armed attack on Amazon indigenous community
http://ww4report.com/node/8588
Water protests rock Ecuador
http://ww4report.com/node/8587
Action Alert: Four Educators Assassinated in Cordoba, Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2476-action-alert-four-educators-assassinated-in-the-cordoba-colombia
Movie Review: The Coca-Cola Case (Colombia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2475-movie-review-the-coca-cola-case
Venezuela is not Greece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/06/venezuela-greece-economic-crisis
Out of the Past, a New Honduran Culture of Resistance
https://nacla.org/node/6541
Honduras "truth commission" starts investigation
http://ww4report.com/node/8600
A Real Truth Commission for Honduras
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bertha-oliva/a-real-truth-commission-f_b_563215.html
Pressure Mounts on Honduras as Journalist Death Toll Rises
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2478-pressure-mounts-on-honduras-as-journalist-death-toll-rises
Guatemala peasant massacre suspect arrested in US
http://ww4report.com/node/8581
Mexico: International Human Rights Caravan Ambushed, Two Murdered En Route to San Juan Copala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2484-mexico-international-human-rights-caravan-ambushed-two-murdered-en-route-to-san-juan-copala
Oaxaca Caravan Attack: The Paramilitarization of Mexico.
https://nacla.org/node/6563
Mexico's State of Impunity
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-carlsen/mexicos-state-of-impunity_b_566633.html
Mexico: army exonerates itself in Tamaulipas atrocity
http://ww4report.com/node/8601
Mexico extradites ex-governor as cartel crackdown widens
http://ww4report.com/node/8602
U.S. Legislation to Cancel Haiti’s Debt, Boost Garment Sector
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/us-legislation-to-cancel-haitis-debt-boost-garment-sector/
The Poisoning of Puerto Rico
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5869/the_poisoning_of_puerto_rico/
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 #1032, May 9, 2010
1. Haiti: Opposition Protests “Emergency Law”
2. Haiti: Phone Company Privatized--to Vietnamese
3. Mexico: Women’s Groups Call for Cancún Boycott
4. Argentina: Death Flight Pilot Extradited
5. Colombia: FARC Frees Moncayo and Calvo
6. Links to alternative sources on: Mercosur, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Puerto Rico
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: Opposition Protests “Emergency Law”
On the night of Apr. 15-16 the Haitian Senate approved an 18-month extension of the state of emergency that President René Préval decreed after a Jan. 12 earthquake killed some 230,000 people and devastated the capital area. The “emergency law,” which had been approved by the Chamber of Deputies one week earlier, would take effect once Préval had it published in the official government gazette, Le Moniteur.
Thirteen senators voted for the new law, while two opposed it and one abstained; 11 senators boycotted the Apr. 15-16 session, charging that the vote’s outcome was already decided. Sen. Hector Amacacis, who supported the law, said that before the vote a meeting was held at a Western embassy “to push the members of Parliament” to approve the law. “The foreigners put all their weight into the balance to get the law adopted,” he said.
In addition to extending the state of emergency, the new law formally establishes an Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (CIRH) to oversee projects funded by the nearly $10 billion pledged by various countries at an international donors meeting on Mar. 31 in New York [see Update #1028]. Of the CIRH’s 16 members, nine are foreigners and just seven come from Haiti. The commission’s co-presidents are current Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive and former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), now the United Nations (UN) special envoy for Haiti [see Update #1026].
