Weekly News Update on the Americas

WNU #1114: Argentines Unite Against Subway Fare Hike

2012-01-24T09:08:00.002-05:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1114, January 22, 2012

1. Argentina: Subway Workers and Riders Unite Against Fare Hike
2. Ecuador: Indigenous and Women’s Groups Slam Correa
3. Honduras: Lawyer Killed After Reporting Police Abuses
4. Guatemala: Will Ríos Montt Finally Face Genocide Charges?
5. Cuba: Government Denies Prisoner Died From Hunger Strike
6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/

*1. Argentina: Subway Workers and Riders Unite Against Fare Hike
Argentine judge Fernando Juan Lima ruled on Jan. 16 that the Buenos Aires city government could continue for now with a 127% increase it had imposed for the subway fare on Jan. 6. A coalition including unions, student groups and political and social organizations had filed for an emergency injunction to halt the increase, which raises the fare to 2.5 pesos (about 58 cents).

Judge Lima rejected the emergency injunction on the grounds that the increase wouldn’t “cause irreparable harm” to the system’s two million users. But the judge noted that he hadn’t issued a final ruling on the coalition’s case against the increase, and he said he would act on that within 20 days.

The coalition--the Multi-Sector Committee Against the Fare Hike in the Subte (as the subway system is known)--didn’t limit itself to using legal maneuvers to fight the fare hike. The groups also collected more than 200,000 signatures on a petition against the increase, which they said would be a hardship for poorer riders, and presented it to Judge Lima. Subway workers protested the increase by opening the turnstiles during rush hours for about a week and letting passengers ride for free. [The Union Association of Subte and Premetro Workers (AGTSyP), part of the coalition, used this tactic when it sought recognition as a union in 2009; see Update #1004.]

As of Jan. 18 the coalition was determined to continue the fight but seemed divided on what tactics to follow after Lima ruled against the emergency injunction.

At the same time that he was facing angry subway riders and workers, Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri was also in a dispute with the city’s “manteros,” vendors who sell handcrafts, blankets and clothing on Florida Street in the center of the city. On Jan. 16 the vendors blocked Corrientes Street to protest Macri’s decision the week before to send the Metropolitan police to remove them, a move that resulted in confrontations and injuries. The vendors have also protested by selling their wares in front of the Congress. They argue that their activities are protected by Article 83 of Law 1472, which allows artists and makers of handcrafts to occupy public space.

Until this year subsidies from the federal government made it possible to maintain low fares in the capital’s subway system. But the administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner--the head of a left-leaning section of the Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) who began her second four-year term on Dec. 10--is now drastically cutting subsidies for transportation and utilities. The Argentine consulting firm Econométrica projects that the growth rate for the national economy will fall to 2% this year, down from 7% in 2011, partly as a result of the global economic crisis. Facing a shortfall, the Fernández government is retreating from generous social spending that has helped contain conflicts in the decade since Argentina’s 2001-2002 economic crisis; the president’s critics say the spending also helped her win an easy electoral victory last October.

The decision to turn the subway over to the municipal government and withdraw the subsidy has a political benefit for the president, since it shifts the problem to Macri, one of Fernández’s main rivals, and his rightwing Republican Proposal (Pro) party. The federal government has agreed to continue to pay about half the old subsidy to the end of 2012. (Wall Street Journal 1/6/12; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/17/12 from correspondent; TeleSUR 1/17/12; Buenos Aires Herald 1/17/12; Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores (MST) website 1/18/12)

*2. Ecuador: Indigenous and Women’s Groups Slam Correa
On Jan. 10 the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), the country’s main indigenous umbrella group, issued a communiqué reporting a “surprising and inexplicable” police presence in the organization’s headquarters in Quito. “[A]round 9:45 am police arrived [in a ] truck [at] the CONAIE offices, and two police agents dressed in black entered inside the offices,” the group wrote. Asked to explain their presence, one agent mentioned a possible danger to CONAIE president Humberto Cholango; later the agents said they were there to protect a meeting of indigenous organizations scheduled for that day. CONAIE said it hadn’t reported any dangers or asked for protection, and the group denounced the “arbitrary and illegal acts against social organizations that [are] being implemented in Ecuador.” (CONAIE communiqué 1/10/12)

The incident shows the level of distrust that has developed between popular Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa and many of the grassroots and leftist organizations that helped bring him to office five years ago. It came just as Correa was preparing to celebrate the fifth anniversary on Jan. 15 of his first inauguration and of the start of what he calls the “citizens’ revolution.”

Respected figures from the Latin American left and social movements and the arts attended festivities held in Cuenca, including Cuban musician Pablo Milanés and the Guatemalan indigenous activist Rigoberta Menchú Tum, the winner of the 1992 Nobel peace prize. But Menchú also paid a visit to CONAIE president Cholango, who gave her a document that accused Correa’s government of criminalizing social protest and of bringing legal cases against indigenous leaders. In the past five years, Cholango told Menchú, the government had failed to push forward agrarian reform, the redistribution of water rights, the democratization of the economy and the development of a state that recognizes Ecuador’s different nationalities. (El Tiempo (Quito) 1/10/12)

Camila Vallejo Dowling, the best known of the leaders of Chile’s militant student movement, was also expected at the celebration, but on Jan. 10 she announced via Twitter that she wouldn’t attend, because of “time and responsibilities here in Chile.” (El Comercio (Cuenca) 1/10/12)

Meanwhile, Correa offended women activists in his own PAIS (Proud and Sovereign Nation) Alliance with remarks he made on Dec. 31 during his weekly television program. “I don’t know if gender equality improves democracy,” he said. “What is certain is that it has improved the party”—a New Year’s Eve party for government ministers and members of the National Assembly. “What pretty Assembly members we have! We need to raise their salaries, since they didn’t have money to buy enough cloth, with all of them in miniskirts. My God…they told me they have some amazing legs.”

On Jan. 10 a group of women, including members of his party, sent Correa a letter saying that “[s]ince politics is also pedagogy and a president’s discourse can send many messages, allow us to remind you how the participation of women has improved democracy.” They noted that a democracy is incomplete if it excludes half the population, and that women have strengthened democracy by “questioning the traditional division between the public and the private spheres.” “Machismo too is violence,” they concluded. But another PAIS Alliance member, Loja province governor Alicia Jaramillo, defended Correa: “This is the first government that has included women in ministerial posts,” she said, attributing the president’s Dec. 31 remarks to his good humor. (Otra América website 1/10/12)

The Coordinating Committee for the Unity of the Lefts has chosen Mar. 8, International Women’s Day, to protest government policies with a national march “for life, democracy and the defense of natural resources.” The sponsoring coalition includes CONAIE, the National Union of Educators (UNE), the Unified Workers Front and the Federation of Secondary and University Students. (El Comercio 1/17/12)

*3. Honduras: Lawyer Killed After Reporting Police Abuses
Three unidentified men gunned down attorney José Ricardo Rosales the morning of Jan. 17 near his office or residence (the accounts differ) in the coastal city of Tela in the northern Honduran department of Atlántida. The murder came just four days after the San Pedro Sula daily El Tiempo ran a news report on Rosales’ claim that Tela police agents had been abusing detainees. Rosales may also have offended the authorities by carrying out a successful defense of Marco Joel Alvarez (“Unicorn”) against government charges that he was responsible for the March 2011 murder of radio and television journalist David Meza in the nearby city of La Ceiba. Meza had regularly criticized the police force on his programs.

Héctor Turcios, the chief of Tela’s Preventive Police, told reporters that the department didn’t have “a hypothesis for why [the killers] ended the lawyer’s existence.”

Some 30 lawyers have reportedly been killed in Honduras since 2008, while 17 journalists were murdered from 2010 through 2011. President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa has been conducting purges of the country’s 14,000 police agents over the last three months, but this has done little to end complaints that the police abuse detainees and collaborate with drug traffickers and other criminals [see Updates #1104, 1112]. Tela’s police force was removed just days before Rosales made his accusations, and a new force was brought in: the new agents were the ones Rosales accused of abusing detainees. “[I]f the previous agents go away and they send us others who are worse...we’re not accomplishing anything,” he told El Tiempo. (El Tiempo 1/13/12; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 1/18/12; AP 1/18/12 via El Nuevo Herald (Miami))

*4. Guatemala: Will Ríos Montt Finally Face Genocide Charges?
Former Guatemalan military dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) is to appear before a judge on Jan. 26 in what could become a trial for genocide. Ríos Montt headed the government during one of the bloodiest periods in a 36-year counterinsurgent war that left more than 200,000 people dead, mostly civilians. After the fighting ended in 1996 Ríos Montt re-emerged as a politician, leading the rightwing Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) and holding a seat in Congress from 2000 until this month. The legislative position gave him immunity from prosecution, which has now ended.

Guatemala’s new president, Otto Pérez Molina, who was inaugurated on Jan. 14, was a major in the army during the Ríos Montt dictatorship [see World War 4 Report 11/7/11]. He operated around Nebaj, El Quiché department, in the Ixil Mayan region, where the killings amounted to genocide according to a 1999 report by a truth commission backed by the United Nations. The new president denies any involvement in war crimes and says he’ll support efforts by the attorney general to bring human rights cases to trial. (New York Times 1/23/12)

Titular de Hoy: Guatemala, a documentary from 1983 which appeared on Finnish televeion, includes a scene in which Pérez Molina, then known in the Nebaj area as “Commander Tito,” is interviewed by US investigative reporter Allan Nairn. The scene, which was posted separately on YouTube in May 2011, shows Commander Tito standing near several battered corpses in Nebaj; one of his soldiers said these were captives Pérez Molina had “interrogated.” ( “Democracy Now!” 1/17/12)

*5. Cuba: Government Denies Prisoner Died From Hunger Strike
The Cuban government announced on Jan. 20 that a prisoner, Wilmar Villar Mendoza, had died the day before in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Santiago de Cuba. The government said Villar had been hospitalized six days before with pneumonia and had died of “generalized infection.” According to Villar’s wife, Maritza Pelegrino, the prisoner had been on hunger strike from Nov. 25 to Dec. 23 to protest his four-year prison sentence and had resumed the strike on Dec. 29. Elizardo Sánchez, a well-known Cuban dissident, said Villar had been active in with an opposition group since last summer.

US president Barack Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, released a statement on Jan. 20 calling Villar “a young and courageous defender of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Cuba who launched a hunger strike to protest his incarceration and succumbed to pneumonia.” The Cuban government denied that Villar had been on hunger strike or that he was a political prisoner; the Cubans said the US, Spain and Chile were “manipulating” the death and called them “interventionists…without moral authority.” (White House statement 1/20/12; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/21/12 from correspondent; El Universal (Mexico) 1/22/12 from correspondent)

On Jan. 12 the noted Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano visited Cuba for the first time since 2003, when he, along with Portuguese author José Saramago and other leftist intellectuals, criticized the Cuban government’s execution of three boat hijackers and the imprisonment of 75 dissidents. The occasion for Galeano’s visit was the Jan. 16 ceremony for the literature prize awarded annually by Casa de las Américas, a major Cuban cultural organization. “The true friend is the one who criticizes you to your face and praises you behind your back,” Galeano said during his visit, adding that he was quoting the late Carlos Fonseca Amador, a founder of Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

According to Galeano, his most famous work, The Open Veins of Latin America, failed to win the Casa de las Américas prize in 1971 because the jury didn’t consider the book “serious enough.” “It was a period in which the left still confused being serious with being boring,” he said. “Fortunately, this was changing, and in our days it is known that the best ally of the left is laughter.” (LJ 1/17/12 from correspondent)

*6. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Guatemala, Mexico, Caribbean, Haiti

Remembering the Social Movements that Reimagined Argentina: 2002 - 2012
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3411-remembering-the-social-movements-that-reimagined-argentina-2002-2012

Landless Peasants with 80 Families Occupy and Take Over Farm in Northern Uruguay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3412-landless-peasants-with-80-families-occupy-and-take-over-farm-in-northern-uruguay

Brazil: Growing Pains in a Country Under Construction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3408-brazil-growing-pains-in-a-country-under-construction

Bolivia’s TIPNIS Highway Redux
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/20/bolivia%E2%80%99s-tipnis-highway-redux

Conga Mine Protests Continue as Peruvians Await Court Decision
http://nacla.org/news/2012/1/19/conga-mine-protests-continue-peruvians-await-court-decision

Regional Strike Paralyzes Hydroelectric Project in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3415-regional-strike-paralyzes-hyrdroelectric-project-in-colombia

Colombia: government blinks in regional strike against hydro project
http://ww4report.com/node/10737

Colombia: Caño-Limón pipeline blown up —again
http://ww4report.com/node/10741

Chavez: U.S Threats to Sanction Latin America Are “Absurd”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6757

‘Removing the Veil’: El Salvador Apologizes for State Violence on 20th Anniversary of Peace Accords
http://nacla.org/news/2012/1/17/%E2%80%98removing-veil%E2%80%99-el-salvador-apologizes-state-violence-20th-anniversary-peace-accords

El Salvador: Pesticides Fill Graveyards in Rural Villages
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3407-el-salvador-pesticides-fill-graveyards-in-rural-villages

Guatemala’s Perez Molina wants to Discuss Drug Decriminalization
http://latindispatch.com/2012/01/19/guatemalas-perez-molina-wants-to-discuss-drug-decriminalization/

Mexican States Must End Impunity for Enforced Disappearances
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3418-mexican-states-must-end-impunity-for-enforced-disappearances-

The Narco’s Gag in Tamaulipas, Mexico: “Nothing left but to obey”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3409-the-narcos-gag-in-tamaulipas-mexico-nothing-left-but-to-obey

The Caribbean in 2012: Looking Forward
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/19/caribbean-2012-looking-forward

Former Dictator Lives the Good Life, as Haitian Government has “Deliberately Stalled” Investigation
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/former-dictator-lives-the-good-life-as-haitian-government-has-deliberately-stalled-investigation

Decline 'Friend' Request: Social Media Meets 21st Century Statecraft in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3410-decline-friend-request-social-media-meets-21st-century-statecraft-in-latin-america

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

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WNU #1113: Who’s to Blame for Chile’s Wildfires?

