Issue #1252, January 25, 2015
1. Argentina: AMIA Prosecutor Dies in “Suicide”
2. Argentina: Many Are Suspected in AMIA Coverup
3. Mexico: More PEMEX Contract Scandals Exposed
4. Guatemala: Top Cop Convicted in Embassy Fire
5. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Argentina: AMIA Prosecutor Dies in “Suicide”
Argentine federal prosecutor Natalio Alberto Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment late on Jan. 18 with a gunshot wound to his head. Nisman had filed a 289-page criminal complaint on Jan. 14 charging that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman and eight others, including two Iranians, had acted to cover up the alleged role of the Iranian government in the July 1994 bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires [see World War 4 Report 1/19/15]. The bombing, which left 85 dead and some 300 injured, is considered the deadliest anti-Semitic attack carried out anywhere since World War 2. Nisman’s death came the day before he was to testify to the National Congress about the charges.
Nisman’s body was found in his locked apartment by his mother and agents from his 10-member security detail after the prosecutor failed to answer phone calls; he was lying next to the .22-caliber handgun used to shoot him. Investigators initially suggested suicide, as did President Fernández in a Facebook posting on Jan. 20. But evidence emerged later that undercut the suicide hypothesis: Nisman had not appeared suicidal; there was no note; gunpowder traces weren’t detected on Nisman’s hands; a locksmith disputed claims that two entrances to the apartment were locked; and a previously unnoticed third entrance was discovered. Reversing her earlier position, Fernández wrote on Jan. 22 that the prosecutor had probably been murdered. (New York Times 1/22/15, 1/23/15 from correspondents; InfoBAE (Argentina) 1/22/15)
In October 2006 Nisman--who was appointed to head the AMIA inquiry by former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), Fernández’s late husband--formally charged the Lebanese organization Hezbollah with carrying out the AMIA bombing and the Iranian government with ordering it. In January 2013 Argentina and Iran signed an agreement for a joint investigation into the attack [see Update #1195]. Nisman opposed the deal, as did Jewish community leaders, who felt this would impede prosecution of the Iranian suspects. An Argentine appeals court ruled the agreement unconstitutional on May 15, 2014, although the government has appealed the decision [see World War 4 Report 5/18/14].
In his Jan. 14 complaint, based in part on intercepted phone calls, Nisman accused the presidency and people close to Fernández of working to negate the charges against Iran in exchange for trade deals. In addition to President Fernández and Foreign Minister Timerman, Nisman named legislative deputy Andrés “Cuervo” Larroque; Luis D’Elía, a leader in the leftist Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA) and the piquetero (“picketer”) unemployed movement who is close to the government [see Update #975]; Fernando Esteche, the leader of the far-left group Quebracho [see Update #960]; Héctor Yrimia, a former prosecutor in the AMIA case; Mohsen Rabbani, a former cultural attaché to the Iranian embassy suspected of masterminding the bombing [see Update #1124]; and Jorge “Yussuf” Khalil, an Iranian community leader in Buenos Aires. The complaint included transcripts of phone conversations between D’Elía and Khalil. (Todo Noticias (Argentina) 1/15/15, 1/23/15; NYT 1/22/15 from correspondents)
Fernández supporters noted that Nisman had close relations with the US embassy in Buenos Aires, according to US diplomatic cables released by the Wikileaks group in 2010, and that he followed advice from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs (OIA). It seems that Nisman regularly notified the embassy in advance about his legal moves. A confidential diplomatic cable dated May 19, 2009, notes that Nisman advised the embassy of his request for the indictment of a new AMIA suspect the day before he submitted the request to the judge in the case, Rodolfo Canicoba Corra. (Buenos Aires Herald 1/16/15)
In related news, at least 10 people were injured the night of Jan. 18-19 when a crowd chanting anti-Semitic slogans attacked a hostel in Lago Puelo in the southern province of Chubut, beating and robbing Israeli tourists. The hostel’s owner, Sergio Polak, said the crowd also hurled rocks and Molotov bombs and fired shots. Attacks on the hostel “started in March or April last year,” he said. “We connect it with the campaign going on for a while on the subject of Israeli tourism. They say [the guests] are Israeli soldiers.” The attack reportedly went on for hours because the local police didn’t have enough agents on hand. There were about 10 assailants, identified as neighbors of the hostel. Initially no one was arrested, but a local radio station reported later that the attackers were “at the disposition of justice.” (La Nación (Argentina) 1/21/15 from Agencia DyN)
*2. Argentina: Many Are Suspected in AMIA Coverup
While the US media focused on the late Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s Jan. 14 charges against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, many people have been accused over the years of blocking the investigation into the deadly 1994 bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) building. The people suspected include a former president, a judge, an intelligence chief, and officials of two foreign governments. After an inquiry that has gone on for 21 years under several different governments, Argentine prosecutors have still not won a single conviction in the case.
In May 2008 Nisman charged former president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999) with impeding the initial investigation during his presidency. In March 2012 federal judge Ariel Lijo ordered Menem to stand trial on the charges, along with the judge who headed the original investigation, Juan José Galeano; intelligence service directors Hugo Anzorreguy and Juan Carlos Anchezar; and two commanders of the federal police [see Update #1124]. The trial still hasn’t taken place. Formerly an opponent of President Fernández, Menem is now a political ally and seems to be having a relatively easy time in the courts. He is also implicated in the government's clandestine sales of 6,500 tons of arms to Ecuador and Croatia from 1991 to 1995. In March 2013 an appeals court found him guilty of “aggravated smuggling,” but he currently enjoys immunity as a senator for La Rioja province [see Updates #1097, 1167].
Menem was allied with the US government while he was president, and the US embassy was clearly upset when Nisman filed charges against him in the AMIA case. Nisman apologized for not giving the embassy advance warning, according to a May 27 confidential cable obtained by the Wikileaks group. Then-US ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne, now the ambassador to Mexico, complained in another confidential cable two days later that the Menem charges “could complicate international efforts to bring the Iranian indictees to justice.” “Nisman may still be currying favor from the Casa Rosada [Argentina’s presidential palace] with a view to a favorable judicial appointment in the future,” Wayne claimed. The May 27 cable emphasized the US government’s interest in keeping the investigation centered on Iran and away from Menem: “Legatt officers [legal attachés] have for the past two years recommended to Nisman that he focus on the perpetrators of the terrorist attack and not on the possible mishandling of the first investigation.” (Buenos Aires Herald 1/16/15)
Although never formally charged, another coverup suspect is Antonio Horacio Stiles, better known as “Jaime Stiusso” (or “Stiuso”), the director of operations for the federal Intelligence Service (SI) until Fernández replaced him in December. Stiusso entered intelligence work in 1972, serving under the highly repressive 1976-1983 military junta and then under all governments since the restoration of democracy. He is said to have been close to Nisman, and also to have worked closely with Israel’s Mossad and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Stiusso seemed to have a great deal of power in the government. Then-justice minister Gustavo Beliz had to resign his post on July 25, 2004 after tangling with the intelligence director. Beliz went on television the same day to charge that Stiusso had “messed up” the AMIA investigation. Beliz also said Argentina’s intelligence apparatus was a “black hole,” a “parallel state” and a “secret police without any controls,” and he described Stiusso as someone “the whole world fears because they say he’s dangerous and can have you killed.” (La Nación (Argentina) 12/18/14; El País (Madrid) 1/25/15)
Although the Iranian government would obviously have reasons to block the inquiry if Iranian officials were involved in the AMIA bombing, there have also been accusations against Israeli officials. In January 2014 former Israeli ambassador to Argentina Yitzhak Aviran (1993-2000) announced that his country had killed most of the perpetrators of the attack. “The vast majority of the guilty parties are in another world, and this is something we did,” he said. Argentine foreign minister Héctor Timerman noted that Aviran’s comments “would imply that Israel hid information from Argentine courts, blocking new evidence from appearing.” Timerman demanded that Aviran tell Argentine prosecutors whether Israel had further information [see Update #1205].
Some Argentines noted that suspect “suicides” like Nisman’s are hardly unprecedented in the country [see Update #454]. Claims of suicide have been questioned in at least five other cases, all of which took place during Menem’s presidency or involved Menem or people close to him. In three of the cases, the victim was about to testify or was considering doing so.
Former Customs head Brig. Gen. Rodolfo Echegoyen (or Etchegoyen) was shot in the head in his studio in December 1990; as in the Nisman case, there were no traces of gunpowder on his hands. Echegoyen was reportedly investigating the Edcadassa company, owned by members of the Yoma family, former in-laws of then-president Menem. Postal magnate and former Menem associate Alfredo Yabrán was found dead of apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds in one of his country estates in May 1998; he was sought for questioning in the January 1997 murder of photojournalist José Luis Cabezas, who had been investigating Yabrán’s business activities. Naval captain Horacio Pedro Estrada was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment in August 1998; again, no traces of gunpowder were found, and the right-handed Estrada was shot in the left side of his head. Estrada was reportedly considering testifying in the case of illegal arms sales to Ecuador and Croatia. Also in August 1998, Marcelo Cattáneo was found hanging in an abandoned structure on a Buenos Aires university campus; he was charged with paying bribes in a corruption case involving the state-owned Banco Nacion bank and IBM, the US computer giant. His family expressed doubts about the suicide hypothesis. Lourdes di Natale, once a secretary to former Menem in-law Emir Yoma, supposedly fell or jumped to her death from her apartment’s balcony while drunk in March 2003, but no alcoholic beverage was found in her apartment and the amount of alcohol in her blood should have made her incapable of getting on the balcony. She was about to testify in the case of the smuggled arms. (Diario Uno (Argentina) 6/18/12; Página 12 (Argentina) 1/20/15)
*3. Mexico: More PEMEX Contract Scandals Exposed
Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), Mexico’s giant state-owned oil monopoly, signed contracts worth $149 billion with outside companies from 2003 to 2012, according to a Jan. 23 investigative report by the Reuters wire service; about 8% of these contracts were cited by a congressional watchdog, the Chamber of Deputies’ Federal Audit Office (ASF), as having irregularities “ranging from overcharging for shoddy work to outright fraud,” Reuters’ reporters wrote. The problems involved more than 100 contracts with a total value of $11.7 billion.
Reuters’ revelations appeared as Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was pushing ahead with an “energy reform” program to open up the country’s petroleum industry to still more contracts with private firms. Praised by the US government and media, the program is unpopular with many Mexicans, who see it as a form of disguised privatization. Two major scandals implicating PEMEX contractors came to light last year, one involving Oceanografía SA de CV and the US banking corporation Citigroup Inc., the other involving the California-based technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) [see Update #1239].
PEMEX officials rarely act to correct the contract problems, according to Reuters. From 2008 to 2012 the ASF sent PEMEX 274 recommendations to take action on the irregularities. PEMEX’s response so far has been to suspend a few employees in just three of the cases; the rest of the recommendations were dismissed or are still awaiting action. The government plans to establish a new independent auditing office for the enterprise to resolve this problem, but past performance by PEMEX auditors leads to skepticism. One example was the case of sales to Brazilian chemical maker Unigel SA. From to 2009 to 2011 PEMEX’s petrochemicals subsidiary sold the Brazilian company a chemical at an unexplained discount that cost the Mexican enterprise $24.2 million. PEMEX internal auditors flagged the problem, but the head auditor advised his colleagues to “work with the director of PEMEX Petrochemicals to attend to and answer [our] recommendations, with the aim of avoiding them becoming definitive issues.” The PEMEX officials who approved the deal weren’t disciplined; one now works for Unigel.
“PEMEX’s taxes and dividends finance about 30 percent of the federal budget,” Reuters noted. “Contract abuse at the oil giant eats into the government’s ability to fund services from healthcare to road building.” (Business Insider 1/23/15 from Reuters)
Meanwhile, PEMEX and the overall Mexican economy are being hurt by plunging oil prices on international markets. As of Jan. 23 PEMEX’s oil was selling at $38.03 a barrel, its lowest price since June 2009. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/24/15). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects a growth rate of 3.2% for Mexico this year and 3.5% for 2016, a little below its projections for the world as a whole--3.5% in 2015 and 3.7% in 2016. (Forbes México 1/20/15 from Reuters)
*4. Guatemala: Top Cop Convicted in Embassy Fire
On Jan. 19 Guatemala’s High Risk Court B convicted former police chief Pedro García Arredondo of the deaths of 37 people in a fire at the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City on Jan. 31, 1980 [see Update #1237]. García Arredondo was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the fire and 50 years for the deaths of two students; he is already serving a 70-year sentence for the killing of a student. The fire broke out when police stormed the embassy, which had been occupied by indigenous and campesino protesters from El Quiché department; the police blocked the doors and refused to let firefighters enter. The victims included the Spanish consul, two of his employees, a former Guatemalan vice president, a former Guatemalan foreign relations minister, and 22 El Quiché campesinos; one was Vicente Menchú, the father of 1992 Nobel peace prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum.
