Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1203, December 15, 2013
1. Haiti: Maquila Workers Take to the Streets--Again
2. Haiti: Evictions of Quake Victims Continue
3. Mexico: Fracking Wins in Disputed “Energy Reform”
4. Honduras: Another Journalist Killed; Toll Reaches 37
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Haiti: Maquila Workers Take to the Streets—Again
Haitian garment workers walked off their jobs in Port-au-Prince on the morning of Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, starting off three days of strikes and marches for a higher minimum wage. The protests were in response to the Nov. 29 recommendation by the newly formed Higher Council on Wages (CSS) setting a minimum wage of 225 gourdes (US$5.44) a day for the country’s 24 apparel factories—tax-exempt plants, known in Latin America as maquiladoras, which assemble products for export to North America [see Update #1202]. With hundreds of participants—or thousands, according to some sources--the actions were the largest demonstrations by assembly workers since August 2009 [see Update #1001].
On each of the three days the workers set off from the Metropolitan Industrial Park (PIM) near the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in the north of the capital; the majority of Haiti’s assembly plants are in or near the complex, which is generally referred to as “Sonapi,” from the initials of the semi-public authority that manages the assembly sector, the National Industrial Parks Company. On Dec. 10 the workers marched on the Parliament building in downtown Port-au-Prince. Waving tree branches and chanting “Down with the CSS,” the marchers, largely young women, called for a daily minimum wage of 500 gourdes (US$12.08). At Parliament legislative deputies Arnel Bélizaire and Fritz Gérald Bourjolly talked with a group of unionists. “We’re going to meet with the people concerned and with the bosses to find a negotiated solution to this problem,” Bourjolly promised. “These days a person can’t eat and drink on 225 gourdes.”
On Dec. 11 the protesters headed towards the Oasis Hotel in the comparatively wealthy suburb of Pétionville, where the CSS was said to be holding a meeting. Riot police blocked their way, and the marchers eventually returned to Sonapi. On Dec. 12 factory owners responded to the wildcat strikes by closing their plants. The Haiti Industries Association (ADIH), which represents the owners, cited “reasons of safety of employees,” claiming the demonstrations were caused by “individuals [who] entered violently within the confines of several plants to sow panic…and force workers to leave their workstations.” Finding the plants closed, workers again marched to Parliament, chanting: “500 gourdes, like it or not.” (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) video 12/10/13); AlterPresse (Haiti) 12/10/13, 12/11/13, 12/12/13; Haïti Libre 12/12/13)
The workers’ demands received positive responses from some government officials. On Dec. 12 Jean Tholbert Alexis, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, announced the formation of a seven-member commission to study the situation. During the course of the week representatives from the Collective of Textile Union Organizations (KOSIT), an alliance formed by four union federations, met with the minister of social affairs and labor. One of the representatives, Yannick Etienne of the leftist Batay Ouvriye (“Worker’s Struggle”), reported that “steps are under way for a consensus among the different parties on this situation. There are possibilities of meetings with the [CSS], the bosses and some unions.” She added that “the question of the wages for the workers has to be renegotiated, because they don’t accept the 225 gourdes.”
The factories reopened on Dec. 13, but according to Batay Ouvriye “the main officials of the factory [union] committees weren’t allowed to enter, sometimes with a letter indicating a suspension or a penalty, when it wasn’t an outright dismissal.” (AlterPresse 12/13/13; Batay Ouvriye News 12/13/13)
*2. Haiti: Evictions of Quake Victims Continue
Some 60 families left homeless by the earthquake that devastated southern Haiti in January 2010 were evicted from their improvised shelters in the vast Canaan camp a few kilometers north of Port-au-Prince on Dec. 7. According to residents, the removal was carried out--without an eviction order--by a justice of the peace and 17 police agents. The authorities were accompanied by a group of men armed with machetes and clubs who tore down homes, stole residents’ belongings and assaulted more than a dozen people. Another 100 families were told they would be evicted later.
The Haitian government declared the Canaan camp area public land in March 2010, and tens of thousands of displaced people have moved there—despite the lack of water, electricity and other services—after being pushed out of displaced person camps in Port-au-Prince. Now people claiming to own land in Canaan are seeking to drive out the settlers. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates the number of people currently living in camps at 171,974, about a third of them threatened with eviction; the numbers would be much higher if the IOM hadn’t removed 52,926 Canaan residents from the count on the grounds that the government now categorizes the area as “new neighborhoods.”
Many of the families evicted on Dec. 7 were previously evicted from the Mozayik camp in Delmas, a commune in greater Port-au-Prince, on May 4, 2012; the Delmas government has a history of violently breaking up the camps [see Update #1081]. The UK-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) is calling for appeals to be sent to Minister of Justice and Public Security Jean Renel Sanon (secretariat.mjsp@yahoo.com); General Director of the Haitian Police Godson Orélus (godore68@hotmail.com); and Minister for Human Rights and the Reduction of Extreme Poverty Roseanne Auguste (rosanne.auguste@primature.ht) calling on them not to carry out evictions without due process, to investigate the involvement of police agents and other authorities in violent and illegal evictions, and to seek durable solutions to the earthquake victims’ housing needs. (AI urgent action 12/9/13)
*3. Mexico: Fracking Wins in Disputed “Energy Reform”
The Mexican Chamber of Deputies voted 353-134 on Dec. 12 to approve a series of constitutional amendments providing the groundwork for President Enrique Peña Nieto’s controversial “energy reform” [see Update #1202]. The Chamber’s vote completed the amendments’ passage through Congress, since the Senate had approved the measures on Dec. 10. The required ratification of the changes by 17 of the 32 state legislatures is considered certain, since the main sponsors of the “reform,” the governing centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the center-right National Action Party (PAN), dominate the majority of state legislatures.
Opponents call President Peña Nieto’s program a de facto privatization of the state-owned oil and electrical companies, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Federal Energy Commission (CFE). In addition to street demonstrations outside the building in Mexico City, the Chamber of Deputies debate on Dec. 11 and 12 was marked by theatrics inside, led by deputies from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the small leftist Labor Party (PT). Opposition deputies seized the podium at times, occasionally advising “reform” supporters to privatize their own mothers. While speaking against the amendments, PRD deputy Antonio García Conejo stripped down to his underwear to dramatize his claim that the measures would strip Mexico of its resources. At one point PRD deputy Karen Quiroga punched PRI deputy Landy Berzunza Novelo, who was taken to the infirmary. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/12/13, 12/13/13; Milenio (Mexico)12/12/13)
By Dec. 15 the constitutional amendments had already been ratified by 13 state legislatures. As in Mexico City, the votes in the states brought out demonstrations by activists, many from the newly formed center-left National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party. In the western state of Jalisco riot police used tear gas to keep protesters from storming into the legislature, while legislators in the southeastern state of Campeche met in an alternative location to avoid the demonstrations. (LJ 12/15/13)
Despite the controversy, there has been little debate over the environmental impact of the changes, which will expand the involvement of foreign-owned multinationals using newer technologies such as deep-sea drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and hydraulic fracturing (“hydrofracking”) in the Eagle Ford shale formation in northern Mexico [see Update #1188]. Shortly before the congressional vote the Mexican Alliance Against Fracking issued a statement warning of the dangers. “Mexico should follow the example of other countries, such as France and Bulgaria, where hydraulic fracturing is currently prohibited under a strict precautionary principle,” the group wrote. (Frontera NorteSur 12/14/13 via Newspaper Tree (El Paso, Texas))
The US newspaper Investor’s Business Daily had a different view. The new energy policy “now makes North America the world’s oil and gas powerhouse,” the paper wrote in an editorial. “Credit the fracking revolution.” The editors said that with the changes-- “Mexico’s biggest shift since the mighty North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA], signed [into law in the US] 20 years ago this month”--Peña Nieto “seals his legacy, as North America solidifies its position as the world’s biggest and most advanced oil producer. Let the revolution begin.” (IBD 12/12/13)
*4. Honduras: Another Journalist Killed; Toll Reaches 37
The body of Honduran journalist Juan Carlos Argeñal Medina was found on Dec. 7 at his home in Danlí in the southern department of El Paraíso; he had been shot dead. Argeñal was a correspondent for the independent Globo radio and television network and also owned Vida Televisión. He was at least the third Honduran journalist killed this year and the 37th since President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa took office in January 2010, according to Globo. [Another Globo journalist, Edgardo Castro, has announced that he plans to leave the country because of death threats; see Update #1202]. (Miami Herald 12/9/13 from AP; Adital (Brazil) 12/11/13)
José Enrique Reyes Coto, an attorney who had run unsuccessfully for a local office in Nov. 24 elections on the line of the center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), was gunned down by three unidentified men in the early morning of Dec. 8 while he was attending a party in his home town of Choloma, in the northern department of Cortés. He was reportedly the 71st lawyer killed during President Lobo’s term. The police suggest the killers were gang members who thought Reyes had failed to represent another gang member adequately. (Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 12/10/13; Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 12/10/13)
In other news, a Tegucigalpa criminal court has finalized the sentences of four former police agents for the October 2011 murder of two university students, Carlos David Pineda Rodríguez and Alejandro Rafael Vargas Castellanos, the son of the rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) [see Update #1187]. One agent was sentenced to 66 years in prison and the others to 58 years. (Miami Herald 12/9/13 from AP)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Hyperglobalization Still on Course (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11208
Gender, Sexuality, and New Media: An Interview with Coral Herrera, Part 1 (Latin America)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/12/gender-sexuality-and-new-media-interview-coral-herrera-part-1
The Mapuche’s Struggle for the Land (Argentina/Chile)
http://intercontinentalcry.org/mapuches-struggle-land/
Uruguay becomes first nation to legalise marijuana trade
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4606-uruguay-becomes-first-nation-to-legalise-marijuana-trade-
In memory of Ambrósio Vilhalva (Brazil)
http://intercontinentalcry.org/in-memory-of-ambrosio-vilhalva-21328/
Bolivia: activists disrupt Human Rights Day confab
http://ww4report.com/node/12830
The Government and the Street in Bolivia: An Interview with Julieta Ojeda of Mujeres Creando
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4600-the-government-and-the-street-in-bolivia-an-interview-with-julieta-ojeda-of-mujeres-creando
Peru: deadly clash as narco-flight intercepted
http://ww4report.com/node/12833
Protesters occupy Bogotá over municipal 'coup'
http://ww4report.com/node/12828
Colombia: kingpin named in Trujillo Massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/12829
Certified Seeds: Different Wars, Same Reasons (Colombia)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/13/certified-seeds-different-wars-same-reasons
'Touch One of Us and We Will All Respond': Building a Movement to Fight Femicide and Impunity in Medellin (Colombia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4596-touch-one-of-us-and-we-will-all-respond-building-a-movement-to-fight-femicide-and-impunity-in-medellin
Chavistas Celebrate Victory in the Venezuelan Municipal Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4598-chavistas-celebrate-victory-in-the-venezuelan-municipal-elections-
Venezuela and the Battle against Transgenic Seeds
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10236
Report from Honduras: How the Election Was Stolen
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/9/report-honduras-how-election-was-stolen
International Election Monitors in Honduras: Do They Ensure Clean Elections or Whitewash Fraud?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4601-international-election-monitors-in-honduras-do-they-ensure-clean-elections-or-whitewash-fraud
Anatomy of Election Fraud: The 2013 Honduran Election in Five Simple Steps
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4607-anatomy-of-election-fraud-the-2013-honduran-election-in-five-simple-steps
Honduran elections signal increased militarism and resource extraction
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/honduras-home-free-fair-militarized-elections/
Honduras: ‘They can’t clip our wings’
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4605-action-alert-fear-for-safety-of-environmental-activists-in-ecuador
Maya People of Sipacapa Issue International Call for Solidarity Against Goldcorp (Guatemala)
http://intercontinentalcry.org/maya-people-sipacapa-issue-international-call-solidarity-goldcorp-21342/
Peña Nieto Set to be Worse Than Calderón Sexenio (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/12/pe%C3%B1a-nieto-set-be-worse-calder%C3%B3n-sexenio
Mexico Opens Energy Industry to Foreign Investment
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4608-mexico-opens-energy-industry-to-foreign-investment
Fiefdoms of Narco Death (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/fiefdoms-of-narco-death/
The Realities of Ecotourism in Chiapas (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4599-the-realities-of-ecotourism-in-chiapas
Drones over Tijuana (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/drones-over-tijuana/
Nelson Mandela’s Inconvenient Appreciation for Cuba
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/nelson-mandelas-inconvenient-appreciation-for-cuba
Dozens of Families in Canaan Forcibly Evicted, More at Risk (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/dozens-of-families-in-canaan-forcibly-evicted-more-at-risk
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
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Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
WNU #1202: Haitian Workers Are Offered an 8 Cent Raise
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1202, December 8, 2013
1. Haiti: Wage Council Proposes Eight-Cent Raise
2. Mexico: Fight Over “Energy Reform” Heats Up
3. Honduras: Two More Opposition Activists Murdered
4. Brazil: Indigenous Protest Land Demarcation Changes
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration, US/policy
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Haiti: Wage Council Proposes Eight-Cent Raise
On Nov. 29 Haiti’s newly formed tripartite Higher Council on Wages (CSS) announced the minimum wage levels it is proposing to go into effect on Jan. 1. The nine-member council, which is composed of government, management and labor representatives, set different minimums for five job categories. For Category A, which includes bank employees, electricians and telecommunication workers, the new minimum is 260 gourdes (US$6.28) a day, while for Category B, which includes construction workers and truck drivers, the new rate is 240 gourdes (US$5.80). For Category C, which covers agricultural work and the important sector that assembles products for export, the new rate will be 225 gourdes (US$5.44). Two other groups will have their own minimums: 300 gourdes for public administrators (US$7.25) and 125 gourdes for domestic workers (US$3.02).