2012-01-17T09:48:00.001-05:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1113, January 15, 2012

1. Chile: Did the Mapuche Cause Wildfires, or Was It Climate Change?
2. Honduras: Family Killed in Latest Aguán Massacre
3. Mexico: US Drug Agents Aided the Beltrán Leyva Cartel
4. Mexico: Local Police Suspected in Deaths at Guerrero Protest
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Chile: Did the Mapuche Cause Wildfires, or Was It Climate Change?
A series of raids and house fires in southern Chile followed the filing of a criminal complaint on Jan. 6 by the government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera implying that indigenous Mapuche activists were responsible for recent major forest fires in the Biobío and Araucanía regions [see World War 4 Report 1/7/12]. The complaint was based on an “antiterrorism” law passed during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and used repeatedly to repress protests by Mapuche activists seeking to regain control of ancestral lands being exploited by timber companies [see Update #1083].

On the night of Jan. 7, the day after the government’s legal action, five masked men set fire to two mediaguas (prefabricated houses) in the La Marina estate in the Pidima de Ercilla sector of Araucanía; the authorities said the houses belonged to a retired military officer and that the attackers exchanged gunfire with police agents. At 6 am the next morning the carabineros militarized police raided Chequenko, a Mapuche community in Pidima, apparently in response to the attack on the La Marina estate. According to José Venturelli of the nongovernmental Ethical Commission Against Torture, some 200 agents armed with handguns, rifles and tear gas grenades carried out a “massive attack” on the community.

During the same morning, a fire was set in another part of Araucanía at a home belonging to the parents of José Santos Millao, a Mapuche leader and a director of the government’s National Indigenous Development Corporation (Conadi). (ANSA (Italy) 1/8/12; BBC News 1/9/12)

On Jan. 10 masked members of the indigenous community of Rofue--near Araucanía’s capital, Temuco--blocked a highway to protest the construction of an airport. The police claimed the demonstrators fired at them with birdshot when they tried to break up the protest. Carabineros then raided the nearby village of José Jineo Ñanco, according to residents. In one incident, videotaped on a cellphone and posted on the internet, two agents approached Guillermina Painebilu and her daughter, Jessica Guzmán Painebilu, as they stood in a field holding a baby. One agent struck Guillermina Painebilu with a rifle butt and then pointed the rifle at her. Both women were arrested, but on Jan. 10 Temuco judge Federico Gutiérrez dismissed all charges against them and ordered carabineros commanders to investigate the agents’ actions. (UPI 1/11/12 via Noticias.123 (Chile); DPA 1/12/12 via La Gaceta de Tucumán (Argentina); Crónica de Hoy (Mexico City) 1/12/12 from unnamed wire services)

The most recent of the major forest fires in southern Chile began on Jan. 5 in Carahue community in Araucanía; seven firefighters died while combating the blaze. Police investigators said the fire was started in 83 different places at the same time, indicating it was set intentionally. Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter cast suspicion on the Arauco Malleco Coordinating Committee (CAM), a militant Mapuche organization. But a CAM leader, Héctor Llaitul Carillanca, currently serving a 14-year prison sentence [see Update #1081], told interviewers that starting a forest fire would be “outside our line of action.” The accusations were a setup to justify the application of the “antiterrorist” law to Mapuche communities, Llaitul said, and to use it “to confront Chile’s student and social movements as well, anticipating a year in which greater mobilizations and struggles may appear.”

Conadi director José Santos Millao said President Piñera and Interior Minister Hinzpeter were seeking to create “a type of apartheid, a type of Nazism or fascism.” Some Mapuche activists blamed the fires on the introduction of exotic tree species that they say exacerbated a drought as the Southern Hemisphere’s summer was beginning, while the Ethical Commission Against Torture’s José Venturelli accused the timber companies of setting the fires themselves “to collect insurance payments they couldn’t get for infected trees that can’t be sold.” (ANSA 1/8/12; BBC News 1/9/12; Página 12 (Argentina) 1/11/12 from correspondent; La Tercera (Chile) 1/15/12)

There have been an exceptional number of forest fires in South America since December. One fire destroyed 1,000 hectares in Argentina’s Chubut province, and more than 700 hectares of forest were burned in Paraguay’s Caazapá National Park. The main cause is a series of severe droughts which weather experts blame on a combination of factors: the regularly occurring La Niña weather pattern and climate change resulting from human activity. “I think you really have to point the finger at human-caused climate change as having tipped the scales to make previously unprecedented weather events more possible, and multiple unprecedented weather events like we're seeing,” Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website, told the Associated Press wire service. “There is so much regular variation in the weather, and it's hard to pick out the signal from the noise. But the signal’s sure getting pretty strong now.” (Prensa Latina 1/6/12; AP 1/6/12 via ABC News)

*2. Honduras: Family Killed in Latest Aguán Massacre
Eight people, including four children, were murdered in the village of Regaderos, in Sabá municipality in the northern Honduran department of Colón, on the evening of Jan. 9. Seven of the victims were members of the same campesino family; the eighth was a man running errands. The attackers took the victims from the family’s home to a field and killed them there with machetes and firearms. The youngest of the children was one year old; the others were seven, 12 and 15 years old. The attackers cut a part of the ear off each of the eight bodies. (El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 1/10/12)

The massacre was one of three mass killings in northern Honduras since the beginning of the year. Six people were murdered on Jan. 3 in the village of El Palmar, Las Vegas municipality, Santa Bárbara, in northwestern Honduras, and four members of one family were killed on Jan. 10 in the Rivera Hernández section of the main northern city, San Pedro Sula. There were 6,723 homicides in Honduras from January 2011 to Dec. 15, according to researchers at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH). With a homicide rate of 82 per 100,000 inhabitants, Honduras is the most violent country in Central America and one of the five most violent countries in Latin America. (Proceso Digital (Honduras) 1/11/12)

Sabá municipality, where the campesino family was massacred the night of Jan. 9, is in the Lower Aguán Valley, the site of violent land disputes between campesinos and large landowners [see Update #1102]. Colón chief of police Osmín Bardales almost immediately ruled out any connection between these disputes and the murders.

But the Honduras Culture and Politics blog points out that it is typical for both police and media to play down possible political motives behind violence in Honduras. One example is the US media’s tendency to blame Honduras’ homicide rate on the increase in drug trafficking through the country. But a United Nations report released on Oct. 6, Global Study on Homicide, notes that there isn’t always a connection: “Organized criminal groups involved in drug trafficking do not necessarily make themselves visible through violent and lethal crime…. Violence often escalates when an existing status quo is broken, as a result, for example, of changes in the structure of the drug market, the emergence of new protagonists or the ‘threat’ posed by police repression.” Meanwhile, the media rarely mention the increase in murders of women, campesinos and transsexuals since the June 2009 military coup that overthrew President José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 1/12/12)

As of Jan. 6 the Honduran government appeared have made no progress in a plan to buy 5,700 hectares of land in the Aguán to turn over to campesino collectives as a way of ending at least some of the land disputes. Alba-Petróleos, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), reportedly offered about $28.8 million to help with this plan [see Update #1111]. President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa still seemed interested in this proposal on Jan. 6. “Just imagine,” Lobo said, “someone gives the campesinos financing at low interest rates in long-term loans. What I can say is: best wishes and thanks.” (Proceso Digital 1/6/12)

*3. Mexico: US Drug Agents Aided the Beltrán Leyva Cartel
Agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) worked with an informant and with Mexican enforcement agents in 2007 to launder millions of dollars for Mexico’s Beltrán Leyva cartel, according to reports in the New York Times and the Mexican magazine emeequis. The information comes from the Mexican government’s response to a US request for the extradition of Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, a Colombian drug trafficker arrested in Mexico in November 2010.

According to documents the Mexican government supplied in the extradition case, in January 2007 a DEA informant began seeking money-laundering jobs from Poveda-Ortega, who was supplying Colombian drugs to the Mexican cartel headed by Arturo Beltrán Leyva and his three brothers. In July, the informant and a group of DEA agents laundered about $1 million through a Bank of America branch in Dallas and had it delivered to someone in Panama. In August and September they worked with an undercover Mexican agent to launder $499,250 on one occasion and $1 million on another. In October the DEA helped the Beltrán Leyva cartel ship 330 kilograms of cocaine through Dallas from Ecuador to Madrid, where Spanish authorities seized the drugs after being tipped off by the DEA.

As reported by the New York Times in December, the US government claims that this type of operation is useful in tracking criminal activity and leads to the arrests of cartel leaders [see Update #1109]. Arturo Beltrán Leyva was killed in a shootout with Mexican security forces in 2009, and apparently information from the US led to the Mexican operation. But the Beltrán Leyva cartel remains a major criminal organization. Morris Panner, a former assistant US attorney and an adviser on drug policy at Harvard University, described the DEA’s strategy “a slippery slope. If it’s not careful, the United States could end up helping the bad guys more than hurting them.” (NYT 1/9/12)

On Jan. 10 the Mexican government gave its official statistics on drug-related homicides for 2011. The Mexican Attorney General’s Office (PGR) reported that 12,903 deaths of this sort had occurred as of Sept. 30, giving a total of 47,453 drug-related homicides since President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa took office in December 2006. The Los Angeles Times reports that with the presidential election coming up in six months, Calderón’s government was reluctant to release the numbers and only did so under pressure. (LAT 1/11/12; La Jornada (Mexico) 1/12/12)

Crime reporting is inconsistent in Mexico, with the result that official and nongovernmental figures sometimes differ considerably. Earlier this month the Mexican daily La Jornada gave a much lower figure, 11,890, for homicides in 2011 but a much higher figure, 51,918, for the total since December 2006 [see Update #1111].

*4. Mexico: Local Police Suspected in Deaths at Guerrero Protest
On Jan. 12 ballistics experts and investigators from Mexico’s governmental National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) carried out a reconstruction of a confrontation last month between student protesters and police on a highway in the southwestern state of Guerrero. Two students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the nearby village of Ayotzinapa were killed on Dec. 12 when state and federal police tried to disperse some 500 protesters blocking the highway; a worker at a gas station near the road also died, in a fire reportedly caused by a Molotov cocktail thrown by a student [see Update #1112].

Using lasers, the experts determined that the two students were killed by gunfire from an eastern location where Guerrero ministerial police (formerly known as “judicial police”) were stationed. CNDH inspector Luis García López Guerrero emphasized that the investigation hadn’t ended and that state police agents might not be the only ones responsible for the incident, in which he said 31 people were injured, one was tortured, and four suffered gunshot wounds. The inspector noted that the Federal Police (PF) were the first to use tear gas at the beginning of the confrontation. The CNDH would also “investigate and not leave in impunity the case of the gas station worker,” he promised.