The law also significantly expands the powers of the Haitian government’s executive branch, authorizing the president to approve contracts without bids, to requisition private land to build camps for people displaced by the earthquake, and to evacuate the displaced from their current camps. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/16/10; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 4/17/10)
On May 5 Préval, whose five-year term ends on Feb. 7, 2011, sent Parliament a proposal to modify article 232 of the 2008 electoral law so that if new elections can’t be held before the end of November, he would remain in office until as late as May 14, 2011. Other elected officials would also have their terms extended. Préval, the UN and the US have been pushing for national elections in the fall that would combine this year’s presidential election with legislative elections that were scheduled for Feb. 28 but were postponed because of the earthquake [see Update #1028]. [Due to delays in the presidential elections scheduled for 2005, Préval didn’t take office until May 14, 2006.] (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 5/5/10)
Préval’s moves ceding Haitian sovereignty to foreign officials and increasing his own power have provided an opening for the political opposition. On Apr. 12, three days before the emergency law came before the Senate, a number of opposition parties--including the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004), the Union party, the Union of Democratic Haitian Citizens for Development and Education (UCCADE), and the Alternative coalition—announced the formation of a new coalition, Tèt Kole (literally “heads close together”). Two of the coalition’s most prominent spokespersons are longtime opponents. René Civil is the leader of the militantly pro-Aristide Popular Power Youth (JPP), while former radio commentator and Port-au-Prince mayor Evans Paul (“K-Plim”), a leader of the Democratic Unity Committee (KID), worked to drive Aristide from office in 2004. (Agence Haïtienne de Presse (AHP) 4/12/10; Radio Métropole 4/12/10)
The coalition has held a series of demonstrations against the emergency law. On Apr. 27 protesters banged on pots and pans in Cap Haïtien to demand Préval’s departure, while more than 200 members of different organizations marched in the streets of Miragoane the same day. Some 500 protesters marched again in Miragoane on Apr. 30. Several thousand reportedly marched in Jacmel on May 1 in a protest sponsored by the Regional Coordinating Committee of Organizations of the Southeast (CROS). Lavalas members marched in Cap Haïtien on May 1, but another group of protesters claiming to represent a different branch of Lavalas reportedly attacked them with stones and bottles. There have also been protests in Léogane, Hinche, Cayes, Saint Marc, Gonaïve and Port-au-Prince. (Radio Métropole 4/27/10, 4/30/10, 5/1/10)
Most of the Tèt Kole parties apparently plan to run in the elections this fall. In contrast, an Apr. 19 statement from the leftist Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle,” BO) dismissed the elections as a “maneuver…to mask the dictatorship of the ruling classes.” The group has called for building a grassroots movement to fight for a new political and social system. (“Nou ale,” BO statement 4/19/10)
*2. Haiti: Phone Company Privatized--to Vietnamese
On Apr. 29 the Vietnamese telecommunications company Viettel formally acquired 60% of the shares in Haiti’s state-owned phone company, Télécommunications d'Haïti (Haiti Téléco) [see Update #1016]. Central Bank president Charles Castel said the company, which escaped the privatization process that led to the sell-off of several state enterprises in the 1990s, was constantly in the red and required monthly subsidies from the government. According to Téléco director Michel Presumé, the company had “more than 5,000 employees who weren’t doing anything.” “A lot of them spent more time in the radio stations than in their places of employment,” he added, presumably referring to workers giving interviews about their opposition to the company’s privatization.
Viettel representative Nguyen Khac Chung said the Vietnamese company already operates in several countries, including Cambodia and Laos. The Haitian government will continue to own 40% of the shares in Téléco, which will now be known as Natcom. (Radio Métropole 4/30/10)
The only result of the sale will be the enrichment of Viettel, Haitian economist Camille Chalmers, executive secretary of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), said on May 6. He noted that Téléco was very profitable as recently as the early 1990s, adding that privatization programs hadn’t benefited the general population in countries like Bolivia and Venezuela, which were now doing the opposite---nationalizing private companies. (AHP 5/6/10)
*3. Mexico: Women’s Groups Call for Cancún Boycott
Civil Pact for Life, Liberty and the Rights of Women of Mexico, an association of 90 groups, held a rally in Mexico City on May 5 to call for a boycott of the seaside resort city of Cancún in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo as a protest against the state government’s anti-choice policies. Like more than half of Mexico’s 31 states, Quintana Roo recently passed a strict anti-abortion law. The protesters charged that the state, governed by the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), acts “as if it was a church.” “Get your rosaries out of our ovaries,” they chanted.
Mexican women’s groups have focused on the case of a pregnant 11-year-old indigenous girl in Quintana Roo. The girl, known as “Amalia,” says she was raped and impregnated by her stepfather when she was 10. She is now being forced to have the baby, although even under the new state law a rape victim can still choose to abort.
Marta Lamas, from the Elective Reproduction Information Group, and journalist and activist Lydia Cacho have charged that the local branch of the Mexican government’s family welfare agency, Integral Family Development (DIF), sent Amalia to a clinic run by the anti-abortion group Provida instead of directing her to a state health agency where she would have been told her options. After passing the 12th week of pregnancy, Amalia could no longer get an abortion even in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), which passed a law in April 2007 permitting elective abortion through the first three months [see Update #959]. The activists say the pregnancy is highly dangerous for Amalia, not only because of her age but also because her family is impoverished and she suffers from the effects of malnutrition.