Unionists and many economists say that even the highest rate set by the CSS, 300 gourdes a day, doesn’t constitute a living wage for a Haitian family [see Update #1200]. In November the economist Camille Chalmers, who heads the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), called for a minimum wage of 560 gourdes (US$13.52) for an eight-hour day. A 2011 study by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, an international organization sponsored by the main US labor federation, concluded that a Haitian worker needed 1,152 gourdes (about US$27.83) a day to support a family of four. Most Haitians are unemployed or work on their own farms or in the informal sector, but they are indirectly affected by the official wage levels, which can limit or expand spending by workers in the formal sector.
The minimum wage in the apparel plants is an especially contentious issue: the assembly sector, which now employs some 30,000 workers, is often promoted as the source of future growth for Haiti. Garment workers walked off the job in Port-au-Prince over the minimum wage in August 2009 and held massive mobilizations in various parts of the capital [see Update #1001]. The raise the CSS proposed for the assembly sector is just 12.5% above the 200 gourdes (US$4.83) a day which has been in effect since October 2012; this works out to an increase of about $0.08 an hour. Apparel workers’ unions had been pushing for a minimum of 500 gourdes (US$12.08) a day.
But the new Category C rate apparently will not affect the majority of the workers in the apparel plants, since they are paid by the piece. According to Daniel Altiné, one of the government’s three representatives on the CSS, the minimum wage decisions won’t apply to the piece rate, which he said the companies and the unions will negotiate in January. Under the current law the piece rate is supposed to be set in a way that allows most workers to make 300 gourdes (US$7.25) for an eight-hour day, although most factories have been underpaying by about one-third.
The Collective of Textile Union Organizations (KOSIT)—an alliance formed by the National Confederation of Haitian Workers (CNOHA), the Confederation of Haitian Workers’ Forces (CFOH), the Autonomous Confederation of Haitian Workers (CATH) and the May 1 Union Group-Batay Ouvriye (ESPM-BO, “Workers’ Struggle”)—responded to the CSS proposal with a press conference in Port-au-Prince on Dec. 4. The unionists called the new wage rates “an insult, a total lack of respect, a criminal act” and promised to continue mobilizations for 500 gourdes. The factory owners have circulated a letter repeating their claim that low wages are necessary to “keep Haiti competitive” with the country’s “big rivals,” Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam. But PAPDA noted that during the disputes over wages in 2009 the employers used the same argument to oppose raising the rate from 70 gourdes a day (US$1.69) to 200 gourdes. “It has been proven that there are more jobs [now], created with a minimum wage of 200 gourdes, than at 70 gourdes,” the group argued. (Inter Press Service 12/3/13; Haiti Press Network 12/5/13; AlterPresse 12/5/13; KOSIT press release 12/5/13 via Batay Ouvriye News; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 12/6/13)
*2. Mexico: Fight Over “Energy Reform” Heats Up
As of Dec. 8 the Mexican Senate was set to begin debates on President Enrique Peña Nieto’s plan for opening up the state-owned oil and electric companies, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Federal Energy Commission (CFE), to greater participation by foreign and Mexican private companies. Supporters say the “energy reform” will bring needed capital investment and technical expertise to the energy sector, while opponents consider it a disguised plan for privatization, especially of oil production, which President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (1934-1940) nationalized in 1938.
The legislative proposal--worked out by the governing centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the center-right National Action Party (PAN), which together hold a majority in the Congress—includes changes to Articles 27 and 28 of the Constitution. Article 27 asserts state control over oil, gas and coal and bans the granting of concessions; the proposal would add a qualification that private companies could share in profits, could be paid in cash or barrels of oil and could count their share of oil reserves as assets. Article 28 would no longer define the refining of oil and the generation of electricity as strategic activities. According to opponents, the changes to Article 27 would create de facto concessions and the changes to Article 28 would allow private companies to compete with Pemex and the CFE. Opposition in the Senate is being led by Sen. Alejandro Encinas of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and Sen. Manuel Bartlett of the small leftist Labor Party (PT). (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/8/13)
Since the beginning of December protesters have organized daily picket lines outside the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies to express their opposition to the “reform.” The National Regeneration Movement (Morena), a new center-left party which broke away from the PRD in 2012, is sponsoring the street protests, with support from PRD and PT activists and grassroots groups. The movement suffered a setback in the early morning of Dec. 3 when Morena founder Andrés Manuel López Obrador (“AMLO”) was hospitalized with a heart attack and underwent surgery. A two-time presidential candidate and the head of government of the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) from 2000 to 2005, López Obrador was released from the hospital on Dec. 7; his doctors said the patient’s progress was satisfactory but told him to rest at home for four weeks. His son, Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, and Morena president Martí Batres are now leading the protests. (LJ 12/8/13, 12/8/13)
The Congress has nearly completed approval of another set of sweeping constitutional changes. On Dec. 3 the Senate passed a measure that would allow reelection of federal legislators for up to 12 years; currently they cannot stand for reelection after one term--six years for senators and three years for legislative deputies. Presidents would still be limited to one six-year term. The changes would also allow independent candidates to run; now candidates need to be nominated by registered political parties. The measure passed the Chamber of Deputies on Dec. 5 with support from the PRI, the PAN and part of the PRD, but the legislation was returned to the Senate to iron out differences between the versions from the two chambers. The PAN has insisted on the electoral changes as a condition for its support of Peña Nieto’s energy program. (Miami Herald 12/4/13 from AP; LJ 12/6/13)
*3. Honduras: Two More Opposition Activists Murdered
José Antonio Ardón, an activist in Honduras’ center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), was gunned down by unknown assailants in Tegucigalpa’s Altos de la Sosa neighborhood the evening of Nov. 30. Ardón had been part of the motorcycle group that provided an escort for LIBRE presidential candidate Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, LIBRE’s presidential candidate in the disputed Nov. 24 general elections [see Update #1201]. He was known as “Emo Dos” (“Emo Two”) because he had inherited his motorcycle from another activist, Mahadeo (“Emo”) Sadloo, who was murdered in eastern Tegucigalpa on Sept. 7, 2011 [see Update #1096]. LIBRE supporters say more than 250 people active in the party and other opposition groups have been murdered since the June 2009 military coup d’état that overthrew former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), Xiomara Castro’s husband. (El Libertador (Honduras) 11/30/13; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 12/1/13)
On the night of Dec. 6 unknown assailants on a motorcycle murdered a former LIBRE mayoral candidate, Graciela Suazo Solano, in the northern city of La Ceiba, Atlántida department. Suazo Solano came in third on Nov. 24 in the mayoral race for the town of Brus Laguna, Gracias a Dios department. Police indicated that she was killed while resisting an attempted robbery. (Proceso Digital (Honduras) 12/7/13)
Edgardo Castro, a journalist with Globo TV elected to the National Congress on the LIBRE ticket, announced on Dec. 7 that he was leaving the country. He said that he had been receiving death threats on his cell phone and that a colleague had warned him about plans for his murder. “I’m being obliged to leave the country because the government isn’t guaranteeing me protection,” he said. “On the contrary, the threats against my life are coming from there.” (El Libertador 12/7/13)
*4. Brazil: Indigenous Protest Land Demarcation Changes
Some 1,200 Brazilian indigenous activists encircled the Palácio do Panalto, which houses the president’s offices, in Brasilia on Dec. 4 in a continuation of protests against proposals to change the way land is demarcated for indigenous groups [see Update #1195]. Currently the demarcations are worked out by the government’s National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), but Congress is considering a measure, Proposed Constitutional Amendment (PEC) 215, which would give other government agencies a role in the process. During the Dec. 4 march a confrontation broke about between some protesters and the Palácio do Panalto security force, which used pepper spray to disperse the group. “Some participants were hospitalized,” an indigenous leader, Marcos Xukuru, told the Brazilian news agency Adital. The marchers then moved on to the Justice Ministry and requested an interview with the minister; they were told he was out of the office. (Adital 12/4/13)
In other news, Ambrosio Vilhalva, a leader of the indigenous Guaraní, was stabbed to death near his home in the Guyraroká encampment in the southern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, on Dec. 1. Vilhalva was known outside Brazil because of his role in the 2008 film “Birdwatchers.” The police indicated that internal struggles were behind the killing, and the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), a nonprofit connected to the Catholic Church, apparently confirmed this, citing as a factor tensions among the Guaraní caused by their loss of territory. (Adital 12/4/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration, US/policy
Fracking for Sovereignty? The Argentine Case
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/6/fracking-sovereignty-argentine-case
Argentine Protesters vs Monsanto: “The Monster is Right on Top of Us”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4588-argentine-protesters-vs-monsanto-the-monster-is-right-on-top-of-us
Government of Ecuador Shuts Down Fundación Pachamama
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4591-government-of-ecuador-shuts-down-fundacion-pachamama
Ecuador: ecology group shut down by government
http://ww4report.com/node/12819
Nostalgia for Escobar, Uribe’s Crying Shame (Colombia)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/6/nostalgia-escobar-uribe%E2%80%99s-crying-shame
Venezuela Leads Region in Poverty Reduction in 2012, ECLAC Says
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/venezuela-leads-region-in-poverty-reduction-in-2012-eclac-says
Venezuela's National Assembly Votes to Make Chavez's 6 Year Plan Law
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10214
Canada Approves Genetically Modified Salmon Exports to Panama
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4586-canada-approves-genetically-modified-salmon-exports-to-panama
OceanaGold Bails Out Pacific Rim Mining, but El Salvador is Not for Sale
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/4587--oceanagold-bails-out-pacific-rim-mining-but-el-salvador-is-not-for-sale
Honduras’ Flawed Election: The Case of El Paraíso
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-flawed-election-the-case-of-el-paraiso
Honduras: Beyond the Eye of the Electoral Storm
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4590-honduras-beyond-the-eye-of-the-electoral-storm
Q&A with Raul Burbano, Canadian Electoral Observer in Honduras
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/4/qa-raul-burbano-canadian-electoral-observer-honduras
Honduras: Voto Social and Transparency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4593-honduras-voto-social-and-transparency-
Photo Essay: Guatemalan Wartime Victims Exhumed From Former Military Base Return to Pambach
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4585-photo-essay-guatemalan-wartime-victims-exhumed-from-former-military-base-return-to-pambach
Guatemala: Genocide on Trial
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4592-guatemala-genocide-on-trial
Business as Usual: the Anniversary of the Return of the PRI (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/4/business-usual-anniversary-return-pri
Mexico: protesters pledge to resist energy 'reform'
http://ww4report.com/node/12802
Mexicans Against Zionism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4589-mexicans-against-zionism
Baja Mega-Resorts under International Scrutiny (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/baja-mega-resorts-under-international-scrutiny/
