Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1161, January 27, 2013
1. Mexico: EZLN Supporter Freed After Year in Jail
2. Chile: Mapuche Hunger Striker Reported Near Death
3. Haiti: Evictions of Quake Survivors Continue
4. Dominican Republic: Haitians End Labor Protest—Were They Tricked?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. 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. Mexico: EZLN Supporter Freed After Year in Jail
Francisco Sántiz López, a civilian supporter of Mexico’s rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), was released from prison in San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the highlands of the southeastern state of Chiapas, on Jan. 25, more than 13 months after his arrest. Over the past year a movement has formed in some 30 countries to demand the release of Sántiz López and another prisoner, the schoolteacher Alberto Patishtán Gómez, a supporter of the ELZN-initiated Other Campaign [see Update #1129].
Sántiz López was arrested in December 2011 on charges of participating in violence that broke out in the indigenous Banavil community in Tenejapa municipality on Dec. 4 when a group connected to the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) attacked EZLN supporters. Two people died in the violence, one from each side; witnesses denied that Sántiz López was involved. A judge acquitted him three months later, but prosecutors then charged him with illegal possession of a firearm. On Jan. 24 of this year Judge Jesús Hidalgo ruled that the authorities hadn’t taken into account “all the existing evidence in favor of Sántiz López indicating that he hadn’t taken part in the acts he was accused of.” Hidalgo ordered the prisoner’s release within 24 hours. “We’re going to continue with the EZLN in the struggle,” Sántiz López said as he left the prison. “We’re going to win.”
Patishtán Gómez remains in the prison, where he has been serving a 60-year sentence since 2000 for his alleged involvement in the killing of seven police agents in El Bosque municipality in June of that year. He says prison authorities are denying him medicine he requires following surgery for a brain tumor late in 2012. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/26/13)
*2. Chile: Mapuche Hunger Striker Reported Near Death
On Jan. 27 a group of academics, musicians and human rights activists said they were planning an emergency visit the next day to two indigenous Chilean prisoners to try to find a political solution that could end a hunger strike the prisoners started on Nov. 14. The prisoners--Héctor Llaitul Carillanca, the leader of the militant Mapuche organization Arauco Malleco Coordinating Committee (CAM), and CAM activist Ramón Llanquileo Pilquimán--were convicted in 2011 of arson and of attacking a prosecutor; this is their third hunger strike to demand a reduction of their sentences [see Update #1083]. They are now being held in a prison in Concepción, in the central Biobío region.
Ana Miranda, a representative of the Spanish autonomous region of Galicia in the European Parliament, visited Héctor Llaitul on Jan. 26. The prisoner’s health was deteriorating after 74 days on hunger strike, according to the legislator, who was in Chile for two joint European and Latin American summits. “It was painful to see him,” she said. “The people who visited him with me, who are friends of his, told me that to them he seemed much worse in terms of his weight, and basically that this could give him a heart attack at any moment—that is, Mr. Héctor Llaitul could die at any moment.” Miranda said it was time for Chile to recognize the rights of different ethnic groups and to create autonomous regions within the country.
The group planning to visit the prisoners includes the Uruguayan writer Raúl Zibechi, University of Chile history professor Sergio Grez, Chilean human rights activist Viviana Díaz Caro, Federation of Catholic University Students (FEUC) president Diego Vela, and singer and poet Manuel García. (Radio Bío Bío (Chile) 1/26/13; La Nación (Chile) 1/26/13; Radio Universidad de Chile 1/27/13)
Some 150 legislators from Europe and the Americas were in Santiago to attend the sixth meeting of the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (EuroLat), held Jan. 24-25, and the first summit of the European Union (EU) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), held Jan. 26-27. A total of 30 of the legislators signed a declaration expressing their “concern about the situation experienced by the Mapuche people in the Republic of Chile” and about what they called “legal state terrorism.”
“We are alarmed by the harsh militarization that is taking place in the Mapuche territories, along with the emergency laws such as the state security law and the antiterrorist law that date back to the era of the dictatorship,” the legislators said, referring to the 1973-1990 military government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. “We call for respect for the rights and guarantees of the Mapuche people, for recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples consecrated in International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 169, and for an urgent response to the demands of the political prisoners on hunger strike who are at this time in critical health situations.”
Supporters of the declaration included legislators from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Honduras, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Uruguay, Venezuela, Spain and the Spanish autonomous regions of Catalonia and Galicia. (Terra.com (Chile) 1/24/13; European Parliament News 1/24/13; Puranoticia.cl (Viña del Mar) 1/27/13)
On Jan. 18, a week before legislators arrived for the summit, the Chilean national police fired Lt. Walter Ramírez, the agent convicted of killing the young Mapuche Matias Catrileo on Jan. 3, 2008; Catrileo was shot in the back [see Update #1159]. Despite the conviction, Ramírez was never imprisoned, and he had remained on the force. Interior Minister Andrés Chadwick released a statement saying the firing “shows that the force always follows the law.” Mónica Quezada, the victim’s mother, told reporters that she hoped this will help bring about “a policy of the state that when an officer commits unnecessary violence resulting in death, the crime does not go unpunished.” (Miami Herald 1/18/13 from AP)
*3. Haiti: Evictions of Quake Survivors Continue
On Jan. 12, the third anniversary of a massive earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti, municipal and national authorities forcibly removed hundreds of people left homeless by the quake from their encampment in Place Sainte Anne, a park a few blocks from the National Palace in downtown Port-au-Prince. “Several injuries have been recorded in this unexpected eviction,” Carnise Delbrun, a representative of the New Place Sainte Anne Management Commission (NCGPS), told reporters. The operation was carried out by officials from the mayor’s office and from the national Civil Protection Office, the country’s civil defense agency, according to the displaced camp residents.
Camp residents claim Civil Protection was supposed to provide each family with a check for 20,000 gourdes (about US$473), as part of the national government’s program to move homeless people out of the camps by giving them small amounts of money. “They evicted these poor people on the pretext that everyone had already received this 20,000 gourde check to go find shelter somewhere else,” Delbrun said. But 552 families never got their payment, according to another NCGPS representative, Mario James Michaud. “About 20 people out of every 100 have benefited from this money,” he said, claiming that municipal authorities had only distributed the checks to their friends.
Dozens of families demonstrated on Jan. 22, saying they still hadn’t received their payment and threatening to rebuild their temporary shelters in the park. (Haiti Press Network (Haiti) 1/14/13; AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/22/13)
In other news, a man identified as Pamphile Bellefort was killed on Jan. 22 in the city of Jérémie in the southwestern department of Grand'Anse during renewed protests over delays in a project for repairing the 69-km highway from Jérémie to Les Cayes in South department. Another man had been killed during an earlier protest on Nov. 27 [see Update #1154]. Bellefort was reportedly shot by a guard at the Jérémie penitentiary who thought the protesters were trying to invade the prison. Demonstrators reacted to the new violence by setting up flaming barricades and shutting down most economic activity in the city. (AlterPresse 1/22/13; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 1/23/13)
The three-year-old highway renovation was halted in August 2012 when the Brazilian company that won the contract abruptly suspended its operations. According to Susana Ferreira of the Reuters wire service, one factor was the common confusion about property titles in Haiti; it was unclear who should be compensated for some of the roadside homes that would be demolished to widen the highway. Government officials say the Dominican construction company Estrella will soon be taking over the project. (Reuters 1/27/13)
*4. Dominican Republic: Haitians End Labor Protest—Were They Tricked?
On Jan. 19 a group of Haitian immigrant workers reached an agreement with international organizations and Dominican authorities to leave an encampment they and family members had maintained in front of the Dominican Labor Ministry in Santo Domingo since Dec. 14. The 112 mostly undocumented workers said they were owed a total of 15 million pesos (about US$368,550) in severance pay and benefits after two coconut processing plants, Coquera Kilómetro 5 and Coquera Real, in nearby San Cristóbal province went out of business [see Update #1159].
Later the Haitians charged that they had been pressured by Dominican immigration authorities and Cy Winter, the local director of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), to sign a form they thought would keep them from being deported; in fact it was an application for voluntary repatriation to Haiti, according to one of their lawyers, Carlos Sánchez Díaz. The workers also accused Edwin Paraison—a former Haitian minister for Haitians living abroad and now the head of the Zile Foundation, which seeks to improve Haitian-Dominican relations—of helping to trick them into signing. Paraison said he’d simply aided in the production of identity papers for the Haitians. Winter “didn’t tell me this would be to incorporate my compatriots into the voluntary return program,” Paraison said.