The rightwing government of President Otto Pérez Molina, who was a military officer at the time of the fire, said it respected the court’s decision. A note from the Foreign Relations Ministry expressed regret for the deaths of “famous Spanish people and Guatemalans.” “These situations cannot be repeated,” the note added. The Spanish Foreign Ministry wrote that the Spanish government “expresses its satisfaction and congratulates the Guatemalan justice system for having, 35 years later, judged these acts in accordance with the laws and with respect for due process.” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 1/20/15 from AFP; Prensa Latina 1/20/15)
As of Jan. 13 Judge Carol Patricia Flores had ordered a medical examination for former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) to determine whether he can attend his new trial for genocide against Ixil Mayans in El Quiché department. He failed to appear at a hearing on Jan. 12 to discuss administrative issues in the trial. Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide and sentenced to 80 years in prison on May 10, 2013, but the Constitutional Court threw the verdict out 10 days later [see Update #1178]. A new trial started on Jan. 5 but was immediately suspended because of a defense challenge to one of the judges, Jeannette Valdez, on the grounds that she had written her 2004 doctoral thesis about the genocide. (La Nación (Costa Rica) 1/13/15 from AFP)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Commodity boom extracting increasingly heavy toll on Amazon forests (South America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5191-commodity-boom-extracting-increasingly-heavy-toll-on-amazon-forests-
New Evidence Raises Questions About Death of Argentine Prosecutor
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/22/new-evidence-raises-questions-about-death-of-argentine-prosecutor/
Prosecutor’s Death a Test for Argentine Democracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/5192-prosecutors-death-a-test-for-argentine-democracy
La Legua: Building Community in Small Spaces (Chile)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14486
In Memoriam: Pedro Lemebel (Chile)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/23/memoriam-pedro-lemebel
Bolivian Socialist Funds Election Campaign by Selling Potatoes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5188-bolivian-socialist-funds-election-campaign-by-selling-potatoes
Ecuador: Waorani warriors on trial in oil-field raid
http://ww4report.com/node/13925
Chevron Crowned as World's Worst Company for the Environment (Ecuador)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Chevron-Crowned-as-Worlds-Worst-Company-for-the-Environment-20150123-0024.html
Ecuador: The “Citizens’ Revolution” vs Social Movements
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5189-ecuador-the-citizens-revolution-vs-social-movements
Social Movements Demand ¨Maximum Sentence¨ for Indigenous Leader’s Murderer as Trial Continues (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11165
El Salvador: Pardon Granted For One of 17 Women Jailed for Miscarriage, Accused of Homicide
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/5198-el-salvador-pardon-granted-for-one-of-17-women-jailed-for-miscarraige
Evidence the DEA Attempted to Alter Testimony on Drug War Massacre in Honduras
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14509
Trial on Guatemala’s Spanish Embassy Fire Resumes Today: The Rest is History (Video)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/19/trial-guatemala%E2%80%99s-spanish-embassy-fire-resumes-today-rest-history-video
2015 US Appropriations Act Maintains Restrictions On US Military Aid To Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5186-2015-us-appropriations-act-maintains-restrictions-on-us-military-aid-to-guatemala
Mexico: Ayotzinapa, Emblem of the Twenty-First Century Social Order
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5193-mexico-ayotzinapa-emblem-of-the-twenty-first-century-social-order
Forced Disappearances Are Humanitarian Crisis in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5195-forced-disappearances-are-humanitarian-crisis-in-mexico
Lopez Obrador Back on the Battlefield (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/lopez-obrador-back-on-the-battlefield/
Vanished in Vallarta (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/vanished-in-vallarta/
Mexico: cops arrested in 'disappearance' of reporter
http://ww4report.com/node/13920
Cuba, U.S. Agree on Diplomacy, Clash Over Human Rights During Historic Talks
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/23/cuba-u-s-agree-on-diplomacy-clash-over-human-rights-during-historic-talks/
The Cuban Opening and the Struggles for a New Social Order
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5194-the-cuban-opening-and-the-struggles-for-a-new-social-order
Security Council Arrives in Haiti as New Electoral Commission is Announced
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/security-council-arrives-in-haiti-as-new-electoral-commission-is-announced
New Tools for Assessing Progress in Haiti Reconstruction and Development
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/new-tools-for-assessing-progress-in-haiti-reconstruction-and-development
Is USAID Helping Haiti to Recover, or US Contractors to Make Millions?
www.thenation.com/article/195673/usaid-helping-haiti-recover-or-us-contractors-make-millions
Over 17,000 Mexican Children Attempt to Enter US Every Year (US/immigration)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Over-17000-Mexican-Children-Attempt-to-Enter-US-Every-Year-20150123-0019.html
The Israel-Mexico Border: How Israeli High-Tech Firms Are Up-Armoring the U.S.-Mexico Border
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/27/israel-mexico-border
Joining our struggles to build another world: 10 years of horizontal organising in El Barrio, New York (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14495
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
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Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Monday, January 19, 2015
WNU #1251: Haitian President to Rule by Decree
Issue #1251, January 18, 2015
1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
Haiti entered a long-threatened period of constitutional crisis on Jan. 12 when terms expired for all 99 members of the Chamber of Deputies and for 10 of the country’s 30 senators; the terms had already run out for another third of the senators. Since the government had failed to hold overdue elections for these seats, Parliament no longer had a quorum to pass laws and President Martelly was free to rule by decree in the absence of a viable legislature. He and the leaders of Parliament had announced an agreement on Dec. 29 that would extend the legislators’ terms if Parliament met a Jan. 12 deadline to pass amendments to the electoral law [see Update #1249], but the deal didn’t win the agreement of the main opposition parties. The vote never took place.
The slide into direct presidential rule came on the day when Haitians were marking the fifth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and left tens or hundreds of thousands of people dead. (Radio-Canada 1/11/15 from correspondents; Radio France Internationale (RFI) 1/13/15 from correspondent)
Martelly’s opponents said they would continue with the anti-government demonstrations they have been sponsoring since the fall to demand Martelly’s resignation. On Jan. 15 an opposition coalition announced plans for marches in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 16, Jan. 17, Jan. 20, Jan. 22 and Jan. 23. The coalition includes the Patriotic Movement of the Democratic Opposition (Mopod) and a new political party, Pitit Desalin (“Children of Dessalines,” referring to the revolutionary hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines). Pitit Desalin’s leader is ex-senator Moïse Jean-Charles, who until late 2013 was associated with the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004) [see Update #1204]. FL itself has refrained from calling for Martelly’s resignation, but according to former FL senator Louis Gérald Gilles, the party is demanding the resignation of Martelly’s new prime minister, Evans Paul, a longtime Aristide opponent who hadn’t been confirmed by Parliament before it lost its quorum. If Paul doesn’t step down, Gilles said, FL will join the other opposition groups in demanding Martelly’s resignation. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/15/15; Haïti Libre 1/17/15)
As of Jan. 15 the so-called “Core Group”--the ambassadors of Brazil, Canada, France, Spain, the US and the European Union (EU), along with the special representatives of the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of American States (OAS)—had declared their countries’ “support for the president of the republic in the exercise of his constitutional duties.” The US had backed the failed agreement to extend the legislators’ terms, and US ambassador Pamela White angered many Haitians by attending a meeting of Parliament the evening of Jan. 11 when the deal was being discussed. She apparently hadn’t been invited. “You want to know what I think of Pamela White?” a passerby told an RFI correspondent the next day. “These people have long since been interfering in the country’s affairs. They’re the ones who chose Martelly, because he sold them the country.” The speaker was referring to interference by foreign powers in the 2010-2011 elections [see Update #1062]. (RFI 1/13/15; AlterPresse 1/15/15)
In contrast to the Core Group, the center-left government of Uruguay may react to the situation by withdrawing its troops from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), as it threatened in December [see Update #1249]. Uruguayan foreign minister Luis Almagro was reportedly planning an “emergency” visit to UN headquarters in New York to coordinate the withdrawal of his country’s 605 MINUSTAH members in the near future. (AlterPresse 1/15/15)
It was unclear how much effect the dissolution of Parliament would have on the government’s operations, which were already hampered by a longstanding stalemate between Martelly and the opposition, but an anti-mining coalition, the Mining Justice Collective (previously the “Collective Against Mining”), is concerned that the president may take advantage of the situation to impose a law that would greatly expand the mining sector [see Update #1230]. The measure, which was stalled in Parliament, would change Haiti’s 1976 mining code to allow the Bureau of Mines and Energy (BME) to sign directly with mining companies without having to win approval from Parliament, opening up northern Haiti to massive open-pit gold mining by foreign companies. The World Bank helped draft the law, and six Haitian groups filed a formal complaint with the bank on Jan. 7, noting that the measure was written without the public consultation often required by the bank’s own policies. (Upside Down World 1/13/15 from IPS)
*2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
At least seven people were injured, some seriously, on Jan. 12 when dozens of protesters tried to enter a Mexican military post in Iguala de la Independencia in the southwestern state of Guerrero, saying they were looking for students who were abducted in the area the night of Sept. 26-27 [see Update #1248]. The missing students had attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the town of Ayotzinapa, and the protesters were other students from the school and parents and relatives of the missing youths. The military post, staffed by the 47th Infantry Battalion, is near the sites where local police and others—possibly including soldiers and federal police--gunned down six people and abducted 43 students in the September violence. So far authorities have only identified the remains of one of the missing students, leaving 42 unaccounted for.
“[Y]ou too were complicit in the violent acts that happened in Iguala,” one of the parents told the soldiers, addressing them over a megaphone. “Today we’ve come to demand that you give us our children, because you know where they are…. Today we’re telling these cowardly and murderous soldiers that they aren’t good for anything but killing students, not for confronting organized crime, which they’re scared of.” Unable to get into the installation, a group of students commandeered a Coca-Cola delivery truck and knocked down one side of a gate. Inside the post the protesters were outnumbered by some 300 military and state police agents, who used tear gas and fire extinguishers in an attempt to disperse them. The protesters responded with rocks, which the agents hurled back. The injured included four parents, two students and one reporter from the Venezuela-based television network TeleSUR. Two demonstrators were detained and held for about one hour.
After being driven from the post, the protesters joined with members of the militant State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG) to march to the Iguala-Chilpancingo highway, where they set three trucks on fire. (La Jornada 1/13/15)
The Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) insists that the September attack was the work of municipal police from Iguala and nearby Cocula and the members of a local gang, Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”). In the official version, the gang members took the 43 students and executed them, incinerating the bodies at a dump in Cocula. The government has arrested 97 people in the case, and is pressing charges against former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa. Federal officials say the investigation has been completed, although they claim to be continuing the search for the 42 students who are still missing.
Insisting they had nothing to hide, on the evening of Jan. 13 federal authorities said they would make arrangements for the parents of the missing students to visit military installations. Federal governance secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong announced on Jan. 14 that the military would also invite the government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) to inspect the Iguala post, although he denied any involvement by the military in the September events. (LJ 1/14/15, 1/14/15, 1/15/15)
According to an investigative report published on Dec. 13 by the Mexican weekly Proceso, both the military and the federal police monitored the movements of the Ayotzinapa students the evening of Sept. 26 and were probably involved in the violence. Two researchers--Jorge Antonio Montemayor Aldrete from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Pablo Ugalde Vélez from Mexico City’s Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM)—have questioned the PGR’s conclusion that the missing students were killed and then incinerated at the Cocula dump. The researchers say it would be impossible to build a fire at the site that would be hot enough for the sort of full incineration the government claims. The military has its own modern crematoria, and the researchers have asked to see records of their use in late September. (LJ 1/4/15) The researchers also charge that vegetation shown in photos of the dump in November couldn’t have grown back so quickly after the intense heat from the supposed fire, and that if some students had been killed there, blood and other organic material would have left enough DNA in the soil for investigators to make positive identifications of the victims. (LJ 1/14/15)
In other news, a leader of the Triqui indigenous group, Julián González Domínguez, was kidnapped by 10 armed men from his home in Santiago Juxtlahuaca municipality, in Oaxaca near the Guerrero border, and was found dead at a nearby highway on Jan. 12, according to the Oaxaca International Indigenous Network (RIIO). González was a leader for many years in the Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULT); more recently, he was one of the founders of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), a new center-left party started by former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The Triqui zone has been the scene of violent conflicts between the MULT, the rival Independent Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULTI) and the Social Welfare Unity of the Triqui Region (UBISORT); the last organization is said to be a paramilitary group linked to the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #1054]. González’s community also had a longstanding agrarian dispute with a nearby community directed by the PRI-affiliated National Campesino Confederation (CNC). RIIO said that González had been receiving threats and that another member of his community was kidnapped and murdered in December. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR, or CIDH by its initials in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), had issued “cautionary measures” calling on the Mexican authorities to protect the Triqui leader’s life. (Sputnik News 1/13/15)
*3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
Some 150 supporters greeted Puerto Rican independence activist Norberto González Claudio at San Juan’s international airport on Jan. 15, hours after he was released from a federal prison in Coleman, Florida. González Claudio, a former member of the rebel Boricua Popular Army (EPB)-Macheteros, had served a three and one-half year prison term for his involvement in the group’s 1983 armed robbery of $7.1 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut—until then the largest heist on record. Arrested in May 2011 in the central Puerto Rican town of Cayey after spending 25 years as fugitive, González Claudio pleaded guilty in exchange for a shorter prison sentence [see Update #1133]. He was due to be released last September, but his time in Coleman was extended four months because of an alleged infraction. The activist’s relatives and colleagues saw this as part of a pattern of physical and psychological tortures they say he endured.