[Lydia Cacho is the author of a 2005 book on a child prostitution ring in Cancún and its powerful backers; the exposé’s publication led to her arrest and abduction by Puebla state authorities in December 2005; see Update #904.]
According to Unicef and the state health authorities, the rate of reported sexual abuse cases in Quintana Roo is almost three times the average for Mexico. In 2009, 881 minors became pregnant through rape in the state, while the number this year is already 458. (New York Times 5/6/10 from AP; Diario de Yucatán (Mexico) 5/6/10 from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/19/10)
*4. Argentina: Death Flight Pilot Extradited
Spanish authorities extradited former Argentine military pilot Juan Alberto Poch to Argentina on May 5 to face charges that he flew some of the "death flights" in which as many as 1,000 opponents of Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship were thrown from planes into the Atlantic. He is specifically charged in the “kidnapping, disappearance, torture and murder” of the journalist and writer Rodolfo Walsh, the Swedish youth Dagmar Hagelin, and French nuns Alice Domón and Leonie Duquet.
Spanish police arrested Poch on Sept. 21 at the airport in Valencia as he was piloting a plane for Transavia, an airline owned by KLM and Air France [see Update #1005]. His coworkers had turned him in because he bragged about his role in the death flights and tried to justify the killings.
On May 4 Argentine authorities arrested José (“Joe”) Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, the dictatorship’s economy minister from 1976 to 1981, in connection with the kidnapping of Federico Gutheim and his son Miguel Gutheim. The Gutheims were allegedly held captive for five months until they agreed to give up control of their cotton export company to a firm approved by the economy ministry. Martínez de Hoz, who is 84, is being held in a private clinic due to poor health, but an attorney, Rodolfo Yanzón, has filed a complaint charging that Martínez de Hoz is following what Yanzón called the “great Pinochet” strategy. Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s dictator from 1973 to 1990, avoided trial in his later years by claiming serious health problems. (Associated Press 5/6/10; Clarín (Argentina) 5/6/10, 5/8/10)
*5. Colombia: FARC Frees Moncayo and Calvo
Two Colombian soldiers, Sgt. Pablo Emilio Moncayo and Pvt. Josué Daniel Calvo, returned to their hometowns on Apr. 15 following their release by the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and more than two weeks of rest and medical tests in Bogotá. Calvo, who was freed by the FARC on Mar. 28 after 11 months in captivity, was greeted by family, friends and the departmental governor in Popayán, capital the southwestern department of Cauca, while Moncayo, who was released on Mar. 30, arrived at Sandoná in the southwestern department of Nariño accompanied by his parents and other family members.
Along with José Libio Martínez Estrada, who remains in captivity, Moncayo is the soldier who has spent the most time as prisoner of the FARC; he and Martínez were captured in a rebel attack on an army base on Dec. 21, 1997. Moncayo is especially well-known because his father, the schoolteacher Gustavo Moncayo, carried out a "walk for peace" for several years to call for the government and the FARC to negotiate his son’s release [see Update #1018].