After leaving the Labor Ministry the Haitians went back to San Cristóbal province, where a relative of one of their lawyers was letting them camp out in a large parking lot. The workers are apparently continuing their lawsuit for severance pay. Some supporters of the workers say the owner of the closed plants, Rafael Alonzo (or Alonso) Luna, is a local leader of the governing Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) in Samaná province in the north and is being protected by an influential official. (EFE 1/20/13 via Univision; El Día (Santo Domingo) 1/21/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti
Martin Luther King’s Reasons for Opposing the Viet Nam War Apply to Today’s Drug War (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8826
Argentina, Iran in joint probe of AMIA bombing
http://ww4report.com/node/11924
Chile: Summit of the Peoples Demands Solidarity and Sovereignty
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/4089-chile-summit-of-the-peoples-demands-solidarity-and-sovereignty
Brazil: landless leader assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/11922
Peru: new mobilization against Conga project
http://ww4report.com/node/11915
Peru: new incident at Bagua
http://ww4report.com/node/11914
Ecuador: Building a Good Life - Sumak Kawsay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4087-ecuador-building-a-good-life-sumak-kawsay
Colombia: prosecutor's transfer sparks outcry
http://ww4report.com/node/11917
Colombia: FARC assassinate indigenous leader
http://ww4report.com/node/11916
Shift in the FARC Position Regarding the Land Problem: A Social Democratic Program in the Making (Colombia)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/21/shift-farc-position-regarding-land-problem-social-democratic-program-making
Free Trade and Workers’ Rights in Colombia: “Peace” the European Way
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4086-free-trade-and-workers-rights-in-colombia-peace-the-european-way
Grassroots Activists Speak on Chavez’s Absence: “We’ll Fight Even Harder” (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7642
Migration Now: Art that Moves (US/immigration)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4096-migration-now-art-that-moves-
Panama Canal expansion fuels inter-oceanic race
http://ww4report.com/node/11919
Constitutional Death Spiral in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4085-constitutional-death-spiral-in-honduras
Remilitarization Gives Rise to New Tensions and Violence in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4095-remilitarization-gives-rise-to-new-tensions-and-violence-in-guatemala
Guatemala’s War on Women
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4092-guatemalas-war-on-women-
Subcommander Marcos speaks again (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/11810#comment-450046
Grain Imports Soar (Mexico)
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2013/01/25/grain-imports-soar/
Hunger Strike Aims to Stop GMO Corn in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4090-hunger-strike-aims-to-stop-gmo-corn-in-mexico
Mexico: campesinos bear arms against narcos
http://ww4report.com/node/11918
Mexico’s New Immigrants
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2013/01/21/mexicos-new-immigrants/
New Cuba: Beachhead for Economic Democracy Beyond Capitalism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4094-new-cuba-beachhead-for-economic-democracy-beyond-capitalism
The Miami Herald Offers Free Publicity to Rightwing Lobbyist Jose Cardenas (Cuba)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/25/miami-herald-offers-free-publicity-rightwing-lobbyist-jose-cardenas
Jamaica and the IMF: How Not to Learn From Past Mistakes
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/jamaica-and-the-imf-how-not-to-learn-from-past-mistakes
In Commemorating Earthquake, Very Different Approaches (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/in-commemorating-earthquake-very-different-approaches
The U.S. State Department’s Uninspiring Report to Congress (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/the-us-state-departments-uninspiring-report-to-congress
CIDA Continues its History of Controvery in Haiti
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/24/cida-continues-its-history-controvery-haiti
Phoenix Project... born again? (Haiti)
http://www.ayitikaleje.org/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2013/1/21/phoenix-project-born-again.html
The Uses of Paul Farmer: The Doctor and the Haitian Machine
http://www.mediahacker.org/2013/01/18/the-uses-of-paul-farmer-the-doctor-and-the-haitian-machine/
Letter From Haiti: Life in the Ruins
http://www.thenation.com/article/172101/letter-haiti-life-ruins
Collateral Damage on the U.S.-Mexico Border (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/24/collateral-damage-us-mexico-border
Why Do Poor People Living in an Abandoned Skyscraper So Outrage the New Yorker?
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7648
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://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.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/
NOTE: An interview with Weekly News Update co-editor David Wilson appears in From Disaster to Hope, a series of interviews conducted by Nicole Titus with people affected by the 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti. Available at:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Disaster-Hope-Interviews-ebook/dp/B009E52X66
Update co-editor Jane Guskin is leading a dialogue on immigration at the James Connolly Forum in Troy, NY, on Friday, Feb. 15. The event starts at 7 pm at the Oakwood Community Center on 313 Tenth Street; for more information, call 518-505-0948.
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.com/
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
WNU #1160: Documents Describe US “Transition Plans” for Cuba
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1160, January 20, 2013
1. Cuba: Documents Describe US “Transition Plans”
2. Honduras: Are “Model Cities” Back on the Agenda?
3. Mexico: US Plans to Train Commandos for “Drug War”
4. Mexico: Victims’ Movement Calls for US Gun Control
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, 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. Cuba: Documents Describe US “Transition Plans”
New information about the inner workings of the Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program (CDCPP)--a multimillion-dollar program administered by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) ostensibly to promote democracy in Cuba—were made public on Jan. 15 when a major USAID contractor filed program-related documents in federal court in Washington, DC. The documents are being used in an effort by Maryland-based Development Alternatives Inc (DAI) to win the dismissal of a $60 million lawsuit against it and USAID by the family of US citizen Alan Gross, a DAI subcontractor now serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba for his work there for the CDCPP [see World War 4 Report 8/6/11). The DC-based research group National Security Archive posted the documents on its website on Jan. 18.
The papers include a May 8, 2008 solicitation by USAID for bids on a $30 million CDCPP project and a memo by DAI describing an Aug. 26, 2008 meeting between USAID and DAI representatives. The CDCPP is intended to “[s]upport the [US government’s] primary objective of hastening a peaceful transition to a democratic, market-oriented society” in Cuba, the USAID officials explain in the documents. The US has “between five to seven different transition plans” for Cuba, including “plans for launching a rapid-response programmatic platform.” “CDCPP is not an analytical project; it’s an operational activity,” officials noted, and it requires “continuous discretion.” However, the USAID didn’t classify the project, in order to maintain the appearance of transparency; as a result, project documents can be made public.
Gross won a contract with DAI to distribute communication devices to members of Cuba’s Jewish community as part of the CDCPP project. Cuban authorities arrested him in December 2009 on charges of “acts against the independence or integrity of the state,” and he has been imprisoned ever since. Currently he is poor health and is being held in a military hospital, although the nature of his illness is in dispute. “[M]y goals were not the same as the program that sent me,” Gross told National Security Archive analyst Peter Kornbluh during a meeting at the hospital last Nov. 28. Gross called on the administration of US president Barack Obama to resolve his case and other bilateral issues through negotiations.
Analysts have questioned the claimed purpose of Gross’s mission. “[T]his isn’t simply a matter of supplying equipment to the tiny Jewish community in Cuba,” José Pertierra, a DC-based attorney who has represented Venezuela in its extradition request against Cuban-born former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “asset” Luis Posada Carriles [see Update #1075], told the Mexican daily La Jornada. The purpose was “to establish an alternative network of dissidents used in the interests of the US,” he said, adding that “this is illegal in Cuba and in all the countries in the world—no sovereign government accepts a foreign power involving itself in internal activities aimed at promoting regime change.”
Pertierra said he would like Gross to be freed on humanitarian grounds, but he contrasted the case with the 2001 convictions in US federal court of five Cuban men (widely known as the “Cuban Five”) on charges of spying against the US [see Update #993]. “Gross’s program had the intention of destabilizing Cuba,” according to Pertierra, who is active in work for the release of the five Cubans. “The Five didn’t have the objective of destabilizing the US; instead, they were working to prevent acts of terrorism against Cuban launched from and protected by the US.” (National Security Archive Electronic Briefing 1/17/13; Along the Malecón blog 1/17/13; LJ 1/20/13)
*2. Honduras: Are “Model Cities” Back on the Agenda?
Juan Orlando Hernández, the president of Honduras’ National Congress, introduced a bill the evening of Jan. 14 to create Special Development Regimes (RED), semi-autonomous jurisdictions that proponents say would attract international investment and stimulate the country’s economy. The proposed special regions are similar to the “model cities,” autonomous zones to be managed by North American corporations, that Hernández and Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa pushed for last year; these were called Special Development Regions (RED), with the same acronym as the new entities. The Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) ruled the earlier proposal unconstitutional on Oct. 17 [see Update #1148].
The new proposal would include 12 types of special zones: international finance centers, international logistics centers, autonomous cities, special economic zones, international commercial courts, special investment districts, renewable energy districts, zones with their own legal systems, special agro-industrial zones, special tourist zones, industrial mining zones and industrial forest zones. Hernández claims the new bill responds to the CSJ’s October ruling by keeping the zones under the national court system and by requiring referendums before establishing or changing the zones. He is pushing to have the new law passed by Jan. 25, before the end of the current congressional session; since the bill includes constitutional changes, it needs to be approved in two successive sessions. (El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 1/15/13; Honduras Culture and Politics blog 1/16/13)
There also seems to be a renewed interest in “model cities” in the US. National Public Radio (NPR) ran a segment on Jan. 4 describing model cities as a way “you could cure all your country's ills by just...starting over” [ellipses in the original]. “[P]oor countries could invite richer countries to found and run ideal ‘charter cities.’ It’s not colonialism, [US economist Paul] Romer explains, because the poor countries are asking for help.” (NPR 1/4/13; Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Americas Blog 1/15/13)
The new legislation might face a somewhat more sympathetic CSJ, since the National Congress removed four of the court’s 15 justices and appointed replacements for them on Dec. 12—a maneuver that opponents said was unconstitutional. The new justices took office on Jan. 3 under heavy police guard as demonstrators protested the changes in the CSJ. However, the replacement of four justices wouldn’t be enough to change the lopsided October ruling, which was approved by 13 justices. (EFE 1/3/13 via Terra.com)
The authors of the Honduras Culture and Politics blog write that the old law is very different from the new one and is simply intended to help out rich Hondurans, not to revive the model cities plan. They cite Honduran analyst Raul Pineda, who said, in the blog’s paraphrase, “that the reason this law is being rushed through is the urgent need for some in the oligarchy who owned or speculatively purchased lands they expected to be appropriated under the unconstitutional model cities law to sell those properties for financial reasons.” (El Heraldo 1/15/13; Honduras Culture and Politics 1/16/13)
*3. Mexico: US Plans to Train Commandos for “Drug War”
Citing documents and interviews with several US officials, Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press wire service reported on Jan. 17 that the US military’s Northern Command (Northcom) has a new special operations headquarters in Colorado, to be used “to teach Mexican security forces how to hunt drug cartels the same way special operations teams hunt al-Qaida.” A Dec. 31 memo signed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta transformed the Northcom special operations group into the new command headquarters, which will be led by a general rather than a colonel. The staff will increase from 30 to 150.