Supporters and relatives of another prisoner, Oscar López Rivera, were among the people greeting González Claudio at the airport. (El Nuevo Día (Guaynabo) 1/15/15; Univision 1/15/15 from Inter News Service; Hartford Courant 1/15/15 from AP)
López Rivera has been in the US prison system for 33 years for his role in another independence group, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) [see Update #871]. He refused to accept a clemency offer in 1999 from then-US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and is now apparently the last prisoner from the group. Fellow FALN member Haydée Beltrán Torres was released in 2009, and her husband, Carlos Alberto Torres, was released in 2010.
González Claudio was the last prisoner from the Macheteros group, whose leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, was shot dead by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September 2005 [see Update #1117]. Víctor Manuel Gerena, the Wells Fargo driver who carried out the 1983 robbery, is reportedly living in Cuba. Along with African-American activist Assata Shakur (formerly Joanne Chesimard) and FALN activist William Morales, Gerena has become a target of US politicians seeking the return of US political exiles from asylum in Cuba as a condition for improved relations between that country and the US [see World War 4 Report 12/24/15]. (Hunterdon County (NJ) Democrat 1/13/15)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Did Iran kill Argentine prosecutor?
http://ww4report.com/node/13911#comment-452733
French Economist Piketty Blasts Vulture Funds in Argentina Tour
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/French-Economist-Piketty-Blasts-Vulture-Funds-in-Argentina-Tour-20150117-0017.html
Brazil Truth Commission Details Extent of Rape During Military Dictatorship
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5187-brazil-truth-commission-details-extent-of-rape-during-military-dictatorship
Peru: protest legal assault on land rights
http://ww4report.com/node/13447#comment-452714
Peru: youth protest labor law
http://ww4report.com/node/13906
Ecuador: Defending the CONAIE beyond Its House
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5178-ecuador-defending-the-conaie-beyond-its-house
Ecuador: Correa blinks in stand-off with CONAIE
http://ww4report.com/node/13898
Colombia: will government answer FARC ceasefire?
http://ww4report.com/node/13897
Are the FARC narco-traffickers?
http://ww4report.com/node/13903
Straight Talk on How Maduro Measures Up to Chávez (Venezuela)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/09/maduro%27s-progress-economic-warfare
Economic Solutions: Two Perspectives from the Bolivarian Left (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11160
Rudy Giuliani Will Advise El Salvador on Security, Justice Reform
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/12/rudy-giuliani-will-advise-el-salvador-on-security-justice-reform/
El Salvador: Archbishop Romero Declared Martyr
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5180-archbishop-romero-declared-martyr
El Salvador's Other Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5172-el-salvadors-other-crisis
Poor Guatemalans Are Taking On North American Mining Companies-and Have the Bullet Wounds to Prove It
https://www.thenation.com/article/194809/poor-guatemalans-are-taking-north-american-mining-companies-and-have-bullet-wounds-pr
Justice in Guatemala Deferred, Again (Audio)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/14/justice-guatemala-deferred-again-audio
Guatemala postpones ex-dictator's genocide retrial
http://ww4report.com/node/13896
Trial on Guatemala’s Spanish Embassy Fire Resumes Today: The Rest is History (Video)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/19/trial-guatemala%E2%80%99s-spanish-embassy-fire-resumes-today-rest-history-video
2015 US Appropriations Act Maintains Restrictions On US Military Aid To Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5186-2015-us-appropriations-act-maintains-restrictions-on-us-military-aid-to-guatemala
Ayotzinapa: 100 Days of Rage, Sorrow and Struggle in Guerrero
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5181-ayotzinapa-100-days-of-rage-sorrow-and-struggle-in-guerrero
The L.A.-Ayotzinapa Connection (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14454
#Alertabachajón - Police Shoot at Indigenous Tseltales Trying to Recover Lands (Mexico)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/alertabachajon-police-shoot-indigenous-tseltales-trying-recover-lands/
Mexico’s Economy 2015: Boom, Bust or Burp?
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-economy-2015-boom-bust-or-burp/
Mexican Labor 2014 in Review
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=232#1786
Farewell to the Grand Old Dean of Latin Journalism (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/farewell-to-the-grand-old-dean-of-latin-journalism/
US Politicians Descend on Cuba as Normalization Process Begins
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Politicians-Descend-on-Cuba-as-Normalization-Process-Begins-20150117-0014.html
Five Years After the Earthquake in Haiti, the Sad State of Democracy and Human Rights
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14409
It’s Been Five Years, and All the Money Raised is Gone: What did the Red Cross Accomplish in Haiti?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/its-been-five-years-and-all-the-money-raised-is-gone-what-did-the-red-cross-accomplish-in-haiti
Haitians Worry World Bank-Assisted Mining Law Could Result in “Looting”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5179-haitians-worry-world-bank-assisted-mining-law-could-result-in-looting
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
Haiti entered a long-threatened period of constitutional crisis on Jan. 12 when terms expired for all 99 members of the Chamber of Deputies and for 10 of the country’s 30 senators; the terms had already run out for another third of the senators. Since the government had failed to hold overdue elections for these seats, Parliament no longer had a quorum to pass laws and President Martelly was free to rule by decree in the absence of a viable legislature. He and the leaders of Parliament had announced an agreement on Dec. 29 that would extend the legislators’ terms if Parliament met a Jan. 12 deadline to pass amendments to the electoral law [see Update #1249], but the deal didn’t win the agreement of the main opposition parties. The vote never took place.
The slide into direct presidential rule came on the day when Haitians were marking the fifth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and left tens or hundreds of thousands of people dead. (Radio-Canada 1/11/15 from correspondents; Radio France Internationale (RFI) 1/13/15 from correspondent)
Martelly’s opponents said they would continue with the anti-government demonstrations they have been sponsoring since the fall to demand Martelly’s resignation. On Jan. 15 an opposition coalition announced plans for marches in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 16, Jan. 17, Jan. 20, Jan. 22 and Jan. 23. The coalition includes the Patriotic Movement of the Democratic Opposition (Mopod) and a new political party, Pitit Desalin (“Children of Dessalines,” referring to the revolutionary hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines). Pitit Desalin’s leader is ex-senator Moïse Jean-Charles, who until late 2013 was associated with the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004) [see Update #1204]. FL itself has refrained from calling for Martelly’s resignation, but according to former FL senator Louis Gérald Gilles, the party is demanding the resignation of Martelly’s new prime minister, Evans Paul, a longtime Aristide opponent who hadn’t been confirmed by Parliament before it lost its quorum. If Paul doesn’t step down, Gilles said, FL will join the other opposition groups in demanding Martelly’s resignation. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/15/15; Haïti Libre 1/17/15)
As of Jan. 15 the so-called “Core Group”--the ambassadors of Brazil, Canada, France, Spain, the US and the European Union (EU), along with the special representatives of the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of American States (OAS)—had declared their countries’ “support for the president of the republic in the exercise of his constitutional duties.” The US had backed the failed agreement to extend the legislators’ terms, and US ambassador Pamela White angered many Haitians by attending a meeting of Parliament the evening of Jan. 11 when the deal was being discussed. She apparently hadn’t been invited. “You want to know what I think of Pamela White?” a passerby told an RFI correspondent the next day. “These people have long since been interfering in the country’s affairs. They’re the ones who chose Martelly, because he sold them the country.” The speaker was referring to interference by foreign powers in the 2010-2011 elections [see Update #1062]. (RFI 1/13/15; AlterPresse 1/15/15)
In contrast to the Core Group, the center-left government of Uruguay may react to the situation by withdrawing its troops from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), as it threatened in December [see Update #1249]. Uruguayan foreign minister Luis Almagro was reportedly planning an “emergency” visit to UN headquarters in New York to coordinate the withdrawal of his country’s 605 MINUSTAH members in the near future. (AlterPresse 1/15/15)
It was unclear how much effect the dissolution of Parliament would have on the government’s operations, which were already hampered by a longstanding stalemate between Martelly and the opposition, but an anti-mining coalition, the Mining Justice Collective (previously the “Collective Against Mining”), is concerned that the president may take advantage of the situation to impose a law that would greatly expand the mining sector [see Update #1230]. The measure, which was stalled in Parliament, would change Haiti’s 1976 mining code to allow the Bureau of Mines and Energy (BME) to sign directly with mining companies without having to win approval from Parliament, opening up northern Haiti to massive open-pit gold mining by foreign companies. The World Bank helped draft the law, and six Haitian groups filed a formal complaint with the bank on Jan. 7, noting that the measure was written without the public consultation often required by the bank’s own policies. (Upside Down World 1/13/15 from IPS)
*2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
At least seven people were injured, some seriously, on Jan. 12 when dozens of protesters tried to enter a Mexican military post in Iguala de la Independencia in the southwestern state of Guerrero, saying they were looking for students who were abducted in the area the night of Sept. 26-27 [see Update #1248]. The missing students had attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the town of Ayotzinapa, and the protesters were other students from the school and parents and relatives of the missing youths. The military post, staffed by the 47th Infantry Battalion, is near the sites where local police and others—possibly including soldiers and federal police--gunned down six people and abducted 43 students in the September violence. So far authorities have only identified the remains of one of the missing students, leaving 42 unaccounted for.
“[Y]ou too were complicit in the violent acts that happened in Iguala,” one of the parents told the soldiers, addressing them over a megaphone. “Today we’ve come to demand that you give us our children, because you know where they are…. Today we’re telling these cowardly and murderous soldiers that they aren’t good for anything but killing students, not for confronting organized crime, which they’re scared of.” Unable to get into the installation, a group of students commandeered a Coca-Cola delivery truck and knocked down one side of a gate. Inside the post the protesters were outnumbered by some 300 military and state police agents, who used tear gas and fire extinguishers in an attempt to disperse them. The protesters responded with rocks, which the agents hurled back. The injured included four parents, two students and one reporter from the Venezuela-based television network TeleSUR. Two demonstrators were detained and held for about one hour.
After being driven from the post, the protesters joined with members of the militant State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG) to march to the Iguala-Chilpancingo highway, where they set three trucks on fire. (La Jornada 1/13/15)
The Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) insists that the September attack was the work of municipal police from Iguala and nearby Cocula and the members of a local gang, Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”). In the official version, the gang members took the 43 students and executed them, incinerating the bodies at a dump in Cocula. The government has arrested 97 people in the case, and is pressing charges against former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa. Federal officials say the investigation has been completed, although they claim to be continuing the search for the 42 students who are still missing.