Mexico: new massacre strikes terror in Juárez
http://ww4report.com/node/12811
Black Friday: The Perfect NAFTA Holiday? (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/black-friday-the-perfect-nafta-holiday/
Wage Hike in Haiti Doesn’t Address Factory Abuses
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/wage-hike-haiti-doesnt-address-factory-abuses/
Uruguay Discusses Withdrawing Troops from Haiti, Creating Waves Throughout the Region
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/uruguay-discusses-withdrawing-troops-from-haiti-creating-waves-throughout-the-region
In the Presence of Rocks: Border Patrol's Shoot-to-Kill Policy (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/4/presence-rocks-border-patrols-shoot-kill-policy
How School of the Americas Watch’s perseverance is paying off (US/policy)
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/enduring-struggle-close-school-americas/
Support Grassroots Media: Celebrate Upside Down World's Decade of Publishing
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3442-support-grassroots-media-celebrate-upside-down-worlds-decade-of-publishing
Support World War 4 Report
http://ww4report.com/node/12388
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.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. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1202, December 8, 2013
1. Haiti: Wage Council Proposes Eight-Cent Raise
2. Mexico: Fight Over “Energy Reform” Heats Up
3. Honduras: Two More Opposition Activists Murdered
4. Brazil: Indigenous Protest Land Demarcation Changes
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration, US/policy
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Haiti: Wage Council Proposes Eight-Cent Raise
On Nov. 29 Haiti’s newly formed tripartite Higher Council on Wages (CSS) announced the minimum wage levels it is proposing to go into effect on Jan. 1. The nine-member council, which is composed of government, management and labor representatives, set different minimums for five job categories. For Category A, which includes bank employees, electricians and telecommunication workers, the new minimum is 260 gourdes (US$6.28) a day, while for Category B, which includes construction workers and truck drivers, the new rate is 240 gourdes (US$5.80). For Category C, which covers agricultural work and the important sector that assembles products for export, the new rate will be 225 gourdes (US$5.44). Two other groups will have their own minimums: 300 gourdes for public administrators (US$7.25) and 125 gourdes for domestic workers (US$3.02).
Unionists and many economists say that even the highest rate set by the CSS, 300 gourdes a day, doesn’t constitute a living wage for a Haitian family [see Update #1200]. In November the economist Camille Chalmers, who heads the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), called for a minimum wage of 560 gourdes (US$13.52) for an eight-hour day. A 2011 study by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, an international organization sponsored by the main US labor federation, concluded that a Haitian worker needed 1,152 gourdes (about US$27.83) a day to support a family of four. Most Haitians are unemployed or work on their own farms or in the informal sector, but they are indirectly affected by the official wage levels, which can limit or expand spending by workers in the formal sector.
The minimum wage in the apparel plants is an especially contentious issue: the assembly sector, which now employs some 30,000 workers, is often promoted as the source of future growth for Haiti. Garment workers walked off the job in Port-au-Prince over the minimum wage in August 2009 and held massive mobilizations in various parts of the capital [see Update #1001]. The raise the CSS proposed for the assembly sector is just 12.5% above the 200 gourdes (US$4.83) a day which has been in effect since October 2012; this works out to an increase of about $0.08 an hour. Apparel workers’ unions had been pushing for a minimum of 500 gourdes (US$12.08) a day.
But the new Category C rate apparently will not affect the majority of the workers in the apparel plants, since they are paid by the piece. According to Daniel Altiné, one of the government’s three representatives on the CSS, the minimum wage decisions won’t apply to the piece rate, which he said the companies and the unions will negotiate in January. Under the current law the piece rate is supposed to be set in a way that allows most workers to make 300 gourdes (US$7.25) for an eight-hour day, although most factories have been underpaying by about one-third.
The Collective of Textile Union Organizations (KOSIT)—an alliance formed by the National Confederation of Haitian Workers (CNOHA), the Confederation of Haitian Workers’ Forces (CFOH), the Autonomous Confederation of Haitian Workers (CATH) and the May 1 Union Group-Batay Ouvriye (ESPM-BO, “Workers’ Struggle”)—responded to the CSS proposal with a press conference in Port-au-Prince on Dec. 4. The unionists called the new wage rates “an insult, a total lack of respect, a criminal act” and promised to continue mobilizations for 500 gourdes. The factory owners have circulated a letter repeating their claim that low wages are necessary to “keep Haiti competitive” with the country’s “big rivals,” Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam. But PAPDA noted that during the disputes over wages in 2009 the employers used the same argument to oppose raising the rate from 70 gourdes a day (US$1.69) to 200 gourdes. “It has been proven that there are more jobs [now], created with a minimum wage of 200 gourdes, than at 70 gourdes,” the group argued. (Inter Press Service 12/3/13; Haiti Press Network 12/5/13; AlterPresse 12/5/13; KOSIT press release 12/5/13 via Batay Ouvriye News; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 12/6/13)
*2. Mexico: Fight Over “Energy Reform” Heats Up
As of Dec. 8 the Mexican Senate was set to begin debates on President Enrique Peña Nieto’s plan for opening up the state-owned oil and electric companies, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Federal Energy Commission (CFE), to greater participation by foreign and Mexican private companies. Supporters say the “energy reform” will bring needed capital investment and technical expertise to the energy sector, while opponents consider it a disguised plan for privatization, especially of oil production, which President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (1934-1940) nationalized in 1938.
The legislative proposal--worked out by the governing centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the center-right National Action Party (PAN), which together hold a majority in the Congress—includes changes to Articles 27 and 28 of the Constitution. Article 27 asserts state control over oil, gas and coal and bans the granting of concessions; the proposal would add a qualification that private companies could share in profits, could be paid in cash or barrels of oil and could count their share of oil reserves as assets. Article 28 would no longer define the refining of oil and the generation of electricity as strategic activities. According to opponents, the changes to Article 27 would create de facto concessions and the changes to Article 28 would allow private companies to compete with Pemex and the CFE. Opposition in the Senate is being led by Sen. Alejandro Encinas of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and Sen. Manuel Bartlett of the small leftist Labor Party (PT). (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/8/13)
Since the beginning of December protesters have organized daily picket lines outside the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies to express their opposition to the “reform.” The National Regeneration Movement (Morena), a new center-left party which broke away from the PRD in 2012, is sponsoring the street protests, with support from PRD and PT activists and grassroots groups. The movement suffered a setback in the early morning of Dec. 3 when Morena founder Andrés Manuel López Obrador (“AMLO”) was hospitalized with a heart attack and underwent surgery. A two-time presidential candidate and the head of government of the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) from 2000 to 2005, López Obrador was released from the hospital on Dec. 7; his doctors said the patient’s progress was satisfactory but told him to rest at home for four weeks. His son, Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, and Morena president Martí Batres are now leading the protests. (LJ 12/8/13, 12/8/13)
The Congress has nearly completed approval of another set of sweeping constitutional changes. On Dec. 3 the Senate passed a measure that would allow reelection of federal legislators for up to 12 years; currently they cannot stand for reelection after one term--six years for senators and three years for legislative deputies. Presidents would still be limited to one six-year term. The changes would also allow independent candidates to run; now candidates need to be nominated by registered political parties. The measure passed the Chamber of Deputies on Dec. 5 with support from the PRI, the PAN and part of the PRD, but the legislation was returned to the Senate to iron out differences between the versions from the two chambers. The PAN has insisted on the electoral changes as a condition for its support of Peña Nieto’s energy program. (Miami Herald 12/4/13 from AP; LJ 12/6/13)
*3. Honduras: Two More Opposition Activists Murdered
José Antonio Ardón, an activist in Honduras’ center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), was gunned down by unknown assailants in Tegucigalpa’s Altos de la Sosa neighborhood the evening of Nov. 30. Ardón had been part of the motorcycle group that provided an escort for LIBRE presidential candidate Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, LIBRE’s presidential candidate in the disputed Nov. 24 general elections [see Update #1201]. He was known as “Emo Dos” (“Emo Two”) because he had inherited his motorcycle from another activist, Mahadeo (“Emo”) Sadloo, who was murdered in eastern Tegucigalpa on Sept. 7, 2011 [see Update #1096]. LIBRE supporters say more than 250 people active in the party and other opposition groups have been murdered since the June 2009 military coup d’état that overthrew former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), Xiomara Castro’s husband. (El Libertador (Honduras) 11/30/13; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 12/1/13)
On the night of Dec. 6 unknown assailants on a motorcycle murdered a former LIBRE mayoral candidate, Graciela Suazo Solano, in the northern city of La Ceiba, Atlántida department. Suazo Solano came in third on Nov. 24 in the mayoral race for the town of Brus Laguna, Gracias a Dios department. Police indicated that she was killed while resisting an attempted robbery. (Proceso Digital (Honduras) 12/7/13)
Edgardo Castro, a journalist with Globo TV elected to the National Congress on the LIBRE ticket, announced on Dec. 7 that he was leaving the country. He said that he had been receiving death threats on his cell phone and that a colleague had warned him about plans for his murder. “I’m being obliged to leave the country because the government isn’t guaranteeing me protection,” he said. “On the contrary, the threats against my life are coming from there.” (El Libertador 12/7/13)
*4. Brazil: Indigenous Protest Land Demarcation Changes
Some 1,200 Brazilian indigenous activists encircled the Palácio do Panalto, which houses the president’s offices, in Brasilia on Dec. 4 in a continuation of protests against proposals to change the way land is demarcated for indigenous groups [see Update #1195]. Currently the demarcations are worked out by the government’s National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), but Congress is considering a measure, Proposed Constitutional Amendment (PEC) 215, which would give other government agencies a role in the process. During the Dec. 4 march a confrontation broke about between some protesters and the Palácio do Panalto security force, which used pepper spray to disperse the group. “Some participants were hospitalized,” an indigenous leader, Marcos Xukuru, told the Brazilian news agency Adital. The marchers then moved on to the Justice Ministry and requested an interview with the minister; they were told he was out of the office. (Adital 12/4/13)
In other news, Ambrosio Vilhalva, a leader of the indigenous Guaraní, was stabbed to death near his home in the Guyraroká encampment in the southern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, on Dec. 1. Vilhalva was known outside Brazil because of his role in the 2008 film “Birdwatchers.” The police indicated that internal struggles were behind the killing, and the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), a nonprofit connected to the Catholic Church, apparently confirmed this, citing as a factor tensions among the Guaraní caused by their loss of territory. (Adital 12/4/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration, US/policy
Fracking for Sovereignty? The Argentine Case
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/6/fracking-sovereignty-argentine-case