According to Dozier, this is the latest effort by US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) head Adm. Bill McRaven “to migrate special operators from their decade of service in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to new missions.” SOCOM “has already helped Mexican officials set up their own intelligence center in Mexico City to target criminal networks, patterned after similar centers in war zones built to target al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Dozier wrote. Mexican military, intelligence and law enforcement officers have reportedly visited SOCOM facilities at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and Mexican officials also visited a SOCOM targeting center at the Balad air base in Iraq before the US troop withdrawal in 2011, according to a former US official.
The Mexican government hasn’t expressed an opinion on Northcom’s plan to help with its “war on drugs,” but Agnes Gereben Schaefer of the California-based Rand Corporation intelligence group told Dozier that Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto would probably support the plan. “He has talked about setting up a paramilitary force...made up of former military and police forces, which he has described as more surgical” than the current effort, Schaefer said. At least 50,000 Mexicans have died in the wave of violence that followed the militarization of anti-narcotics efforts that former president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa started at the beginning of his 2006-2012 administration. (Miami Herald 1/17/13 from AP)
In a Jan. 18 blog post, Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) researcher Adam Isacson noted that the new development “signals a closer relationship” between the US military and Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat (SEDENA) under President Peña; the Mexican military has traditionally been suspicious of the US. “[A]s Special Forces units leave Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 drawdown, there will be many more of them available for training and other missions in Latin America,” Isacson wrote. “The pace of Special Forces deployments—low-profile, under the radar, mostly for training, but also serving other purposes, like intelligence-gathering—is very likely beginning to pick up throughout the hemisphere.” (Just the Facts blog 1/18/13)
*4. Mexico: Victims’ Movement Calls for US Gun Control
On Jan. 14 Mexican poet and human rights activist Javier Sicilia and Mexican political scientist Sergio Aguayo Quezada brought the US embassy in Mexico City a letter signed by 54,558 people calling on US president Barack Obama and other officials to stop the flow of smuggled firearms from the US to Mexico. “Our country is bleeding to death,” the letter read, referring to the violence that followed the militarization of the “war on drugs” by former president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012). “More than 60,000 Mexicans were murdered during the Calderón administration. In the first month of [current president] Enrique Peña Nieto, December 2012, 755 people were executed. The majority of them died from wounds caused by weapons obtained in the US.”
The signers asked for the US government to enforce its existing prohibition on the export of assault weapons to Mexico; to expand the current mandate for the reporting of sales of assault weapons in the US border states; and to improve the analysis of arms trafficking routes and other available information, including arms identified in criminal complaints and in the government’s weapons database, to help identify arms vendors who supply smugglers. Sicilia heads the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity (MPJD), a movement focusing on victims of Mexico’s “drug war”; Sicilia founded the group in 2011 after the murder of his own son, apparently by gang members [see Update #1143]. The signatures were gathered by Civic Alliance, an organization that Aguayo founded in the 1990s to monitor elections; the Civic Proposal Investigation and Training Center; and two US-based organizations, the Washington Office on Latin América (WOLA) and Global Exchange. (SDP Noticias (Mexico) 1/14/13)
Sicilia and Aguayo also presented the embassy with a letter criticizing Harvard University’s decision to grant a fellowship to former president Calderón at its John F. Kennedy School of Government [see Updates #1154, 1155]. They called Harvard’s action an insult to the victims of the “drug war.” (Reforma (Mexico) 1/14/13 via Terra.com)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti
How the Walmart labor struggle is going global (Latin America)
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2013/01/how-the-walmart-labor-struggle-is-going-global/
Argentine Farm Sales Raise Questions of Land Speculation By Soros
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4079-argentine-farm-sales-raise-questions-of-land-speculation-by-soros
The Privatization of Chile's Sea
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9528
Battle of Reports Sustains Bolivia’s TIPNIS Conflict
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/18/battle-reports-sustains-bolivia%E2%80%99s-tipnis-conflict
Ecuadorean Tribe Will 'Die Fighting' to Defend Rainforest
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4075-ecuadorean-tribe-will-die-fighting-to-defend-rainforest
Colombian Peace Talks Resume Between the Santos Government and the FARC
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/14/colombian-peace-talks-resume-between-santos-government-and-farc
Colombia: FARC ends unilateral ceasefire
http://ww4report.com/node/11892
Colombia: ELN abducts gold prospectors
http://ww4report.com/node/11893
Chiquita Republic: United Fruit in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4078-chiquita-republic-united-fruit-in-colombia
The Guardian vs. the Conventional Wisdom on Venezuela
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7619
Democratizing the Media: An Interview with Carlos Ciappina (Venezuela)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/1/16/democratizing-media-interview-carlos-ciappina
DEA back to Venezuela?
http://ww4report.com/node/11894
Honduras: deadly DEA raid —again
http://ww4report.com/node/11895
NPR Examines One Side of Honduran “Model Cities” Debate
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/npr-examines-one-side-of-honduran-model-cities-debate
A New Scenario in Guatemala: Challenges for Social Movements and Cooperation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4082-a-new-scenario-in-guatemala-challenges-for-social-movements-and-cooperation
Mexico: Voices from 'Below and to the Left' Say it's the Time of Hope and Action for Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4081-mexico-voices-from-below-and-to-the-left-say-time-of-hope-and-action-for-movements
Lopez Obrador’s New Challenge (Mexico)
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2013/01/16/lopez-obradors-new-challenge/
Colonialism and the Green Economy in Chiapas: Villagers Defy Pressure to Forfeit Farms for Carbon-Offset (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4076-colonialism-and-the-green-economy-in-chiapas-villagers-defy-pressure-to-forfeit-farms-for-carbon-offset-
Guerrero Community Police Denounce Attempts to Use Citizen Uprising to Divide and Militarize Their Region (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4077-guerrero-community-police-denounce-attempts-to-use-citizen-uprising-to-divide-and-militarize-their-region
The Struggle for Ciudad Juárez's Heart and Soul: An Experiment in Filmmaking (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/17/struggle-ciudad-ju%C3%A1rezs-heart-and-soul-experiment-filmmaking
Women March for Lives (Mexico)
https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#label/wnu1160/13c5461303b17d38
Three Years Later: Three Answers to Haiti's Predicament
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/three-years-later-three-answers-to-haitis-predicament
UN’s Muñoz Misses the Point (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/uns-munoz-misses-the-point
Canadian Aid to Haiti Tied to Mining Interests
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9278
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://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.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/
NOTE: An interview with Weekly News Update co-editor David Wilson appears in From Disaster to Hope, a series of interviews conducted by Nicole Titus with people affected by the 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti. Available at:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Disaster-Hope-Interviews-ebook/dp/B009E52X66
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.com/
Issue #1160, January 20, 2013
1. Cuba: Documents Describe US “Transition Plans”
2. Honduras: Are “Model Cities” Back on the Agenda?
3. Mexico: US Plans to Train Commandos for “Drug War”
4. Mexico: Victims’ Movement Calls for US Gun Control
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, 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. Cuba: Documents Describe US “Transition Plans”
New information about the inner workings of the Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program (CDCPP)--a multimillion-dollar program administered by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) ostensibly to promote democracy in Cuba—were made public on Jan. 15 when a major USAID contractor filed program-related documents in federal court in Washington, DC. The documents are being used in an effort by Maryland-based Development Alternatives Inc (DAI) to win the dismissal of a $60 million lawsuit against it and USAID by the family of US citizen Alan Gross, a DAI subcontractor now serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba for his work there for the CDCPP [see World War 4 Report 8/6/11). The DC-based research group National Security Archive posted the documents on its website on Jan. 18.
The papers include a May 8, 2008 solicitation by USAID for bids on a $30 million CDCPP project and a memo by DAI describing an Aug. 26, 2008 meeting between USAID and DAI representatives. The CDCPP is intended to “[s]upport the [US government’s] primary objective of hastening a peaceful transition to a democratic, market-oriented society” in Cuba, the USAID officials explain in the documents. The US has “between five to seven different transition plans” for Cuba, including “plans for launching a rapid-response programmatic platform.” “CDCPP is not an analytical project; it’s an operational activity,” officials noted, and it requires “continuous discretion.” However, the USAID didn’t classify the project, in order to maintain the appearance of transparency; as a result, project documents can be made public.
Gross won a contract with DAI to distribute communication devices to members of Cuba’s Jewish community as part of the CDCPP project. Cuban authorities arrested him in December 2009 on charges of “acts against the independence or integrity of the state,” and he has been imprisoned ever since. Currently he is poor health and is being held in a military hospital, although the nature of his illness is in dispute. “[M]y goals were not the same as the program that sent me,” Gross told National Security Archive analyst Peter Kornbluh during a meeting at the hospital last Nov. 28. Gross called on the administration of US president Barack Obama to resolve his case and other bilateral issues through negotiations.