On Jan. 13 the CNDH investigators visited the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college to see the conditions that set off the student protests. Afterwards Luis García López Guerrero told reporters that the situation at the under-funded school made it difficult “for the subject of education to be developed in an appropriate manner” there. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/14/12, ___ )

*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti

Iran's Relations with Latin America Less Than Meets the Eye
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3406-irans-relations-with-latin-america-less-than-meets-the-eye

CELAC Holds First Meeting of Triumvirate Countries, Designates Priorities
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6746

Brazil: loggers invade tribal home of Amazon indigenous child "burned alive"
http://ww4report.com/node/10726

Deforestation slowing in Brazil
http://ww4report.com/node/10134#comment-331128

Bolivia’s New Faces of Justice
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/13/bolivia%E2%80%99s-new-faces-justice

Revolution against “Progress”: The TIPNIS's Struggle and Class Contradictions in Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3404-revolution-against-progress-the-tipnis-ssruggle-and-class-contradictions-in-bolivia

Peru: anti-drug chief who suspended coca eradication resigns
http://ww4report.com/node/10717

Peru: Elected by the Left, Ruling with the Right
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/3399-elected-by-the-left-ruling-with-the-right

Colombia: another indigenous leader slain in Cauca
http://ww4report.com/node/10727

Obama’s State Department Takes Cues from Right-Wing Cubans on Venezuela
http://nacla.org/news/2012/1/14/obama%E2%80%99s-state-department-takes-cues-right-wing-cubans-venezuela

A Cycle of Death: Inside Nicaragua's Sugar Cane Fields
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/nicaragua-archives-62/3402-a-cycle-of-death-inside-nicaraguas-sugar-cane-fields

Nicaragua’s Ortega Sworn In For Third Term As President
http://latindispatch.com/2012/01/11/nicaraguas-ortega-sworn-in-for-third-term-as-president/

Honduras: Return to Rigores
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3401-honduras-return-to-rigores

Action Alert! Urgent Need for Solidarity After Another Attack on Q’eqchi’ Communities in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3400-action-alert-urgent-need-for-solidarity-after-another-attack-on-qeqchi-communities-in-guatemala-

Ex-President Zedillo Faces Charges for Overseeing State Violence in Mexico
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/10/ex-president-zedillo-faces-charges-overseeing-state-violence-mexico

The Michoacán Debacle: Fault Lines Ahead of the Mexican Presidential Election
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3398-the-michoacan-debacle-fault-lines-ahead-of-the-mexican-presidential-election

Alert: Please Show Solidarity with SME -- Demand Resolution in Negotiations (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=196#1388

Mexican Labor Year in Review: 2011
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=196#1389

International Aid and the Neoliberal Ethos in the Tent Camps of Port-au-Prince, Haiti
http://nacla.org/news/2012/1/12/international-aid-and-neoliberal-ethos-tent-camps-port-au-prince-haiti

Two Years Later: Media Assess the State of Reconstruction in Haiti
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/two-years-later-media-assess-the- state-of-reconstruction-in-haiti

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1112: UN Claims Progress in Haiti—Two Years After Quake

2012-01-10T10:01:00.001-05:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1112, January 8, 2012

1. Haiti: UN Claims Progress--Two Years After Quake
2. Mexico: Guerrero Students Occupy Radio Stations
3. Mexico: Ex-President Claims Immunity in Acteal Massacre
4. Honduras: Police Torture Priest and His Brothers
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Haiti: UN Claims Progress--Two Years After Quake
International efforts to help Haiti recover from a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated the southern part of the country in 2010 have made significant progress, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) associate administrator Rebeca Grynspan told reporters on Jan. 6. Speaking less than a week before the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 12, 2010 quake, Grynspan cited the creation of 300,000 temporary jobs, with 40% going to women, and the removal of 50% of the debris, about five million cubic meters--enough to fill five soccer stadiums, according to Grynspan. International aid has now shifted “from the humanitarian phase to the recovery and reconstruction phases,” she said. (United Nations News Center 1/6/12; AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/8/12)

Haitian prime minister Garry Conille was equally upbeat when talking to the press in December. He announced that in the two months since his confirmation, the new government had made many advances in helping the earthquake survivors who still live in temporary camps. Conille said his administration’s priority is relocating the thousands of homeless people camped out in the Champ de Mars, a huge park that faces the National Palace in downtown Port-au-Prince, and making sure “that they’ll be able to go to a zone that is secure.” This is to be done, according to the prime minister, through the “16/6” program, a government plan to move the displaced from six camps into 16 neighborhoods, with each family receiving 20,000 gourdes (about $496) to pay for new homes. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 12/17/11)

But a Jan. 8 report by the Associated Press wire service noted that hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in camps or badly damaged buildings. While United Nations (UN) secretary general Ban Ki-moon and the UN special envoy, former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), promised “that the world would help Haiti ‘build back better,’ and $2.38 billion has been spent, Haitians have hardly seen any building at all,” AP reporter Trenton Daniel wrote. “Of the 10 best-funded projects approved by a reconstruction panel, not one focuses exclusively on housing.”

One of these projects is the Parc Industriel de Caracol (Caracol Industrial Park, PIC), a factory complex being built with $225 million in international financing, $124 million of it from the US [see Update #1108]. The project includes housing for 5,000 workers, but PIC is located in the northeast, 240 km (150 miles) from the area affected by the earthquake. The best-publicized effort to provide new homes for the displaced was the spring 2010 relocation of 5,000 people from a golf course in Pétionville, an affluent Port-au-Prince suburb, to Corail-Cesselesse, a deserted area 24 km north of the capital. This too was promoted as a plan for providing housing around a proposed industrial park [see Update #1052]. “That never happened,” according to the AP report. “Today, the people of Corail-Cesselesse are ravaged by floods or bake in the heat in their timber-frame shelters…far from the jobs that sustained them before the quake.”

The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC, or CIRH in French and Spanish), which international donors set up in March 2010 to monitor the distribution of international aid, is now out of operation. The Haitian Parliament refused to renew the IHRC’s mandate at the end of October on the grounds that the commission, which Bill Clinton co-chaired, had inadequate Haitian representation [see Update #1099]. (AP 1/8/12 via WTOP (Washington, DC)

*2. Mexico: Guerrero Students Occupy Radio Stations
Dozens of students occupied four radio stations in Chilpancingo, capital of the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero, for about an hour on Jan. 3 in an attempt to publicize their positions on an ongoing conflict at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the nearby village of Ayotzinapa. The conflict intensified when two students were shot dead on Dec. 12 as state and federal police attempted to remove some 500 protesters blocking the Mexico City-Acapulco highway to push their demands for improvements at the school [see Update #1109]. The students, along with parents and other supporters, occupied the school over the Christmas and New Year break and said they planned to maintain their mobilization after the official school opening on Jan. 3.

The student protests had started with demands for expanding the student body and for resuming classes, which had been suspended since Nov. 2 because of a dispute involving the teachers and the school administration. Following the shootings on Dec. 12, the students added a demand for the resignation of Guerrero governor Ángel Heladio Aguirre Rivero and for a thorough investigation of the police action. The students also want to know the status of the federal police agents who had been active in the operation. The media reported that 12 state police were put under restrictions after the killings but said nothing about the federal police, according to the students.

A gas station near the highway caught fire during the Dec. 12 confrontation, apparently because a Molotov cocktail thrown by a student hit a gas pump. Gonzalo Miguel Rivas Cámara, a worker at the station, was injured in the fire; he died of his injuries early on Jan. 8. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/2/12, 1/4/12)

*3. Mexico: Ex-President Claims Immunity in Acteal Massacre
Former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (1994-2000) filed papers in US district court in Hartford, Connecticut, on Jan. 6 claiming that his presidential status gives him immunity from a legal action stemming from a December 1997 massacre in the southeastern state of Chiapas. Ten unnamed survivors of the massacre of 45 indigenous campesinos in the community of Acteal are demanding $50 million in damages in a suit they filed against Zedillo in Hartford on Sept. 19. The former president is currently teaching at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Since he is in the US, he is subject to two US laws--the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 and the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act--which permit foreigners to bring suits in US courts for violence that occurred in other countries.

The Acteal killings were carried out by indigenous paramilitaries against members of the Civil Society Organization Las Abejas (“The Bees”). The Mexican government has always contended that the killings arose from long-standing conflicts between indigenous communities. Dozens of men from neighboring villages were convicted of participating in the massacre, although the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) overturned 22 of the convictions in August 2009 [see World War 4 Report 8/16/09].

Zedillo’s 122-page court filing called charges that the former president “was somehow complicit” in the killings “baseless and outrageous.” But the massacre occurred during conflicts between the government and the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), and the Acteal community was sympathetic to the EZLN. A number of Mexican analysts feel that Zedillo’s government may have trained and backed the paramilitaries, or at the very least aggravated tensions between EZLN supporters and opponents in Chiapas.

“[W]ithout doubt, in Zedillo there was complicity or [guilt by] omission for the tragic events in Acteal,” former legislator Jaime Martínez Veloz told the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada. Martínez Veloz had been a member of the Concord and Peacemaking Commission (COCOPA), a multi-party congressional commission sent by the federal government to negotiate with the EZLN starting in 1994. “Ultimately, Acteal is the most brutal expression of the failure to comply with the San Andrés Accords,” he said, referring to an agreement COCOPA worked out providing more autonomy for indigenous communities in Chiapas. Zedillo’s government rejected the accords, leaving the conflicts unresolved. (CNN 1/6/12; LJ 1/7/12 from Notimex, 1/8/12 by staff)

*4. Honduras: Police Torture Priest and His Brothers
Marco Aurelio Lorenzo, a Catholic priest based in the western Honduran department of Santa Bárbara, filed a criminal complaint with the Public Ministry on Jan. 4 charging that he and his two brothers had been tortured by eight police agents. Lorenzo said the attack occurred on Dec. 26 on a road between La Esperanza and San Miguelito, Intibucá department, as the brothers were driving to visit their parents in Yamaranguila, also in Intibucá. “They beat us on every part of our bodies,” Lorenzo told reporters after filing the charges in the northern city of San Pedro Sula.

The new accusation against the police follows several months of media reports about police involvement in corruption, drug trafficking, auto theft and murders, including the Oct. 22 killing of two college students [see Update #1104]. (EFE 1/4/12 via Univision, 1/5/12 via Latin American Herald Tribune)

Lorenzo is known for his activism in defense of the environment. He was arrested and beaten by police agents on July 17, 2007, after a peaceful protest against open-pit mining, and he was beaten by three unidentified men on Aug. 13, 2004. The Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH) is demanding that the Honduran government take measures to guarantee the physical integrity of Lorenzo and his brothers and their access to justice, without allowing reprisals against them. The human rights organization asks for letters to be sent to Honduran officials, including Supreme Court President Jorge Alberto Rivera Avilés (cedij@poderjudicial.gob.hn) and Public Prosecutions Director (lrubi@mp.hn ), with copies to COFADEH (berthacofadeh@yahoo.com ). (Alliance for Global Justice alert 1/5/12)

*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US

Chile: Mapuche "terrorism" blamed in deadly forest fires
http://ww4report.com/node/10704

A Temporary Suspension of Exile in Chile: Interview with Former MIR Militant Hugo Marchant
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3392-a-temporary-suspension-of-exile-interview-with-former-mir-militant-hugo-marchant

Chile Rising: Behind the Student Protest Movement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3384-chile-rising-behind-the-student-protest-movement

Bolivia: Cochabamba social summit highlights contradictions
http://ww4report.com/node/10706

Peru: Cajamarca anti-mining protests resume
http://ww4report.com/node/10694

Ecuador court upholds multi-billion dollar fine against Chevron
http://ww4report.com/node/10693

Oil Politics in Ecuador: Saving Yasuní, Without Chevron’s Blood Money
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/6/oil-politics-ecuador-saving-yasun%C3%AD-without-chevron%E2%80%99s-blood-money

Colombia: National Police mobilized to Urabá as paras declare "armed
http://ww4report.com/node/10703

Inmates' families occupy Venezuela prison
http://ww4report.com/node/10695

Favourable Verdict for Venezuelan Government on Exxon Nationalisation Case
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6726

US boots Venezuelan consul in supposed cyber-attack plot
http://ww4report.com/node/10710

New U.S.-Colombia Base in Panama to Combat Undocumented People
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3385-new-us-colombia-base-in-panama-to-qcombat-undocumentedq-people

Military Maneuvers in the Country Without an Army (Costa Rica)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5937

A Wake-up Call for Human Rights Defenders in the Americas, Not Indicator of Goldcorp's Performance (Guatemala)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3391-a-wake-up-call-for-human-rights-defenders-in-the-americas-not-indicator-of-goldcorps-performance

Justice Delayed 30 Years in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3390-justice-delayed-30-years-in-guatemala

Mexico mobilizes thousands more troops to Tamaulipas amid rising violence
http://ww4report.com/node/10699

Zapatistas: 18 Years of Rebellion and Resistance
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5918

An Emerging Political-Civic Disconnect in Mexico
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/1/3/emerging-political-civic-disconnect-mexico

How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-us-policies-fueled-mexicos-great.html

U.S. and Latin America Should Support Prosecution of Haiti’s Duvalier
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5927

Haiti: Seven Places Where Earthquake Money Did and Did Not Go
http://www.truth-out.org/haiti-seven-places-where-earthquake-money-did-and-did-not-go/1325873508

Contractor Accused of Waste in Katrina Reconstruction Lands USAID Contract in Haiti
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/contractor-accused-of-waste-in-katrina-reconstruction-lands-usaid-contract-in-haiti

Mesoamerica Project: Obama’s Message to the Latin American Governments
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3388-mesoamerica-project-obamas-message-to-the-latin-american-governments

School of Americas Watch: Vigil to Close the SOA 2011
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5942

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

News From the NY Nicaragua Solidarity Network

2012-01-06T12:48:00.001-05:00

1. We’ve finally moved out of 339 Lafayette Street

2. New life at the old building

3. The Network archives and historical memory

4. Progress on the John Ross archives

5. We still have banners—and expenses

1. We’ve finally moved out of 339 Lafayette Street

An NSN banner from around 1990

On Oct. 29 we finished clearing out the New York Nicaragua Solidarity Network’s longtime office at 339 Lafayette Street in Lower Manhattan to make room for the new tenants: the New York State Youth Leadership Council, an organization of undocumented youth. In addition to its ongoing organizing and educational work, the NYSYLC is known for bold and imaginative actions, including a 10-day hunger strike on the sidewalk in front of Sen. Chuck Schumer’s office in June 2010.