Argentine Protesters vs Monsanto: “The Monster is Right on Top of Us”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4588-argentine-protesters-vs-monsanto-the-monster-is-right-on-top-of-us
Government of Ecuador Shuts Down Fundación Pachamama
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4591-government-of-ecuador-shuts-down-fundacion-pachamama
Ecuador: ecology group shut down by government
http://ww4report.com/node/12819
Nostalgia for Escobar, Uribe’s Crying Shame (Colombia)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/6/nostalgia-escobar-uribe%E2%80%99s-crying-shame
Venezuela Leads Region in Poverty Reduction in 2012, ECLAC Says
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/venezuela-leads-region-in-poverty-reduction-in-2012-eclac-says
Venezuela's National Assembly Votes to Make Chavez's 6 Year Plan Law
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10214
Canada Approves Genetically Modified Salmon Exports to Panama
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4586-canada-approves-genetically-modified-salmon-exports-to-panama
OceanaGold Bails Out Pacific Rim Mining, but El Salvador is Not for Sale
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/4587--oceanagold-bails-out-pacific-rim-mining-but-el-salvador-is-not-for-sale
Honduras’ Flawed Election: The Case of El Paraíso
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduras-flawed-election-the-case-of-el-paraiso
Honduras: Beyond the Eye of the Electoral Storm
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4590-honduras-beyond-the-eye-of-the-electoral-storm
Q&A with Raul Burbano, Canadian Electoral Observer in Honduras
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/4/qa-raul-burbano-canadian-electoral-observer-honduras
Honduras: Voto Social and Transparency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4593-honduras-voto-social-and-transparency-
Photo Essay: Guatemalan Wartime Victims Exhumed From Former Military Base Return to Pambach
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4585-photo-essay-guatemalan-wartime-victims-exhumed-from-former-military-base-return-to-pambach
Guatemala: Genocide on Trial
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4592-guatemala-genocide-on-trial
Business as Usual: the Anniversary of the Return of the PRI (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/4/business-usual-anniversary-return-pri
Mexico: protesters pledge to resist energy 'reform'
http://ww4report.com/node/12802
Mexicans Against Zionism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4589-mexicans-against-zionism
Baja Mega-Resorts under International Scrutiny (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/baja-mega-resorts-under-international-scrutiny/
Mexico: new massacre strikes terror in Juárez
http://ww4report.com/node/12811
Black Friday: The Perfect NAFTA Holiday? (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/black-friday-the-perfect-nafta-holiday/
Wage Hike in Haiti Doesn’t Address Factory Abuses
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/wage-hike-haiti-doesnt-address-factory-abuses/
Uruguay Discusses Withdrawing Troops from Haiti, Creating Waves Throughout the Region
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/uruguay-discusses-withdrawing-troops-from-haiti-creating-waves-throughout-the-region
In the Presence of Rocks: Border Patrol's Shoot-to-Kill Policy (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/4/presence-rocks-border-patrols-shoot-kill-policy
How School of the Americas Watch’s perseverance is paying off (US/policy)
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/enduring-struggle-close-school-americas/
Support Grassroots Media: Celebrate Upside Down World's Decade of Publishing
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3442-support-grassroots-media-celebrate-upside-down-worlds-decade-of-publishing
Support World War 4 Report
http://ww4report.com/node/12388
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.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. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
WNU #1201: Anti-Monsanto Protest Attacked in Argentina
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1201, December 1, 2013
1. Argentina: Anti-Monsanto Protesters Attacked
2. Honduras: New Party “Breaks Chains” of Old System
3. Dominican Republic: Haitians Flee Amid Lynching Rumors
4. Bahamas: Haiti Migrants Killed in Boat Capsize
5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, US/immigration
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Argentina: Anti-Monsanto Protesters Attacked
On the morning of Nov. 28 some 60 men and women attacked an encampment of protesters who for the past two months had been blocking construction of a seed-drying plant in Malvinas Argentinas, a town in the central Argentine province of Córdoba, by the Missouri-based biotech giant Monsanto Company [see Update #1200]. The attackers, arriving in two rented buses, used rocks and clubs to drive away protesters at two points where they were blocking access to the construction site. Once the road was cleared, seven trucks delivered construction materials. Later, a confrontation broke out between the attackers and the protesters, who included Malvinas Argentinas residents and environmentalists from other parts of Argentina. At this point police agents finally intervened by firing rubbers bullets. As many as 20 protesters were injured in the incident, along with three police agents; it was unclear how many attackers were hurt.
According to members of the Malvinas Struggles for Life Neighbors’ Assembly, which organized the blockade, the attack was arranged for Monsanto by the Construction Workers Union of the Argentine Republic (UOCRA), a major union which reportedly sponsored a similar attack on anti-mining activists in the southern province of Chubut in November 2012 [see Update #1154]. Monsanto and UOCRA spokespeople insisted the attackers were simply workers from the site and their families, but one of the injured was an UOCRA official, Luis Gutiérrez. The injured protesters also included a union official: Carlos Valduvino, secretary general of the Union Circle of the Córdoba Press and Communication (Cispren), was hit by a rock in the right eyebrow and required treatment at a clinic.
The Nov. 28 attack came after several incidents involving Monsanto supporters. Two weeks earlier an unidentified man had pulled a pistol on environmentalist Sofia Gatica, a winner of the 2012 Goldman environmental prize, while she was riding a bus; he told her that her brains would be splattered on Monsanto’s doors. On Nov. 22 two people beat and kicked Gatica as she was leaving work. The next day, a group leafleted against the protesters as they were holding a fair on a public plaza. The group’s leaflet claimed that “the people in the encampment aren’t from Malvinas,” that they “don’t want progress,” and that the blockade is financed “by other companies that don’t like Monsanto.” When a youth from the encampment lashed out at the leafleters, they beat him.
The protesters said they would maintain the blockade despite the attacks. They held a march in the nearby city of Córdoba, the provincial capital, the evening of Nov. 28, and are planning another march on Dec. 3, with the support of leftist parties. The French singer of Spanish descent Manu Chao, who was touring Argentina, visited the encampment on the morning of Dec. 1 as a demonstration of solidarity. (ANRed (Argentina) 11/28/13; La Voz del Interior (Argentina) 11/28/13, 11/29/13; Análisis Digital (Argentina) 12/1/13)
*2. Honduras: New Party “Breaks Chains” of Old System
Honduras’ Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) issued an official announcement on Nov. 30 declaring former Congress president Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, the presidential candidate of the rightwing governing National Party (PN), the victor in general elections that were held on Nov. 24 [see Update #1200]. According to the TSE, Hernández received 36.80% of the vote, while Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the candidate of the center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), received 28.79%. Results announced the day before showed Mauricio Villeda of the center-right Liberal Party (PL) with 20.28% of the vote and Salvador Nasralla of the Anticorruption Party (PAC) with 13.72%. The TSE didn’t announce final results for the 128 deputies in the unicameral National Congress, but earlier projections showed the PN winning 47 seats, followed by LIBRE with 39, the PL with 26 and the PAC with 13; each of three smaller parties is expected to have one seat.
The TSE called the turnout historic, with 3.232 million voters participating out of some 5.3 million registered voters, about 61%. Observers and media reports also indicated that participation was high. In the November 2009 elections--which the left boycotted to protest the June 2009 military coup that overthrew president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009)--the TSE gave several different turnout estimates but eventually said the rate was 49.4%; the left claimed participation was significantly lower [see Update #1017].
Both Xiomara Castro and Salvador Nasralla refused to acknowledge the official results and demanded a review of the ballots; a protest march was planned for Dec. 1 in Tegucigalpa. Castro, the wife of former president Zelaya, called the official results “a fraud of incalculable proportions,” although she said her supporters would protest “peacefully.” But Castro noted that even according to the official results LIBRE has become an “important political force.” Previously Honduran politics had been dominated by the PN and the PL. “We broke the chains of two-party rule,” she said.
Without a PN majority in Congress, Hernández’s powers as president will be limited, unless the PL deputies vote consistently with the PN. The LIBRE and PAC delegations may bloc together on some votes, and a LIBRE-PAC bloc would have a majority if 13 PL deputies voted with them. (Honduras Culture and Politics 11/29/13; InfoNews (Argentina) 11/30/13 from Télam; TeleSUR 12/1/13, some from EFE)
Most observer delegations upheld the elections’ validity. On Nov. 25, the day after the election, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega Saavedra, the leader of the historically leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), phoned Hernández to congratulate him. Ortega expressed “to the new president of Honduras the willingness of Nicaragua to advance in all the programs of integration, of unity of the Central American region” and “to strengthen the ties” with Honduras, according to Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s spokesperson and wife. (La Prensa (Tegucigalpa) 11/25/13)
But there were many questions about the official results. On Nov. 26 the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM) officially commended the electoral process for “transparency as well as respect for the will of voters in the tabulation.” But an EU-EOM member, Austrian journalist Leo Gabriel, said the majority of the European observers who had witnessed the elections on the ground had opposed the official report. “[T]he TSE pulled the results out of their sleeves according to a pre-defined political calculus,” Gabriel said, attributing the EU-EOM’s endorsement of the election to a desire to “clean up Honduras’ image around the world” so that a commercial project, the Association Agreement between the European Union and the Central American region, could proceed smoothly. (Upside Down World 11/29/13 from Opera Mundi (Brazil)) Adding to doubts about the election was a report that the clandestine internet activist group Anonymous had hacked into the TSE’s data base and found discrepancies pointing to fraud—and demonstrated that the data base lacked adequate security. (Honduras Culture and Politics 11/28/13)
“Indeed, far from announcing a democratic normalization and the overcoming of this country’s political fracturing after the 2009 coup, the electoral process that ended [on Nov. 24] demonstrated that the Honduran political crisis persists,” the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada wrote in a Dec. 1 editorial. It is not clear whether the country can avoid “a very deep social confrontation between the privileged sectors and a grassroots bloc that is still diffuse but is growing,” the editors concluded. (LJ 12/1/13)
*3. Dominican Republic: Haitians Flee Amid Lynching Rumors
Hundreds of Haitian immigrants fled the Dominican Republic from Nov. 23 to Nov. 25 following reports that mobs were killing Haitians in revenge for the murder of a Dominican couple; one or two men, reportedly Haitians, raped and murdered 63-year-old Luja Díaz Encarnación in the course of a robbery on Nov. 22 and killed her 70-year-old husband, José Méndez, in Neyba, the capital of the southwestern Dominican province of Baoruco. According to the Haitian nonprofit Support Group for the Repatriated and Refugees (GARR), 347 Haitian citizens were repatriated in just two days, Nov. 23 and Nov. 24, at the southern border crossing between the Dominican city of Jimaní and the Haitian town of Malpasse; the refugees included 107 children. The fleeing immigrants told GARR that four Haitians had been killed with machetes and their bodies had been burned.