Analysts have questioned the claimed purpose of Gross’s mission. “[T]his isn’t simply a matter of supplying equipment to the tiny Jewish community in Cuba,” José Pertierra, a DC-based attorney who has represented Venezuela in its extradition request against Cuban-born former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “asset” Luis Posada Carriles [see Update #1075], told the Mexican daily La Jornada. The purpose was “to establish an alternative network of dissidents used in the interests of the US,” he said, adding that “this is illegal in Cuba and in all the countries in the world—no sovereign government accepts a foreign power involving itself in internal activities aimed at promoting regime change.”
Pertierra said he would like Gross to be freed on humanitarian grounds, but he contrasted the case with the 2001 convictions in US federal court of five Cuban men (widely known as the “Cuban Five”) on charges of spying against the US [see Update #993]. “Gross’s program had the intention of destabilizing Cuba,” according to Pertierra, who is active in work for the release of the five Cubans. “The Five didn’t have the objective of destabilizing the US; instead, they were working to prevent acts of terrorism against Cuban launched from and protected by the US.” (National Security Archive Electronic Briefing 1/17/13; Along the Malecón blog 1/17/13; LJ 1/20/13)
*2. Honduras: Are “Model Cities” Back on the Agenda?
Juan Orlando Hernández, the president of Honduras’ National Congress, introduced a bill the evening of Jan. 14 to create Special Development Regimes (RED), semi-autonomous jurisdictions that proponents say would attract international investment and stimulate the country’s economy. The proposed special regions are similar to the “model cities,” autonomous zones to be managed by North American corporations, that Hernández and Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa pushed for last year; these were called Special Development Regions (RED), with the same acronym as the new entities. The Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) ruled the earlier proposal unconstitutional on Oct. 17 [see Update #1148].
The new proposal would include 12 types of special zones: international finance centers, international logistics centers, autonomous cities, special economic zones, international commercial courts, special investment districts, renewable energy districts, zones with their own legal systems, special agro-industrial zones, special tourist zones, industrial mining zones and industrial forest zones. Hernández claims the new bill responds to the CSJ’s October ruling by keeping the zones under the national court system and by requiring referendums before establishing or changing the zones. He is pushing to have the new law passed by Jan. 25, before the end of the current congressional session; since the bill includes constitutional changes, it needs to be approved in two successive sessions. (El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 1/15/13; Honduras Culture and Politics blog 1/16/13)
There also seems to be a renewed interest in “model cities” in the US. National Public Radio (NPR) ran a segment on Jan. 4 describing model cities as a way “you could cure all your country's ills by just...starting over” [ellipses in the original]. “[P]oor countries could invite richer countries to found and run ideal ‘charter cities.’ It’s not colonialism, [US economist Paul] Romer explains, because the poor countries are asking for help.” (NPR 1/4/13; Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Americas Blog 1/15/13)
The new legislation might face a somewhat more sympathetic CSJ, since the National Congress removed four of the court’s 15 justices and appointed replacements for them on Dec. 12—a maneuver that opponents said was unconstitutional. The new justices took office on Jan. 3 under heavy police guard as demonstrators protested the changes in the CSJ. However, the replacement of four justices wouldn’t be enough to change the lopsided October ruling, which was approved by 13 justices. (EFE 1/3/13 via Terra.com)
The authors of the Honduras Culture and Politics blog write that the old law is very different from the new one and is simply intended to help out rich Hondurans, not to revive the model cities plan. They cite Honduran analyst Raul Pineda, who said, in the blog’s paraphrase, “that the reason this law is being rushed through is the urgent need for some in the oligarchy who owned or speculatively purchased lands they expected to be appropriated under the unconstitutional model cities law to sell those properties for financial reasons.” (El Heraldo 1/15/13; Honduras Culture and Politics 1/16/13)
*3. Mexico: US Plans to Train Commandos for “Drug War”
Citing documents and interviews with several US officials, Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press wire service reported on Jan. 17 that the US military’s Northern Command (Northcom) has a new special operations headquarters in Colorado, to be used “to teach Mexican security forces how to hunt drug cartels the same way special operations teams hunt al-Qaida.” A Dec. 31 memo signed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta transformed the Northcom special operations group into the new command headquarters, which will be led by a general rather than a colonel. The staff will increase from 30 to 150.
According to Dozier, this is the latest effort by US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) head Adm. Bill McRaven “to migrate special operators from their decade of service in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to new missions.” SOCOM “has already helped Mexican officials set up their own intelligence center in Mexico City to target criminal networks, patterned after similar centers in war zones built to target al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Dozier wrote. Mexican military, intelligence and law enforcement officers have reportedly visited SOCOM facilities at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and Mexican officials also visited a SOCOM targeting center at the Balad air base in Iraq before the US troop withdrawal in 2011, according to a former US official.
The Mexican government hasn’t expressed an opinion on Northcom’s plan to help with its “war on drugs,” but Agnes Gereben Schaefer of the California-based Rand Corporation intelligence group told Dozier that Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto would probably support the plan. “He has talked about setting up a paramilitary force...made up of former military and police forces, which he has described as more surgical” than the current effort, Schaefer said. At least 50,000 Mexicans have died in the wave of violence that followed the militarization of anti-narcotics efforts that former president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa started at the beginning of his 2006-2012 administration. (Miami Herald 1/17/13 from AP)
In a Jan. 18 blog post, Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) researcher Adam Isacson noted that the new development “signals a closer relationship” between the US military and Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat (SEDENA) under President Peña; the Mexican military has traditionally been suspicious of the US. “[A]s Special Forces units leave Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 drawdown, there will be many more of them available for training and other missions in Latin America,” Isacson wrote. “The pace of Special Forces deployments—low-profile, under the radar, mostly for training, but also serving other purposes, like intelligence-gathering—is very likely beginning to pick up throughout the hemisphere.” (Just the Facts blog 1/18/13)
*4. Mexico: Victims’ Movement Calls for US Gun Control
On Jan. 14 Mexican poet and human rights activist Javier Sicilia and Mexican political scientist Sergio Aguayo Quezada brought the US embassy in Mexico City a letter signed by 54,558 people calling on US president Barack Obama and other officials to stop the flow of smuggled firearms from the US to Mexico. “Our country is bleeding to death,” the letter read, referring to the violence that followed the militarization of the “war on drugs” by former president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012). “More than 60,000 Mexicans were murdered during the Calderón administration. In the first month of [current president] Enrique Peña Nieto, December 2012, 755 people were executed. The majority of them died from wounds caused by weapons obtained in the US.”
The signers asked for the US government to enforce its existing prohibition on the export of assault weapons to Mexico; to expand the current mandate for the reporting of sales of assault weapons in the US border states; and to improve the analysis of arms trafficking routes and other available information, including arms identified in criminal complaints and in the government’s weapons database, to help identify arms vendors who supply smugglers. Sicilia heads the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity (MPJD), a movement focusing on victims of Mexico’s “drug war”; Sicilia founded the group in 2011 after the murder of his own son, apparently by gang members [see Update #1143]. The signatures were gathered by Civic Alliance, an organization that Aguayo founded in the 1990s to monitor elections; the Civic Proposal Investigation and Training Center; and two US-based organizations, the Washington Office on Latin América (WOLA) and Global Exchange. (SDP Noticias (Mexico) 1/14/13)
Sicilia and Aguayo also presented the embassy with a letter criticizing Harvard University’s decision to grant a fellowship to former president Calderón at its John F. Kennedy School of Government [see Updates #1154, 1155]. They called Harvard’s action an insult to the victims of the “drug war.” (Reforma (Mexico) 1/14/13 via Terra.com)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti
How the Walmart labor struggle is going global (Latin America)
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2013/01/how-the-walmart-labor-struggle-is-going-global/
Argentine Farm Sales Raise Questions of Land Speculation By Soros
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4079-argentine-farm-sales-raise-questions-of-land-speculation-by-soros
The Privatization of Chile's Sea
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9528
Battle of Reports Sustains Bolivia’s TIPNIS Conflict
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/18/battle-reports-sustains-bolivia%E2%80%99s-tipnis-conflict
Ecuadorean Tribe Will 'Die Fighting' to Defend Rainforest
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4075-ecuadorean-tribe-will-die-fighting-to-defend-rainforest
Colombian Peace Talks Resume Between the Santos Government and the FARC
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/14/colombian-peace-talks-resume-between-santos-government-and-farc
Colombia: FARC ends unilateral ceasefire
http://ww4report.com/node/11892
Colombia: ELN abducts gold prospectors
http://ww4report.com/node/11893
Chiquita Republic: United Fruit in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4078-chiquita-republic-united-fruit-in-colombia
The Guardian vs. the Conventional Wisdom on Venezuela
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7619
Democratizing the Media: An Interview with Carlos Ciappina (Venezuela)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/1/16/democratizing-media-interview-carlos-ciappina
DEA back to Venezuela?