We’re delighted that the office is getting good use now—and for a cause as critical as immigrant rights. The Network is continuing to publish the online edition of Weekly News Update on the Americas--we hope you'll continue to read it.

It was a lot of work to clean up an office that had been used for more than 25 years by various groups--Nicaragua Support Project, NY Nicaragua Construction Brigade, ¡Adelante! Street Theater Project, Campaign for Real Equitable Economic Development (CREED), Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants and the Global Sweatshop Coalition--and we needed a lot of help. We won’t try to name all the people who participated, but they know who they are, and we appreciate all that they did.

2. New life at the old building
The NYSYLC isn’t the only new tenant at 339 Lafayette Street. Since October the building has provided an office for Global Revolution TV, which is best known for its live-stream video coverage from Occupy Wall Street; it also receives and distributes live feeds from independent journalists on the ground at nonviolent protests around the world.

Global Revolution TV has gotten the most media attention recently—in the New Yorker, for instance, and on CNN Money and Wired News—but 339 Lafayette continues to host a range of other activist groups, from the War Resisters League and the Granny Peace Brigade to the Socialist Party and the Met Council on Housing. The building, which is managed by the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute, has structural problems, but there may be ways to rehabilitate it and preserve this important movement resource. For updates, go to
http://ajmuste.org/bldgupdate.html And you can donate at: https://www.justgive.org/giving/donate.jsp?charityId=4046&

3. The Network archives and historical memory
There was a tremendous accumulation of materials in the office from the Network and the other groups that had used it. We went through the mass of papers and donated a selection of them to New York University’s Tamiment Library, an internationally known center for scholarly research on labor and the left. The archives at Tamiment are especially useful for activists, since they are open to the public. For a summary of the Network archive, go to
http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/nicaragua_solidarity_network.html To find out how to access materials, go to http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/usingtam.html

Our collection of posters and political buttons from a variety of movements is going to the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG), which has the largest collection of post-World War 2 political graphics in the United States.

We want to stress the importance of preserving movement materials and making them available both to historians and to the general public. The media have done their best to ignore or dismiss our movements over the years, with the result that we’re often unaware of our own history, and unable to learn from our successes and our failures. We need to make sure our history doesn’t disappear.

If people know about the Central America solidarity movement at all, they probably think of the “sandalista” stereotype, not what we did to increase awareness about Central America in the 1980s, or how we worked to link the solidarity movement with support for the South African and Palestinian struggles, and with the work of homeless activists here in the US. Most of this never made it into the media or the history books, not even events as striking as our Sept. 12, 1987 action, in which solidarity activists set up more than 100 tables on New York City streets and in one day gathered at least 20,000 signatures demanding an end to US aid for the “contras,” who were murdering civilians and undermining the revolution in Nicaragua.

Please contact us at weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com if you’re interested in doing more to keep this history from going down the memory hole. We’d be happy to help with research, with setting up interviews with movement activists, or with pulling together an event on the history of the solidarity movement.

4. Progress on the John Ross archives
We’ve also been working with a project for archiving the writings of John Ross, the famously independent journalist who covered Mexican social movements—and many other subjects—for some 40 years before his death in January 2011.

For more than a decade the Nicaragua Solidarity Network and the Weekly News Update distributed John’s weekly columns, first México Bárbaro (396 articles) and then Blind Man’s Buff (191 articles). Some of the columns appeared in The Nation and other publications, and some were recycled into John’s books on Mexico, but many never would have been published if we hadn’t provided a platform. (This also generated some extra income for John, although never as much as he deserved.)

The result was that we had the most complete edited collection of John’s articles from 1996 to 2007. For some time John had been talking to us about ways to get them on line so that they would be accessible for people looking for information in English on what was happening in Mexico during those years. He became especially concerned about this after he was diagnosed with cancer in 2010.

The articles were residing precariously in two very old PCs, but we managed to rescue them, with a lot of help from movement technicians, and now we’ve sent all 587 columns to the team John got together to work on finding a university archive for his papers. Hopefully we’ll be able to report soon that a university has agreed to maintain a website for the full collection.

5. We still have banners—and expenses
We still have some banners that people might want to preserve for history or adapt for new uses. Contact us if you’re interested in any of them. See photos here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2645382064019.206418.1539673739&type=1&l=948b340cec

One more thing: You’ve probably received plenty of year-end fundraising appeals from various worthy causes. We’re not sending you another. But we do have expenses from the old office, so if you really want to help, you can always make checks or money orders payable to Nicaragua Solidarity Network and mail them to PO Box 20587, Tompkins Square Station, New York, NY 10009.

And don’t forget that you can help maintain 339 Lafayette as an activist center by donating to the AJ Muste Memorial Institute (mark your gift “via NSN for sheltering” to designate it for the sheltering program that provides a space for activism to thrive and grow in New York City):
https://www.justgive.org/giving/donate.jsp?charityId=4046&

Construction Brigade banner, photo courtesy of Cyndi Kerr

WNU #1111: Police Commander Arrested in Mexican Kidnapping

2012-01-03T00:19:00.004-05:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1111, January 1, 2012

1. Mexico: Police Commander Arrested in Ecologists' Kidnapping
2. Honduras: Anti-Drug Adviser Killed, Peace Corps Withdraws
3. Honduras: Government Looks to Venezuela for Aid
4. Puerto Rico: Status Vote Set as Crime, Unemployment Rise
5. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Andes Region, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Mexico: Police Commander Arrested in Ecologists' Kidnapping
On Dec. 28 the government of the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero announced the arrest of police commander Cesario Espinoza Palma (or “Cesáreo Espinosa Palma”) in connection with the Dec. 7 kidnapping of two campesino environmental activists, Eva Alarcón and Marcial Bautista [see Update #1110]. Nicknamed “The Goose,” Espinoza Palma is the coordinator of the state Ministerial Investigative Police (PIM) for Tecpan de Galeana municipality; his arrest seems to be related to investigators’ questioning of 24 Tecpan municipal police and four PIM agents on Dec. 15.

State officials didn’t give details on Espinoza Palma’s alleged connection to the kidnapping or information on the possible location or condition of the two activists, although official sources indicated a week earlier that they were still alive. Alarcón and Bautista are leaders in the Organization of Ecologist Campesinos of the Sierra de Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán (OCESP), which has been targeted both by drug traffickers and by the authorities since it was started in 1998 to fight deforestation in the Guerrero highlands. The two activists are also members of the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity (MPJD), which was formed in 2011 to oppose President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s militarized fight against the drug cartels. (Milenio (Mexico) 12/29/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 12/29/11)

The number of homicides from apparent fighting between criminal organizations or from confrontations between the authorities and alleged criminal groups in 2011 had reached 11,890 as of Dec. 30, according to the left-leaning daily La Jornada. This is down 11% from the 2010 total, which was 13,417. Just 10 states accounted for 84% of the killings: Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Guerrero, Durango, Jalisco, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Michoacán and México state. The newspaper calculates that the total of these homicides since president Calderón took office in December 2006 is 51,918.

La Jornada’s number was based on media reports and information from various government sources. The federal government hasn’t given an official total since Jan. 12, 2011, but its number for 2010 was higher than La Jornada’s by almost 2,000. (LJ 12/31/11)

*2. Honduras: Anti-Drug Adviser Killed, Peace Corps Withdraws
Alfredo Landaverde, a former adviser to the Honduran government on security and drug trafficking, was shot dead on Dec. 7 by unknown gunmen on a motorcycle as he was driving in Tegucigalpa. His wife, the Venezuelan sociologist and author Hilda Caldera Tosta, was wounded in the attack. Landaverde had been the executive secretary of the National Commission of Struggle Against Narcotrafficking (CNLN) and an adviser to the Security Secretariat and the Public Ministry. He was also a former legislative deputy for the Christian Democratic Party of Honduras (PDCH), of which he was president.

Even after retiring from public service more than a year ago, Landaverde remained a prominent and outspoken critic of official corruption [see Update #1104]. During a television appearance in November, just a few weeks before his assassination, Landaverde demanded that former security minister Oscar Álvarez produce a list of 25 high-ranking officials who reportedly had links with drug trafficking.

This was not the first assassination to strike the Landaverde family. Alfredo’s brother Moisés Landaverde was murdered in 1988, along with Miguel Ángel Pavón, then the president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (Codeh); agents of the notorious National Investigation Directorate (DIN) were apparently responsible. Alfredo Landaverde took part in a government investigation in 1994 that led to the dissolution of the DIN.

On Dec. 6, the day before Landaverde’s murder, journalist Luz Marina Paz Villalobos and her driver, Delmer Canales, were shot dead in their car, also by unknown men on a motorcycle. The government responded to the three murders by quickly passing a law that makes it illegal for more than two people to ride a motorcycle while in an urban area during the next six months. (EFE 12/8/11 via Terra.com (Peru); La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 12/8/11; Europa Press (Spain) 12/9/11)

Honduras is now thought to have the highest homicide rate in the world. On Dec. 21 officials of the US government’s Peace Corps program announced that they were withdrawing all 158 Peace Corps volunteers from Honduras in January for security reasons and weren’t planning to send more for the time being. The Peace Corps will keep its current 335 volunteers in El Salvador and Guatemala, which are also experiencing a rise in crime, but has decided not to send the volunteers slated to go there in January. (New York Times 12/22/11)

*3. Honduras: Government Looks to Venezuela for Aid
In a communiqué released on Dec. 24, center-right Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa said his government intended to have the country return to Petrocaribe, a program through which Venezuela provides oil to other Caribbean countries at favorable terms. Honduras joined Petrocaribe in January 2008 during the presidency of José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), but the oil shipments were halted after Zelaya was removed from office by a military coup in June 2009. Talks have been underway for restoring the deal as part of Honduras’ improved relations with Venezuela’s leftist president, Hugo Chávez Frias; the negotiations have reportedly advanced since President Lobo went to Caracas in early December for the founding of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

Ironically, many of the rightwing forces that back Lobo justified the 2009 coup by claiming that Zelaya was too close to Chávez. Honduran business leader and coup supporter Adolfo Facussé, president of the National Association of Industrialists (ANDI), is now actively pushing for the return to Petrocaribe. “I invited the gentlemen from Venezuela to an ANDI session,” Facussé told the Tegucigalpa daily La Tribuna. “There they explained the scope of this program, and we approved it, so that now we think it is a necessary matter.”

Petrocaribe’s economic benefits are obvious, and even the de facto government that ran the country from the time of the coup to Lobo’s inauguration in January 2010 tried to stay in Petrocaribe [see Update #1017]. But the Lobo government seems to be pushing for still closer cooperation with Venezuela.

As of Dec. 27, Alba-Petróleos, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), was planning to pay 546 million lempiras (about $28.8 million) on a loan the Honduran government will set up to buy 5,700 hectares of land in the Lower Aguán Valley in the north, the site of a series of bloody land disputes between big landowners and campesino organizations. The land is being bought mostly from the major business leader Miguel Facussé Barjum to be turned over to two campesino organizations, the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) and the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos (MARCA), in an effort to settle their disputes with Facussé and other landowners [see Update #1094]. Alba-Petróleos also wants to build an African palm fruit processing plant that would give MUCA and MARCA access to markets for their palm oil. President Lobo is reportedly in favor of these plans, although he still hadn’t made a final decision as of Dec. 27.

One reason for the rapprochement with Venezuela seems to be Honduras’ failure to qualify for the US government Millennium Challenge aid for next year. Along with the withdrawal of Peace Corps volunteers, this has left the impression that the US is losing interest in Honduras. “As the US withdraws, Hugo Chavez moves in,” the Honduras Culture and Politics blog wrote on Dec. 28. (La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 12/24/11; Honduras Culture and Politics blog 12/28/11; El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 12/28/11)

*4. Puerto Rico: Status Vote Set as Crime, Unemployment Rise
On Dec. 29 Puerto Rican governor Luis Fortuño signed a measure into law mandating a plebiscite on the island’s status, to be held on Nov. 6, the same day as the gubernatorial election. Voters will be asked two questions: whether they want to maintain the current political status, which is subject to the territorial clause of the US Constitution (Article IV, section 3); and whether as a permanent alternative they would prefer independence, incorporation into the US as a state, or the continuation of a “free associated state” status but no longer under the territorial clause. The referendum, which reflects the recommendations of a US presidential task force on Puerto Rico, is nonbinding; any changes would have to be approved by the US Congress and president.