The Haitian government put the total number of refugees for the week at 464, including 133 children. On Nov. 29 Haitian interior minister David Bazile announced that only one Haitian had been killed and that the flow of Haitians across the border had ended as of Nov. 28. “We’re not at war with the Dominican Republic,” he said. Dominican authorities deniedreports that the police had deported Haitian immigrants who sought protection from the mobs. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/25/13; Noticias SIN (Dominican Republic) 11/25/13; Adital (Brazil) 11/27/13; El Nacional (Venezuela) 11/29/13 from AP; 7 Días (Dominican Republic) 11/29/13 from Le Nouvelliste (Haiti))
The violence in Neyba added to tensions among Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent following a Sept. 23 ruling by the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Tribunal (TC) that denied citizenship to people born in the country to undocumented immigrant parents [see Update #1196]. The Haitian government has protested the decision, and on Nov. 27 the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), an organization of 15 Caribbean countries that includes Haiti, expressed its disapproval of the anti-immigrant ruling by suspending the process of admitting the Dominican Republic to the group. Just hours later the Dominican Republic announced it was suspending participation in talks Venezuela was mediating between the Haitian and Dominican governments on the issue. (Aporrea (Venezuela) 11/27/13 from TeleSUR)
*4. Bahamas: Haitian Migrants Killed in Boat Capsize
As many as 30 Haitians were killed when the boat they were traveling on ran aground and then capsized on Nov. 25 near Harvey Cays in the southern Bahamas. Bahamian authorities said 111 survivors were rescued, many of them suffering from hunger and dehydration. The badly overloaded 40-foot boat was apparently headed for Florida; Haitians seeking to enter the US without authorization frequently travel through the Bahamas. Bahamas military spokesperson Lt Origin Deleveaux said the survivors would be processed at a military base on New Providence and then repatriated to Haiti.
This was the second fatal incident in less than two months involving Haitians seeking to enter the US. Four Haitian women died in mid-October when their boat capsized near Miami. As of Nov. 5 Bahamian authorities had detained more than 1,500 migrants this year, up from 1,447 in 2012; 90% were Haitians. “What we know is that this issue comes in waves. It ebbs and flows,” Bahamas Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell said. “It simply appears that people are more desperate and the numbers are increasing.” (The Guardian (UK) 11/26/13; Miami Herald 11/28/13 from AP and correspondent)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, US/immigration
Pluspetrol Heavily Fined for Irreparable Environmental Damages in the Peruvian Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4578-pluspetrol-heavily-fined-for-irreparable-environmental-damages-in-the-peruvian-amazon
Mariátegui online (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/12407#comment-451853
Ecuador: deadly clash in anti-mining operation
http://ww4report.com/node/12796
Colombian Coal: Fueling the Cycle of Conflict
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/30/colombian-coal-fueling-cycle-conflict
Colombia: threatened indigenous group leader slain
http://ww4report.com/node/12797
Colombia: violent eviction at Cúcuta squatter camp
http://ww4report.com/node/12798
Women, War and Peace: Colombian Women Demand Truth and Justice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4573-women-war-and-peace-colombian-women-demand-truth-and-justice
Venezuela Tightens State Control Over Its Economy (Video)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10190
Nicaraguan President Ortega's Power Grab
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11058
Honduran Elections: Live Blog
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduran-elections-live-blog
Honduran Election Results Contested by International Observers
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/28/honduran-election-results-contested-international-observers
Honduran Election Results Contested Amid Reports of Fraud, Intimidation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4572-honduran-election-results-contested-amid-reports-of-fraud-intimidation
Violence Against Demonstrators Follows Contested Result in Honduras Elections
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20293-violence-against-demonstrators-follows-contested-result-in-honduras-elections
SOA Watch: 2013 Honduran Presidential Elections Analysis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4582-soa-watch-2013-honduran-presidential-elections-analysis
Honduran Congress will be Transformed
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4577-honduran-congress-will-be-transformed-
National Lawyers Guild Observers Question Validity of Honduran Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4575-national-lawyers-guild-observers-question-validity-of-honduran-elections
The Different Souls of the Libre Party and Repression against Honduran Students
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4580-the-different-souls-of-the-libre-party-and-repression-against-honduran-students
The Results of the Elections in Honduras were Changed, Says European Union Observer
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4584-the-results-of-the-elections-in-honduras-were-changed-says-european-union-observer-
Alleged Voting Irregularities Mar Honduran Elections
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11095
Violation of Guatemalan Q’eqchi Maya community land rights
http://intercontinentalcry.org/violation-of-guatemalan-qeqchi-maya-community-land-rights/
Mexico: protesters pledge to resist energy 'reform'
http://ww4report.com/node/12802
In Mexico, a victory for indigenous liberation
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/mexico-victory-indigenous-liberation/
Citizens challenge media silence on Matamoros war (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/12791
U.S. Alarmism Denies Complicity in Rising Mexican Asylum Requests
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/29/us-alarmism-denies-complicity-rising-mexican-asylum-requests
Adoption, Bigotry, Collagen: Some ABCs of Puerto Rico's LGBT
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/28/adoption-bigotry-collagen-some-abcs-puerto-ricos-lgbt
Q&A—Siege Mentality: the Border Patrol’s Northern Advance (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/27/qa%E2%80%94siege-mentality-border-patrol%E2%80%99s-northern-advance
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.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. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1201, December 1, 2013
1. Argentina: Anti-Monsanto Protesters Attacked
2. Honduras: New Party “Breaks Chains” of Old System
3. Dominican Republic: Haitians Flee Amid Lynching Rumors
4. Bahamas: Haiti Migrants Killed in Boat Capsize
5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, US/immigration
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Argentina: Anti-Monsanto Protesters Attacked
On the morning of Nov. 28 some 60 men and women attacked an encampment of protesters who for the past two months had been blocking construction of a seed-drying plant in Malvinas Argentinas, a town in the central Argentine province of Córdoba, by the Missouri-based biotech giant Monsanto Company [see Update #1200]. The attackers, arriving in two rented buses, used rocks and clubs to drive away protesters at two points where they were blocking access to the construction site. Once the road was cleared, seven trucks delivered construction materials. Later, a confrontation broke out between the attackers and the protesters, who included Malvinas Argentinas residents and environmentalists from other parts of Argentina. At this point police agents finally intervened by firing rubbers bullets. As many as 20 protesters were injured in the incident, along with three police agents; it was unclear how many attackers were hurt.
According to members of the Malvinas Struggles for Life Neighbors’ Assembly, which organized the blockade, the attack was arranged for Monsanto by the Construction Workers Union of the Argentine Republic (UOCRA), a major union which reportedly sponsored a similar attack on anti-mining activists in the southern province of Chubut in November 2012 [see Update #1154]. Monsanto and UOCRA spokespeople insisted the attackers were simply workers from the site and their families, but one of the injured was an UOCRA official, Luis Gutiérrez. The injured protesters also included a union official: Carlos Valduvino, secretary general of the Union Circle of the Córdoba Press and Communication (Cispren), was hit by a rock in the right eyebrow and required treatment at a clinic.
The Nov. 28 attack came after several incidents involving Monsanto supporters. Two weeks earlier an unidentified man had pulled a pistol on environmentalist Sofia Gatica, a winner of the 2012 Goldman environmental prize, while she was riding a bus; he told her that her brains would be splattered on Monsanto’s doors. On Nov. 22 two people beat and kicked Gatica as she was leaving work. The next day, a group leafleted against the protesters as they were holding a fair on a public plaza. The group’s leaflet claimed that “the people in the encampment aren’t from Malvinas,” that they “don’t want progress,” and that the blockade is financed “by other companies that don’t like Monsanto.” When a youth from the encampment lashed out at the leafleters, they beat him.
The protesters said they would maintain the blockade despite the attacks. They held a march in the nearby city of Córdoba, the provincial capital, the evening of Nov. 28, and are planning another march on Dec. 3, with the support of leftist parties. The French singer of Spanish descent Manu Chao, who was touring Argentina, visited the encampment on the morning of Dec. 1 as a demonstration of solidarity. (ANRed (Argentina) 11/28/13; La Voz del Interior (Argentina) 11/28/13, 11/29/13; Análisis Digital (Argentina) 12/1/13)
*2. Honduras: New Party “Breaks Chains” of Old System
Honduras’ Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) issued an official announcement on Nov. 30 declaring former Congress president Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, the presidential candidate of the rightwing governing National Party (PN), the victor in general elections that were held on Nov. 24 [see Update #1200]. According to the TSE, Hernández received 36.80% of the vote, while Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the candidate of the center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), received 28.79%. Results announced the day before showed Mauricio Villeda of the center-right Liberal Party (PL) with 20.28% of the vote and Salvador Nasralla of the Anticorruption Party (PAC) with 13.72%. The TSE didn’t announce final results for the 128 deputies in the unicameral National Congress, but earlier projections showed the PN winning 47 seats, followed by LIBRE with 39, the PL with 26 and the PAC with 13; each of three smaller parties is expected to have one seat.
The TSE called the turnout historic, with 3.232 million voters participating out of some 5.3 million registered voters, about 61%. Observers and media reports also indicated that participation was high. In the November 2009 elections--which the left boycotted to protest the June 2009 military coup that overthrew president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009)--the TSE gave several different turnout estimates but eventually said the rate was 49.4%; the left claimed participation was significantly lower [see Update #1017].
Both Xiomara Castro and Salvador Nasralla refused to acknowledge the official results and demanded a review of the ballots; a protest march was planned for Dec. 1 in Tegucigalpa. Castro, the wife of former president Zelaya, called the official results “a fraud of incalculable proportions,” although she said her supporters would protest “peacefully.” But Castro noted that even according to the official results LIBRE has become an “important political force.” Previously Honduran politics had been dominated by the PN and the PL. “We broke the chains of two-party rule,” she said.
Without a PN majority in Congress, Hernández’s powers as president will be limited, unless the PL deputies vote consistently with the PN. The LIBRE and PAC delegations may bloc together on some votes, and a LIBRE-PAC bloc would have a majority if 13 PL deputies voted with them. (Honduras Culture and Politics 11/29/13; InfoNews (Argentina) 11/30/13 from Télam; TeleSUR 12/1/13, some from EFE)
Most observer delegations upheld the elections’ validity. On Nov. 25, the day after the election, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega Saavedra, the leader of the historically leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), phoned Hernández to congratulate him. Ortega expressed “to the new president of Honduras the willingness of Nicaragua to advance in all the programs of integration, of unity of the Central American region” and “to strengthen the ties” with Honduras, according to Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s spokesperson and wife. (La Prensa (Tegucigalpa) 11/25/13)
But there were many questions about the official results. On Nov. 26 the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM) officially commended the electoral process for “transparency as well as respect for the will of voters in the tabulation.” But an EU-EOM member, Austrian journalist Leo Gabriel, said the majority of the European observers who had witnessed the elections on the ground had opposed the official report. “[T]he TSE pulled the results out of their sleeves according to a pre-defined political calculus,” Gabriel said, attributing the EU-EOM’s endorsement of the election to a desire to “clean up Honduras’ image around the world” so that a commercial project, the Association Agreement between the European Union and the Central American region, could proceed smoothly. (Upside Down World 11/29/13 from Opera Mundi (Brazil)) Adding to doubts about the election was a report that the clandestine internet activist group Anonymous had hacked into the TSE’s data base and found discrepancies pointing to fraud—and demonstrated that the data base lacked adequate security. (Honduras Culture and Politics 11/28/13)
“Indeed, far from announcing a democratic normalization and the overcoming of this country’s political fracturing after the 2009 coup, the electoral process that ended [on Nov. 24] demonstrated that the Honduran political crisis persists,” the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada wrote in a Dec. 1 editorial. It is not clear whether the country can avoid “a very deep social confrontation between the privileged sectors and a grassroots bloc that is still diffuse but is growing,” the editors concluded. (LJ 12/1/13)
*3. Dominican Republic: Haitians Flee Amid Lynching Rumors
Hundreds of Haitian immigrants fled the Dominican Republic from Nov. 23 to Nov. 25 following reports that mobs were killing Haitians in revenge for the murder of a Dominican couple; one or two men, reportedly Haitians, raped and murdered 63-year-old Luja Díaz Encarnación in the course of a robbery on Nov. 22 and killed her 70-year-old husband, José Méndez, in Neyba, the capital of the southwestern Dominican province of Baoruco. According to the Haitian nonprofit Support Group for the Repatriated and Refugees (GARR), 347 Haitian citizens were repatriated in just two days, Nov. 23 and Nov. 24, at the southern border crossing between the Dominican city of Jimaní and the Haitian town of Malpasse; the refugees included 107 children. The fleeing immigrants told GARR that four Haitians had been killed with machetes and their bodies had been burned.