http://ww4report.com/node/11894
Honduras: deadly DEA raid —again
http://ww4report.com/node/11895
NPR Examines One Side of Honduran “Model Cities” Debate
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/npr-examines-one-side-of-honduran-model-cities-debate
A New Scenario in Guatemala: Challenges for Social Movements and Cooperation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4082-a-new-scenario-in-guatemala-challenges-for-social-movements-and-cooperation
Mexico: Voices from 'Below and to the Left' Say it's the Time of Hope and Action for Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4081-mexico-voices-from-below-and-to-the-left-say-time-of-hope-and-action-for-movements
Lopez Obrador’s New Challenge (Mexico)
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2013/01/16/lopez-obradors-new-challenge/
Colonialism and the Green Economy in Chiapas: Villagers Defy Pressure to Forfeit Farms for Carbon-Offset (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4076-colonialism-and-the-green-economy-in-chiapas-villagers-defy-pressure-to-forfeit-farms-for-carbon-offset-
Guerrero Community Police Denounce Attempts to Use Citizen Uprising to Divide and Militarize Their Region (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4077-guerrero-community-police-denounce-attempts-to-use-citizen-uprising-to-divide-and-militarize-their-region
The Struggle for Ciudad Juárez's Heart and Soul: An Experiment in Filmmaking (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/17/struggle-ciudad-ju%C3%A1rezs-heart-and-soul-experiment-filmmaking
Women March for Lives (Mexico)
https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#label/wnu1160/13c5461303b17d38
Three Years Later: Three Answers to Haiti's Predicament
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/three-years-later-three-answers-to-haitis-predicament
UN’s Muñoz Misses the Point (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/uns-munoz-misses-the-point
Canadian Aid to Haiti Tied to Mining Interests
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9278
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://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.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/
NOTE: An interview with Weekly News Update co-editor David Wilson appears in From Disaster to Hope, a series of interviews conducted by Nicole Titus with people affected by the 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti. Available at:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Disaster-Hope-Interviews-ebook/dp/B009E52X66
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.com/
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
WNU #1159: New Violence in Chile’s Mapuche Region
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1159, January 13, 2013
1. Chile: “Terrorists” Blamed for Killings in Mapuche Region
2. Honduras: Two More Campesinos Murdered in Aguán
3. Dominican Republic: Haitian Workers Protest at Labor Ministry
4. Haiti: Aristide Gets Questioned; Duvalier Gets New Passport
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti, 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. Chile: “Terrorists” Blamed for Killings in Mapuche Region
Chilean landowner Werner Luchsinger and his wife, Vivianne McKay, died in a fire set by some 20 masked attackers on Jan. 4 at their Lumahue estate in Vilcún, in the southern region of Araucanía. Luchsinger, who was 75 years old, reportedly fought back against the intruders with a firearm, wounding at least one. The couple, who owned some 1,000 hectares of farmland in the region, had resisted demands for land from the indigenous Mapuche community. Pamphlets were found at the site commemorating the fifth anniversary of the death of Mapuche student Matías Catrileo Quezada, who was shot in the back by a police agent on Jan. 3, 2008 during an occupation of an estate owned by Werner Luchsinger’s cousin, Jorge Luchsinger [see Update #929].
Rightwing president Sebastián Piñera reacted immediately to the killings with an unscheduled trip to the Araucanía, announcing that he would send a contingent of the carabineros militarized police to reinforce the carabineros already in the region and that he would appoint a special prosecutor for the case. The attackers would be prosecuted under a controversial “antiterrorist” law from the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet [see Update #1149], he said. “This struggle isn’t against any group in particular, much less against the Mapuche people,” Piñera said. “It’s a struggle against a minority of criminals, of terrorists and violent people who feel they have the right to go beyond the law.”
Government officials indicated that the attackers were funded by foreign forces. “We’re in the presence of an organized terrorist group, with terrorist methods, with international links that come with training, with training sessions and contacts with the FARC,” General Secretary of the Presidency Cristian Larroulet said on Jan. 8, referring to the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Chilean prosecutors have been trying since 2010 to establish a link between the FARC and militant Mapuche organizations, with a focus on the Arauco Malleco Coordinating Committee (CAM) [see Update #1113]. (A declaration by the CAM published on Jan. 8 denounced the recent violence as “erratic actions committed by some groups not connected to our organization…actions [that] only serve the interests of businesses and the government.”)
As of Jan. 10 Chilean authorities had arrested three people in the deaths at the Luchsinger estate. Celestino Córdova Tránsito, a machi (doctor in traditional Mapuche medicine), was found with a bullet wound near the estate on the day of the attack. His brother, José Córdova Tránsito, was detained on Jan. 9 in the community of Lleupeco (or Yeupeko). Carlos Huerao Carril was arrested when a large number of carabineros and investigations police agents carried out a violent early morning raid in Lleupeco on Jan. 10. A shotgun and a pistol were found in Huerao's home; his wife said the weapons were licensed. Celestino Córdova was indicted on Jan. 11 on four charges, including "terrorist" homicide and arson. José Córdova was released on Jan. 12 after being charged with illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition; he was not charged under the antiterrorism law.
Violent incidents continued in Araucanía, despite tightened security and the presence of 400 carabineros. A shed with machinery inside was set on fire in the early morning of Jan. 5 at the commune of Freire, and two lumber trucks were burned in a separate incident the same morning in the Capitán Pastene sector; there were no injuries in either attack. Another fire was set in a storeroom and an uninhabited house in Padre las Casas on Jan. 8. On Jan. 10 three armed and masked men torched the house of the caretaker of the estate of business owner Joaquín Biwer Meller in Río Bueno municipality in the Los Ríos region, which is directly south of Araucanía; Mapuche activists had tried to occupy this estate in 2009.
Also on Jan. 10, a fire was set in a storeroom at the Trapilhue private school in the Maquehue sector of Araucanía, near Temuco, the regional capital. According to the police, there were no witnesses to the incident but graffiti were found supporting the Mapuche cause and opposing a new airport being built nearby. The school has 90 pupils, 87 of them Mapuches. The arson “constitutes a clumsy effort to link the Mapuche communities in resistance to criminal acts,” unnamed local leaders told the Venezuela television network TeleSUR.
Chile’s 700,000 Mapuches form the largest indigenous group in the country. Their lands, largely in the Araucanía, were taken over in 1883 by the government, which offered them to European settlers; the Luchsingers are descended from Swiss immigrants who arrived some 90 years ago. Since the 1990s Mapuche groups have been demanding the return of the lands they claim, which are now mostly under the control of large landowners and timber companies. Successive governments have responded to Mapuche activism with repression; as many as 13 Mapuche activists have died in the recent struggles over land.
During the past year the Piñera administration has created a development zone in the region which it says has benefited 1,000 families, members of 37 of the 42 Mapuche communities, but at the same time the government continues to apply repression, as in the current application of the Pinochet-era laws. Mapuche leaders deny that their activists have links to outside forces. “The Mapuches don’t need the FARC to sustain their legitimate struggle for the recovery of their territory,” the werkén (spokesperson) Aucán Huilcamán of Consejo de Todas las Tierras (Council of All Lands) told reporters. “The government shouldn’t insist on repressive measures; it should open up a solid, long-term dialogue.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/5/13 from DPA, AFP, 1/6/13 from AFP, 1/8/13 from AFP, Notimex, DPA, 1/9/13 from DPA, AFP; Inter Press Service 1/8/13 via Upside Down World; Fortín Mapocho (Chile) 1/8/13; EFE 1/10/13 via Terra.com; TeleSUR 1/11/13; MapuExpress (Chile) 1/11/13, 1/14/13; Werkén (Chile) 1/12/13)
On Jan. 11 a group of Mapuche researchers and academics published an open letter on the Luchsinger killings. “[D]eaths resulting from a conflict are always regrettable,” they wrote, and “contribute to radicalization and polarization of the political and ideological positions and lead to the development of irrational acts.” At the same time, the signers called for an understanding of “the historical background that underlies the contradictions and present conflicts. Violence is never an arbitrary phenomenon.” “We don’t want the events in Vilcún to be a justification for the Chilean state to add new victims to the list of numerous Mapuches who already have been assassinated over the course of this long conflict.” (Declaración pública de investigadores mapuche sobre acontecimientos recientes en La Araucanía, 1/11/13)
*2. Honduras: Two More Campesinos Murdered in Aguán
Two campesinos were shot dead on Jan. 11 in the Lower Aguán Valley in the northern Honduran department of Colón as they were walking out of an estate which they and other campesinos had been occupying for two months. A long-standing conflict between campesino groups and large landowners in the area has resulted in the deaths of some 80 campesinos since the groups began occupying estates in December 2009 to dramatize their demands for land [see Update #1154]. According to Wilfredo Paz Zúniga, spokesperson for the Permanent Human Rights Monitoring Center for the Aguán, the victims were José Luis Reyes and Antonio Manuel Pérez. He said unidentified people shot them at close range from a moving automobile.
The Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), one of the main campesino groups in the region, identified the campesinos as Luis Antonio Ramos Reyes, originally from the Tepusteca de Olanchito Yoro community, and Manuel Antonio Pérez, originally from Remolino on the Aguán river’s left bank. MUCA said the two men were members of another group, the Campesino Movement for the Recovery of the Aguán (MOCRA), whose 600 families began occupying estates on July 20, 2012. According to Paz, the campesinos had been occupying land claimed by the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH); MUCA said the land was owned by UNAH's Atlantic Coast Regional University Center (CURLA), which had abandoned it. (AFP 1/12/13 via Terra.com; Anncol (Colombia) 1/13/13 via Rebelión (Spain))
*3. Dominican Republic: Haitian Workers Protest at Labor Ministry
More than 100 Haitian immigrant workers and their family members remained encamped in front of the Dominican Labor Ministry in Santo Domingo as of Jan. 10 to demand severance pay and other benefits they say they were owed when two coconut processing plants in nearby San Cristóbal province went out of business. According to the workers’ lawyers, the owner of Coquera Kilómetro 5 and Coquera Real, Rafael Alonzo Luna, declared bankruptcy in an irregular form and denied benefits to employees who had worked at the plants for up to 14 years. Conditions at the encampment, which the workers have maintained since Dec. 14, were said to be deteriorating, but the group’s spokesperson, Elmo Ojilus, said the workers planned to continue their protest.