Shortly after being freed, Sgt. Moncayo thanked his father, the “indefatigable” Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba, Colombians for Peace, the Catholic Church and the International Red Cross for their work in arranging his release. “I want to thank the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa,” he added, “because he called for the guerrillas to make a gesture of peace with my handover. Also I want to thank the efforts of the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and of Brasil, [Luiz Inácio] Lula da Silva.” (EFE 4/15/10 via terra.com (Spain); Venezuelanalysis.com 4/1/10 via Upside Down World)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Mercosur, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Puerto Rico
South America: Mercosur’s Cooperatives in an Age of Integration
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/2480-south-america-mercosurs-cooperatives-in-an-age-of-integration
Paraguay: Controversy Over Troop Deployment
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2477-paraguay-controversy-over-troop-deployment
Paraguay paranoid as guerillas re-emerge
http://ww4report.com/node/8598
Second rancher sentenced for killing of activist nun in Brazilian Amazon
http://ww4report.com/node/8590
Bolivia Nationalizes Energy Firms
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2479--bolivia-nationalises-energy-firms-
Bolivia: Morales Faces First Workers Protests
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2481-bolivia-bolivia-morales-faces-first-workers-protests
Strikes across Bolivia in Evo Morales' first showdown with labor
http://ww4report.com/node/8593
Evo Morales delivers Cochabamba climate summit resolutions to United Nations
http://ww4report.com/node/8594
Otto Reich speaks at Capitol Hill Evo-bashing session
http://ww4report.com/node/8595
Bolivia: five military chiefs cited in "Black October" violence
http://ww4report.com/node/8596
Bolivia cracks down on "Norwegian Cartel"
http://ww4report.com/node/8597
Peru: Spanish oil giant targets "uncontacted" peoples' rainforest
http://ww4report.com/node/8589
Peru: Sendero establishes new command for Upper Huallaga
http://ww4report.com/node/8599
Ecuador: The Debate in the Streets
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2483-ecuador-the-debate-in-the-streets-
Ecuador: armed attack on Amazon indigenous community
http://ww4report.com/node/8588
Water protests rock Ecuador
http://ww4report.com/node/8587
Action Alert: Four Educators Assassinated in Cordoba, Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2476-action-alert-four-educators-assassinated-in-the-cordoba-colombia
Movie Review: The Coca-Cola Case (Colombia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2475-movie-review-the-coca-cola-case
Venezuela is not Greece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/06/venezuela-greece-economic-crisis
Out of the Past, a New Honduran Culture of Resistance
https://nacla.org/node/6541
Honduras "truth commission" starts investigation
http://ww4report.com/node/8600
A Real Truth Commission for Honduras
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bertha-oliva/a-real-truth-commission-f_b_563215.html
Pressure Mounts on Honduras as Journalist Death Toll Rises
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2478-pressure-mounts-on-honduras-as-journalist-death-toll-rises
Guatemala peasant massacre suspect arrested in US
http://ww4report.com/node/8581
Mexico: International Human Rights Caravan Ambushed, Two Murdered En Route to San Juan Copala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2484-mexico-international-human-rights-caravan-ambushed-two-murdered-en-route-to-san-juan-copala
Oaxaca Caravan Attack: The Paramilitarization of Mexico.
https://nacla.org/node/6563
Mexico's State of Impunity
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-carlsen/mexicos-state-of-impunity_b_566633.html
Mexico: army exonerates itself in Tamaulipas atrocity
http://ww4report.com/node/8601
Mexico extradites ex-governor as cartel crackdown widens
http://ww4report.com/node/8602
U.S. Legislation to Cancel Haiti’s Debt, Boost Garment Sector
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/us-legislation-to-cancel-haitis-debt-boost-garment-sector/
The Poisoning of Puerto Rico
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5869/the_poisoning_of_puerto_rico/
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, May 4, 2010
WNU #1031: Latin Americans Celebrate May Day
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1031, May 2, 2010
1. Southern Cone: May 1 Marches Focus on Local Issues
2. Andes Region: Government Backers and Opponents March on May 1
3. Central America: May 1 Marches Protest Neoliberalism
4. Mexico: May Day Marchers Blast Labor “Reform”
5. Caribbean: May 1 Marches Focus on “Sacrifice”
6. Links to alternative sources on: Environment, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua, 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. Southern Cone: May 1 Marches Focus on Local Issues
Latin Americans generally used the traditional International Workers Day marches on May 1 this year to protest around national issues, but some also demonstrated their support for immigrants in the US, where tens of thousands of immigrants and supporters were marching against anti-immigrant measures and laws.
At least 66 people were arrested in disturbances in Chile on May 1 as marchers protested the policies of President Sebastián Piñera, who took office on Mar. 11. Piñera is the country’s first rightwing leader since the end of the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
In Paraguay labor confederations started the day of events with a mass in Asunción’s Cristo Rey church. Unionists then marched to the Justice and Labor Ministry, where they presented Justice and Labor Minister Humberto Blasco with a petition calling for a 15% pay increase.
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva used May Day events to promote the campaign of his former cabinet chief, Dilma Rousseff, the Workers Party (PT) presidential candidate in elections this October. “You know who I want,” Lula said during an event in Sao Paulo. (El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 5/1/10 from AFP; Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 5/1/10 from AFP)
*2. Andes Region: Government Backers and Opponents March on May 1
Thousands of unionized public employees marked International Workers Day on May 1 with marches in Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador, joined by members of socialist president Rafael Correa’s PAIS Alliance (AP) party. [“PAIS” is the acronym of “Proud and Sovereign Homeland” in Spanish, and also spells the word for “country.”] Unemployment in Ecuador reached 9.1% in the first quarter of 2010, up from 7.9% at the end of 2009, while underemployment among the country’s 4.6 million economically active workers is officially at 51.3%.