The Haitian government put the total number of refugees for the week at 464, including 133 children. On Nov. 29 Haitian interior minister David Bazile announced that only one Haitian had been killed and that the flow of Haitians across the border had ended as of Nov. 28. “We’re not at war with the Dominican Republic,” he said. Dominican authorities deniedreports that the police had deported Haitian immigrants who sought protection from the mobs. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/25/13; Noticias SIN (Dominican Republic) 11/25/13; Adital (Brazil) 11/27/13; El Nacional (Venezuela) 11/29/13 from AP; 7 Días (Dominican Republic) 11/29/13 from Le Nouvelliste (Haiti))
The violence in Neyba added to tensions among Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent following a Sept. 23 ruling by the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Tribunal (TC) that denied citizenship to people born in the country to undocumented immigrant parents [see Update #1196]. The Haitian government has protested the decision, and on Nov. 27 the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), an organization of 15 Caribbean countries that includes Haiti, expressed its disapproval of the anti-immigrant ruling by suspending the process of admitting the Dominican Republic to the group. Just hours later the Dominican Republic announced it was suspending participation in talks Venezuela was mediating between the Haitian and Dominican governments on the issue. (Aporrea (Venezuela) 11/27/13 from TeleSUR)
*4. Bahamas: Haitian Migrants Killed in Boat Capsize
As many as 30 Haitians were killed when the boat they were traveling on ran aground and then capsized on Nov. 25 near Harvey Cays in the southern Bahamas. Bahamian authorities said 111 survivors were rescued, many of them suffering from hunger and dehydration. The badly overloaded 40-foot boat was apparently headed for Florida; Haitians seeking to enter the US without authorization frequently travel through the Bahamas. Bahamas military spokesperson Lt Origin Deleveaux said the survivors would be processed at a military base on New Providence and then repatriated to Haiti.
This was the second fatal incident in less than two months involving Haitians seeking to enter the US. Four Haitian women died in mid-October when their boat capsized near Miami. As of Nov. 5 Bahamian authorities had detained more than 1,500 migrants this year, up from 1,447 in 2012; 90% were Haitians. “What we know is that this issue comes in waves. It ebbs and flows,” Bahamas Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell said. “It simply appears that people are more desperate and the numbers are increasing.” (The Guardian (UK) 11/26/13; Miami Herald 11/28/13 from AP and correspondent)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, US/immigration
Pluspetrol Heavily Fined for Irreparable Environmental Damages in the Peruvian Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4578-pluspetrol-heavily-fined-for-irreparable-environmental-damages-in-the-peruvian-amazon
Mariátegui online (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/12407#comment-451853
Ecuador: deadly clash in anti-mining operation
http://ww4report.com/node/12796
Colombian Coal: Fueling the Cycle of Conflict
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/30/colombian-coal-fueling-cycle-conflict
Colombia: threatened indigenous group leader slain
http://ww4report.com/node/12797
Colombia: violent eviction at Cúcuta squatter camp
http://ww4report.com/node/12798
Women, War and Peace: Colombian Women Demand Truth and Justice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4573-women-war-and-peace-colombian-women-demand-truth-and-justice
Venezuela Tightens State Control Over Its Economy (Video)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10190
Nicaraguan President Ortega's Power Grab
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11058
Honduran Elections: Live Blog
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduran-elections-live-blog
Honduran Election Results Contested by International Observers
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/28/honduran-election-results-contested-international-observers
Honduran Election Results Contested Amid Reports of Fraud, Intimidation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4572-honduran-election-results-contested-amid-reports-of-fraud-intimidation
Violence Against Demonstrators Follows Contested Result in Honduras Elections
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20293-violence-against-demonstrators-follows-contested-result-in-honduras-elections
SOA Watch: 2013 Honduran Presidential Elections Analysis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4582-soa-watch-2013-honduran-presidential-elections-analysis
Honduran Congress will be Transformed
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4577-honduran-congress-will-be-transformed-
National Lawyers Guild Observers Question Validity of Honduran Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4575-national-lawyers-guild-observers-question-validity-of-honduran-elections
The Different Souls of the Libre Party and Repression against Honduran Students
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4580-the-different-souls-of-the-libre-party-and-repression-against-honduran-students
The Results of the Elections in Honduras were Changed, Says European Union Observer
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4584-the-results-of-the-elections-in-honduras-were-changed-says-european-union-observer-
Alleged Voting Irregularities Mar Honduran Elections
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11095
Violation of Guatemalan Q’eqchi Maya community land rights
http://intercontinentalcry.org/violation-of-guatemalan-qeqchi-maya-community-land-rights/
Mexico: protesters pledge to resist energy 'reform'
http://ww4report.com/node/12802
In Mexico, a victory for indigenous liberation
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/mexico-victory-indigenous-liberation/
Citizens challenge media silence on Matamoros war (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/12791
U.S. Alarmism Denies Complicity in Rising Mexican Asylum Requests
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/29/us-alarmism-denies-complicity-rising-mexican-asylum-requests
Adoption, Bigotry, Collagen: Some ABCs of Puerto Rico's LGBT
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/28/adoption-bigotry-collagen-some-abcs-puerto-ricos-lgbt
Q&A—Siege Mentality: the Border Patrol’s Northern Advance (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/27/qa%E2%80%94siege-mentality-border-patrol%E2%80%99s-northern-advance
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.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. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
WNU #1200: Opposition Charges Fraud in Honduran Election
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1200, November 24, 2013
1. Honduras: Opposition Charges Fraud in Election
2. Argentina: Residents Block Monsanto Plant
3. Haiti: Support Grows for Minimum Wage Increase
4. US: Annual SOA Protest Smaller But “Energizing”
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/policy
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Honduras: Opposition Charges Fraud in Election
With about 43% of the ballots counted in Honduras’ Nov. 24 presidential election, Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, the candidate of the rightwing governing National Party (PN), was ahead with about 34% of the votes, according to electoral officials on Nov. 25. Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, running for the newly formed center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), was second with 28.4%, followed by Mauricio Villeda of the center-right Liberal Party (PL) with about 21%. Both Castro and Hernández, previously the National Congress president, claimed victory. Castro’s husband, former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), told reporters that there were “serious inconsistencies” in as many as 400,000 ballots. He said LIBRE supporters “are going to defend our triumph at the ballot box and if necessary will take to the streets.” There is no runoff in the Honduran presidential election; the candidate with a plurality wins.
While the results remain in dispute, the election clearly marked a shift in Honduran politics, which the PL and the PN dominated for most of the last century. LIBRE, which grew out of a broad movement resisting the military coup that overthrew Zelaya in June 2009, has now at the very least established itself as the main opposition party, following a pattern seen in many Latin American countries over the past 20 years. (BBC News 11/26/13 from correspondent; New York Times 11/26/13 from correspondents)
In addition to voting for the president, Hondurans were choosing the 128 deputies for the unicameral National Congress, 20 deputies for the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) and the governments of the 298 municipalities. Some 5.4 million Hondurans were eligible to vote. Hundreds of international observers arrived in the country to monitor the country, some from governmental organizations like the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union (EU), and others from social organizations, including the international campesino movement Vía Campesina and Jubilee South/Americas, a Latin American network focusing on international debt.
In October LIBRE supporters reported a wave of pre-electoral violence against party activists and people active in other social movements [see Update #1199]. Violence, intimidation and irregularities continued up to election day. Two LIBRE members, María Amparo Pineda Duarte and Julio Ramón Maradiaga, were shot dead the evening of Nov. 23 in Cantarranas, in the south-central department of Francisco Morazán, as they were returning from an election training session. On the morning of Nov. 24 Radio Globo, an independent station, reported that the military had surrounded its transmitter. “We have not requested this presence,” an announcer said on the air. “They want to use this to pressure us and shut us up, but Radio Globo will be on the air, whatever it takes.”
Widespread blackouts were reported in Tegucigalpa in the week before the elections, threatening possible disruptions in the voting; the neighborhoods affected, including La Mercedes, Kennedy, San Francisco, Hato de Medio, Dilbio Paraleso, Nueva Capital Del Pantanal, Quesada and other marginalized areas, are LIBRE strongholds. International observers reported incidents of harassment by immigration officials and the military on Nov. 22 and Nov. 23. (Adital (Brazil) 11/22/13; Honduras Solidarity Network 11/23/13, 11/23/13; Honduras Culture and Politics 11/24/13)
*2. Argentina: Residents Block Monsanto Plant
As of Nov. 23 residents of Malvinas Argentinas in the central Argentine province of Córdoba had succeeded for more than two months in their effort to stop the Missouri-based biotech giant Monsanto Company from building a corn seed-drying plant in their town. After more than a year of protests against plans for the $300 million, 27-hectare plant--projected to be the company’s largest facility in Latin America [see Updates #1166, 1178]--the Malvinas Struggles for Life Neighbors’ Assembly announced a “Spring Without Monsanto” festival to be held outside the construction site on Sept. 19, three days before the start of spring in the Southern Hemisphere. The festival launched an open-ended blockade of the plant. With access cut off, the construction contractors removed their heavy equipment and the workers didn’t come to the site. Monsanto acknowledged that the project was suffering a setback.
After announcing plans for the facility in June 2012, Monsanto failed to answer when residents of Malvinas Argentinas, a working-class suburb of the city of Córdoba, asked for explanations. The company also didn’t provide an environmental impact study required by the General Law of the Environment. In November 2012 the Neighbors’ Assembly demanded that residents be allowed to vote on the plan. Mayor Daniel Arzani, from the Radical Civic Union (UCR), and provincial governor José Manuel de la Sota, from the Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist), refused to authorize the vote. According to opinion polls carried out in April this year by the National University of Córdoba (UNC), the Catholic University and the government’s National Council of Scientific and Technical Investigation (Conicet), nine out of 10 Malvinas Argentinas residents favored the call for a vote and 58% said they would vote against the construction.
On Oct. 31 Monsanto sent letters by registered mail to Sofía Gatica, a member of the Buenos Aires province-based Mothers of Ituzaingó environmental group, and to Eduardo Quispe, a member of the Malvinas Argentinas assembly. The company accused the activists of “harming public security” by their role in the blockade and claimed that “acts of violence against personnel” had taken place. (Página 12 (Buenos Aires) 11/23/13)
Adding to Monsanto’s public relations problems, on Oct. 20 the Associated Press wire service published an article detailing concerns that “uncontrolled pesticide applications could be the cause of growing health problems among the 12 million people who live in the South American nation’s vast farm belt.” Researchers have found a pattern of illness in provinces with large-scale farming, AP reported: “In Santa Fe, cancer rates are two times to four times higher than the national average. In Chaco, birth defects quadrupled in the decade after biotechnology dramatically expanded farming in Argentina.” Genetically modified (GM) plants now account for nearly all of the country’s soy production and most of its corn and cotton. Monsanto is the dominant force in the GM market, selling both the glyphosate-based Roundup pesticide and GM seeds for plants that are resistant to it.