The Haitians, who are mostly undocumented, claim they have received no response from Labor Ministry. Haitian diplomats have been no more helpful, according to the protesters; ambassador Fritz Cinéas reportedly advised them to go back to Haiti. By contrast, Dominican churches and unions have brought them food and medicine. Representatives of the Classist Autonomous Union Conference (CASC), the Roundtable for Migrants and Refugees in the Dominican Republic (Menamird) and the Socio-Cultural Movement of Haitian Workers (Mosctha) visited the protesters on Jan. 8 to demonstrate solidarity and to denounce inaction by the Labor Ministry. (Hoy (Santo Domingo) 1/4/13; AP 1/9/13 via Miami Herald; Listín Diario (Santo Domingo) 1/9/13; AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/10/13; Diario Libre (Santo Domingo) 10/11/13)
In related news, hundreds of Haitians blocked the bridge connecting the northwestern city of Dajabón with the Haitian border city of Ouanaminthe for four days at the beginning of the second week of January after Dominican authorities denied them entry into the country. The action kept Haitians from participating in the market day in Dajabón on Jan. 7; the markets held there every Monday and Friday provide one of the major points of commercial exchange between the two countries, and the loss of business on Jan. 7 was estimated to have cost Dominican merchants large amounts of money.
Regino Martínez, a Dominican Jesuit priest and the president of the immigrant aid organization Border Solidarity, got permission from immigration authorities in December for 2,030 Haitians who work in the Dominican northwest to return after visiting their families for the Christmas holidays. But when the Haitians presented themselves at the border in January, Dominican authorities said their papers weren’t in order, sparking the protest. After negotiations, the Haitian workers agreed to stay in Ouanaminthe while the Haitian government provided them with passports; the Dajabón market operated normally on Jan. 11. Some 920 Haitians were expected to get their papers for reentering the Dominican Republic by Jan. 12, according to Martínez. (EFE 1/7/13 via Diario Vasco (San Sebastián, Spain); Hoy (Santo Domingo) 1/12/13)
*4. Haiti: Aristide Gets Questioned; Duvalier Gets New Passport
Port-au-Prince Government Commissioner Lucmane Délile, the chief prosecutor for Haiti’s capital, met with former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004) for about 30 minutes on Jan. 9 to discuss criminal complaints accusing Aristide of theft, swindling and abuse of confidence. The meeting took place in Aristide’s residence in Tabarre, a well-to-do neighborhood northeast of the capital. It was originally scheduled for the prosecutor’s office downtown, but Délile apparently decided to change the location when 1,000 or more Aristide supporters began protesting outside his office.
The complaints against Aristide, filed by individuals who say they were victims, charge that he benefited from a credit cooperative scheme that bankrupted thousands during his second term and that he exploited children in his Fanmi Selavi (“Family Is Life”) foundation by using them for fundraising. Both Délile and President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) have denied that there are political motives behind the charges against Aristide. Dieuseul Simon Desras, the president of the National Assembly, said in early January that the case looked like a political maneuver intended to distract attention from the country’s social and economic crisis and from political problems associated with Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) president Josué Pierre Louis, who is facing a rape accusation.
One of Aristide’s attorneys, Newton Saint-Juste, described the Jan. 9 meeting as “friendly”; the former president’s legal team also included human rights attorney Mario Joseph [see Update #1148] and Camille Leblanc. Afterwards Commissioner Délile said he was forwarding the case to an investigative judge, who will decide whether to proceed. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 1/4/13; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 1/9/13; AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/9/13, Radio Métropole (Haiti) 1/10/13)
On Jan. 5 investigative judge Carvès Jean confirmed that the government had issued former “president for life” Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier (1971-1986) a diplomatic passport. The judge ruled on Jan. 30, 2012 that Duvalier should face trial for corruption but not for the brutal crimes committed by his government [see Update #1121]. Duvalier could be sentenced to as many as five years in prison for allegedly embezzling $300 million to $800 million during his administration, but he is now free to leave the country. (Haïti Libre 1/5/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti, US/immigration
“A Natural Experiment”: William K. Black Compares the Latin American Left to the “Washington Consensus”
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/a-natural-experiment-william-k-black-compares-the-latin-american-left-to-the-washington-consenus
Human Mic: Technologies for Democracy
http://nacla.org/news/2013/1/8/human-mic-technologies-democracy
Chile: Historic Mapuche Land Conflict Flares Up
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4066-historic-mapuche-land-conflict-flares-up
Bolivia wins coca-chewing victory at UN
http://ww4report.com/node/11870
Bolivia Takes the Leap into the Big Pond of Mercosur
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4065-bolivia-takes-the-leap-into-the-big-pond-of-mercosur
Bolivia: deforestation decree protested
http://ww4report.com/node/11876
Print Media Withers in Bolivia, While Radio Thrives
http://nacla.org/news/2013/1/11/print-media-withers-bolivia-while-radio-thrives
Morococha makes the New York Times (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/5669#comment-431891
The Word on Women - Transgender Rights in Ecuador: A Legal, Spatial, Political and Cultural Acquittal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4059-the-word-on-women-transgender-rights-in-ecuador-a-legal-spatial-political-and-cultural-acquittal
What the Venezuelan Constitution Does, and Does Not, Say about Chávez's Innauguration
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/
Deadly Conflict Over Honduran Palm Oil Plantations Puts CEO in the Spotlight
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4071-deadly-conflict-over-honduran-palm-oil-plantations-puts-ceo-in-the-spotlight
Honduras: police seize $50,000 gold-plated AK-47
http://globalganjareport.com/content/honduras-police-seize-50000-gold-plated-ak-47
Gustavo Esteva: Recovering Hope - The Zapatista Example (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4068-gustavo-esteva-recovering-hope-the-zapatista-exampl4
Oaxaca: Triqui Protest Camp Suffers New Eviction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4074-oaxaca-triqui-protest-camp-suffers-new-eviction
Gasoline Price Hike in Mexican New Year (Mexico)
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2013/01/06/gasoline-price-hike-in-mexican-new-year/
The Blood of the Sierra (Mexico)
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2012/12/31/the-blood-of-the-sierra/
Peace of the graveyard in Ciudad Juárez? (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/11877
The Mexican Labor Year in Review – 2012
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=210#1550
2013: A Brighter Year Ahead for the Caribbean?
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/10/2013-brighter-year-ahead-caribbean
In $7-Per-Day Fight, Haitian Workers Call for North American Support
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/14391/7_per_day_haiti_anti-sweatshop_revival/
What Are 'Peacekeepers' Doing in a Haitian Industrial Park?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/4073-what-are-peacekeepers-doing-in-a-haitian-industrial-park
Pressure Builds on UN to Take Responsibility as Cholera Still Far From “Under Control” (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/
Three Years Later: A Round-up of News and Commentary (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/three-years-later-a-round-up-of-news-and-commentary
Haiti by the Numbers, Three Years Later
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haiti-by-the-numbers-three-years-later
Billions of Dollars—For the Children (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/9/billions-dollars%E2%80%94-children
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://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.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/
NOTE: An interview with Weekly News Update co-editor David Wilson appears in From Disaster to Hope, a series of interviews conducted by Nicole Titus with people affected by the 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti. Available at:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Disaster-Hope-Interviews-ebook/dp/B009E52X66
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.com/
Issue #1159, January 13, 2013
1. Chile: “Terrorists” Blamed for Killings in Mapuche Region
2. Honduras: Two More Campesinos Murdered in Aguán
3. Dominican Republic: Haitian Workers Protest at Labor Ministry
4. Haiti: Aristide Gets Questioned; Duvalier Gets New Passport
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti, 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. Chile: “Terrorists” Blamed for Killings in Mapuche Region
Chilean landowner Werner Luchsinger and his wife, Vivianne McKay, died in a fire set by some 20 masked attackers on Jan. 4 at their Lumahue estate in Vilcún, in the southern region of Araucanía. Luchsinger, who was 75 years old, reportedly fought back against the intruders with a firearm, wounding at least one. The couple, who owned some 1,000 hectares of farmland in the region, had resisted demands for land from the indigenous Mapuche community. Pamphlets were found at the site commemorating the fifth anniversary of the death of Mapuche student Matías Catrileo Quezada, who was shot in the back by a police agent on Jan. 3, 2008 during an occupation of an estate owned by Werner Luchsinger’s cousin, Jorge Luchsinger [see Update #929].
Rightwing president Sebastián Piñera reacted immediately to the killings with an unscheduled trip to the Araucanía, announcing that he would send a contingent of the carabineros militarized police to reinforce the carabineros already in the region and that he would appoint a special prosecutor for the case. The attackers would be prosecuted under a controversial “antiterrorist” law from the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet [see Update #1149], he said. “This struggle isn’t against any group in particular, much less against the Mapuche people,” Piñera said. “It’s a struggle against a minority of criminals, of terrorists and violent people who feel they have the right to go beyond the law.”
Government officials indicated that the attackers were funded by foreign forces. “We’re in the presence of an organized terrorist group, with terrorist methods, with international links that come with training, with training sessions and contacts with the FARC,” General Secretary of the Presidency Cristian Larroulet said on Jan. 8, referring to the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Chilean prosecutors have been trying since 2010 to establish a link between the FARC and militant Mapuche organizations, with a focus on the Arauco Malleco Coordinating Committee (CAM) [see Update #1113]. (A declaration by the CAM published on Jan. 8 denounced the recent violence as “erratic actions committed by some groups not connected to our organization…actions [that] only serve the interests of businesses and the government.”)