Insisting they had nothing to hide, on the evening of Jan. 13 federal authorities said they would make arrangements for the parents of the missing students to visit military installations. Federal governance secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong announced on Jan. 14 that the military would also invite the government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) to inspect the Iguala post, although he denied any involvement by the military in the September events. (LJ 1/14/15, 1/14/15, 1/15/15)
According to an investigative report published on Dec. 13 by the Mexican weekly Proceso, both the military and the federal police monitored the movements of the Ayotzinapa students the evening of Sept. 26 and were probably involved in the violence. Two researchers--Jorge Antonio Montemayor Aldrete from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Pablo Ugalde Vélez from Mexico City’s Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM)—have questioned the PGR’s conclusion that the missing students were killed and then incinerated at the Cocula dump. The researchers say it would be impossible to build a fire at the site that would be hot enough for the sort of full incineration the government claims. The military has its own modern crematoria, and the researchers have asked to see records of their use in late September. (LJ 1/4/15) The researchers also charge that vegetation shown in photos of the dump in November couldn’t have grown back so quickly after the intense heat from the supposed fire, and that if some students had been killed there, blood and other organic material would have left enough DNA in the soil for investigators to make positive identifications of the victims. (LJ 1/14/15)
In other news, a leader of the Triqui indigenous group, Julián González Domínguez, was kidnapped by 10 armed men from his home in Santiago Juxtlahuaca municipality, in Oaxaca near the Guerrero border, and was found dead at a nearby highway on Jan. 12, according to the Oaxaca International Indigenous Network (RIIO). González was a leader for many years in the Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULT); more recently, he was one of the founders of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), a new center-left party started by former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The Triqui zone has been the scene of violent conflicts between the MULT, the rival Independent Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULTI) and the Social Welfare Unity of the Triqui Region (UBISORT); the last organization is said to be a paramilitary group linked to the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #1054]. González’s community also had a longstanding agrarian dispute with a nearby community directed by the PRI-affiliated National Campesino Confederation (CNC). RIIO said that González had been receiving threats and that another member of his community was kidnapped and murdered in December. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR, or CIDH by its initials in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), had issued “cautionary measures” calling on the Mexican authorities to protect the Triqui leader’s life. (Sputnik News 1/13/15)
*3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
Some 150 supporters greeted Puerto Rican independence activist Norberto González Claudio at San Juan’s international airport on Jan. 15, hours after he was released from a federal prison in Coleman, Florida. González Claudio, a former member of the rebel Boricua Popular Army (EPB)-Macheteros, had served a three and one-half year prison term for his involvement in the group’s 1983 armed robbery of $7.1 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut—until then the largest heist on record. Arrested in May 2011 in the central Puerto Rican town of Cayey after spending 25 years as fugitive, González Claudio pleaded guilty in exchange for a shorter prison sentence [see Update #1133]. He was due to be released last September, but his time in Coleman was extended four months because of an alleged infraction. The activist’s relatives and colleagues saw this as part of a pattern of physical and psychological tortures they say he endured.
Supporters and relatives of another prisoner, Oscar López Rivera, were among the people greeting González Claudio at the airport. (El Nuevo Día (Guaynabo) 1/15/15; Univision 1/15/15 from Inter News Service; Hartford Courant 1/15/15 from AP)
López Rivera has been in the US prison system for 33 years for his role in another independence group, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) [see Update #871]. He refused to accept a clemency offer in 1999 from then-US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and is now apparently the last prisoner from the group. Fellow FALN member Haydée Beltrán Torres was released in 2009, and her husband, Carlos Alberto Torres, was released in 2010.
González Claudio was the last prisoner from the Macheteros group, whose leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, was shot dead by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September 2005 [see Update #1117]. Víctor Manuel Gerena, the Wells Fargo driver who carried out the 1983 robbery, is reportedly living in Cuba. Along with African-American activist Assata Shakur (formerly Joanne Chesimard) and FALN activist William Morales, Gerena has become a target of US politicians seeking the return of US political exiles from asylum in Cuba as a condition for improved relations between that country and the US [see World War 4 Report 12/24/15]. (Hunterdon County (NJ) Democrat 1/13/15)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Did Iran kill Argentine prosecutor?
http://ww4report.com/node/13911#comment-452733
French Economist Piketty Blasts Vulture Funds in Argentina Tour
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/French-Economist-Piketty-Blasts-Vulture-Funds-in-Argentina-Tour-20150117-0017.html
Brazil Truth Commission Details Extent of Rape During Military Dictatorship
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5187-brazil-truth-commission-details-extent-of-rape-during-military-dictatorship
Peru: protest legal assault on land rights
http://ww4report.com/node/13447#comment-452714
Peru: youth protest labor law
http://ww4report.com/node/13906
Ecuador: Defending the CONAIE beyond Its House
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5178-ecuador-defending-the-conaie-beyond-its-house
Ecuador: Correa blinks in stand-off with CONAIE
http://ww4report.com/node/13898
Colombia: will government answer FARC ceasefire?
http://ww4report.com/node/13897
Are the FARC narco-traffickers?
http://ww4report.com/node/13903
Straight Talk on How Maduro Measures Up to Chávez (Venezuela)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/09/maduro%27s-progress-economic-warfare
Economic Solutions: Two Perspectives from the Bolivarian Left (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11160
Rudy Giuliani Will Advise El Salvador on Security, Justice Reform
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/12/rudy-giuliani-will-advise-el-salvador-on-security-justice-reform/
El Salvador: Archbishop Romero Declared Martyr
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5180-archbishop-romero-declared-martyr
El Salvador's Other Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5172-el-salvadors-other-crisis
Poor Guatemalans Are Taking On North American Mining Companies-and Have the Bullet Wounds to Prove It
https://www.thenation.com/article/194809/poor-guatemalans-are-taking-north-american-mining-companies-and-have-bullet-wounds-pr
Justice in Guatemala Deferred, Again (Audio)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/14/justice-guatemala-deferred-again-audio
Guatemala postpones ex-dictator's genocide retrial
http://ww4report.com/node/13896
Trial on Guatemala’s Spanish Embassy Fire Resumes Today: The Rest is History (Video)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/19/trial-guatemala%E2%80%99s-spanish-embassy-fire-resumes-today-rest-history-video
2015 US Appropriations Act Maintains Restrictions On US Military Aid To Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5186-2015-us-appropriations-act-maintains-restrictions-on-us-military-aid-to-guatemala
Ayotzinapa: 100 Days of Rage, Sorrow and Struggle in Guerrero
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5181-ayotzinapa-100-days-of-rage-sorrow-and-struggle-in-guerrero
The L.A.-Ayotzinapa Connection (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14454
#Alertabachajón - Police Shoot at Indigenous Tseltales Trying to Recover Lands (Mexico)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/alertabachajon-police-shoot-indigenous-tseltales-trying-recover-lands/
Mexico’s Economy 2015: Boom, Bust or Burp?
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-economy-2015-boom-bust-or-burp/
Mexican Labor 2014 in Review
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=232#1786
Farewell to the Grand Old Dean of Latin Journalism (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/farewell-to-the-grand-old-dean-of-latin-journalism/
US Politicians Descend on Cuba as Normalization Process Begins
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Politicians-Descend-on-Cuba-as-Normalization-Process-Begins-20150117-0014.html
Five Years After the Earthquake in Haiti, the Sad State of Democracy and Human Rights
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14409
It’s Been Five Years, and All the Money Raised is Gone: What did the Red Cross Accomplish in Haiti?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/its-been-five-years-and-all-the-money-raised-is-gone-what-did-the-red-cross-accomplish-in-haiti
Haitians Worry World Bank-Assisted Mining Law Could Result in “Looting”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5179-haitians-worry-world-bank-assisted-mining-law-could-result-in-looting
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Monday, January 12, 2015
WNU #1250: US Grants UN Immunity in Haiti Cholera Suit
Issue #1250, January 11, 2015
1. Haiti: US Grants UN Immunity in Cholera Suit
2. Peru: Fujimori Sentenced for Tabloid Bribery
3. Mexico: Protests Follow Peña to Washington
4. Latin America: Why Did Monsanto Profits Dip?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Haiti: US Grants UN Immunity in Cholera Suit
On Jan. 9 a federal district judge in New York, J. Paul Oetken, dismissed a lawsuit seeking compensation from the United Nations (UN) for a cholera epidemic introduced into Haiti in October 2010 by infected soldiers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) [see Update #1238]. “The UN is immune from suit unless it expressly waives its immunity,” Judge Oetken wrote in his decision, which was based on the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN and a US appeals court ruling in a 2010 sexual discrimination case. Lawyers from the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), representing thousands of Haitian cholera victims, said they would appeal the decision, which came three days before the fifth anniversary of an earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti.
The suit, Delama Georges, et al, v. United Nations, et al, was filed in October 2013. The plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that the UN was not entitled to immunity under the 1946 convention because the world organization failed to meet its obligation under the convention to establish a settlement process for the victims. A number of legal experts agreed with the plaintiffs’ position, filing three amicus curiae briefs with the court and arguing in support of the plaintiffs at a hearing in October 2014. The UN has never admitted its responsibility for the cholera outbreak and didn’t respond to the suit; the US government argued on the UN’s behalf. According to Haitian rights lawyer Mario Joseph, the president of the Bureau of International Lawyers (BAI), Oetken’s ruling “implies that there is nowhere in the world [the victims] can turn to seek justice. That is irreconcilable with their human rights and basic notions of justice.” (IJDH press release 1/9/15; Reuters 1/10/15)
At least 8,774 Haitians had died of the cholera epidemic by Jan. 8, according to the DC-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Some 14,000 or more were sickened by the disease in 2014, and 243 died that year. The amount of money required for a program for the eradication of cholera in Haiti is estimated to be $2.2 billion; the amount pledged so far is $50 million. (Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch, CEPR, 1/8/15)
Arnel (or Anel) Alexis Joseph, the controversial president of the Superior Council of the Judicial Branch (CSPJ), offered his resignation on Jan. 7, as was recommended on Dec. 9 by an 11-member “consultative commission” that President Michel Martelly set up to resolve a political impasse; terms are set to expire for one-third of Haiti’s senators on Jan. 12, leaving the Senate without a quorum and possibly creating a constitutional crisis [see Update #1246]. Other people that the commission asked to resign, including former prime minister Laurent Lamothe and the members of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), had already complied. The Senate called for Joseph’s resignation back in 2012 on the grounds that he was past the maximum legal age for the post. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/7/15)
*2. Peru: Fujimori Sentenced for Tabloid Bribery
After a trial lasting more than a year, on Jan. 8 a Peruvian court sentenced former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) to eight years in prison for embezzlement. The court found that between 1998 and 2000 Fujimori diverted some $43 million from the military to the National Intelligence Service (SIN) in order to pay tabloid dailies to follow the government’s editorial line. The colorful tabloids--known in Peru as “diarios chicha” after a popular musical style—supported Fujimori’s campaign for reelection in 2000 by characterizing his opponents as communists, homosexuals and spies; some of the papers were actually created by Fujimori’s government for the purpose. The former president claimed in court on Dec. 29 that he didn’t know about the diversion of the money. In addition to the prison sentence, Fujimori lost his right to hold public office for three years and was ordered to pay a fine of 3 million soles (about US$1 million). (RRP (Peru) 1/8/15; El País (Madrid) 1/8/15 from correspondent)
This was the fifth conviction for Fujimori since 2007. On Dec. 11, 2007, he was found guilty of ordering an illegal search of the home of the wife of his former adviser Vladimiro Montesinos to seize compromising video tapes. On Apr. 7, 2009, a court sentenced him to 25 years in prison for two massacres of unarmed civilians carried out by the Colina Group, a death squad organized by military intelligence and allegedly reporting to the president: the November 1991 killing of 15 people at a family barbecue in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima, and the July 1992 abduction and murder of nine university students and a professor from the Enrique Guzmán y Valle (La Cantuta) university; the group also kidnapped journalist Gustavo Gorriti and business owner Samuel Dyer in 1992 [see Update #1019]. Also in 2009, Fujimori was sentenced to seven years and six months for appropriating $15 million from the treasury for Montesinos; in a separate case, he was sentenced to six years for spying on phone calls, payoffs to the media and the buying of Congress members.
Although elected as a populist in 1990, Fujimori quickly imposed a harsh neoliberal program known as “Fujishock.” In 1992 he seized dictatorial powers with a “self-coup,” claiming this would clear the way for combating two leftist rebel movements. He fled the country in 2000 when his government’s massive corruption came to light, and sought asylum in Japan. In 2005 he went to Chile as part of a plan to return to Peru, but Chilean authorities imprisoned him and turned him over to the Peruvian government in 2007. The maximum sentence in Peru is 25 years, so the five sentences will run concurrently. Fujimori will theoretically be released in 2032, at the age of 94. (La República (Peru) 1/8/15; El País 1/8/15)
In other news, judicial authorities announced on Dec. 30 that Attorney General Carlos Ramos Heredia had been suspended from his post for six months to “safeguard the optimal development of the investigations” into charges that he impeded inquiries concerning alleged corruption in the central western department of Ancash. Officials there took $113 million in public funds between 2008 and 2011, according to Mesías Guevara, the president of the parliamentary commission investigating the allegations. Ramos Heredia told RPP radio that he would respect the suspension but wouldn’t resign. (Yahoo News 12/30/14 from AP)
*3. Mexico: Protests Follow Peña to Washington
Facing serious political and economic problems at home, on Jan. 6 Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto made his first official visit to Washington, DC, since taking office in December 2012. A private meeting at the White House with US president Barack Obama lasted longer than was scheduled, and the two presidents didn’t take questions when they spoke with the press afterwards. The US has been following the “tragic events” involving seven deaths and the abduction of 43 students the night of Sept. 26-27 in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero [see Update #1246], Obama told reporters, and the US would continue to aid in investigations and in the fight against drug cartels. Obama also praised Mexico’s efforts to keep Central American migrants from reaching the US border, especially during the child migrant “crisis” in the summer of 2014 [see Update #1237]. Peña Nieto promised that Mexico would help the US and Cuba normalize relations. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/7/15)
In addition to facing massive protests against the Mexican political system since the Guerrero abductions, Peña Nieto’s government is having to deal with a drop in oil prices that has led to downward pressure on the peso. Now at $39.70 a barrel, the price of Mexico’s export oil plummeted by 61.23% from June 20, 2014 to Jan. 9 of this year, while the peso fell by 12.3%, ending up at 14.5 to the US dollar. (El Financiero (Mexico) 1/12/15)
As the two presidents were speaking, about 100 protesters, mostly Mexicans and Mexican Americans, rallied outside the White House. The protesters charged that the US government is supporting corruption and violence in Mexico through its Mérida Initiative, a program often referred to as “Plan Mexico,” in which the US funds anti-narcotics campaigns by Mexican security forces, themselves often linked to the cartels [see Update #952]. Among the participants in the rally was Nansi Cisneros, whose brother was kidnapped by men in police uniforms in the western state of Jalisco; a US citizen living in Los Angeles, Cisneros had written about her brother’s case on the Huffington Post news site.