The results of three previous plebiscites, in 1967, 1993 and 1998, were inconclusive. But opponents of the current status—principally Gov. Fortuño’s New Progressive Party (PNP), which is close to the US Republican Party, and the nationalist Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP)—expect that both statehood and independence supporters will vote “no” on the first question and that this will force the US government to confront the status question. The Popular Democratic Party (PPD), which is close to the US Democratic Party and wants to maintain the status quo, is critical both of the plebiscite and of the decision to hold it the same day as the gubernatorial election—which is expected to benefit Fortuño when he runs for a second term. PPD vice president Héctor Ferrer told the Spanish wire service EFE on Dec. 29 that the plebiscite was a maneuver to divert attention from problems like the rising crime rate and the increase in unemployment. (Primera Hora (Guaynabo) 12/29/11; EFE 12/29/11 via WUVN TV (Connecticut))

With a population of just 3.7 million, this year Puerto Rico had more than 1,130 homicides, a record number. Unemployment has risen to 15.2%, according to official records, while unemployment among youths from 16 to 29 is now at 30%. The situation was aggravated by the imposition of an $800 tuition surcharge for students at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), the island’s main public institution of higher education. The increase in fees, backed by Fortuño, forced thousands of students out of the school into the job market. (Prensa Latina 12/27/11, 12/31/11)

Militant strikes by UPR students in 2010 and 2011 forced some concessions from Fortuño but were not enough to stop the $800 surcharge [see Update #1071]. However, student organizations and unions representing UPR professors and other employees won an unexpected victory on Dec. 12 when a San Juan court ruled that the university had to allow public access to information on the real estate holdings it has accumulated since its founding in 1903. While claiming that it was unable to function without the tuition surcharge, the UPR has refused to provide allow public scrutiny of its assets. As of Dec. 13 the court had not ruled on whether the university would also have to divulge information on assets other than real estate. (Noticias 24/7 (Puerto Rico) 12/13/11; Adital (Brazil) 12/13/11)

Correction: Because of a typographical error, this item originally gave "130,000" as the number of homicides for 2011.

*5. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Andes Region, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba

The Second Cold War and South America: New Strategic Directions on the Part of the United States
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3378-the-second-cold-war-and-south-america-new-strategic-directions-on-the-part-of-the-united-states

Argentina: Anti-Terrorism Law Upsets Harmony Between Government and Activists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3377-peru-weak-environmental-impact-studies-for-mines-

No Time Left to Adapt to Melting Glaciers (Andes region)
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106312

McDonald’s Closes All Their Restaurants in Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3375-mcdonalds-closes-all-their-restaurants-in-bolivia

Peru: Weak Environmental Impact Studies for Mines
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3377-peru-weak-environmental-impact-studies-for-mines-

The Dangers Behind the Proposed Judicial Reform in Colombia
http://nacla.org/blog/2011/12/27/dangers-behind-proposed-judicial-reform-colombia

Venezuela’s Chavez Speculates over Coincidence of Leftwing Latin American Presidents with Cancer
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6716

Mexico: more Sinaloa Cartel kingpins busted —but still not El Chapo
http://ww4report.com/node/10682

Mexico: Youth on the Front Lines of Protest Movement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3379-mexico-youth-on-the-front-lines-of-protest-movement

Democracy Lessons for Fidel Castro (Cuba)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3371-what-this-company-did-to-us-rape-and-displacement-in-guatemala-

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1110: Chilean Students End Protests, Plan for 2012

2011-12-27T00:52:00.004-05:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1110, December 25, 2011

1. Chile: Students End Protests, Plan for 2012
2. Mexico: Violence Continues Against Ecologists and Indigenous
3. Guatemala: Pollutants Found in Rivers Near Goldcorp Mine
4. Argentina: Junta and US Knew About Baby Thefts
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/

*1. Chile: Students End Protests, Plan for 2012
After eight months of mobilizations, strikes and campus occupations, on Dec. 22 Chilean university and secondary students held their last protest of the 2011 school year, a march through the streets of downtown Santiago. As in previous demonstrations, there were clashes with the carabineros militarized police, who said the students didn’t have a permit for the protest; some 10 youths were arrested. With an estimated 1,000 to 4,000 participants, the final mobilization was tiny in comparison with the hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and supporters that had marched in the months before [see Update #1098].

The protest came one day after students in Santiago ended their occupations of the University of Chile’s main building and of the José Miguel Carrera National Institute, the country’s oldest institution of public education. The occupation of the Darío Salas high school, also in Santiago, ended on Dec. 22, the day of the march.

With the mass protests winding down, commentators noted that the students had only won small concessions from the rightwing government of President Sebastián Piñera and had failed to achieve their main goal, the reversal of the privatization of the educational system that started under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. But as Santiago University professor and analyst Bernardo Navarrete told the Associated Press wire service, “the students succeeded this year in changing the agenda of a government of the right.” The movement in fact produced the largest mobilizations since the restoration of democracy in 1990 and won wide support from the general population, as was shown when more than a million people voted in a grassroots plebiscite that students and teachers organized in October [see Update #1100]. The Chilean protests also invigorated student movements in Colombia and other parts of Latin America [see Update #1107].

Chile’s main student organizations will have new leaders in March when schools reopen after the summer break. Gabriel Boric has been elected president of the Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH), replacing Camila Vallejo Dowling, who will be vice president. Vallejo, a member of the Communist Youth of Chile (JJCC), became the best-known student leader in both local and international media; readers of the British daily The Guardian made her the paper’s “person of the year” for 2011. The new president of the Federation of Catholic University Students (FEUC) is Noam Titelman, replacing Giorgio Jackson.

Student leaders insist that protests will continue next year in a new form. One of their goals is to expand the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH) in 2012 to include student groups from private universities and from secondary schools; student leaders have announced a conference for recreating the movement, to take place in February or March. At the Dec. 22 protest, new FECH president Boric said that next year the student movement will work together with other social movements around common demands. Boric is an independent. Although he denies that he is more radical than Vallejo, he emphasizes the importance of social movements acting outside the traditional political parties. (TeleSUR 12/22/11 from staff, Prensa Latina, Infobae; AP 12/23/11 via Univision; Noticias 123.cl (Chile) 12/23/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 12/23/11 from correspondent)

*2. Mexico: Violence Continues Against Ecologists and Indigenous
Mexican environmental activists Eva Alarcón and Marcial Bautista were reportedly still alive as of Dec. 21, two weeks after their Dec. 7 kidnapping from a bus in the southwestern state of Guerrero [see Update #1109]. According to Francisco Saucedo—an adviser to their group, the Guerrero-based Organization of Ecologist Campesinos of the Sierra de Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán (OCESP)—officials of the state government supplied the information during a meeting with Alarcón’s daughter, Coral Rosas, and Bautista’s daughter, Victoria Bautista, but said that giving out more information might cause problems.

Founded in 1998, OCESP has led struggles against deforestation in the Petatlán highlands, where campesino and indigenous organizations regularly face harassment and violence from drug traffickers, state police agents, federal soldiers, and goons allegedly working for logging companies and big landowners. The attacks against OCESP members included the May 2005 murder of two children of an OCESP leader, Albertano Peňalosa Domínguez. The group’s founder, Chico Mendes award winner Felipe Arreaga Sanchez, was imprisoned from November 2004 to September 2005 on murder charges that were dismissed after the case received international publicity [see Update #829]. (Arreaga died in a traffic accident in September 2009.)

The mysterious disappearance of 17 people, including nine children, from the Guerrero community of Cerro Verde, on Dec. 18 may be connected to the Alarcón and Bautista kidnapping. The disappeared, members of four different families, were located in nearby Tecpan de Galeana on Dec. 22. According to a relative, Ignacio Salto Villa, 15 armed men broke into the four families’ homes, saying the family members were “Marcial Bautista’s people.” The families actually belong to a different organization, the Hermenegildo Galeana Free Front, Salto Villa told a reporter, describing the front as “a group of campesinos who care for and protect some 300 hectares of pine groves and green areas.” The four families were treated relatively well and were never threatened, according to Salto Villa, who charged that Federal agents and soldiers were involved in the kidnapping. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/22/11; Amnesty International posting 9/21/09; AFP 12/22/11 via Univision; Milenio (Mexico) 12/23/11)

Alarcón and Bautista are also members of the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity (MPJD), formed this year to oppose President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s militarized fight against the drug cartels. Two other MPJD members were murdered recently in the neighboring state of Michoacán: Trinidad de la Cruz Crisóstomo (“Don Trino”), who was found dead on Dec. 7 [see Update #1109], and Pedro Leyva Domínguez, who was killed on Oct. 6.

Leyva and De la Cruz were leaders of Xayakalan (or Xayacalan), a community founded in the summer of 2009 by indigenous Nahua from Santa María Ostula who occupied disputed land near the Pacific coast and were then granted more than 1,000 hectares by Michoacán’s state government [see Update #998]. (The creation of the community is the subject of a brief video by Notilibertas, apparently a Mexican media collective.) But the community quickly became the target of drug gangs that want to control the area; landowners that dispute the community’s right to the land may also be involved. In September 2010 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), the human rights arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), issued a precautionary measure (No. 264-10) calling on the state and federal governments to work with the Xayakalan community to provide protection for its members.

So far the IACHR’s efforts have had little effect. Leyva was murdered shortly after a September meeting with an IACHR delegation about the precautionary measure; De la Cruz was murdered shortly after a Nov. 28 meeting with state and local authorities on protecting the community. Xayakalan residents say De la Cruz was the 28th community member to be killed. Of the 300 families that originally made up the community, all but 30 have left. (LJ 12/22/11)

*3. Guatemala: Pollutants Found in Rivers Near Goldcorp Mine
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish) has withdrawn a 2010 order for the Guatemalan government to suspend operations at the controversial Marlin gold mine, according to a Dec. 19 press release from the Canadian mining company Goldcorp Inc. The action follows a petition by the Guatemalan government saying its monitors had determined that “no proof exists that there is any situation presenting a threat of serious or imminent harm to persons or that there is a probability that any damage will materialize, and therefore there does not exist a situation of extreme seriousness or urgency to avoid irreparable harm to persons as a result of operations at the Marlin mine.” (Goldcorp 12/19/11 via the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch)

The IACHR, the human rights arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), issued the 2010 order in response to a complaint filed by indigenous Mayan inhabitants of the communities of Sipacapa and San Miguel Ixtahuacán in the western department of San Marcos. The residents charged that the mine had caused significant damage to their health and to the local environment. The Guatemalan government and the mine’s owner, Goldcorp subsidiary Montana Exploradora de Guatemala, SA, have simply ignored the IACHR order ever since it was issued [see Update #1082].

Shortly before the IACHR issued its decision to withdraw the suspension, the Pastoral Commission Peace and Ecology (Copae) of San Marcos diocese reported that the Tzalá and Quivichil rivers, which pass near the mine, have high concentrations of heavy metals, including cyanide, arsenic, copper, aluminum and manganese.

According to Copae’s Josué Navarro, the presence of cyanide and arsenic are evidence of contamination from the mine and pose a health threat to communities that drink water in the area. But Amílcar Ruiz Téllez, departmental delegate for the Environment Ministry, said the concentrations of metal in the water were within acceptable limits, based on a study by the Community Environmental Monitoring Association (Asociación de Monitoreo Ambiental Comunitario, AMAC). (Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 12/10/11)

[According to an online fact sheet posted by Goldcorp, the AMAC is “an independent and community-based organization” that the company “helped established” (sic) in 2005.]

Correction: Environment Ministry delegate Ruiz Téllez did not actually endorse the AMAC report’s conclusions; he simply cited them, adding: “we’ll have to wait for the repercussions, good or negative.”

*4. Argentina: Junta and US Knew About Baby Thefts
As of Dec. 22 the US government had sent the Argentine human rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo a completely declassified copy of a 1982 US State Department memo discussing the abduction of the babies of alleged leftists during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship. The document undercuts any claims by former members of the ruling junta that the abductions were not systematic or that the military rulers were unaware of the crimes. The human rights group had asked the US for the memo so that it could be used in trials of former de facto president Gen. Reynaldo Bignone (1982-83) and others.

During the dictatorship’s “dirty war” against supposed leftist “terrorists,” the military regularly killed women prisoners and then secretly gave their babies and small children to military and other families. According to the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, about 500 children were “appropriated” in this way; the group has succeeded in reuniting more than 100 with their biological families.

In the memo, then-assistant secretary of state for human rights Elliott Abrams described a Dec. 3, 1982 meeting he held with Argentina’s ambassador at the time, Lucio Alberto García del Solar, at the Jockey Club in Washington, DC. The “two main topics,” according to Abrams, were US certification of the junta’s human rights record and “the question of the disappeared.” “I raised with the ambassador the question of children,” Abrams wrote. “Children born to prisoners or children taken from their families during the dirty war. While the disappeared were dead, these children were alive and this was in a sense the gravest humanitarian problem. The ambassador agreed completely and had already made this point to his foreign minister and president.”

Abrams said he suggested that the junta might tell “everything it could about the fate of individuals” or invite the Catholic Church to reunite the children with their biological families. Apparently the generals wouldn’t consider either plan. “The military is absolutely united and determined to avoid widespread and vengeful punishment for its acts,” Abrams wrote. All the same, Abrams saw no problem with having the administration of then-US president Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) certify that the dictatorship was making progress on human rights.