As of Jan. 10 Chilean authorities had arrested three people in the deaths at the Luchsinger estate. Celestino Córdova Tránsito, a machi (doctor in traditional Mapuche medicine), was found with a bullet wound near the estate on the day of the attack. His brother, José Córdova Tránsito, was detained on Jan. 9 in the community of Lleupeco (or Yeupeko). Carlos Huerao Carril was arrested when a large number of carabineros and investigations police agents carried out a violent early morning raid in Lleupeco on Jan. 10. A shotgun and a pistol were found in Huerao's home; his wife said the weapons were licensed. Celestino Córdova was indicted on Jan. 11 on four charges, including "terrorist" homicide and arson. José Córdova was released on Jan. 12 after being charged with illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition; he was not charged under the antiterrorism law.
Violent incidents continued in Araucanía, despite tightened security and the presence of 400 carabineros. A shed with machinery inside was set on fire in the early morning of Jan. 5 at the commune of Freire, and two lumber trucks were burned in a separate incident the same morning in the Capitán Pastene sector; there were no injuries in either attack. Another fire was set in a storeroom and an uninhabited house in Padre las Casas on Jan. 8. On Jan. 10 three armed and masked men torched the house of the caretaker of the estate of business owner Joaquín Biwer Meller in Río Bueno municipality in the Los Ríos region, which is directly south of Araucanía; Mapuche activists had tried to occupy this estate in 2009.
Also on Jan. 10, a fire was set in a storeroom at the Trapilhue private school in the Maquehue sector of Araucanía, near Temuco, the regional capital. According to the police, there were no witnesses to the incident but graffiti were found supporting the Mapuche cause and opposing a new airport being built nearby. The school has 90 pupils, 87 of them Mapuches. The arson “constitutes a clumsy effort to link the Mapuche communities in resistance to criminal acts,” unnamed local leaders told the Venezuela television network TeleSUR.
Chile’s 700,000 Mapuches form the largest indigenous group in the country. Their lands, largely in the Araucanía, were taken over in 1883 by the government, which offered them to European settlers; the Luchsingers are descended from Swiss immigrants who arrived some 90 years ago. Since the 1990s Mapuche groups have been demanding the return of the lands they claim, which are now mostly under the control of large landowners and timber companies. Successive governments have responded to Mapuche activism with repression; as many as 13 Mapuche activists have died in the recent struggles over land.
During the past year the Piñera administration has created a development zone in the region which it says has benefited 1,000 families, members of 37 of the 42 Mapuche communities, but at the same time the government continues to apply repression, as in the current application of the Pinochet-era laws. Mapuche leaders deny that their activists have links to outside forces. “The Mapuches don’t need the FARC to sustain their legitimate struggle for the recovery of their territory,” the werkén (spokesperson) Aucán Huilcamán of Consejo de Todas las Tierras (Council of All Lands) told reporters. “The government shouldn’t insist on repressive measures; it should open up a solid, long-term dialogue.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/5/13 from DPA, AFP, 1/6/13 from AFP, 1/8/13 from AFP, Notimex, DPA, 1/9/13 from DPA, AFP; Inter Press Service 1/8/13 via Upside Down World; Fortín Mapocho (Chile) 1/8/13; EFE 1/10/13 via Terra.com; TeleSUR 1/11/13; MapuExpress (Chile) 1/11/13, 1/14/13; Werkén (Chile) 1/12/13)
On Jan. 11 a group of Mapuche researchers and academics published an open letter on the Luchsinger killings. “[D]eaths resulting from a conflict are always regrettable,” they wrote, and “contribute to radicalization and polarization of the political and ideological positions and lead to the development of irrational acts.” At the same time, the signers called for an understanding of “the historical background that underlies the contradictions and present conflicts. Violence is never an arbitrary phenomenon.” “We don’t want the events in Vilcún to be a justification for the Chilean state to add new victims to the list of numerous Mapuches who already have been assassinated over the course of this long conflict.” (Declaración pública de investigadores mapuche sobre acontecimientos recientes en La Araucanía, 1/11/13)
*2. Honduras: Two More Campesinos Murdered in Aguán
Two campesinos were shot dead on Jan. 11 in the Lower Aguán Valley in the northern Honduran department of Colón as they were walking out of an estate which they and other campesinos had been occupying for two months. A long-standing conflict between campesino groups and large landowners in the area has resulted in the deaths of some 80 campesinos since the groups began occupying estates in December 2009 to dramatize their demands for land [see Update #1154]. According to Wilfredo Paz Zúniga, spokesperson for the Permanent Human Rights Monitoring Center for the Aguán, the victims were José Luis Reyes and Antonio Manuel Pérez. He said unidentified people shot them at close range from a moving automobile.
The Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), one of the main campesino groups in the region, identified the campesinos as Luis Antonio Ramos Reyes, originally from the Tepusteca de Olanchito Yoro community, and Manuel Antonio Pérez, originally from Remolino on the Aguán river’s left bank. MUCA said the two men were members of another group, the Campesino Movement for the Recovery of the Aguán (MOCRA), whose 600 families began occupying estates on July 20, 2012. According to Paz, the campesinos had been occupying land claimed by the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH); MUCA said the land was owned by UNAH's Atlantic Coast Regional University Center (CURLA), which had abandoned it. (AFP 1/12/13 via Terra.com; Anncol (Colombia) 1/13/13 via Rebelión (Spain))
*3. Dominican Republic: Haitian Workers Protest at Labor Ministry
More than 100 Haitian immigrant workers and their family members remained encamped in front of the Dominican Labor Ministry in Santo Domingo as of Jan. 10 to demand severance pay and other benefits they say they were owed when two coconut processing plants in nearby San Cristóbal province went out of business. According to the workers’ lawyers, the owner of Coquera Kilómetro 5 and Coquera Real, Rafael Alonzo Luna, declared bankruptcy in an irregular form and denied benefits to employees who had worked at the plants for up to 14 years. Conditions at the encampment, which the workers have maintained since Dec. 14, were said to be deteriorating, but the group’s spokesperson, Elmo Ojilus, said the workers planned to continue their protest.
The Haitians, who are mostly undocumented, claim they have received no response from Labor Ministry. Haitian diplomats have been no more helpful, according to the protesters; ambassador Fritz Cinéas reportedly advised them to go back to Haiti. By contrast, Dominican churches and unions have brought them food and medicine. Representatives of the Classist Autonomous Union Conference (CASC), the Roundtable for Migrants and Refugees in the Dominican Republic (Menamird) and the Socio-Cultural Movement of Haitian Workers (Mosctha) visited the protesters on Jan. 8 to demonstrate solidarity and to denounce inaction by the Labor Ministry. (Hoy (Santo Domingo) 1/4/13; AP 1/9/13 via Miami Herald; Listín Diario (Santo Domingo) 1/9/13; AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/10/13; Diario Libre (Santo Domingo) 10/11/13)
In related news, hundreds of Haitians blocked the bridge connecting the northwestern city of Dajabón with the Haitian border city of Ouanaminthe for four days at the beginning of the second week of January after Dominican authorities denied them entry into the country. The action kept Haitians from participating in the market day in Dajabón on Jan. 7; the markets held there every Monday and Friday provide one of the major points of commercial exchange between the two countries, and the loss of business on Jan. 7 was estimated to have cost Dominican merchants large amounts of money.
Regino Martínez, a Dominican Jesuit priest and the president of the immigrant aid organization Border Solidarity, got permission from immigration authorities in December for 2,030 Haitians who work in the Dominican northwest to return after visiting their families for the Christmas holidays. But when the Haitians presented themselves at the border in January, Dominican authorities said their papers weren’t in order, sparking the protest. After negotiations, the Haitian workers agreed to stay in Ouanaminthe while the Haitian government provided them with passports; the Dajabón market operated normally on Jan. 11. Some 920 Haitians were expected to get their papers for reentering the Dominican Republic by Jan. 12, according to Martínez. (EFE 1/7/13 via Diario Vasco (San Sebastián, Spain); Hoy (Santo Domingo) 1/12/13)
*4. Haiti: Aristide Gets Questioned; Duvalier Gets New Passport
Port-au-Prince Government Commissioner Lucmane Délile, the chief prosecutor for Haiti’s capital, met with former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004) for about 30 minutes on Jan. 9 to discuss criminal complaints accusing Aristide of theft, swindling and abuse of confidence. The meeting took place in Aristide’s residence in Tabarre, a well-to-do neighborhood northeast of the capital. It was originally scheduled for the prosecutor’s office downtown, but Délile apparently decided to change the location when 1,000 or more Aristide supporters began protesting outside his office.
The complaints against Aristide, filed by individuals who say they were victims, charge that he benefited from a credit cooperative scheme that bankrupted thousands during his second term and that he exploited children in his Fanmi Selavi (“Family Is Life”) foundation by using them for fundraising. Both Délile and President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) have denied that there are political motives behind the charges against Aristide. Dieuseul Simon Desras, the president of the National Assembly, said in early January that the case looked like a political maneuver intended to distract attention from the country’s social and economic crisis and from political problems associated with Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) president Josué Pierre Louis, who is facing a rape accusation.