In Colombia--where unemployment stood at 11.8% in March, down 0.2 points from a year earlier—thousands of workers marched in various cities calling for candidates in the May 30 presidential election to promote the creation of “more and better jobs and to halt the violence against unionists and society” [see Update # 1021]. Confrontations between marchers and the police left some 15 people injured.
In Venezuela supporters and opponents of leftist president Hugo Chávez held separate marches. Supporters celebrated the achievements of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution, while opponents demanded more democracy and respect for the rights of unionists. (El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 5/1/10 from AFP; Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 5/1/10 from AFP)
*3. Central America: May 1 Marches Protest Neoliberalism
In Panama thousands of workers marched on May 1 to oppose the neoliberal economic policies of President Ricardo Martinelli’s government, which they said was seeking to "take the workers back to the labor conditions of the 19th century.” They protested an increase in prices of staple goods, an increase in consumption taxes, government plans for labor “reform,” and a law which imposes prison sentences of up to two years for blocking traffic during protests—an effort “to stop the unions and to criminalize social protest,” according to Mariano Mena, director of the National Coordinating Committee of Organized Workers.
In El Salvador, more than 75,000 people marched in San Salvador to demand that the government of President Mauricio Funes, of the leftist Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN), "comply with the change" that he promised and not let himself “be seduced” by the right. There were two other May Day marches in the capital, ending with a large rally in the central Gerardo Barrios plaza, where more than 100,000 people gathered, according to the unions.
In Honduras tens of thousands of people marched in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and other cities to protest a June 28, 2009 military coup and to promote demands for a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the Constitution. The Honduran labor movement forms a large part of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), a coalition that formed to oppose the coup [see Update #1020].
The colorful Tegucigalpa march included protesters dressed as devils, monkeys and white gorillas; two marchers in prison uniforms wore signs identifying them as coup leaders Roberto Micheletti and Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez. The rightwing Tegucigalpa daily La Tribuna estimated the crowd at more than 100,000; organizers claimed over 500,000.
Thousands of Guatemalan workers protested an anti-immigrant measure in the US state of Arizona, Immigration Law SB1070, which was signed into law on Apr. 23. They also demonstrated their opposition to local mining and drilling operations, which they said cause "irreparable" damage to ecosystems. "We don’t want more violations in the areas around our communities,” said campesino leader Daniel Pascual. “We demand that they respect the results of the community consultations we’ve carried out, which rejected practices that go against our Mother Earth.” (El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 5/1/10 from AFP; Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 5/1/10 from AFP; Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 5/1/10; Honduras Culture and Politics 5/2/10)
*4. Mexico: May Day Marchers Blast Labor “Reform”
As has become traditional, rival Mexican union confederations celebrated International Workers Day on May 1 with separate rallies in Mexico City’s huge Zócalo plaza. The largest was organized by the independent National Workers Union (UNT), which claimed 250,000 to 300,000 participants; the local police failed to give an estimate.
The marchers opposed labor “reform” proposals from the government of rightwing president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and called for the dismissal of Labor Secretary Javier Lozano Alarcón. They expressed support for strikers at the Cananea copper mine and for 72 hunger strikers from the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) camped out in the plaza to protest the government’s sudden dismissal of 44,000 unionized electrical workers last October [see Updates #1022, 1028].
The demonstrators protested anti-immigrant measures in the US like Arizona Immigration Law SB1070 and criticized what they said was the Calderón administration’s passive attitude towards US immigration policy. One of the featured speakers was Elvira Arellano, an undocumented immigrant to the US who was repatriated to Mexico in 2007 after spending a year in a Chicago church resisting a deportation order. Others protested US immigration policy in a separate rally in front of the US embassy. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/2/10, ___; El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 5/1/10 from AFP)
*5. Caribbean: May 1 Marches Focus on “Sacrifice”
Cuban president Raúl Castro led some 800,000 people in the traditional May 1 march to Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución. In a brief speech, Salvador Valdés, head of the Cuban Workers’ Confederation (CTC), asked workers to support the government’s economic plan, which he said “will require extraordinary efforts and sacrifices” but is “vital for preserving our social system.” In April President Castro called for a reduction of public spending, the elimination of subsidies and of the black market, a stimulus for agriculture, and layoffs of as many as 1 million workers, about a fifth of the workforce, from their current employment. Castro said the government would seek to create conditions so that everyone would be able to find a productive job. (Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 5/1/10 from AFP; La Jornada (Mexico) 5/2/10 from correspondent)
In Puerto Rico the Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL) union coalition, the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coalition and other groups led a May 1 march from the Luis Muñoz Rivera park in San Juan to the Fortaleza, the governor’s official residence, ending up at the Plaza Colón in the capital’s old city. These groups led a massive demonstration on Oct. 15 against Gov. Luis Fortuño’s plans lay off nearly 17,000 government employees [see Update #1008], but participation in the May 1 demonstration was reportedly in the hundreds.