The memo was originally released in 2002, but some paragraphs were blacked out, which would lessen its credibility as a court document. The censored paragraphs turn out not to have been relevant to the abductions of children.

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo thanked US ambassador Vilma Martinez for her help. “We hope that this will be the start of the declassification of all the documents that the United States has, in particular those of agencies like the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], to contribute to clearing up the crimes against humanity that occurred in our country,” the group wrote.

Abrams, a neoconservative best known for his role in the illegal sale of weapons to Iran in the middle 1980s to fund the rightwing Nicaraguan contras, now works at the Council for Foreign Relations, a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan think tank. A spokesperson told the Associated Press wire service that Abrams “will not comment on the substance of this memo or any other questions due to the fact that he may have to testify in the coming future.” (Página/12 (Argentina) 12/22/11; AP 12/23/11 via ABC News; La Jornada (Mexico) 12/24/11 from correspondent)

*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

Latino Student Movements: Defending Education
https://nacla.org/news/2011/12/21/latino-student-movements-defending-education

The U.S. Double Standard on Elections in Latin America and the Caribbean
https://nacla.org/news/2011/12/22/us-double-standard-elections-latin-america-and-caribbean

Argentina Shows World How to Beat the Economic Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3366-argentina-shows-world-how-to-beat-the-economic-crisis

Embassy Cables Reveal Brazil Supported Chile’s Pinochet Regime
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/3364-embassy-cables-reveal-brazil-supported-chiles-pinochet-regime

"Godfather" of Colombian Army Intelligence Acquitted in Palace of Justice Case
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3367-qgodfatherq-of-colombian-army-intelligence-acquitted-in-palace-of-justice-case

Interview with Iván Cepeda: Social Movements Fight Against Impunity in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3374-interview-with-ivan-cepeda-social-movements-fight-against-impunity-in-colombia

Venezuela’s Attorney General: Extradition of FARC Singer Conrado Shouldn’t Proceed
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6706

Venezuela Sends National Guard To The Streets To Fight Crime
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/18/venezuela-sends-national-guard-to-the-streets-to-fight-crime/

International Solidarity Bolsters El Salvador’s Anti-Mining Resistance
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/12/23/international-solidarity-bolsters-el-salvador%E2%80%99s-anti-mining-resistance

Trials and Tenacity in Honduran Women’s Struggle for Land Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3368-trials-and-tenacity-in-honduran-womens-struggle-for-land-rights

What This Company Did to Us: Rape and Displacement in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3371-what-this-company-did-to-us-rape-and-displacement-in-guatemala-

Impunity Still Rules in Mexico: A Few More Deaths Foretold
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/12/20/impunity-still-rules-mexico-few-more-deaths-foretold

Mexico’s Dirty War Gets Dirtier
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5874

Militarized Mining in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3365-militarized-mining-in-mexico

UNI Global Union Supports Atento Workers in Mexico
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=195#1385

Workers at Volkswagen Supplier Fired for Opposing CTM Union Leader
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=195#1386

Mexico: Racism Prevalent Among Children, Revealing Cultural Pattern (Study)
http://latindispatch.com/2011/12/21/mexico-racism-prevalent-among-children-revealing-cultural-pattern-study/

Cuba Declares 3-Day Mourning Period For Kim Jong Il
http://latindispatch.com/2011/12/20/cuba-declares-3-day-mourning-period-for-kim-jong-il/

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1109: Two Mexican Students Killed at Protest

2011-12-20T10:05:00.002-05:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1109, December 18, 2011

1. Mexico: Police Kill Two Guerrero Students at Protest
2. Mexico: Ex-Officials Now Work for US Drug Enforcement
3. Haiti: UN Troops Beat and Rob Delivery Workers
4. Dominican Republic: Haitian Descendents Protest “Denationalization”
5. Peru: Berenson Is Harassed, Fujimori Seeks Pardon
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, CELAC, Climate Conference, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

Note: We were unable to produce the Update last week because of a technical problem.

*1. Mexico: Police Kill Two Guerrero Students at Protest
Two Mexican students were killed by police gunfire around noon on Dec. 12 as police agents and soldiers attempted to disperse protesters blocking the Mexico City-Acapulco highway near Chilpancingo, the capital of the southwestern state of Guerrero. The victims, Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, were students at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the nearby village of Ayotzinapa, and they had joined about 500 other students and their indigenous supporters to demonstrate for improvements at the school.

Some 300 security agents were sent to remove the protesters, who were blocking a well-traveled highway on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a popular holiday for Mexican Catholics. The agents—including state troopers, members of the state Attorney General’s Office, federal police and some soldiers from the Mexican army—used tear gas on the protesters, who responded by throwing rocks and some molotov cocktails. The shooting began after one of the firebombs landed at a filling station near the protest and set a gas pump on fire. In addition to the two students killed, one other protester was hospitalized with serious injuries, and more than 20 were arrested. The buses that the students came in were hit in the shooting, along with a truck.

Gen. Ramón Arreola Ibarría, who headed the contingent of state troopers at the scene, denied that any agents were armed, and Guerrero attorney general Alberto López Rosas immediately charged that the students were responsible for the shooting. One student, Gerardo Torres Pérez, was arrested for allegedly firing an AK-47 automatic rifle.

By the end of the day more than 200 Mexican human rights organizations and other nonprofit groups had placed the blame on the security forces, which have a long record of abuses in Guerrero. The federal government’s Public Security Secretariat (SSP) announced on Dec. 13 that according to its analysts at least some of the gunfire came from a state Attorney General’s Office agent dressed as a civilian. Most of the detainees were released on Dec. 13. Gerardo Torres was freed in the evening; he said that after he had been arrested, federal agents and agents from the state Attorney General’s Office beat him and took him to a vacant lot, where they forced him to fire an AK-47 five times.

Guerrero officials announced on Dec. 13 that Gov. Ángel Aguirre Rivero had removed Attorney General López, Public Security Secretary Ramón Almonte Borja and Gen. Arreola from office. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/13/11, ___, 12/14/11; AFP 12/13/11 via Univision)

The students from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college had been demanding a meeting with Gov. Aguirre, who they said had failed to keep four appointments. They were seeking resumption of classes, which had been suspended since Nov. 2 because of a dispute, and an increase in the student body from 140 to 170 for the 2011-2012 school year. Mexico’s 16 rural teachers’ colleges, which were mostly established by the center-left government of President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940), have suffered from neglect and budget cuts. The problems at Ayotzinapa have been ongoing for decades, according to alumni who joined current students and other activists at a protest march in Chilpancingo on Dec. 16. The marchers insisted that they weren’t satisfied with the dismissal of the attorney general and the public security secretary. “There’s no one more guilty than Gov. Aguirre, who gave the order for the removal of the protesters,” said Daniel Gómez Ruiz, a student leader at Ayotzinapa. (LJ 12/13/11, 12/17/11)

Aguirre was elected governor last January as the candidate of a coalition that included the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the small leftist Workers Party (PT) and the social democratic Convergence party. Previously he had been a leader in the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which dominated Guerrero politics for decades, often through violent repression. Aguirre was interim governor from 1996 to 1999 as the handpicked successor of the PRI’s Rubén Figueroa Alcocer, who was forced to leave office in the aftermath of a June 1995 massacre by state police of 17 unarmed members of the leftist South Sierra Campesino Organization (OCSS) at Aguas Blancas near Acapulco [see Updates #320, 381].

*2. Mexico: Ex-Officials Now Work for US Drug Enforcement
At least 80 former Mexican government employees with backgrounds in intelligence and security are now working for US government agencies as analysts and informants, according to a Dec. 18 article in the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada. Unnamed top officials in Mexican federal security agencies told reporter Gustavo Castillo García that the informants range from high-level ex-officials to former low-ranking police agents, and that “it hasn’t been discounted that current employees may also be working for the US.” Most of the former Mexican employees are reportedly employed by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), but some are with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); they work in Mexico City locations that include the US embassy, a building at 265 on the Reforma avenue, and one floor of a hotel at the Ángel de la Independencia. (LJ 12/18/11)

The new revelations come at a time when many Mexicans are expressing concern over what appear to be US violations of Mexican sovereignty as the two countries work together in a “drug war” against Mexican narco-trafficking cartels [see Update #1103]. Just two weeks earlier, a Dec. 4 article in the New York Times revealed that US “narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds” to and from Mexico in order to use the money to track criminal operations. Reporter Ginger Thompson cited “current and former federal law enforcement officials,” who said most of the agents involved in the laundering and smuggling are employed by the DEA. The article noted the similarity of the drug agents’ money laundering to the bungled Operation Fast and Furious, in which the ATF allowed guns to cross illegally into Mexico in the hopes of tracing criminal activities [see Update #1105]. (NYT 12/4/11)

Alejandra Sota, a spokesperson for President Felipe Calderón Hinojoso, told reporters on Dec. 11 that the Mexican government knew nothing about the DEA money laundering but was investigating. (LJ 12/12/11)

In other “drug war” news, an activist with the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity (MPJD), which was formed this year to oppose President Calderón’s militarized fight against the cartels, was found dead of gunshot wounds on Dec. 7 in Aquila municipality in the central western state of Michoacán. The victim, Trinidad de la Cruz Crisóstomo, was a well-known community leader in Xayakalan, Michoacán, and was active with the indigenous Nahua community in Santa María Ostula.

De la Cruz had received threats and had been assaulted in the month before he was killed; his murder may have been related to local struggles [see Update #998] rather than to his activism with the MPJD. However, his body was discovered just hours after two other MPJD activists, Eva Alarcón and Marcial Bautista, were kidnapped while riding on a bus from Petatlán, Guerrero, to Chilpancingo, the state capital. MPJD activist Nepomuceno Moreno Núñez was shot dead on a street in Hermosillo in the northern state of Sonora on Nov. 28 [see Update #1108]. After the kidnapping of the two activists in Guerrero, poet and MPJD founder Javier Sicilia called for a suspension of the group’s public activities while the members considered how to safeguard their security. (LJ 12/8/11)

*3. Haiti: UN Troops Beat and Rob Delivery Workers
According to a report by the Haitian organization National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), Brazilian soldiers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) detained two water delivery workers and a friend in Port-au-Prince in the early morning of Dec. 14 without cause, robbing them and beating them repeatedly. MINUSTAH is a Brazilian-led military and police operation with more than 10,000 members that was sent to Haiti in June 2004 ostensibly to maintain peace between political factions and to control gang violence.

The two workers, Joseph Gilbert and Abel Joseph, had finished delivering water in Cité Soleil’s Ancien Fort Dimanche neighborhood when their truck broke down late on Dec. 13. Unable to repair the truck, they decided to stay there to guard it; they were joined by a neighborhood youth, Armos Bazile. At around 3 am the next morning a routine MINUSTAH patrol stopped at the truck. The soldiers arrested the three men and took the proceeds from the day’s delivery, 4,500 gourdes (about $112), along with Gilbert’s cell phone and the men’s identification cards. The soldiers took the three Haitians to the courtyard of a school, the Institution Mixte Educative de La Saline, where they beat them; the beatings left visible marks. Neighbors intervened, saying that they knew the men. The troops responded by forcing the detainees into a vehicle and driving them along Route 9 to a plantain field, where they were beaten again. After taking their victims’ clothes and setting them on fire, the soldiers drove away, leaving the three Haitians in the field.

RNDDH is calling on MINUSTAH and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate the incident and punish the soldiers involved. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 12/16/11)

Haitian activists have repeatedly demonstrated against the presence of the troops, who have been accused of rapes and other sexual abuse; irresponsible sanitary practices at a MINUSTAH base in October 2010 caused a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 6,500 people [see Updates #1102, 1105]. A survey of 600 Port-au-Prince households in August 2011 by two Columbia University graduate students found that 30% of those surveyed wanted the troops withdrawn immediately, 10% wanted them out during the next six months, 25% wanted them to leave over the next year, and 19% wanted withdrawal over the next two years. Only 16% wanted the troops to remain more than two years. “Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch,” a blog produced by the DC-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), notes that the survey’s authors strangely described these results as showing that the majority of Haitians support the mission. (CEPR 12/8/11)

*4. Dominican Republic: Haitian Descendents Protest “Denationalization”
Hundreds of Dominicans of Haitian origin demonstrated near the Supreme Court of Justice building in Santo Domingo on Dec. 8 to protest a court ruling a week earlier supporting a 2007 claim by the Central Electoral Council (JCE) that it can invalidate the citizenship of people born in the country if it believes their parents were undocumented immigrants. Jenny Morón, a spokesperson for the protesters, said some 4,000 Dominicans were now in a “process of denationalization” because the JCE had decided to revoke their citizenship.

The demonstrators noted that revocation of citizenship leaves Haitian-descended Dominicans stateless and without juridical status, since they have no way of claiming Haitian citizenship. Previously only the courts could invalidate Dominican citizenship.