The company insists that glyphosate is safe if applied in the recommended quantities and with the recommended precautions. But critics say that as weeds and insects develop resistance to pesticides, farmers have responded by increasing the amount they apply far beyond the recommended quantities. Use of agrochemicals in the country has jumped from 9 million gallons (34 million liters) in 1990 to more than 84 million gallons (317 million liters) now. AP calculated that “Argentine farmers apply an estimated 4.3 pounds of agrochemical concentrate per acre, more than twice what US farmers use.” (AP 10/20/13)
*3. Haiti: Support Grows for Minimum Wage Increase
Two major North American garment companies, Montreal-based Gildan Activewear Inc. and Fruit of the Loom, which is headquartered in Bowling Green, Kentucky, have announced that they will now require their Haitian suppliers to pay piece-rate workers at least the 300 gourde daily minimum wage (about US$7.22 at the time of the announcement) that went into effect by law in October 2012 [see Update #1197]. The increase will cover 90% of the workers; the rest are trainees who are paid at a lower rate. Scott Nova, a spokesperson for the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) labor monitoring group, told the Toronto Star that the companies will also be meeting with unions to discuss back pay. According to Nova, another major apparel company, North Carolina-based Hanesbrands Inc., has refused to make a commitment to honor the minimum wage.
The move by Gildan and Fruit of the Loom follows the release of a WRC report on Oct. 16 confirming earlier reports that none of the Haitian assembly plants were honoring the 300 gourde minimum wage; instead they were paying based on the old 200 gourde minimum. Adding to the pressure, on Nov. 14 the Washington, DC-based African-American foreign policy group TransAfrica released an open letter calling on North American manufacturers and retailers to remedy “systematic wage theft” by requiring their suppliers to pay at least the current minimum wage. More than 70 civil, human and worker rights organizations from Canada, France, Haiti and the US signed on to the letter.
At the legal minimum, Haitian apparel workers would be making $0.87 an hour; only Bangladesh and Cambodia pay apparel workers less. (TransAfrica letter 11/14/13; Toronto Star 11/18/13)
Meanwhile, in Haiti labor advocates have been organizing around plans for a new minimum wage. After many delays, on Aug. 29 President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) named the nine members of the country’s tripartite Higher Council on Wages (CSS), which is composed of government, management and labor representatives. The CSS is expected to recommend a new minimum wage on Nov. 29.
Some 250 workers attended a Nov. 17 forum on the issue at the Le Plaza hotel, facing Port-au-Prince’s central park, the Champ de Mars. Fignolé St. Cyr, one of the three labor representatives on the CSS and a spokesperson for the Autonomous Confederation of Haitian Workers (CATH), described the difficulties the labor members face on the council, with government and management largely opposing any wage increase. Haitian economist Camille Chalmers of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), said the minimum wage should be set at 70 gourdes an hour (US$1.69), or 560 gourdes for an eight-hour day (US$13.49), based on the cost of living. Chalmers called for an hourly wage to replace the daily wage, to prevent management from abusing overtime; he also advocated cafeterias at the plants, with the meals coming from local producers as a way of supporting Haiti’s agricultural sector. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 8/30/13; Batay Ouvriye report 11/17/13). More than 90 artists and writers, including four Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonists, have signed on to an open letter supporting workers’ demands for a living wage of at least 500 gourdes a day. (Open letter 11/18/13)
In other news, protests continued against President Martelly’s government. Thousands joined an opposition march in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 18, the anniversary of the 1803 Battle of Vertières, in which Haitian fighters decisively defeated an invasion mounted by French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The march followed much the same route as a Nov. 7 protest [see Update #1199)--from Bel Air in Port-au-Prince to Pétionville, a generally well-to-do suburb, and then back to the Champ de Mars. As on Nov. 7, Martelly supporters attacked the protesters with rocks and some gunfire, while police dispersed the demonstration with tear gas. As many as three people were reportedly hit by bullets and taken to the capital’s main hospital. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/18/13, 11/18/13; USA Today 11/18/13 from AP)
*4. US: Annual SOA Protest Smaller But “Energizing”
Some 2,000 activists traveled to Columbus, Georgia, for the 24th annual vigil outside Fort Benning to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). The activities, held this year from Nov. 22 to 24, were sponsored by SOA Watch, which opposes the US Army’s training of Latin American soldiers, charging that SOA graduates have been among the region’s most notorious human rights violators. Previous years were marked by trespass arrests as protesters tried to enter Fort Benning; nearly 300 activists have served prison sentences of up to two years for acts of civil disobedience since the vigils began [see Update #1013]. This year no protesters entered the base. One activist chained himself to the base’s fence on Nov. 23 but eventually unlocked himself after local police agents refused to arrest him.
The police estimated the number of protesters at 1,700, far less than the 22,000 reported in 2006; Father Roy Bourgeois, who started the protests in 1990, put this year’s attendance at about 2,000. But Bourgeois noted that the participants were younger this year, with over half seeming to be high-school and college students; SOA Watch said the vigil had “energized the movement.” “I think that as teenagers and as young adults who are going to be a part of the culture when we grow up, we should be educated on what our government is doing, who our government’s involved with, and I think that it’s such a good cause to be down here,” Audrey Lodes, who rode to Columbus on a bus from Nerinx Hall High School, a Roman Catholic girls school in Webster Groves, Missouri, told a reporter. “And I think it’s such a different perspective on our government than we ever see in the newspapers or in the media,” she added. (WTVM (Columbus, Georgia) 11/23/13;
Columbus Enquirer-Ledger 11/24/13)
Correction: This item originally described the Nov. 24 action as “the 23rd annual vigil.” It was the 24th.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/policy
Fuel Politics in Latin America: Where to Begin?
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/19/fuel-politics-latin-america-where-begin
Bachelet triumphs in Chile election but faces runoff
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4566-bachelet-triumphs-in-chile-election-but-faces-runoff
Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo elected to Congress
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4565-chilean-student-leader-camila-vallejo-elected-to-congress
The June Uprisings in Brazil: Below and Behind the Huge Mobilizations (Part 1)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/4567-the-june-uprisings-in-brazil-below-and-behind-the-huge-mobilizations-part-1
The June Uprisings in Brazil: Below and Behind the Huge Mobilizations (Part 2)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/4568-the-june-uprisings-in-brazil-below-and-behind-the-huge-mobilizations-part-2
Bolivia: Two Years After Chaparina, Still No Answers
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/22/bolivia-two-years-after-chaparina-still-no-answers
Sendero Luminoso in Bolivia?
http://ww4report.com/node/12769
Bolivia: repression against dictatorship survivors
http://ww4report.com/node/12776
Peru: 'narco-terrorist' busted; narco-politician exposed
http://ww4report.com/node/12770
Colombia: Looting Under Legal Camouflage
http://nacla.org/news/2013/11/21/colombia-looting-under-legal-camouflage
Empires of Gold and Colombian Extractivism Today
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/22/empires-gold-and-colombian-extractivism-today
Colombia: Cauca campesino leader assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/12773
Colombian high court upholds 'Framework for Peace' law
http://ww4report.com/node/12478#comment-451838
Venezuela's Legislature Gives Maduro Decree Powers to Fight Corruption and “Economic War”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10178
Honduran Elections: Live Blog
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduran-elections-live-blog
Honduras: Indigenous Movement Defends Land and Rights as Election Looms
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4564-honduras-indigenous-movement-defends-land-and-rights-as-election-looms
Making Sure Votes Count in Honduras?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4569-making-sure-votes-count-in-honduras
ALERT: Please Support Labourstart Campaign (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=218#1647
Teachers Situation Complicated: Negotiations, Protests (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=218#1649
AMLO Threatens to Shut Down Senate over Energy Reform (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=218#1648
The DVD Shootings (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-dvd-shootings/
The Disappeared and Mexico's New Dirty War
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/21/disappeared-and-mexicos-new-dirty-war
Narco-terrorism in Michoacán (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/12762
Michoacán mayor murdered by Knights Templar? (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/12783
NSA Staffed U.S.-Only Intelligence “Fusion Center” in Mexico City
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4563-nsa-staffed-us-only-intelligence-fusion-center-in-mexico-city
Gildan, Fruit of the Loom Commit to Ensuring that Haitian Workers Receive Minimum Wage
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/gildan-fruit-of-the-loom-commit-to-ensuring-that-haitian-workers-receive-minimum-wage
Border Patrol International: “The American Homeland Is the Planet” (Haiti/Dominican Republic)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/20/border-patrol-international-%E2%80%9C-american-homeland-planet%E2%80%9D
John Kerry’s Rhetoric Does Not Match Reality (US/policy)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/john-kerrys-rhetoric-does-not-match-reality
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.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. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1200, November 24, 2013
1. Honduras: Opposition Charges Fraud in Election
2. Argentina: Residents Block Monsanto Plant
3. Haiti: Support Grows for Minimum Wage Increase
4. US: Annual SOA Protest Smaller But “Energizing”
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/policy
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. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Honduras: Opposition Charges Fraud in Election
With about 43% of the ballots counted in Honduras’ Nov. 24 presidential election, Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, the candidate of the rightwing governing National Party (PN), was ahead with about 34% of the votes, according to electoral officials on Nov. 25. Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, running for the newly formed center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), was second with 28.4%, followed by Mauricio Villeda of the center-right Liberal Party (PL) with about 21%. Both Castro and Hernández, previously the National Congress president, claimed victory. Castro’s husband, former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), told reporters that there were “serious inconsistencies” in as many as 400,000 ballots. He said LIBRE supporters “are going to defend our triumph at the ballot box and if necessary will take to the streets.” There is no runoff in the Honduran presidential election; the candidate with a plurality wins.
While the results remain in dispute, the election clearly marked a shift in Honduran politics, which the PL and the PN dominated for most of the last century. LIBRE, which grew out of a broad movement resisting the military coup that overthrew Zelaya in June 2009, has now at the very least established itself as the main opposition party, following a pattern seen in many Latin American countries over the past 20 years. (BBC News 11/26/13 from correspondent; New York Times 11/26/13 from correspondents)
In addition to voting for the president, Hondurans were choosing the 128 deputies for the unicameral National Congress, 20 deputies for the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) and the governments of the 298 municipalities. Some 5.4 million Hondurans were eligible to vote. Hundreds of international observers arrived in the country to monitor the country, some from governmental organizations like the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union (EU), and others from social organizations, including the international campesino movement Vía Campesina and Jubilee South/Americas, a Latin American network focusing on international debt.
In October LIBRE supporters reported a wave of pre-electoral violence against party activists and people active in other social movements [see Update #1199]. Violence, intimidation and irregularities continued up to election day. Two LIBRE members, María Amparo Pineda Duarte and Julio Ramón Maradiaga, were shot dead the evening of Nov. 23 in Cantarranas, in the south-central department of Francisco Morazán, as they were returning from an election training session. On the morning of Nov. 24 Radio Globo, an independent station, reported that the military had surrounded its transmitter. “We have not requested this presence,” an announcer said on the air. “They want to use this to pressure us and shut us up, but Radio Globo will be on the air, whatever it takes.”