There were similar protests that day in at least nine other US cities, including Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Seattle, organized by the USTired2 network [see Update #1245] and other groups to echo the demonstrations in Mexico. One of the protesters in Seattle was José Luis Avila, the husband of Nestora Salgado García, an imprisoned community police leader in Olinalá, Guerrero [see Update #1237]. (LJ 1/7/15)
On Jan. 8 the Guerrero government announced that it was dropping charges against Salgado “as a demonstration that this citizens’ government has been consistent in the search for peace and the harmonious development of Guerrero in all its aspects.” (LJ 1/8/15) As of Jan. 11 there had been no reports of her release.
In other news, the celebrated Mexican editor and investigative reporter Julio Scherer died on Jan. 7 at the age of 88. Scherer edited the influential daily El Excélsior from 1968 to 1976, when government pressure finally succeeded in getting the paper to remove him. He then founded the weekly Proceso, whose investigative reports have plagued Mexican politicians ever since--most recently in articles on alleged federal involvement in the abduction of the 43 students in Guerrero and on possible judicial favoritism for the brother of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari [see Updates #1246, 1248]. People that Scherer interviewed or attempted to interview ranged from Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet to Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael (“El Mayo”) Zambada García. The journalist claimed that he’d go to hell if the devil offered him an interview. (LJ 1/8/15)
*4. Latin America: Why Did Monsanto Profits Dip?
The Missouri-based biotech giant Monsanto Company announced on Jan. 7 that its revenues for September through November 2014, the first quarter of the company’s current fiscal year, fell to $2.87 billion from $3.14 billion for the same period the year before. The decline was less than analysts had expected. According to Bloomberg News, this was because the losses, including a 12% drop in corn seed sales, were partly offset by sales of Monsanto’s new Intacta soybeans, which the company says are genetically modified to withstand pests in South America. But the losses themselves were “in part, due to the reduction in sowing areas in South America,” the Spanish agricultural news site agroinformación.com reported. Agroinformación.com also cited resistance to the construction of a seed processing plant in Malvinas Argentinas in Argentina’s central Córdoba province [see Update #1204]. (Bloomberg 1/7/15; agroinformación.com 1/8/15)
In December residents of Malvinas Argentinas--a small working-class town near the provincial capital, also named Córdoba—celebrated their success so far in stopping Monsanto’s factory, which was to be the company’s largest South American seed processing plant. Since September 2013 residents have been blocking construction crews’ access to the site. Construction has in fact been suspended since January 2014, when an appeals court ordered the company to produce a new environmental impact study. Although the provincial government initially promoted the construction, in February the province’s Environmental Secretariat rejected the company’ new study. Monsanto is now reportedly looking at other sites.
Despite activists’ apparent success in Malvinas Argentinas—and a growing Latin American movement against Monsanto and other producers of genetically modified (GM) seeds [see Update #1232]—Argentina’s major farmers still rely heavily on the products. The country’s huge soybean crop is 100% transgenic, as are 92% of the cotton crop and 84% of the corn crop. The 23.9 million hectares of GM crop in the country represent the world’s third largest surface sowed with transgenic seed, after the US with 69.5 million hectares and Brazil with 36.6 million hectares. (BBC Mundo 12/14/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, US/immigration
The Agents of Unregulated Globalization vs. the Agents of the Fight against Climate Change (Latin America)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/the-agents-of-unregulated-globalization-vs-the-agents-of-the-fight-against-climate-change
Open Letter to Rafael Correa: Stop the Eviction of CONAIE (Ecuador)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/open-letter-rafael-correa-stop-eviction-conaie/
China Commits $20 Billion to Venezuela at First Latin America-China Forum in Beijing
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11143
Territories Free of Mining on the Rise in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/5170-territories-free-of-mining-on-the-rise-in-honduras-
Genocide Trial against Guatemalan Dictator Suspended Once Again
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Genocide-Trial-against-Guatemalan-Dictator-Suspended-Once-Again-20150105-0020.html
The Federal Police Not Only Knew, They Were There (Audio) (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/08/federal-police-not-only-knew-they-were-there-audio
‘Nothing Was an Accident That Night’: Mexican Federal Police Implicated in the Disappearance of the 43
http://www.thenation.com/blog/194073/nothing-was-accident-night-mexican-federal-police-implicated-disappearance-43
Popular Political Trial in Iguala (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14375
Led by Latinos, US Cities Organize to End Plan Mexico and Support Ayotzinapa
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14231
The Organizers Who Never Gave Up on the Cuban Five
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/12/organizers-who-never-gave-cuban-five
Haiti 5 Years After Devastating Earthquake
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12984
Haiti by the Numbers, Five Years Later
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haiti-by-the-numbers-five-years-later
Haiti Cholera Suit Struck Down
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Haiti-Cholera-Suit-Struck-Down-20150110-0005.html
Monsanto Hires Marketing Firm to Poll Citizens on GMOs (Puerto Rico)
http://alainet.org/active/79925
Deportations to Dangerous Zones (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/deportations-to-dangerous-zones/
No Alternative: Ankle Monitors Expand the Reach of Immigration Detention (US/immigration)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/06/no-alternative-ankle-monitors-expand-reach-immigration-detention
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Haiti: US Grants UN Immunity in Cholera Suit
2. Peru: Fujimori Sentenced for Tabloid Bribery
3. Mexico: Protests Follow Peña to Washington
4. Latin America: Why Did Monsanto Profits Dip?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Haiti: US Grants UN Immunity in Cholera Suit
On Jan. 9 a federal district judge in New York, J. Paul Oetken, dismissed a lawsuit seeking compensation from the United Nations (UN) for a cholera epidemic introduced into Haiti in October 2010 by infected soldiers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) [see Update #1238]. “The UN is immune from suit unless it expressly waives its immunity,” Judge Oetken wrote in his decision, which was based on the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN and a US appeals court ruling in a 2010 sexual discrimination case. Lawyers from the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), representing thousands of Haitian cholera victims, said they would appeal the decision, which came three days before the fifth anniversary of an earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti.
The suit, Delama Georges, et al, v. United Nations, et al, was filed in October 2013. The plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that the UN was not entitled to immunity under the 1946 convention because the world organization failed to meet its obligation under the convention to establish a settlement process for the victims. A number of legal experts agreed with the plaintiffs’ position, filing three amicus curiae briefs with the court and arguing in support of the plaintiffs at a hearing in October 2014. The UN has never admitted its responsibility for the cholera outbreak and didn’t respond to the suit; the US government argued on the UN’s behalf. According to Haitian rights lawyer Mario Joseph, the president of the Bureau of International Lawyers (BAI), Oetken’s ruling “implies that there is nowhere in the world [the victims] can turn to seek justice. That is irreconcilable with their human rights and basic notions of justice.” (IJDH press release 1/9/15; Reuters 1/10/15)
At least 8,774 Haitians had died of the cholera epidemic by Jan. 8, according to the DC-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Some 14,000 or more were sickened by the disease in 2014, and 243 died that year. The amount of money required for a program for the eradication of cholera in Haiti is estimated to be $2.2 billion; the amount pledged so far is $50 million. (Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch, CEPR, 1/8/15)
Arnel (or Anel) Alexis Joseph, the controversial president of the Superior Council of the Judicial Branch (CSPJ), offered his resignation on Jan. 7, as was recommended on Dec. 9 by an 11-member “consultative commission” that President Michel Martelly set up to resolve a political impasse; terms are set to expire for one-third of Haiti’s senators on Jan. 12, leaving the Senate without a quorum and possibly creating a constitutional crisis [see Update #1246]. Other people that the commission asked to resign, including former prime minister Laurent Lamothe and the members of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), had already complied. The Senate called for Joseph’s resignation back in 2012 on the grounds that he was past the maximum legal age for the post. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/7/15)
*2. Peru: Fujimori Sentenced for Tabloid Bribery
After a trial lasting more than a year, on Jan. 8 a Peruvian court sentenced former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) to eight years in prison for embezzlement. The court found that between 1998 and 2000 Fujimori diverted some $43 million from the military to the National Intelligence Service (SIN) in order to pay tabloid dailies to follow the government’s editorial line. The colorful tabloids--known in Peru as “diarios chicha” after a popular musical style—supported Fujimori’s campaign for reelection in 2000 by characterizing his opponents as communists, homosexuals and spies; some of the papers were actually created by Fujimori’s government for the purpose. The former president claimed in court on Dec. 29 that he didn’t know about the diversion of the money. In addition to the prison sentence, Fujimori lost his right to hold public office for three years and was ordered to pay a fine of 3 million soles (about US$1 million). (RRP (Peru) 1/8/15; El País (Madrid) 1/8/15 from correspondent)
This was the fifth conviction for Fujimori since 2007. On Dec. 11, 2007, he was found guilty of ordering an illegal search of the home of the wife of his former adviser Vladimiro Montesinos to seize compromising video tapes. On Apr. 7, 2009, a court sentenced him to 25 years in prison for two massacres of unarmed civilians carried out by the Colina Group, a death squad organized by military intelligence and allegedly reporting to the president: the November 1991 killing of 15 people at a family barbecue in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima, and the July 1992 abduction and murder of nine university students and a professor from the Enrique Guzmán y Valle (La Cantuta) university; the group also kidnapped journalist Gustavo Gorriti and business owner Samuel Dyer in 1992 [see Update #1019]. Also in 2009, Fujimori was sentenced to seven years and six months for appropriating $15 million from the treasury for Montesinos; in a separate case, he was sentenced to six years for spying on phone calls, payoffs to the media and the buying of Congress members.
Although elected as a populist in 1990, Fujimori quickly imposed a harsh neoliberal program known as “Fujishock.” In 1992 he seized dictatorial powers with a “self-coup,” claiming this would clear the way for combating two leftist rebel movements. He fled the country in 2000 when his government’s massive corruption came to light, and sought asylum in Japan. In 2005 he went to Chile as part of a plan to return to Peru, but Chilean authorities imprisoned him and turned him over to the Peruvian government in 2007. The maximum sentence in Peru is 25 years, so the five sentences will run concurrently. Fujimori will theoretically be released in 2032, at the age of 94. (La República (Peru) 1/8/15; El País 1/8/15)
In other news, judicial authorities announced on Dec. 30 that Attorney General Carlos Ramos Heredia had been suspended from his post for six months to “safeguard the optimal development of the investigations” into charges that he impeded inquiries concerning alleged corruption in the central western department of Ancash. Officials there took $113 million in public funds between 2008 and 2011, according to Mesías Guevara, the president of the parliamentary commission investigating the allegations. Ramos Heredia told RPP radio that he would respect the suspension but wouldn’t resign. (Yahoo News 12/30/14 from AP)
*3. Mexico: Protests Follow Peña to Washington
Facing serious political and economic problems at home, on Jan. 6 Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto made his first official visit to Washington, DC, since taking office in December 2012. A private meeting at the White House with US president Barack Obama lasted longer than was scheduled, and the two presidents didn’t take questions when they spoke with the press afterwards. The US has been following the “tragic events” involving seven deaths and the abduction of 43 students the night of Sept. 26-27 in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero [see Update #1246], Obama told reporters, and the US would continue to aid in investigations and in the fight against drug cartels. Obama also praised Mexico’s efforts to keep Central American migrants from reaching the US border, especially during the child migrant “crisis” in the summer of 2014 [see Update #1237]. Peña Nieto promised that Mexico would help the US and Cuba normalize relations. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/7/15)
In addition to facing massive protests against the Mexican political system since the Guerrero abductions, Peña Nieto’s government is having to deal with a drop in oil prices that has led to downward pressure on the peso. Now at $39.70 a barrel, the price of Mexico’s export oil plummeted by 61.23% from June 20, 2014 to Jan. 9 of this year, while the peso fell by 12.3%, ending up at 14.5 to the US dollar. (El Financiero (Mexico) 1/12/15)
As the two presidents were speaking, about 100 protesters, mostly Mexicans and Mexican Americans, rallied outside the White House. The protesters charged that the US government is supporting corruption and violence in Mexico through its Mérida Initiative, a program often referred to as “Plan Mexico,” in which the US funds anti-narcotics campaigns by Mexican security forces, themselves often linked to the cartels [see Update #952]. Among the participants in the rally was Nansi Cisneros, whose brother was kidnapped by men in police uniforms in the western state of Jalisco; a US citizen living in Los Angeles, Cisneros had written about her brother’s case on the Huffington Post news site.