The demonstration was organized by the Dominican-Haitian Women's Movement (MUDHA), the Jacques Viau Dominican-Haitian Encounter Network and the Movement for Civil Registry Without Discrimination. During the protest, participants commemorated the human rights activism of MUDHA head Sonia Pierre, who died on Dec. 4 at the age of 48.

The country’s most prominent Catholic leader, Santo Domingo archbishop Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López, also claimed to lament Pierre’s death, but he denounced the protest itself, telling journalists on Dec. 8 that the demonstrators should respect the authority of the Supreme Court and that protests are not a solution. “We’re in the Dominican Republic, so if the Supreme Court of Justice doesn’t have the authority, then who is going to have it?” he asked. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 12/9/11; Listín Diario (Dominican Republic) 12/9/11; EFE 12/9/11 via Univision)

Despite her national and international prominence, Pierre herself was a target of the JCE’s efforts to revoke the citizenship of Dominicans with Haitian parents. In April 2007 the JCE reportedly claimed that Pierre’s parents were in the country illegally at the time of her birth, even though they were in fact working as sugarcane cutters under a program set up by the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina in 1957 and they had presented identity papers from the State Sugar Council (CEA) for their daughter's birth certificate [see Update #893].

*5. Peru: Berenson Is Harassed, Fujimori Seeks Pardon
After a three-day delay, Peruvian authorities finally allowed US citizen Lori Berenson to leave Lima on Dec. 19 for a brief visit to her family in New York. A court had ruled earlier in the month that she could visit the US with her young son until Jan. 11; Berenson has been living in Lima on parole since May 2010 after serving almost 15 years of a 20-year sentence for collaborating with the leftist rebels of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). Berenson’s first attempt to leave was blocked by immigration authorities at the Lima airport on Dec. 16, repeating a pattern of harassment and judicial irregularities that have marked her case since she was arrested in 1995 [see Update #1045]. (The Guardian (UK) 12/20/11 from AP)

Berenson’s effort to visit her family after serving 15 years in prison for nonviolently supporting a rebel group has attracted much more media attention in the US than a concurrent campaign by right-populist former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) to win a humanitarian pardon after serving just four years of a 25-year sentence for crimes that included the deaths of 25 people, two kidnappings, corruption and illicit enrichment [see Update #1019]. On Dec. 17 Fujimori’s attorney, César Nakazaki, announced that the process of seeking a pardon on health grounds had already started and that a medical team would be releasing its findings on the physical condition of the 72-year-old former president, who seized dictatorial powers with a “self-coup” in 1992. (Notimex 12/17/11 via Univision)

*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, CELAC, Climate Conference, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti

South America consolidates its role as an emerging power
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5748

Out of the Backyard: New Latin American and Caribbean Bloc Defies Washington
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/3342-out-of-the-backyard-new-latin-american-and-caribbean-bloc-defies-washington-

Calderón, Chávez, and CELAC
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/12/13/calder%C3%B3n-ch%C3%A1vez-and-celac

Fiddling on Climate
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5756

Pablo Solón: the Outcome of the Climate Change Conference in Durban will be Worse than in Cancun
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5770

Argentina: Poison from the Sky
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3352-argentina-poison-from-the-sky

Dictatorship Relics in Chile: Paying Homage to Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3356-dictatorship-relics-in-chile-paying-homage-to-miguel-krassnoff-martchenko

Paraguay to Hand Over Indigenous Land
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3362-paraguay-to-hand-over-indigenous-land

Bolivia: Negotiating 'Untouchability' as the TIPNIS Conflict Continues
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/12/9/bolivia-negotiating-untouchability-tipnis-conflict-continues

Peru: Protest Against Mine Continues Despite State of Emergency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/3341-peru-protest-against-mine-continues-despite-state-of-emergency

Peru: martial law lifted as Cajamarca agrees to end civil strike
http://ww4report.com/node/10657

Peru: ex-military man takes over in cabinet shake-up
http://ww4report.com/node/10634

Humala Surrounds Himself with Uniforms, Takes Hard-Line Stance Against Protests
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3360-humala-surrounds-himself-with-uniforms-takes-hard-line-stance-against-protests

UN rights representative calls for peace in Colombia
http://ww4report.com/node/10627

Colombia: new anti-FARC "joint task forces" announced
http://ww4report.com/node/10638

Colombia Asked to Shelve Proposed Expansion of Military Jurisdiction
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3363-colombia-asked-to-shelve-proposed-expansion-of-military-jurisdiction-

Colombian secret police agency's parting shot: fake NGOs
http://ww4report.com/node/10637

Venezuela, Bolivia: protecting or fighting the cartels?
http://ww4report.com/node/10658

Central America: Thousands of Sugar Cane Workers Die as Wealthy Nations Stall on Solutions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3355-thousands-of-sugar-cane-workers-die-as-wealthy-nations-stall-on-solutions

Feeding the Monster: Militarization and Privatized Security in Central America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3347-feeding-the-monster-militarization-and-privatized-security-in-central-america

El Salvador apologizes for Mozote massacre —as regime tilts right under US pressure
http://ww4report.com/node/10633

Honduras: another journalist assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/10620

Guatemala: Why Did War-Torn Areas Vote for Pérez Molina?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3354-guatemala-why-did-war-torn-areas-vote-for-perez-molina

Guatemalan Shooting Victim Announces Third Human Rights Lawsuit against Canada's HudBay Minerals
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3348-guatemalan-shooting-victim-announces-third-human-rights-lawsuit-against-canadas-hudbay-minerals

Guatemala’s Colom Apologizes for Dos Erres Massacre
http://latindispatch.com/2011/12/16/guatemalas-colom-apologizes-for-dos-erres-massacre/

Honduras: another journalist assassinated
http://ww4report.com/node/10620

Honduran Police Beat Journalists During Protest
http://latindispatch.com/2011/12/14/honduran-police-beat-journalists-during-protest/

The Militarization of Policing in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3357-the-militarization-of-policing-in-honduras

Why Should We Care About Mexico?
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5742

The Mexico Numbers Game
https://nacla.org/news/2011/12/6/mexico-numbers-game

Clandestine Detention Centers in Mexico
https://nacla.org/news/2011/12/14/clandestine-detention-centers-mexico

US indictment claims Zetas-Hezbollah link
http://ww4report.com/node/10642

Zetas: we are not terrorists
http://ww4report.com/node/10650

Ciudad Juárez: femicide opponent wounded in assassination attempt
http://ww4report.com/node/10621

The City of Outrage: The Impact of Violence in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5738

Mexican Peace Movement Demands Justice for Murdered Activist
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3340-mexican-peace-movement-demands-justice-for-murdered-activist

Mexico: No Protection for Activists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3358-mexico-no-protection-for-activists

Defying the Myth of Native Desolation: Cultural Continuity in Oaxaca
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3346-defying-the-myth-of-native-desolation-cultural-continuity-in-oaxaca

Legal Battles in Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3353-legal-battles-in-mexico

Freedom Through a Pencil: The 1961 Literacy Campaign in Cuba
https://nacla.org/news/2011/12/16/freedom-through-pencil-1961-literacy-campaign-cuba

MINUSTAH by the Numbers (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/minustah-by-the-numbers

The “dream house” nightmare (Haiti)
http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/12/14/the-dream-house-nightmare.html

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1108: Costa Rican Court Rules Against Gold Mine

2011-12-06T09:19:00.001-05:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1108, December 4, 2011

1. Costa Rica: Supreme Court Rules Against Gold Mine
2. Haiti: Pressure Grows for Reinstating Fired Unionists
3. Chile: Judge Indicts US Officer in 1973 Killings
4. Mexico: Murdered Activist Blamed for Own Murder
5. Latin America: Poverty Down Except in Mexico and Honduras
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com.

*1. Costa Rica: Supreme Court Rules Against Gold Mine
In a major victory for Costa Rica’s environmental movement, on Nov. 30 the First Chamber of the country’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s November 2010 decision canceling a concession for an open-pit gold mine in Crucitas de San Carlos near the Nicaraguan border. The Supreme Court’s ruling also nullified Environment and Energy Ministry executive decree 34801, with which former president Oscar Arias Sánchez (1986-1990 and 2006-2010) had declared the mine, owned by the Canadian company Infinito Gold Ltd., a matter of “national interest.” The court told the Public Ministry to “start an investigation to determine whether it is proper to pursue a criminal case against” Arias, former vice president Roberto Dobles Mora and six other former officials.

Infinito Gold, which is based in Calgary, Alberta province, indicated it might go to international bodies to try to get back the $127 million it had invested in the mine, which the company had expected to produce a million ounces of gold.

The court’s call for investigating former president Arias points to several irregularities in the case. Arias’ 2008 decree that the mine was in the national interest let Infinito Gold keep the concession for the project despite serious concerns about its environmental impact. More recently, a draft of the Supreme Court’s final decision in the case disappeared in the middle of November, leading to suspicions that the document was stolen and leaked to Infinito Gold’s legal team. Supreme Court alternate magistrate Moisés Fachler has resigned as a result, and the Public Ministry is investigating.

Activists celebrated the Nov. 30 decision with demonstrations in front of the Supreme Court building in San José. Some 90% of the population reportedly opposed the mine, which had inspired numerous demonstrations and a hunger strike [see Updates #1054, 1056, 1057]. (El País (Costa Rica) 11/30/11; Adital (Brazil) 12/1/11; Costa Rica Contaminada blog 12/3/11)

*2. Haiti: Pressure Grows for Reinstating Fired Unionists
The Montreal-based apparel firm Gildan Activewear Inc. has asked its Haitian subcontractor, Genesis S.A., to reinstate four unionized workers that the plant’s managers fired in the last week of September, Gildan senior vice president Peter Iliopoulos told the Montreal Gazette on Nov. 29. The company has “requested the reinstatement of the employees with full back pay dating back to the date of dismissal and also recognition of full seniority for these individuals as though they had never left the company or factory,” Iliopoulos said. Another major North American apparel firm, North Carolina-based Hanesbrands Inc., has taken similar action with its subcontractor in Haiti, Multiwear SA, which fired Hilaire Jean-Jacques, a member of the same union, on Sept. 30.

The five unionists were all officers of the newly formed Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA). A sixth SOTA officer was fired in the same week at One World Apparel, which produces for Superior Uniform Group Inc., a manufacturer based in Seminole, Florida.

Gildan and Hanesbrands’ call for the workers to be reinstated came in response to a Nov. 24 report by Better Work Haiti, a partnership of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) that was set up to monitor labor conditions in Haiti. “There is strong circumstantial evidence to demonstrate that the officers of the SOTA trade union were terminated based on their trade union affiliation,” the group concluded, saying the timing of the firings “strongly suggests an effort by employers to undermine the new union, and to curtail its growth before it had the opportunity to expand its membership.” The report recommended reinstating the workers with back pay.

SOTA was formally launched on Sept. 15 with the goal of organizing workers in Port-au-Prince’s garment assembly sector, which currently has no unions; only one of Haiti’s 23 assembly plants is unionized. Unionists and supporters, including the leftist workers’ organization Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), responded to the firings with an international campaign to pressure the plants for reinstatement [see Updates #1099, 1106]. (Montreal Gazette 11/30/11, 12/1/11; Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch 11/30/11)

Better Work Haiti’s sharp criticism of labor relations at assembly plants came as the Haitian government and international donors pushed ahead with plans for more of the tax-exempt plants, which produce for export to the North American market. On Nov. 28 Haitian president Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”), former US president Bil Clinton (1993-2001) and other dignitaries attended a cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Parc Industriel de Caracol (Caracol Industrial Park, PIC) near a small fishing village in Northeast department. The 246-hectare facility, formerly known the Parc Industriel du Nord (PIN) or Parc Industriel de Région Nord (PIRN), is expected to generate 20,000 jobs [see Update #1087]. “Haiti is open for business,” President Martelly announced at the ceremony. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 11/28/11)

The ceremony was followed by the second Invest in Haiti Forum, which the Haitian government, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Clinton Foundation hosted in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 29 and 30. Some 1,000 investors, business people and government officials attended the event, which highlighted plans for additional export-oriented projects. One was a partnership of the Inter-American Development Bank (BID), the Swiss-based multinational Nestlé S.A. and the National Federation of Coffee Producers of Colombia for developing coffee exports. Another was an agreement by the multinational cell phone company Digicel Group and the Marriott International hotel company to build and manage a $45 million, 168-room hotel in Port-au-Prince--where hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in tents or other temporary shelters nearly two years after a devastating earthquake. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 12/2/11)

On Nov. 29 Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW, Ayiti Kale Je, “Haiti Keep Your Eyes Open” in Creole), a project sponsored by several Haitian media organizations, released a seven-part assessment of these types of export-oriented development strategies. The series, “Haiti—Open for Business,” detailed low wages and anti-labor practices in the assembly plant sector and described the likely environment damage from the Caracol industrial park in the north. “Basing the country’s development on assembly industries is a big error; it will lead us into a hole, into dependency,” Haitian economist Camille Chalmers of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), told the investigators. “People need to know what FTZs [free trade zones] are, what has happened in Mexico, or Honduras, so they don’t think these things will ‘save’ us,” Chalmers said.