Widespread blackouts were reported in Tegucigalpa in the week before the elections, threatening possible disruptions in the voting; the neighborhoods affected, including La Mercedes, Kennedy, San Francisco, Hato de Medio, Dilbio Paraleso, Nueva Capital Del Pantanal, Quesada and other marginalized areas, are LIBRE strongholds. International observers reported incidents of harassment by immigration officials and the military on Nov. 22 and Nov. 23. (Adital (Brazil) 11/22/13; Honduras Solidarity Network 11/23/13, 11/23/13; Honduras Culture and Politics 11/24/13)
*2. Argentina: Residents Block Monsanto Plant
As of Nov. 23 residents of Malvinas Argentinas in the central Argentine province of Córdoba had succeeded for more than two months in their effort to stop the Missouri-based biotech giant Monsanto Company from building a corn seed-drying plant in their town. After more than a year of protests against plans for the $300 million, 27-hectare plant--projected to be the company’s largest facility in Latin America [see Updates #1166, 1178]--the Malvinas Struggles for Life Neighbors’ Assembly announced a “Spring Without Monsanto” festival to be held outside the construction site on Sept. 19, three days before the start of spring in the Southern Hemisphere. The festival launched an open-ended blockade of the plant. With access cut off, the construction contractors removed their heavy equipment and the workers didn’t come to the site. Monsanto acknowledged that the project was suffering a setback.
After announcing plans for the facility in June 2012, Monsanto failed to answer when residents of Malvinas Argentinas, a working-class suburb of the city of Córdoba, asked for explanations. The company also didn’t provide an environmental impact study required by the General Law of the Environment. In November 2012 the Neighbors’ Assembly demanded that residents be allowed to vote on the plan. Mayor Daniel Arzani, from the Radical Civic Union (UCR), and provincial governor José Manuel de la Sota, from the Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist), refused to authorize the vote. According to opinion polls carried out in April this year by the National University of Córdoba (UNC), the Catholic University and the government’s National Council of Scientific and Technical Investigation (Conicet), nine out of 10 Malvinas Argentinas residents favored the call for a vote and 58% said they would vote against the construction.
On Oct. 31 Monsanto sent letters by registered mail to Sofía Gatica, a member of the Buenos Aires province-based Mothers of Ituzaingó environmental group, and to Eduardo Quispe, a member of the Malvinas Argentinas assembly. The company accused the activists of “harming public security” by their role in the blockade and claimed that “acts of violence against personnel” had taken place. (Página 12 (Buenos Aires) 11/23/13)
Adding to Monsanto’s public relations problems, on Oct. 20 the Associated Press wire service published an article detailing concerns that “uncontrolled pesticide applications could be the cause of growing health problems among the 12 million people who live in the South American nation’s vast farm belt.” Researchers have found a pattern of illness in provinces with large-scale farming, AP reported: “In Santa Fe, cancer rates are two times to four times higher than the national average. In Chaco, birth defects quadrupled in the decade after biotechnology dramatically expanded farming in Argentina.” Genetically modified (GM) plants now account for nearly all of the country’s soy production and most of its corn and cotton. Monsanto is the dominant force in the GM market, selling both the glyphosate-based Roundup pesticide and GM seeds for plants that are resistant to it.
The company insists that glyphosate is safe if applied in the recommended quantities and with the recommended precautions. But critics say that as weeds and insects develop resistance to pesticides, farmers have responded by increasing the amount they apply far beyond the recommended quantities. Use of agrochemicals in the country has jumped from 9 million gallons (34 million liters) in 1990 to more than 84 million gallons (317 million liters) now. AP calculated that “Argentine farmers apply an estimated 4.3 pounds of agrochemical concentrate per acre, more than twice what US farmers use.” (AP 10/20/13)
*3. Haiti: Support Grows for Minimum Wage Increase
Two major North American garment companies, Montreal-based Gildan Activewear Inc. and Fruit of the Loom, which is headquartered in Bowling Green, Kentucky, have announced that they will now require their Haitian suppliers to pay piece-rate workers at least the 300 gourde daily minimum wage (about US$7.22 at the time of the announcement) that went into effect by law in October 2012 [see Update #1197]. The increase will cover 90% of the workers; the rest are trainees who are paid at a lower rate. Scott Nova, a spokesperson for the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) labor monitoring group, told the Toronto Star that the companies will also be meeting with unions to discuss back pay. According to Nova, another major apparel company, North Carolina-based Hanesbrands Inc., has refused to make a commitment to honor the minimum wage.
The move by Gildan and Fruit of the Loom follows the release of a WRC report on Oct. 16 confirming earlier reports that none of the Haitian assembly plants were honoring the 300 gourde minimum wage; instead they were paying based on the old 200 gourde minimum. Adding to the pressure, on Nov. 14 the Washington, DC-based African-American foreign policy group TransAfrica released an open letter calling on North American manufacturers and retailers to remedy “systematic wage theft” by requiring their suppliers to pay at least the current minimum wage. More than 70 civil, human and worker rights organizations from Canada, France, Haiti and the US signed on to the letter.
At the legal minimum, Haitian apparel workers would be making $0.87 an hour; only Bangladesh and Cambodia pay apparel workers less. (TransAfrica letter 11/14/13; Toronto Star 11/18/13)
Meanwhile, in Haiti labor advocates have been organizing around plans for a new minimum wage. After many delays, on Aug. 29 President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) named the nine members of the country’s tripartite Higher Council on Wages (CSS), which is composed of government, management and labor representatives. The CSS is expected to recommend a new minimum wage on Nov. 29.
Some 250 workers attended a Nov. 17 forum on the issue at the Le Plaza hotel, facing Port-au-Prince’s central park, the Champ de Mars. Fignolé St. Cyr, one of the three labor representatives on the CSS and a spokesperson for the Autonomous Confederation of Haitian Workers (CATH), described the difficulties the labor members face on the council, with government and management largely opposing any wage increase. Haitian economist Camille Chalmers of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), said the minimum wage should be set at 70 gourdes an hour (US$1.69), or 560 gourdes for an eight-hour day (US$13.49), based on the cost of living. Chalmers called for an hourly wage to replace the daily wage, to prevent management from abusing overtime; he also advocated cafeterias at the plants, with the meals coming from local producers as a way of supporting Haiti’s agricultural sector. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 8/30/13; Batay Ouvriye report 11/17/13). More than 90 artists and writers, including four Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonists, have signed on to an open letter supporting workers’ demands for a living wage of at least 500 gourdes a day. (Open letter 11/18/13)
In other news, protests continued against President Martelly’s government. Thousands joined an opposition march in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 18, the anniversary of the 1803 Battle of Vertières, in which Haitian fighters decisively defeated an invasion mounted by French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The march followed much the same route as a Nov. 7 protest [see Update #1199)--from Bel Air in Port-au-Prince to Pétionville, a generally well-to-do suburb, and then back to the Champ de Mars. As on Nov. 7, Martelly supporters attacked the protesters with rocks and some gunfire, while police dispersed the demonstration with tear gas. As many as three people were reportedly hit by bullets and taken to the capital’s main hospital. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/18/13, 11/18/13; USA Today 11/18/13 from AP)
*4. US: Annual SOA Protest Smaller But “Energizing”
Some 2,000 activists traveled to Columbus, Georgia, for the 24th annual vigil outside Fort Benning to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). The activities, held this year from Nov. 22 to 24, were sponsored by SOA Watch, which opposes the US Army’s training of Latin American soldiers, charging that SOA graduates have been among the region’s most notorious human rights violators. Previous years were marked by trespass arrests as protesters tried to enter Fort Benning; nearly 300 activists have served prison sentences of up to two years for acts of civil disobedience since the vigils began [see Update #1013]. This year no protesters entered the base. One activist chained himself to the base’s fence on Nov. 23 but eventually unlocked himself after local police agents refused to arrest him.
The police estimated the number of protesters at 1,700, far less than the 22,000 reported in 2006; Father Roy Bourgeois, who started the protests in 1990, put this year’s attendance at about 2,000. But Bourgeois noted that the participants were younger this year, with over half seeming to be high-school and college students; SOA Watch said the vigil had “energized the movement.” “I think that as teenagers and as young adults who are going to be a part of the culture when we grow up, we should be educated on what our government is doing, who our government’s involved with, and I think that it’s such a good cause to be down here,” Audrey Lodes, who rode to Columbus on a bus from Nerinx Hall High School, a Roman Catholic girls school in Webster Groves, Missouri, told a reporter. “And I think it’s such a different perspective on our government than we ever see in the newspapers or in the media,” she added. (WTVM (Columbus, Georgia) 11/23/13;
Columbus Enquirer-Ledger 11/24/13)
Correction: This item originally described the Nov. 24 action as “the 23rd annual vigil.” It was the 24th.
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/policy
Fuel Politics in Latin America: Where to Begin?
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/19/fuel-politics-latin-america-where-begin
Bachelet triumphs in Chile election but faces runoff
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4566-bachelet-triumphs-in-chile-election-but-faces-runoff
Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo elected to Congress
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4565-chilean-student-leader-camila-vallejo-elected-to-congress
The June Uprisings in Brazil: Below and Behind the Huge Mobilizations (Part 1)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/4567-the-june-uprisings-in-brazil-below-and-behind-the-huge-mobilizations-part-1
The June Uprisings in Brazil: Below and Behind the Huge Mobilizations (Part 2)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/4568-the-june-uprisings-in-brazil-below-and-behind-the-huge-mobilizations-part-2
Bolivia: Two Years After Chaparina, Still No Answers
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/22/bolivia-two-years-after-chaparina-still-no-answers
Sendero Luminoso in Bolivia?
http://ww4report.com/node/12769
Bolivia: repression against dictatorship survivors
http://ww4report.com/node/12776
Peru: 'narco-terrorist' busted; narco-politician exposed
http://ww4report.com/node/12770
Colombia: Looting Under Legal Camouflage
http://nacla.org/news/2013/11/21/colombia-looting-under-legal-camouflage
Empires of Gold and Colombian Extractivism Today
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/22/empires-gold-and-colombian-extractivism-today
Colombia: Cauca campesino leader assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/12773
Colombian high court upholds 'Framework for Peace' law
http://ww4report.com/node/12478#comment-451838
Venezuela's Legislature Gives Maduro Decree Powers to Fight Corruption and “Economic War”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10178
Honduran Elections: Live Blog
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/honduran-elections-live-blog
Honduras: Indigenous Movement Defends Land and Rights as Election Looms
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4564-honduras-indigenous-movement-defends-land-and-rights-as-election-looms
Making Sure Votes Count in Honduras?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4569-making-sure-votes-count-in-honduras
ALERT: Please Support Labourstart Campaign (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=218#1647
Teachers Situation Complicated: Negotiations, Protests (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=218#1649
AMLO Threatens to Shut Down Senate over Energy Reform (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=218#1648
The DVD Shootings (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-dvd-shootings/
The Disappeared and Mexico's New Dirty War
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/21/disappeared-and-mexicos-new-dirty-war
Narco-terrorism in Michoacán (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/12762
Michoacán mayor murdered by Knights Templar? (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/12783
NSA Staffed U.S.-Only Intelligence “Fusion Center” in Mexico City
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4563-nsa-staffed-us-only-intelligence-fusion-center-in-mexico-city
Gildan, Fruit of the Loom Commit to Ensuring that Haitian Workers Receive Minimum Wage
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/gildan-fruit-of-the-loom-commit-to-ensuring-that-haitian-workers-receive-minimum-wage
Border Patrol International: “The American Homeland Is the Planet” (Haiti/Dominican Republic)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/20/border-patrol-international-%E2%80%9C-american-homeland-planet%E2%80%9D
John Kerry’s Rhetoric Does Not Match Reality (US/policy)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/john-kerrys-rhetoric-does-not-match-reality
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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