One of Aristide’s attorneys, Newton Saint-Juste, described the Jan. 9 meeting as “friendly”; the former president’s legal team also included human rights attorney Mario Joseph [see Update #1148] and Camille Leblanc. Afterwards Commissioner Délile said he was forwarding the case to an investigative judge, who will decide whether to proceed. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 1/4/13; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 1/9/13; AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/9/13, Radio Métropole (Haiti) 1/10/13)
On Jan. 5 investigative judge Carvès Jean confirmed that the government had issued former “president for life” Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier (1971-1986) a diplomatic passport. The judge ruled on Jan. 30, 2012 that Duvalier should face trial for corruption but not for the brutal crimes committed by his government [see Update #1121]. Duvalier could be sentenced to as many as five years in prison for allegedly embezzling $300 million to $800 million during his administration, but he is now free to leave the country. (Haïti Libre 1/5/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti, US/immigration
“A Natural Experiment”: William K. Black Compares the Latin American Left to the “Washington Consensus”
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/a-natural-experiment-william-k-black-compares-the-latin-american-left-to-the-washington-consenus
Human Mic: Technologies for Democracy
http://nacla.org/news/2013/1/8/human-mic-technologies-democracy
Chile: Historic Mapuche Land Conflict Flares Up
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4066-historic-mapuche-land-conflict-flares-up
Bolivia wins coca-chewing victory at UN
http://ww4report.com/node/11870
Bolivia Takes the Leap into the Big Pond of Mercosur
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4065-bolivia-takes-the-leap-into-the-big-pond-of-mercosur
Bolivia: deforestation decree protested
http://ww4report.com/node/11876
Print Media Withers in Bolivia, While Radio Thrives
http://nacla.org/news/2013/1/11/print-media-withers-bolivia-while-radio-thrives
Morococha makes the New York Times (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/5669#comment-431891
The Word on Women - Transgender Rights in Ecuador: A Legal, Spatial, Political and Cultural Acquittal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4059-the-word-on-women-transgender-rights-in-ecuador-a-legal-spatial-political-and-cultural-acquittal
What the Venezuelan Constitution Does, and Does Not, Say about Chávez's Innauguration
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/
Deadly Conflict Over Honduran Palm Oil Plantations Puts CEO in the Spotlight
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4071-deadly-conflict-over-honduran-palm-oil-plantations-puts-ceo-in-the-spotlight
Honduras: police seize $50,000 gold-plated AK-47
http://globalganjareport.com/content/honduras-police-seize-50000-gold-plated-ak-47
Gustavo Esteva: Recovering Hope - The Zapatista Example (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4068-gustavo-esteva-recovering-hope-the-zapatista-exampl4
Oaxaca: Triqui Protest Camp Suffers New Eviction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4074-oaxaca-triqui-protest-camp-suffers-new-eviction
Gasoline Price Hike in Mexican New Year (Mexico)
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2013/01/06/gasoline-price-hike-in-mexican-new-year/
The Blood of the Sierra (Mexico)
http://www.grass-roots-press.com/2012/12/31/the-blood-of-the-sierra/
Peace of the graveyard in Ciudad Juárez? (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/11877
The Mexican Labor Year in Review – 2012
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=210#1550
2013: A Brighter Year Ahead for the Caribbean?
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/10/2013-brighter-year-ahead-caribbean
In $7-Per-Day Fight, Haitian Workers Call for North American Support
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/14391/7_per_day_haiti_anti-sweatshop_revival/
What Are 'Peacekeepers' Doing in a Haitian Industrial Park?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/4073-what-are-peacekeepers-doing-in-a-haitian-industrial-park
Pressure Builds on UN to Take Responsibility as Cholera Still Far From “Under Control” (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/
Three Years Later: A Round-up of News and Commentary (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/three-years-later-a-round-up-of-news-and-commentary
Haiti by the Numbers, Three Years Later
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haiti-by-the-numbers-three-years-later
Billions of Dollars—For the Children (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/9/billions-dollars%E2%80%94-children
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://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.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/
NOTE: An interview with Weekly News Update co-editor David Wilson appears in From Disaster to Hope, a series of interviews conducted by Nicole Titus with people affected by the 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti. Available at:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Disaster-Hope-Interviews-ebook/dp/B009E52X66
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.com/
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Links but No Update for January 6, 2013
[There is no Update this week; we'll be back next week. Below are links to stories from other sources.]
Falklands fracas flares amid Antarctic anxieties (Argentina)
http://ww4report.com/node/11856
Chile: Mapuches Still Fighting Pinochet-Era Highway Project
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/4055-chile-mapuches-still-fighting-pinochet-era-highway-project
Video Advocacy and Forced Evictions in Brazil: An Interview With Tiago Donato
http://nacla.org/news/2013/1/3/video-advocacy-and-forced-evictions-brazil-interview-tiago-donato
Peace Talks Between FARC and the Santos Government: “Meterle más Pueblo” (Colombia)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/1/peace-talks-between-farc-and-santos-government-%E2%80%9Cmeterle-m%C3%A1s-pueblo%E2%80%9D
‘Learning to Govern Ourselves’: Venezuela’s National Network of Commoners
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/4049-learning-to-govern-ourselves-venezuelas-national-network-of-commoners-
Venezuela After Chavez’s Victory
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4056-venezuela-after-chavezs-victory-
Venezuela without Chavez: A Possible Scenario
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7588
U.S. Intervention in El Salvador, by Privatization This Time
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/4057-us-intervention-in-el-salvador-by-privatization-this-time-
Guatemala - Mayan Oxlajuj Baktun: End of an Era, More of the Same
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4053-guatemala-mayan-oxlajuj-baktun-end-of-an-era-more-of-the-same
Guatemala: Impunity, or Justice for Crimes of the Past?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4058-guatemala-impunity-or-justice-for-crimes-of-the-past
Radio Documentary - Communities in the Crosshairs: The Drug War in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4054-eviction-of-triqui-protest-camp-in-oaxaca-results-in-death-of-a-newborn
“We Are Here”: Zapatistas Send Silent Message With the Return of the PRI (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8775
Oaxaca: indigenous protest camp eviction (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/11858
Eviction of Triqui Protest Camp in Oaxaca Results in Death of a Newborn (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4054-eviction-of-triqui-protest-camp-in-oaxaca-results-in-death-of-a-newborn
Taking Stock Three Years Later: A Prelude (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/taking-stock-three-years-later-a-prelude
Haiti’s Increasingly Hidden Displacement Disaster
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haitis-increasingly-hidden-displacement-disaster
“A Dark Truth” Disrespects Latin American Struggles for Water Rights (US)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/4/%E2%80%9C-dark-truth%E2%80%9D-disrespects-latin-american-struggles-water-rights
Note: An interview with Weekly News Update co-editor David Wilson appears in From Disaster to Hope, a series of interviews conducted by Nicole Titus with people affected by the 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti. Available at:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Disaster-Hope-Interviews-ebook/dp/B009E52X66
He will be speaking at a forum in New York City on the third anniversary of the earthquake on January 12, 2013. More information at:
http://nycal.mayfirst.org/node/13401
and http://www.facebook.com/events/512833625416529/
Falklands fracas flares amid Antarctic anxieties (Argentina)
http://ww4report.com/node/11856
Chile: Mapuches Still Fighting Pinochet-Era Highway Project
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/4055-chile-mapuches-still-fighting-pinochet-era-highway-project
Video Advocacy and Forced Evictions in Brazil: An Interview With Tiago Donato
http://nacla.org/news/2013/1/3/video-advocacy-and-forced-evictions-brazil-interview-tiago-donato
Peace Talks Between FARC and the Santos Government: “Meterle más Pueblo” (Colombia)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/1/peace-talks-between-farc-and-santos-government-%E2%80%9Cmeterle-m%C3%A1s-pueblo%E2%80%9D
‘Learning to Govern Ourselves’: Venezuela’s National Network of Commoners
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/4049-learning-to-govern-ourselves-venezuelas-national-network-of-commoners-
Venezuela After Chavez’s Victory
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4056-venezuela-after-chavezs-victory-
Venezuela without Chavez: A Possible Scenario
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7588
U.S. Intervention in El Salvador, by Privatization This Time
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/4057-us-intervention-in-el-salvador-by-privatization-this-time-
Guatemala - Mayan Oxlajuj Baktun: End of an Era, More of the Same
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4053-guatemala-mayan-oxlajuj-baktun-end-of-an-era-more-of-the-same
Guatemala: Impunity, or Justice for Crimes of the Past?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4058-guatemala-impunity-or-justice-for-crimes-of-the-past
Radio Documentary - Communities in the Crosshairs: The Drug War in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4054-eviction-of-triqui-protest-camp-in-oaxaca-results-in-death-of-a-newborn
“We Are Here”: Zapatistas Send Silent Message With the Return of the PRI (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8775
Oaxaca: indigenous protest camp eviction (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/11858
Eviction of Triqui Protest Camp in Oaxaca Results in Death of a Newborn (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4054-eviction-of-triqui-protest-camp-in-oaxaca-results-in-death-of-a-newborn
Taking Stock Three Years Later: A Prelude (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/taking-stock-three-years-later-a-prelude
Haiti’s Increasingly Hidden Displacement Disaster
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haitis-increasingly-hidden-displacement-disaster
“A Dark Truth” Disrespects Latin American Struggles for Water Rights (US)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/1/4/%E2%80%9C-dark-truth%E2%80%9D-disrespects-latin-american-struggles-water-rights
Note: An interview with Weekly News Update co-editor David Wilson appears in From Disaster to Hope, a series of interviews conducted by Nicole Titus with people affected by the 2010 earthquake in southern Haiti. Available at:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Disaster-Hope-Interviews-ebook/dp/B009E52X66
He will be speaking at a forum in New York City on the third anniversary of the earthquake on January 12, 2013. More information at:
http://nycal.mayfirst.org/node/13401
and http://www.facebook.com/events/512833625416529/
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