There were similar protests that day in at least nine other US cities, including Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Seattle, organized by the USTired2 network [see Update #1245] and other groups to echo the demonstrations in Mexico. One of the protesters in Seattle was José Luis Avila, the husband of Nestora Salgado García, an imprisoned community police leader in Olinalá, Guerrero [see Update #1237]. (LJ 1/7/15)
On Jan. 8 the Guerrero government announced that it was dropping charges against Salgado “as a demonstration that this citizens’ government has been consistent in the search for peace and the harmonious development of Guerrero in all its aspects.” (LJ 1/8/15) As of Jan. 11 there had been no reports of her release.
In other news, the celebrated Mexican editor and investigative reporter Julio Scherer died on Jan. 7 at the age of 88. Scherer edited the influential daily El Excélsior from 1968 to 1976, when government pressure finally succeeded in getting the paper to remove him. He then founded the weekly Proceso, whose investigative reports have plagued Mexican politicians ever since--most recently in articles on alleged federal involvement in the abduction of the 43 students in Guerrero and on possible judicial favoritism for the brother of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari [see Updates #1246, 1248]. People that Scherer interviewed or attempted to interview ranged from Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet to Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael (“El Mayo”) Zambada García. The journalist claimed that he’d go to hell if the devil offered him an interview. (LJ 1/8/15)
*4. Latin America: Why Did Monsanto Profits Dip?
The Missouri-based biotech giant Monsanto Company announced on Jan. 7 that its revenues for September through November 2014, the first quarter of the company’s current fiscal year, fell to $2.87 billion from $3.14 billion for the same period the year before. The decline was less than analysts had expected. According to Bloomberg News, this was because the losses, including a 12% drop in corn seed sales, were partly offset by sales of Monsanto’s new Intacta soybeans, which the company says are genetically modified to withstand pests in South America. But the losses themselves were “in part, due to the reduction in sowing areas in South America,” the Spanish agricultural news site agroinformación.com reported. Agroinformación.com also cited resistance to the construction of a seed processing plant in Malvinas Argentinas in Argentina’s central Córdoba province [see Update #1204]. (Bloomberg 1/7/15; agroinformación.com 1/8/15)
In December residents of Malvinas Argentinas--a small working-class town near the provincial capital, also named Córdoba—celebrated their success so far in stopping Monsanto’s factory, which was to be the company’s largest South American seed processing plant. Since September 2013 residents have been blocking construction crews’ access to the site. Construction has in fact been suspended since January 2014, when an appeals court ordered the company to produce a new environmental impact study. Although the provincial government initially promoted the construction, in February the province’s Environmental Secretariat rejected the company’ new study. Monsanto is now reportedly looking at other sites.
Despite activists’ apparent success in Malvinas Argentinas—and a growing Latin American movement against Monsanto and other producers of genetically modified (GM) seeds [see Update #1232]—Argentina’s major farmers still rely heavily on the products. The country’s huge soybean crop is 100% transgenic, as are 92% of the cotton crop and 84% of the corn crop. The 23.9 million hectares of GM crop in the country represent the world’s third largest surface sowed with transgenic seed, after the US with 69.5 million hectares and Brazil with 36.6 million hectares. (BBC Mundo 12/14/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, US/immigration
The Agents of Unregulated Globalization vs. the Agents of the Fight against Climate Change (Latin America)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/the-agents-of-unregulated-globalization-vs-the-agents-of-the-fight-against-climate-change
Open Letter to Rafael Correa: Stop the Eviction of CONAIE (Ecuador)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/open-letter-rafael-correa-stop-eviction-conaie/
China Commits $20 Billion to Venezuela at First Latin America-China Forum in Beijing
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11143
Territories Free of Mining on the Rise in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/5170-territories-free-of-mining-on-the-rise-in-honduras-
Genocide Trial against Guatemalan Dictator Suspended Once Again
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Genocide-Trial-against-Guatemalan-Dictator-Suspended-Once-Again-20150105-0020.html
The Federal Police Not Only Knew, They Were There (Audio) (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/08/federal-police-not-only-knew-they-were-there-audio
‘Nothing Was an Accident That Night’: Mexican Federal Police Implicated in the Disappearance of the 43
http://www.thenation.com/blog/194073/nothing-was-accident-night-mexican-federal-police-implicated-disappearance-43
Popular Political Trial in Iguala (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14375
Led by Latinos, US Cities Organize to End Plan Mexico and Support Ayotzinapa
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14231
The Organizers Who Never Gave Up on the Cuban Five
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/12/organizers-who-never-gave-cuban-five
Haiti 5 Years After Devastating Earthquake
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12984
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haiti-by-the-numbers-five-years-later
Haiti Cholera Suit Struck Down
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Haiti-Cholera-Suit-Struck-Down-20150110-0005.html
Monsanto Hires Marketing Firm to Poll Citizens on GMOs (Puerto Rico)
http://alainet.org/active/79925
Deportations to Dangerous Zones (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/deportations-to-dangerous-zones/
No Alternative: Ankle Monitors Expand the Reach of Immigration Detention (US/immigration)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/06/no-alternative-ankle-monitors-expand-reach-immigration-detention
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Friday, January 9, 2015
Five Years Since Haiti’s Earthquake
Jan. 12 will be the fifth anniversary of the earthquake that hit southern Haiti in 2010, destroying much of Port-au-Prince and killing tens of thousands of people.
The US media will of course run anniversary articles, at least some of them expressing astonishment that so little has improved in Haiti despite billions in aid and the international community’s promise, in Bill Clinton’s words, to “build back better.” But the situation is no surprise for people who have followed Haiti news over the years. It was predictable, and in fact, many people predicted it.
To give some perspective on the anniversary, we’re linking to two old articles by an Update editor about the earthquake’s aftermath:
Helping Haiti: Our Dollars Aren't Enough
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson300110.html
Why Haiti Wasn’t “Built Back Better”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/3582--why-haiti-wasnt-built-back-better
Below are links to additional articles describing the editor’s experiences in the five days after the earthquake:
Singing and Praying at Night in Port-au-Prince
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson140110.html
Day 2 in Port-au-Prince: ‘Young Men with Crowbars'
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson180110.html
Day Three in Port-au-Prince: ‘A difficult situation’
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson210110.html
Day 4 in Port-au-Prince: On the Veranda
http://grassrootssolidarity.blogspot.com/2010/08/day-4-in-port-au-prince-on-veranda.html
Days 5 and 6 in Port-au-Prince: Escape From Katrina
http://grassrootssolidarity.blogspot.com/2010/08/days-5-and-6-in-port-au-prince-escape.html
The US media will of course run anniversary articles, at least some of them expressing astonishment that so little has improved in Haiti despite billions in aid and the international community’s promise, in Bill Clinton’s words, to “build back better.” But the situation is no surprise for people who have followed Haiti news over the years. It was predictable, and in fact, many people predicted it.
To give some perspective on the anniversary, we’re linking to two old articles by an Update editor about the earthquake’s aftermath:
Helping Haiti: Our Dollars Aren't Enough
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson300110.html
Why Haiti Wasn’t “Built Back Better”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/3582--why-haiti-wasnt-built-back-better
Below are links to additional articles describing the editor’s experiences in the five days after the earthquake:
Singing and Praying at Night in Port-au-Prince
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson140110.html
Day 2 in Port-au-Prince: ‘Young Men with Crowbars'
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson180110.html
Day Three in Port-au-Prince: ‘A difficult situation’
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson210110.html
Day 4 in Port-au-Prince: On the Veranda
http://grassrootssolidarity.blogspot.com/2010/08/day-4-in-port-au-prince-on-veranda.html
Days 5 and 6 in Port-au-Prince: Escape From Katrina
http://grassrootssolidarity.blogspot.com/2010/08/days-5-and-6-in-port-au-prince-escape.html
Monday, January 5, 2015
WNU #1249: Chile Court Hands Barrick Gold a New Setback
Issue #1249, January 4, 2015
1. Chile: Court Rejects New Pascua Lama Appeal
2. Colombia: OAS Court Rules on Palace of Justice Deaths
3. Colombia: Rights Suits Against US Firms Dismissed
4. Haiti: Martelly Names New Prime Minister
5. Puerto Rico: More Cleanup Needed for Vieques
6. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. 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.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Chile: Court Rejects New Pascua Lama Appeal
The Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, the world’s largest gold producer, faced another setback to its mammoth Pascua Lama gold and silver mine [see Update #1198] in late December when Chile’s Supreme Court rejected its appeal of a lower court’s decision on environmental fines. Barrick’s Chilean subsidiary, Compañía Minera Nevada SPA, was disputing an environmental court’s March 2013 ruling that a fine the government’s Environmental Bureau had imposed on Barrick was inadequate. In a decision announced on Dec. 30, a Supreme Court panel rejected the appeal on a technicality: the justices held that Minera Nevada wasn’t a party to the original case and therefore couldn’t appeal the environmental court’s ruling.
Situated high in the Andes on both sides of the border between Argentina and Chile, the Pascua Lama project, planned as one of the world’s largest gold and silver mines, has been met with numerous challenges from environmentalists and local communities, especially over the risks it is said to represent for Andean glaciers. The challenges have been especially effective in Chile, where Barrick is currently facing fines of more than $16 million for violations by the project. The company suspended construction in November 2013 but has indicated that it hopes to restart construction of the mine.
In a statement dated Dec. 31, a group of 10 local and environmental organizations opposing the mine said the Supreme Court decision was “an important step and once again ratifies our objectives, which are the revocation of the environmental permit [for the construction] and the definitive closing of the Pascua Lama project…. Irreparable damage has been done in our mountain range; we will not accept any monetary fine; this doesn’t bring any solution to the constantly irresponsible and criminal attitude of the Barrick mining company in our territory.” (El Mostrador Mercados (Chile) 12/31/14; Wall Street Journal 12/31/14; Piensa Chile 1/3/15)
*2. Colombia: OAS Court Rules on Palace of Justice Deaths
On Dec. 10 the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CorteIDH), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), notified the Colombian government that the court held it responsible for serious human rights violations in its handling of the seizure of the Palace of Justice by the Apr. 19 Movement (M-19) rebel group on Nov. 6, 1985. The violations included 11 forced disappearances, four cases of torture, one extrajudicial execution and negligence in the investigation of the security forces’ retaking of the building one day later, on Nov. 7, an operation in which more than 100 people died, mostly hostages and rebels. The court ordered the Colombian government to pay compensation to the victims, offer a formal and public apology, and produce a documentary explaining what happened.
Apparently the M-19, which demobilized in 1991, planned to use the Palace of Justice takeover to stage a trial of then-president Belisario Betancur (1982–1986) for problems in the government’s peace negotiations with the group. Military intelligence was aware of the rebels’ plans but failed to provide protection for the building. After a commando of 35 M-19 fighters seized the Palace of Justice, the government refused to hold substantive negotiations. Instead, President Betancur gave military commanders permission to storm the building with soldiers, police and armored vehicles. Almost all of the rebels died in the assault, along with 11 of the 25 justices of the Supreme Court and dozens of other hostages. The building caught on fire and was largely destroyed, as were thousands of court documents.
At the end of the assault, the military seized a group of survivors, including visitors, workers from the cafeteria and one rebel, Irma Franco, calling them “suspects.” Franco was killed, and 11 of the survivors have never reappeared. The military also tortured four people, and tortured and then executed a magistrate, Carlos Horacio Urán; his body was placed back in the building to make it appear that he was killed in crossfire. (Colombia Reports 12/10/14; Univision 12/15/14; Adital (Brazil) 12/17/14, some from Verdad Abierta;
The government has never accepted its responsibility in the violence. “The judicial institutions…for nearly 30 years have obstructed the investigations, in favor of the perpetrators,” Viviana Krsticevic, executive director of the nongovernmental Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), wrote after the decision was released. In recent years the government finally prosecuted two of the top commanders: retired colonel Alfonso Plazas Vega was sentenced in June 2010 to 30 years in prison for his involvement in the case of the 11 people disappeared [see World War 4 Report, 6/20/14], and retired general Jesús Armando Arias Cabrales received a 35-year sentence in April 2011 for the disappearances. However, efforts are under way to have Col. Plazas’ conviction overturned.