Striking students at the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) were “setting an example of struggle and combative spirit,” Wilberto Jiménez, head of a university employees union, told the marchers, and people “are going to copy them and take to the streets.” The students, who began a protest against budget cuts at the state university on Apr. 21 [see Update #1030], were still occupying the campus on May 2, despite the UPR administration’s plan to resume administrative work on May 3. The students launched their own radio station, Radio Huelga (“Strike Radio”) at 1650 AM, on May 2. (Primera Hora (Puerto Rico) 5/1/10, 5/2/10)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Environment, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US
Americas Program Biodiversity Report—April 2010
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6726
Gulf of Mexico oil spill endangers birds throughout Americas
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8561
Argentina: Murder of Human Rights Witness Sparks Fears
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6724
Indigenous in Argentina "Drowning in Sadness"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/2464-indigenous-in-argentina-qdrowning-in-sadnessq
UNASUR to Elect Secretary General at Argentina Summit
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2473-unasur-to-elect-secretary-general-at-argentina-summit
Paraguay: Controversy Over Troop Deployment
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2472-paraguay-controversy-over-troop-deployment
The Mothers of May: The Difficult Democratization of Brazil's Genocidal State
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730
Bolivia's Resource Dilemma
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2466-bolivias-resource-dilemma
Bolivia: May Day march amid multiple social conflicts
http://ww4report.com/node/8573
Nicaragua Protests Escalate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2465--nicaragua-protests-escalate-
Chiapas: The Reconquest of Recuperated Land (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2469-chiapas-the-reconquest-of-recuperated-land
Oaxaca: two dead as paras attack human rights caravan (Mexico)
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8560
Mexico: Assassination of Human Rights Defenders in Oaxaca
http://americas.irc-online.org/updater/6732
Merida Initiative Under Scrutiny Following Clinton’s Visit to Mexico
https://nacla.org/node/6530
The Mexican History and Geography Gap
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8565
US supported economics spurred Mexican emigration
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5064
Thomas Friedman: deeply wrong on Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/8069#comment-320157
Cuba: U.S. Democracy Programs under Fire as Fallout from Spy Arrest Continues
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6722
Haiti: Of Donors and Disasters
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6725
From Charity to Solidarity in Haiti: Lessons for the Policy Makers (Part III)
http://www.truthout.org/from-charity-solidarity-haiti-lessons-policy-makers-part-iii59020
US military enforces attacks on Haitian unions (3 parts)
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5048
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5051
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5054
Obama's Militarized Status Quo in Latin America - Panel Discussion From the 2010 Left Forum
https://nacla.org/node/6532
Ignoring the Grassroots in Latin America
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8564
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 #1031, May 2, 2010
1. Southern Cone: May 1 Marches Focus on Local Issues
2. Andes Region: Government Backers and Opponents March on May 1
3. Central America: May 1 Marches Protest Neoliberalism
4. Mexico: May Day Marchers Blast Labor “Reform”
5. Caribbean: May 1 Marches Focus on “Sacrifice”
6. Links to alternative sources on: Environment, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua, 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. Southern Cone: May 1 Marches Focus on Local Issues
Latin Americans generally used the traditional International Workers Day marches on May 1 this year to protest around national issues, but some also demonstrated their support for immigrants in the US, where tens of thousands of immigrants and supporters were marching against anti-immigrant measures and laws.
At least 66 people were arrested in disturbances in Chile on May 1 as marchers protested the policies of President Sebastián Piñera, who took office on Mar. 11. Piñera is the country’s first rightwing leader since the end of the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
In Paraguay labor confederations started the day of events with a mass in Asunción’s Cristo Rey church. Unionists then marched to the Justice and Labor Ministry, where they presented Justice and Labor Minister Humberto Blasco with a petition calling for a 15% pay increase.
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva used May Day events to promote the campaign of his former cabinet chief, Dilma Rousseff, the Workers Party (PT) presidential candidate in elections this October. “You know who I want,” Lula said during an event in Sao Paulo. (El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 5/1/10 from AFP; Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 5/1/10 from AFP)
*2. Andes Region: Government Backers and Opponents March on May 1
Thousands of unionized public employees marked International Workers Day on May 1 with marches in Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador, joined by members of socialist president Rafael Correa’s PAIS Alliance (AP) party. [“PAIS” is the acronym of “Proud and Sovereign Homeland” in Spanish, and also spells the word for “country.”] Unemployment in Ecuador reached 9.1% in the first quarter of 2010, up from 7.9% at the end of 2009, while underemployment among the country’s 4.6 million economically active workers is officially at 51.3%.
In Colombia--where unemployment stood at 11.8% in March, down 0.2 points from a year earlier—thousands of workers marched in various cities calling for candidates in the May 30 presidential election to promote the creation of “more and better jobs and to halt the violence against unionists and society” [see Update # 1021]. Confrontations between marchers and the police left some 15 people injured.
In Venezuela supporters and opponents of leftist president Hugo Chávez held separate marches. Supporters celebrated the achievements of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution, while opponents demanded more democracy and respect for the rights of unionists. (El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 5/1/10 from AFP; Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 5/1/10 from AFP)
*3. Central America: May 1 Marches Protest Neoliberalism
In Panama thousands of workers marched on May 1 to oppose the neoliberal economic policies of President Ricardo Martinelli’s government, which they said was seeking to "take the workers back to the labor conditions of the 19th century.” They protested an increase in prices of staple goods, an increase in consumption taxes, government plans for labor “reform,” and a law which imposes prison sentences of up to two years for blocking traffic during protests—an effort “to stop the unions and to criminalize social protest,” according to Mariano Mena, director of the National Coordinating Committee of Organized Workers.
In El Salvador, more than 75,000 people marched in San Salvador to demand that the government of President Mauricio Funes, of the leftist Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN), "comply with the change" that he promised and not let himself “be seduced” by the right. There were two other May Day marches in the capital, ending with a large rally in the central Gerardo Barrios plaza, where more than 100,000 people gathered, according to the unions.
In Honduras tens of thousands of people marched in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and other cities to protest a June 28, 2009 military coup and to promote demands for a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the Constitution. The Honduran labor movement forms a large part of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), a coalition that formed to oppose the coup [see Update #1020].
The colorful Tegucigalpa march included protesters dressed as devils, monkeys and white gorillas; two marchers in prison uniforms wore signs identifying them as coup leaders Roberto Micheletti and Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez. The rightwing Tegucigalpa daily La Tribuna estimated the crowd at more than 100,000; organizers claimed over 500,000.
Thousands of Guatemalan workers protested an anti-immigrant measure in the US state of Arizona, Immigration Law SB1070, which was signed into law on Apr. 23. They also demonstrated their opposition to local mining and drilling operations, which they said cause "irreparable" damage to ecosystems. "We don’t want more violations in the areas around our communities,” said campesino leader Daniel Pascual. “We demand that they respect the results of the community consultations we’ve carried out, which rejected practices that go against our Mother Earth.” (El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 5/1/10 from AFP; Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 5/1/10 from AFP; Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 5/1/10; Honduras Culture and Politics 5/2/10)
*4. Mexico: May Day Marchers Blast Labor “Reform”
As has become traditional, rival Mexican union confederations celebrated International Workers Day on May 1 with separate rallies in Mexico City’s huge Zócalo plaza. The largest was organized by the independent National Workers Union (UNT), which claimed 250,000 to 300,000 participants; the local police failed to give an estimate.
The marchers opposed labor “reform” proposals from the government of rightwing president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and called for the dismissal of Labor Secretary Javier Lozano Alarcón. They expressed support for strikers at the Cananea copper mine and for 72 hunger strikers from the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) camped out in the plaza to protest the government’s sudden dismissal of 44,000 unionized electrical workers last October [see Updates #1022, 1028].