The Colombian government announced that it would comply with the CorteIDF’s orders. “If this promise is respected,” Krsticevic wrote, “the case of the Palace of Justice will mark a ‘before’ and ‘after’ for Colombia.” (Semana (Colombia) 04/29/11; Colombia Reports 12/10/14; Univision 12/15/14)
In late December the Colombian government’s Unit for Comprehensive Attention and Reparation for Victims of the Armed Conflict issued its first official list of victims from the last 30 years of internal fighting. The agency put the total at 6.8 million, about one-seventh of the country’s 48 million inhabitants. Of these, 86% are people who were forcibly displaced, according to the group’s director, Paula Gaviria. The remaining 14% are “victims of threats, homicide, forced disappearance; and, in a lower proportion, of kidnapping, sexual violence, plundering or neglect of goods, wounding, torture, forced recruitment of children, and attacks,” she said. Gaviria claims that the government is now actively working to return 4.7 million of the displaced to their homes or to compensate them in some other way. About 2.7 million of the victims blamed rebels groups for their victimization, 1.3 million blamed rightwing paramilitaries, 2.9 million didn’t assign blame, and only 28,833 blamed government security forces, according to Gaviria, who is a grandchild of former president Betancur. (El Tiempo (Colombia) 12/28/14)
*3. Colombia: Rights Suits Against US Firms Dismissed
On Dec. 15 the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal district court judge’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit against the Houston-based Occidental Petroleum Corporation by family members of three union leaders that the 18th Brigade of the Colombian National Army killed in 2004. In the suit, Saldana v. Occidental Petroleum Corp, the family members argued that under the 1789 Alien Tort Statute the US company shared responsibility for the killings by the Colombian military, which originally claimed that the three unionists were guerrilla fighters. Occidental’s Colombian subsidiary and the Colombian state-owned oil company Ecopetrol together gave $6.3 million in assistance to the brigade; the companies said the aid was intended to help the brigade protect a pipeline near the border with Venezuela that rebel groups were attacking.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court, which is based in San Francisco, ruled in an unsigned opinion that the suit treated an inherently political question which couldn’t be argued in a US court. (New York Times 12/15/14 from Reuters)
This was the latest in a string of defeats for human rights suits since April 2013, when a US Supreme Court ruling in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum severely restricted victims’ use of the Alien Tort Statute for abuses committed in foreign countries [see Updates #1187, 1205]. On Nov. 12 another 9th Circuit Court panel threw out a similar suit against Occidental and a US security contractor, AirScan, Inc., for the killing of 17 people, including six children, in the Colombian air force’s Dec. 13, 1998 cluster bomb attack on the village of Santo Domingo, Tame municipality, Arauca department. The 2-1 split decision cited the Kiobel case in dismissing the suit’s use of the Alien Tort Statue. The suit, Mujica et al v. AirScan Inc et al, also cited the Torture Victim Protection Act, but the court held that the law doesn’t apply to corporate defendants. The decision was written by Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, who as assistant US attorney general in 2002 produced--along with his deputy, John Yoo--the so-called “torture memo” justifying the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorism suspects. (Daily Mail (UK) 11/12/14 from Reuters)
On July 24 the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a 2007 suit against Charlotte, NC-based Chiquita Brands International Inc by some 4,000 Colombians whose relatives were killed by the rightwing paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) [see Update #1193]. In 2007 Chiquita admitted to having paid out $1.7 million to the AUC over seven years; the US government fined the company $25 million for supporting a terrorist organization. In a 2-1 decision the 11th Circuit Court, which is based in Atlanta, ruled out the use of the Alien Tort Statute and, like the 9th Circuit Court, held that Torture Victim Protection Act only applies to people, not to corporations. The decision was written by Judge David Sentelle. Paul Wolf, who represents many of the plaintiffs, called the dismissal of the suit “another tragedy for the victims of the war, who have already been through so much.” (BBC News 7/24/14)
*4. Haiti: Martelly Names New Prime Minister
The heads of the three branches of the Haitian government reached an accord late on Dec. 29 aimed at heading off a constitutional crisis when the terms of one-third of the country’s senators expire on Jan. 12, leaving the Parliament without a quorum [see Update #1246]. The agreement—signed by Haitian president Michel Martelly, Senate president Simon Dieuseul Desras, Chamber of Deputies president Jacques Stevenson Thimoléon and Superior Council of the Judicial Branch (CSPJ) president Arnel Alexis Joseph—extends terms to April for current members of the Chamber of Deputies and to September for current senators. The term extension will be inserted into legislation amending the electoral law and will only take effect if Parliament passes it by Jan. 12. In the event that the long-stalled election law is passed, the government can proceed to form a new Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) and schedule legislative, municipal and local elections, which have been delayed since 2011. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 12/30/14)
The agreement is one of several efforts by President Martelly’s government to counter a stream of militant opposition protests since the fall. On Dec. 25 Martelly nominated longtime politician Evans Paul to replace former prime minister Laurent Lamothe, a friend of the president’s who was pressured into resigning on Dec. 12. Paul started his political career as a radio journalist under the dictatorship of the late “president for life” Jean-Claude Duvalier (“Baby Doc,” 1971-1986). Using the name K-Plim--short for “Konpè Plim,” which is roughly equivalent to “Partner Pen” or “Brother Pen”--Paul was critical of the Duvalier regime and became an ally of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004), then a left-leaning Catholic priest. Elected Port-au-Prince mayor in 1990 as an Aristide supporter, Paul eventually became a bitter enemy of the former priest. (Reuters 12/15/14) In 2010, however, Paul joined an alliance some observers called “unnatural” because it brought together Aristide supporters and opponents in protests against then-president René Préval (1996-2001, 2006-2011) [see Update #1033].
Also as part of the concessions to the opposition, Martelly has released some 40 prisoners who the opposition says were jailed for their political activities. The latest was Jean Robert Vincent, arrested in February 2012, reportedly for distributing materials against the Martelly administration; he was freed on Dec. 30. The brothers Enold and Josué Florestal were released about two weeks before Vincent. The Florestals faced a murder accusation, but the charge came after they started a suit in August 2012 alleging corruption and misuse of titles by Martelly’s wife, Sophia Saint-Rémy, and his son, Olivier Martelly. The prisoner releases started in December, just one month after a Nov. 2 interview with TV5 Monde, Radio France Internationale (RFI) and Le Monde in which Martelly said he wasn’t aware “that there are demonstrators in prison” or that there were political prisoners in Haiti. (AlterPresse 12/31/14)
In other news, Uruguay’s General Assembly has decided to reduce its contingent in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) by about 60%--from 605 to 250—between Feb. 28 and Dec. 31, according to the Spanish wire service EFE. Adopted unanimously by the Senate, the troop reduction measure was approved by the Chamber of Deputies on Dec. 29. Uruguay’s center-left government has indicated that a complete withdrawal of the troops is also possible, depending on circumstances. Activists in a number of South American countries have been campaigning for an end to their militaries’ participation in the mission, a military-police operation stationed in Haiti since June 2004 [see Update #1238]. (AlterPresse 12/30/14)
*5. Puerto Rico: More Cleanup Needed for Vieques
As of Dec. 11 authorities had closed the Playa Grande beach area in the western region of a national wildlife refuge on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques following the discovery of pieces of inactive munitions there. The US Environmental Protection Agency said the US Navy had removed a projectile, a mortar tail and other objects, although officials insisted that the materials didn’t pose any danger to visitors. The munitions are left over from the Navy’s use of Vieques for testing weapons from the 1940s until May 2003, when mass civil disobedience by Vieques residents and their supporters forced the Navy to withdraw. A total of 1,640 arrests were made from 1999 to 2003 as activists carried out militant protests, including a yearlong occupation of the bombing range. Federal judges handed down jail sentences to protesters totaling 26 years, along with fines totaling $50,980 [see Update #692].
Most of the territory used by the Navy was turned over to the US Department of the Interior in 2003, although the Vieques municipal government received a portion. Cleanup operations began in 2004. Over the past 10 years the US has spent about $220 million removing 28,000 objects, including munitions, bombs, other artifacts and residue from explosives. According to Pedro Pierluisi, the US Congress’s resident commissioner in Puerto Rico, Congress members are seeking an additional $17 million for cleanup efforts next year. Puerto Rican governance secretary Víctor Suárez said a delegation of US experts would be visiting to examine the possibility that new technology could be used to accelerate the cleanup effort. (Associated Press 12/11/14; Primera Hora (Guaynabo) 1/2/15)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico
Torture Reports: Brazil and the United States Release Reports Documenting Systematic Human Rights Abuses
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5165-torture-reports-brazil-and-the-united-states-release-reports-documenting-systematic-human-rights-abuses-
Indigenous Bolivia begins to shine under Morales
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5161-indigenous-bolivia-begins-to-shine-under-morales-
Peruvian Communities Reject COP 20 and Build the Movement of the People for El Buen Vivir
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5164-peruvian-communities-reject-cop-20-and-build-the-movement-of-the-people-for-el-buen-vivir
Climate Change Threatens Quechua and Their Crops in Peru’s Andes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/5167-climate-change-threatens-quechua-and-their-crops-in-perus-andes
Why Is Ecuador Selling Its Economic and Environmental Future to China?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5160-why-is-ecuador-selling-its-economic-and-environmental-future-to-china-
Maduro Confirms Venezuelan Economy in Recession, Announces “Recovery Plan” for 2015
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11122
Former Guatemala Dictator to Stand Trial Again for Genocide
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Former-Guatemala-Dictator-to-Stand-Trial-Again-for-Genocide-20150103-0004.html
Remembering Guatemala’s First Genocide Conviction as the Trial Resumes Today
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/05/remembering-guatemala%E2%80%99s-first-genocide-conviction-trial-resumes-today
Maya Land Rights & Governance (Belize)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/maya-land-rights-governance/
The U.S. and Mexico: Hand-in-Hand in Human Rights Violations
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-u-s-and-mexico-hand-in-hand-in-human-rights-violations/
Complicity and Cover-Ups in Mexican Massacres (Audio)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/12/30/complicity-and-cover-ups-mexican-massacres-audio
Chicago link to Mexican mass abduction?
http://ww4report.com/node/13862
Cuba: #YoTambienExijo and 'regime change'
http://ww4report.com/node/13868
A View on Cuba's Opening From the De Facto U.S. Colony of Puerto Rico
https://nacla.org/blog/2014/12/29/view-cuba-opening-de-facto-us-colony-puerto-rico
Dissecting the Drug War: New Book Charts Ways Global Capitalism Profits From "War on People" (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5166-dissecting-the-drug-war-new-book-charts-ways-global-capitalism-profits-from-qwar-on-peopleq
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Chile: Court Rejects New Pascua Lama Appeal
2. Colombia: OAS Court Rules on Palace of Justice Deaths
3. Colombia: Rights Suits Against US Firms Dismissed
4. Haiti: Martelly Names New Prime Minister
5. Puerto Rico: More Cleanup Needed for Vieques
6. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. 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.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Chile: Court Rejects New Pascua Lama Appeal
The Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, the world’s largest gold producer, faced another setback to its mammoth Pascua Lama gold and silver mine [see Update #1198] in late December when Chile’s Supreme Court rejected its appeal of a lower court’s decision on environmental fines. Barrick’s Chilean subsidiary, Compañía Minera Nevada SPA, was disputing an environmental court’s March 2013 ruling that a fine the government’s Environmental Bureau had imposed on Barrick was inadequate. In a decision announced on Dec. 30, a Supreme Court panel rejected the appeal on a technicality: the justices held that Minera Nevada wasn’t a party to the original case and therefore couldn’t appeal the environmental court’s ruling.
Situated high in the Andes on both sides of the border between Argentina and Chile, the Pascua Lama project, planned as one of the world’s largest gold and silver mines, has been met with numerous challenges from environmentalists and local communities, especially over the risks it is said to represent for Andean glaciers. The challenges have been especially effective in Chile, where Barrick is currently facing fines of more than $16 million for violations by the project. The company suspended construction in November 2013 but has indicated that it hopes to restart construction of the mine.
In a statement dated Dec. 31, a group of 10 local and environmental organizations opposing the mine said the Supreme Court decision was “an important step and once again ratifies our objectives, which are the revocation of the environmental permit [for the construction] and the definitive closing of the Pascua Lama project…. Irreparable damage has been done in our mountain range; we will not accept any monetary fine; this doesn’t bring any solution to the constantly irresponsible and criminal attitude of the Barrick mining company in our territory.” (El Mostrador Mercados (Chile) 12/31/14; Wall Street Journal 12/31/14; Piensa Chile 1/3/15)
*2. Colombia: OAS Court Rules on Palace of Justice Deaths
On Dec. 10 the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CorteIDH), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), notified the Colombian government that the court held it responsible for serious human rights violations in its handling of the seizure of the Palace of Justice by the Apr. 19 Movement (M-19) rebel group on Nov. 6, 1985. The violations included 11 forced disappearances, four cases of torture, one extrajudicial execution and negligence in the investigation of the security forces’ retaking of the building one day later, on Nov. 7, an operation in which more than 100 people died, mostly hostages and rebels. The court ordered the Colombian government to pay compensation to the victims, offer a formal and public apology, and produce a documentary explaining what happened.
Apparently the M-19, which demobilized in 1991, planned to use the Palace of Justice takeover to stage a trial of then-president Belisario Betancur (1982–1986) for problems in the government’s peace negotiations with the group. Military intelligence was aware of the rebels’ plans but failed to provide protection for the building. After a commando of 35 M-19 fighters seized the Palace of Justice, the government refused to hold substantive negotiations. Instead, President Betancur gave military commanders permission to storm the building with soldiers, police and armored vehicles. Almost all of the rebels died in the assault, along with 11 of the 25 justices of the Supreme Court and dozens of other hostages. The building caught on fire and was largely destroyed, as were thousands of court documents.
At the end of the assault, the military seized a group of survivors, including visitors, workers from the cafeteria and one rebel, Irma Franco, calling them “suspects.” Franco was killed, and 11 of the survivors have never reappeared. The military also tortured four people, and tortured and then executed a magistrate, Carlos Horacio Urán; his body was placed back in the building to make it appear that he was killed in crossfire. (Colombia Reports 12/10/14; Univision 12/15/14; Adital (Brazil) 12/17/14, some from Verdad Abierta;
The government has never accepted its responsibility in the violence. “The judicial institutions…for nearly 30 years have obstructed the investigations, in favor of the perpetrators,” Viviana Krsticevic, executive director of the nongovernmental Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), wrote after the decision was released. In recent years the government finally prosecuted two of the top commanders: retired colonel Alfonso Plazas Vega was sentenced in June 2010 to 30 years in prison for his involvement in the case of the 11 people disappeared [see World War 4 Report, 6/20/14], and retired general Jesús Armando Arias Cabrales received a 35-year sentence in April 2011 for the disappearances. However, efforts are under way to have Col. Plazas’ conviction overturned.
The Colombian government announced that it would comply with the CorteIDF’s orders. “If this promise is respected,” Krsticevic wrote, “the case of the Palace of Justice will mark a ‘before’ and ‘after’ for Colombia.” (Semana (Colombia) 04/29/11; Colombia Reports 12/10/14; Univision 12/15/14)
In late December the Colombian government’s Unit for Comprehensive Attention and Reparation for Victims of the Armed Conflict issued its first official list of victims from the last 30 years of internal fighting. The agency put the total at 6.8 million, about one-seventh of the country’s 48 million inhabitants. Of these, 86% are people who were forcibly displaced, according to the group’s director, Paula Gaviria. The remaining 14% are “victims of threats, homicide, forced disappearance; and, in a lower proportion, of kidnapping, sexual violence, plundering or neglect of goods, wounding, torture, forced recruitment of children, and attacks,” she said. Gaviria claims that the government is now actively working to return 4.7 million of the displaced to their homes or to compensate them in some other way. About 2.7 million of the victims blamed rebels groups for their victimization, 1.3 million blamed rightwing paramilitaries, 2.9 million didn’t assign blame, and only 28,833 blamed government security forces, according to Gaviria, who is a grandchild of former president Betancur. (El Tiempo (Colombia) 12/28/14)
*3. Colombia: Rights Suits Against US Firms Dismissed
On Dec. 15 the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal district court judge’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit against the Houston-based Occidental Petroleum Corporation by family members of three union leaders that the 18th Brigade of the Colombian National Army killed in 2004. In the suit, Saldana v. Occidental Petroleum Corp, the family members argued that under the 1789 Alien Tort Statute the US company shared responsibility for the killings by the Colombian military, which originally claimed that the three unionists were guerrilla fighters. Occidental’s Colombian subsidiary and the Colombian state-owned oil company Ecopetrol together gave $6.3 million in assistance to the brigade; the companies said the aid was intended to help the brigade protect a pipeline near the border with Venezuela that rebel groups were attacking.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court, which is based in San Francisco, ruled in an unsigned opinion that the suit treated an inherently political question which couldn’t be argued in a US court. (New York Times 12/15/14 from Reuters)
This was the latest in a string of defeats for human rights suits since April 2013, when a US Supreme Court ruling in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum severely restricted victims’ use of the Alien Tort Statute for abuses committed in foreign countries [see Updates #1187, 1205]. On Nov. 12 another 9th Circuit Court panel threw out a similar suit against Occidental and a US security contractor, AirScan, Inc., for the killing of 17 people, including six children, in the Colombian air force’s Dec. 13, 1998 cluster bomb attack on the village of Santo Domingo, Tame municipality, Arauca department. The 2-1 split decision cited the Kiobel case in dismissing the suit’s use of the Alien Tort Statue. The suit, Mujica et al v. AirScan Inc et al, also cited the Torture Victim Protection Act, but the court held that the law doesn’t apply to corporate defendants. The decision was written by Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, who as assistant US attorney general in 2002 produced--along with his deputy, John Yoo--the so-called “torture memo” justifying the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorism suspects. (Daily Mail (UK) 11/12/14 from Reuters)
On July 24 the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a 2007 suit against Charlotte, NC-based Chiquita Brands International Inc by some 4,000 Colombians whose relatives were killed by the rightwing paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) [see Update #1193]. In 2007 Chiquita admitted to having paid out $1.7 million to the AUC over seven years; the US government fined the company $25 million for supporting a terrorist organization. In a 2-1 decision the 11th Circuit Court, which is based in Atlanta, ruled out the use of the Alien Tort Statute and, like the 9th Circuit Court, held that Torture Victim Protection Act only applies to people, not to corporations. The decision was written by Judge David Sentelle. Paul Wolf, who represents many of the plaintiffs, called the dismissal of the suit “another tragedy for the victims of the war, who have already been through so much.” (BBC News 7/24/14)
*4. Haiti: Martelly Names New Prime Minister
The heads of the three branches of the Haitian government reached an accord late on Dec. 29 aimed at heading off a constitutional crisis when the terms of one-third of the country’s senators expire on Jan. 12, leaving the Parliament without a quorum [see Update #1246]. The agreement—signed by Haitian president Michel Martelly, Senate president Simon Dieuseul Desras, Chamber of Deputies president Jacques Stevenson Thimoléon and Superior Council of the Judicial Branch (CSPJ) president Arnel Alexis Joseph—extends terms to April for current members of the Chamber of Deputies and to September for current senators. The term extension will be inserted into legislation amending the electoral law and will only take effect if Parliament passes it by Jan. 12. In the event that the long-stalled election law is passed, the government can proceed to form a new Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) and schedule legislative, municipal and local elections, which have been delayed since 2011. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 12/30/14)
The agreement is one of several efforts by President Martelly’s government to counter a stream of militant opposition protests since the fall. On Dec. 25 Martelly nominated longtime politician Evans Paul to replace former prime minister Laurent Lamothe, a friend of the president’s who was pressured into resigning on Dec. 12. Paul started his political career as a radio journalist under the dictatorship of the late “president for life” Jean-Claude Duvalier (“Baby Doc,” 1971-1986). Using the name K-Plim--short for “Konpè Plim,” which is roughly equivalent to “Partner Pen” or “Brother Pen”--Paul was critical of the Duvalier regime and became an ally of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004), then a left-leaning Catholic priest. Elected Port-au-Prince mayor in 1990 as an Aristide supporter, Paul eventually became a bitter enemy of the former priest. (Reuters 12/15/14) In 2010, however, Paul joined an alliance some observers called “unnatural” because it brought together Aristide supporters and opponents in protests against then-president René Préval (1996-2001, 2006-2011) [see Update #1033].
Also as part of the concessions to the opposition, Martelly has released some 40 prisoners who the opposition says were jailed for their political activities. The latest was Jean Robert Vincent, arrested in February 2012, reportedly for distributing materials against the Martelly administration; he was freed on Dec. 30. The brothers Enold and Josué Florestal were released about two weeks before Vincent. The Florestals faced a murder accusation, but the charge came after they started a suit in August 2012 alleging corruption and misuse of titles by Martelly’s wife, Sophia Saint-Rémy, and his son, Olivier Martelly. The prisoner releases started in December, just one month after a Nov. 2 interview with TV5 Monde, Radio France Internationale (RFI) and Le Monde in which Martelly said he wasn’t aware “that there are demonstrators in prison” or that there were political prisoners in Haiti. (AlterPresse 12/31/14)
In other news, Uruguay’s General Assembly has decided to reduce its contingent in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) by about 60%--from 605 to 250—between Feb. 28 and Dec. 31, according to the Spanish wire service EFE. Adopted unanimously by the Senate, the troop reduction measure was approved by the Chamber of Deputies on Dec. 29. Uruguay’s center-left government has indicated that a complete withdrawal of the troops is also possible, depending on circumstances. Activists in a number of South American countries have been campaigning for an end to their militaries’ participation in the mission, a military-police operation stationed in Haiti since June 2004 [see Update #1238]. (AlterPresse 12/30/14)
*5. Puerto Rico: More Cleanup Needed for Vieques
As of Dec. 11 authorities had closed the Playa Grande beach area in the western region of a national wildlife refuge on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques following the discovery of pieces of inactive munitions there. The US Environmental Protection Agency said the US Navy had removed a projectile, a mortar tail and other objects, although officials insisted that the materials didn’t pose any danger to visitors. The munitions are left over from the Navy’s use of Vieques for testing weapons from the 1940s until May 2003, when mass civil disobedience by Vieques residents and their supporters forced the Navy to withdraw. A total of 1,640 arrests were made from 1999 to 2003 as activists carried out militant protests, including a yearlong occupation of the bombing range. Federal judges handed down jail sentences to protesters totaling 26 years, along with fines totaling $50,980 [see Update #692].
Most of the territory used by the Navy was turned over to the US Department of the Interior in 2003, although the Vieques municipal government received a portion. Cleanup operations began in 2004. Over the past 10 years the US has spent about $220 million removing 28,000 objects, including munitions, bombs, other artifacts and residue from explosives. According to Pedro Pierluisi, the US Congress’s resident commissioner in Puerto Rico, Congress members are seeking an additional $17 million for cleanup efforts next year. Puerto Rican governance secretary Víctor Suárez said a delegation of US experts would be visiting to examine the possibility that new technology could be used to accelerate the cleanup effort. (Associated Press 12/11/14; Primera Hora (Guaynabo) 1/2/15)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico
Torture Reports: Brazil and the United States Release Reports Documenting Systematic Human Rights Abuses
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5165-torture-reports-brazil-and-the-united-states-release-reports-documenting-systematic-human-rights-abuses-
Indigenous Bolivia begins to shine under Morales
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5161-indigenous-bolivia-begins-to-shine-under-morales-
Peruvian Communities Reject COP 20 and Build the Movement of the People for El Buen Vivir
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5164-peruvian-communities-reject-cop-20-and-build-the-movement-of-the-people-for-el-buen-vivir
Climate Change Threatens Quechua and Their Crops in Peru’s Andes
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/5167-climate-change-threatens-quechua-and-their-crops-in-perus-andes
Why Is Ecuador Selling Its Economic and Environmental Future to China?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5160-why-is-ecuador-selling-its-economic-and-environmental-future-to-china-
Maduro Confirms Venezuelan Economy in Recession, Announces “Recovery Plan” for 2015
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11122
Former Guatemala Dictator to Stand Trial Again for Genocide
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Former-Guatemala-Dictator-to-Stand-Trial-Again-for-Genocide-20150103-0004.html
Remembering Guatemala’s First Genocide Conviction as the Trial Resumes Today
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/05/remembering-guatemala%E2%80%99s-first-genocide-conviction-trial-resumes-today
Maya Land Rights & Governance (Belize)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/maya-land-rights-governance/
The U.S. and Mexico: Hand-in-Hand in Human Rights Violations
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-u-s-and-mexico-hand-in-hand-in-human-rights-violations/
Complicity and Cover-Ups in Mexican Massacres (Audio)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/12/30/complicity-and-cover-ups-mexican-massacres-audio
Chicago link to Mexican mass abduction?
http://ww4report.com/node/13862
Cuba: #YoTambienExijo and 'regime change'
http://ww4report.com/node/13868
A View on Cuba's Opening From the De Facto U.S. Colony of Puerto Rico
https://nacla.org/blog/2014/12/29/view-cuba-opening-de-facto-us-colony-puerto-rico
Dissecting the Drug War: New Book Charts Ways Global Capitalism Profits From "War on People" (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5166-dissecting-the-drug-war-new-book-charts-ways-global-capitalism-profits-from-qwar-on-peopleq
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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