The demonstrators protested anti-immigrant measures in the US like Arizona Immigration Law SB1070 and criticized what they said was the Calderón administration’s passive attitude towards US immigration policy. One of the featured speakers was Elvira Arellano, an undocumented immigrant to the US who was repatriated to Mexico in 2007 after spending a year in a Chicago church resisting a deportation order. Others protested US immigration policy in a separate rally in front of the US embassy. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/2/10, ___; El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 5/1/10 from AFP)
*5. Caribbean: May 1 Marches Focus on “Sacrifice”
Cuban president Raúl Castro led some 800,000 people in the traditional May 1 march to Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución. In a brief speech, Salvador Valdés, head of the Cuban Workers’ Confederation (CTC), asked workers to support the government’s economic plan, which he said “will require extraordinary efforts and sacrifices” but is “vital for preserving our social system.” In April President Castro called for a reduction of public spending, the elimination of subsidies and of the black market, a stimulus for agriculture, and layoffs of as many as 1 million workers, about a fifth of the workforce, from their current employment. Castro said the government would seek to create conditions so that everyone would be able to find a productive job. (Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 5/1/10 from AFP; La Jornada (Mexico) 5/2/10 from correspondent)
In Puerto Rico the Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL) union coalition, the All Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico Coalition and other groups led a May 1 march from the Luis Muñoz Rivera park in San Juan to the Fortaleza, the governor’s official residence, ending up at the Plaza Colón in the capital’s old city. These groups led a massive demonstration on Oct. 15 against Gov. Luis Fortuño’s plans lay off nearly 17,000 government employees [see Update #1008], but participation in the May 1 demonstration was reportedly in the hundreds.
Striking students at the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) were “setting an example of struggle and combative spirit,” Wilberto Jiménez, head of a university employees union, told the marchers, and people “are going to copy them and take to the streets.” The students, who began a protest against budget cuts at the state university on Apr. 21 [see Update #1030], were still occupying the campus on May 2, despite the UPR administration’s plan to resume administrative work on May 3. The students launched their own radio station, Radio Huelga (“Strike Radio”) at 1650 AM, on May 2. (Primera Hora (Puerto Rico) 5/1/10, 5/2/10)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Environment, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US
Americas Program Biodiversity Report—April 2010
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6726
Gulf of Mexico oil spill endangers birds throughout Americas
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8561
Argentina: Murder of Human Rights Witness Sparks Fears
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6724
Indigenous in Argentina "Drowning in Sadness"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/2464-indigenous-in-argentina-qdrowning-in-sadnessq
UNASUR to Elect Secretary General at Argentina Summit
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2473-unasur-to-elect-secretary-general-at-argentina-summit
Paraguay: Controversy Over Troop Deployment
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2472-paraguay-controversy-over-troop-deployment
The Mothers of May: The Difficult Democratization of Brazil's Genocidal State
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730
Bolivia's Resource Dilemma
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2466-bolivias-resource-dilemma
Bolivia: May Day march amid multiple social conflicts
http://ww4report.com/node/8573
Nicaragua Protests Escalate
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2465--nicaragua-protests-escalate-
Chiapas: The Reconquest of Recuperated Land (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/2469-chiapas-the-reconquest-of-recuperated-land
Oaxaca: two dead as paras attack human rights caravan (Mexico)
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8560
Mexico: Assassination of Human Rights Defenders in Oaxaca
http://americas.irc-online.org/updater/6732
Merida Initiative Under Scrutiny Following Clinton’s Visit to Mexico
https://nacla.org/node/6530
The Mexican History and Geography Gap
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8565
US supported economics spurred Mexican emigration
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5064
Thomas Friedman: deeply wrong on Mexico
http://ww4report.com/node/8069#comment-320157
Cuba: U.S. Democracy Programs under Fire as Fallout from Spy Arrest Continues
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6722
Haiti: Of Donors and Disasters
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6725
From Charity to Solidarity in Haiti: Lessons for the Policy Makers (Part III)
http://www.truthout.org/from-charity-solidarity-haiti-lessons-policy-makers-part-iii59020
US military enforces attacks on Haitian unions (3 parts)
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5048
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5051
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5054
Obama's Militarized Status Quo in Latin America - Panel Discussion From the 2010 Left Forum
https://nacla.org/node/6532
Ignoring the Grassroots in Latin America
http://www.ww4report.com/node/8564
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/
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