“Manufacturers do not offshore their jobs in order to ‘jumpstart’ industry or ‘improve the standard of living,’” the HGW reporters concluded. “They do it to make a profit. As Canadian company Gildan Activewear said in a recent newspaper article, the savings offered is ‘too good to pass up.’” (HGW 11/29/11)

Correction: Following our sources, we reported previously that Hanesbrands’ Haitian supplier was One World Apparel, which actually produces for Superior Uniform Group Inc., according to the Montreal Gazette; also, the name of the unionist fired from Multiwear was given incorrectly as “Hilaire Jean-François.”

*3. Chile: Judge Indicts US Officer in 1973 Killings
Chilean judge Jorge Zepeda issued an indictment on Nov. 29 charging former U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis with involvement in the murders of two US citizens, journalist Charles Horman and graduate student Frank Teruggi, in the days after the Sept. 11, 1973 military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende Gossens. Judge Zepeda asked the Chilean Supreme Court to authorize a request for Davis’ extradition from the US. The judge also indicted retired Chilean army Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo, who is already in prison for several other crimes.

Basing the indictment in part on declassified US documents, Zepeda charged that Capt. Davis, who headed the Military Group at the US embassy in Santiago at the time, could have prevented Horman’s execution by the Chilean military but failed to do so because he thought Horman’s work was “subversive” and “extremist.” The documents also indicate that Horman may have been killed because he had found out about US “collaboration during the military events unfolding,” the judge wrote. Horman and Teruggi were working together on a weekly news digest; both were being monitored by US agents, who passed information on to the Chilean military, according to Zepeda.

Capt. Davis’ wife told the Associated Press wire service on Dec. 1 that her husband has severe Alzheimer’s and is in a US nursing home. Patricia Davis, who lives in Florida, refused to name the nursing home. (AP 11/29/11 via Miami Herald, 12/2/11 via ABC News; New York Times 11/30/11)

*4. Mexico: Murdered Activist Blamed for Own Murder
Unknown assailants gunned down Mexican activist Nepomuceno Moreno Núñez on a street in Hermosillo, the capital of the northern state of Sonora, on Nov. 28. Moreno Núñez had been working with the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity (MPJD), which was founded by the poet Javier Sicilia this year to oppose the militarized “war on drugs” that has killed as many as 50,000 Mexican since late 2006 [see Update #1079].

Moreno’s political activism began when one of his sons, Jorge Mario Moreno, disappeared in July 2010, apparently after being picked up in Ciudad Obregón by municipal or state police agents. Nepomuceno Moreno and other MPJD members met with President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa this past Oct. 14 at the Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City; during the meeting Moreno discussed his son’s disappearance and asked for protection for himself.

Sonora state authorities suggested that Moreno’s murder might be linked to his own criminal record. Moreno was convicted of possession of heroin with intent to sell in Arizona in the 1970s, when he was in his twenties. He was arrested again in Sonora in November 2005 for illegal weapons possession in connection with a shootout in the Los Lagos Golf Club in Hermosillo, but he was acquitted in 2009. At a press conference in Mexico City on Nov. 29, Javier Sicilia called for Sonora attorney general Abel Murrieta Gutiérrez to resign because of this attempt to criminalize the murdered activist. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/30/11; Adital (Brazil) 12/1/11; Milenio (Mexico) 12/1/11)

In other “drug war” news, on Nov. 27 President Calderón’s office denounced “false and slanderous imputations” against the president and warned that it was analyzing the possibility of “taking legal action against those that make them in various international or national forums and tribunals.” The reference was to a complaint that Mexican human rights attorney Netzaí Sandoval filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Nov. 25 charging Calderón and others with human rights violations in the fight against drug trafficking [see Update #1107].

Sandoval responded that it was “inadmissible” for the government to try to use lawsuits to silence its critics. “Calderón is betraying the ideology of his own party,” Sandoval said, referring to the center-right National Action Party (PAN). “One of the most persistent criticisms by the PAN and Calderón’s government against the Cuban regime, that of Fidel Castro, is its refusal to allow observation [of the human right situation] by international organizations.” The complaint that Sandoval filed could lead the ICC to place Mexico under observation, as has happened with Colombia. (LJ 11/28/11, 11/29/11)

*5. Latin America: Poverty Down Except in Mexico and Honduras
The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, CEPAL in Spanish) released a report on Nov. 29 showing that the poverty rate in Latin America had dropped from 48.4% to 31.4% between 1990 and 2010, while the indigence rate fell from 22.6% to 12.3%. Despite the progress, 174 million people continue to live in poverty, and their situation is likely to worsen because of rising food costs, according to the UN commission, which is based in Chile.

Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia were the countries that showed the most improvement, according to the report. Only Honduras and Mexico showed an increase in poverty rates, 1.7% for Honduras and 1.5% for Mexico. The Honduran and Mexican economies are both especially dependent on exports to the US, and the global economic crisis that started in 2008 hit Mexico harder than other countries in the region. (MercoPress (Montevideo) 11/29/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/30/11)

*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti

Latin America: new regional bloc includes Cuba —but not US
http://ww4report.com/node/10614

Latin America: Not Everyone on Board with Mesoamerica Development Plan
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3334-latin-america-not-everyone-on-board-with-mesoamerica-development-plan

Just Legalize It: ‘Ending the War on Drugs’ Conference in Washington
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/28/just-legalize-it-%E2%80%98ending-war-drugs%E2%80%99-conference-washington

Argentina: The Assassins of the Landowners
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3337-the-assassins-of-the-landowners

Argentina: Mapuche occupy US-owned gas plant
http://ww4report.com/node/10613

Homage to a Criminal in Chile
https://nacla.org/news/2011/12/1/homage-criminal-chile

Chilean Student Protesters Vow to Continue Marches
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/30/chilean-student-protesters-vow-to-continue-marches/

Peruvian Government Expands Scope of Military Activity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/3335-peruvian-government-expands-scope-of-military-activity

Peru: Humala declares state of emergency over Cajamarca protests
http://ww4report.com/node/10612

Hostage Deaths in Colombia Highlight the Need for More Cautious Policy
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/28/hostage-deaths-colombia-highlight-need-more-cautious-policy

Caracas, Venezuela Prepares for CELAC Founding Conference
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6662

Transnational Movement “Encachimbados” Brings Occupy Protests to El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/3329-transnational-movement-encachimbados-brings-occupy-protests-to-el-salvador

New US Military Bases in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3331-new-us-military-bases-in-honduras-

Honduras: An Urgent Call
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3326-honduras-an-urgent-call

"This Land Is Ours!" Land Theft as Legacy of Genocide in Guatemala
http://ww4report.com/node/10577

Canada Under Pressure to Try Alleged Guatemalan War Criminal
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/29/canada-under-pressure-to-try-alleged-guatemalan-war-criminal/

The Mexican Drug War Goes to The Hague
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/29/mexican-drug-war-goes-hague

REDD in the Lacandon Jungle: The Political Use of a Program Against Climate Change (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3332-redd-in-the-lacandon-jungle-the-political-use-of-a-program-against-climate-change

Request for Letters from Mexican Electrical Workers (SME)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=194#1366

Electrical Workers Demand That Government Fulfill Promises (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=194#1367

"Haiti--Open for Business"
http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/11/29/haiti-open-for-business.html

Controversy over Haiti’s development
http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/controversy-over-haiti%E2%80%99s-development-0021890

World Bank Allocates $255 million for Haiti Reconstruction
http://latindispatch.com/2011/12/02/world-bank-allocates-255-million-for-haiti-reconstruction/

Blacklisted Contractor Continues Receiving Government Money Through Haiti Contracts
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/blacklisted-contractor-continues-receiving-government-money-through-haiti-contracts

Interview: Cuba's Health Care Miracle in Haiti
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3330-interview-cubas-health-care-miracle-in-haiti

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1107: Pentagon Privatizing Mexico’s “Drug War”

2011-11-29T07:41:00.002-05:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1107, November 27, 2011

1. Mexico: Pentagon Privatizes Controversial “War on Drugs”
2. Latin America: Students Hold First Continental March for Education
3. Latin America: Groups Protest Continued Violence Against Women
4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Mexico

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Mexico: Pentagon Privatizes Controversial “War on Drugs”
A little-known office of the US Defense Department is now taking bids from private security firms on a $3 billion contract for US-funded anti-narcotics operations in Mexico, Colombia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries. According to a report in Wired News, the Pentagon’s Counter Narco-Terrorism Program Office (CNTPO) announced a “mega-contract” on Nov. 9 for as much as $950 million for “operations, logistics and minor construction,” up to $975 million for training foreign forces, $875 million for “Information” tasks, and $240 million for “program and program support.” The cash will start flowing next August, and the contractors may be able to extend the jobs for three more years.

The Mexican daily La Jornada reports that the work involving Mexican operations includes training for armed forces drivers; training for pilots, mechanics and crews on UH-60, Schweizer 333 or OH-58 helicopters in the Public Security Secretariat; training for up to 48 people to command and pilot Bell 206 helicopters; and the development of night vision materials and training programs for helicopter pilots and crews.

The CNTPO started in 1995, but its importance has grown as the Defense Department increasingly turns sensitive jobs over to private contractors. Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations for the US nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, told Wired that the office is now “essentially planning on outsourcing a global counternarcotics and counterterrorism program over the next several years, and it’s willing to spend billions to do so.” “This stuff isn’t delivering paper clips or even fuel or bullets,” Schellenbach said. “This is something you really want to keep a tight lid on.”

The CNTPO gained some notoriety in 2009 when it unsuccessfully tried to award a contract worth about $1 billion to the Blackwater military services corporation. Blackwater employees have been accused of theft and human rights violations, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan; the company has since changed its name to Xe Services LLC. (Wired News 11/22/11; LJ 11/23/11 from correspondent)

Much of the Mexican population is disillusioned with the country’s “war on drugs,” five years after President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa began involving the military in anti-narcotics operations at the start of his term [see Update #1103]. On Nov. 25 Mexican human rights attorney Netzaí Sandoval filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague charging Calderón, members of his cabinet and members of a drug cartel based in the northern state of Sinaloa with 470 documented cases of murder, torture, forced displacement and military recruitment of minors. These took place in a “generalized context of systematic violence which has brought Mexico to a humanitarian crisis, with more than 50,000 people killed, 230,000 displaced and 10,000 disappeared,” Sandoval told Netherlands Radio Worldwide.

Among the crimes attributed to the government in the complaint are sexual violations by Mexican soldiers, the “enslavement” of undocumented immigrants by officials in collaboration with criminal groups, the killing of civilians at military checkpoints, forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions and the use of torture to obtain confessions. The complaint says the Sinaloa Cartel and its head, Joaquín Guzmán (“El Chapo”), have created armies that are guilty of executions, amputations and decapitations, attacks on civilian targets and the military recruitment of minors.

The complaint, which was signed by 23,000 Mexicans, is unlikely to develop into an actual criminal case. But John Ackerman, a legal expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told La Jornada that the complaint could lead ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to put Mexico under formal observation, as has happened with Colombia. “If we accomplish this first step, it would be a gain,” he said. (LJ 11/26/11)

*2. Latin America: Students Hold First Continental March for Education
Tens of thousands of students marched in more than a dozen Latin American cities on Nov. 24 in the Latin American March for Education, a coordinated regional demonstration to support free and high-quality public education. The mobilization was planned by Chilean and Colombian students earlier in the month [see Update #1105], but by Nov. 24 it had spread to include actions in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. Participants stressed that students had similar demands throughout the region and were also united in their support for the movement in Chile.

The Nov. 24 march was the 42nd day of mass mobilization for Chilean students, who began protesting last spring against the privatization of the educational system under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). Confrontations between students and the carabineros militarized police broke out in parts of Santiago early on Nov. 24 as youths tried to march without permits in the capital’s downtown area. The local government authorized a march in the evening that drew as many as 40,000 participants, according to some estimates, but the police attacked the marchers with tear gas and water cannons when the permit expired at 8 pm. A total of 58 youths were arrested in the day’s demonstrations; another 30 youths were arrested when the police ended a student occupation at the Darío Salas high school.

Tens of thousands joined the Nov. 24 protests in Colombia’s main cities. Despite a light rain, students marched from at least seven meeting points in Bogotá, monitored by some 2,500 police agents. There were isolated incidents, resulting in 11 arrests. Colombian students had suspended their own month-old strike on Nov. 17 after the government withdrew a proposal for changes to the educational system [see Update #1106], but they marched on Nov. 24 “in solidarity with the student movement in Chile and in all of Latin America,” according to university student Laura Jaramillo. She added that the protest would also remind President Juan Manuel Santos that Colombia’s students remain mobilized. (Inter Press Service 11/25/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/25/11 from correspondent, 11/25/11 from PL, AFP, DPA, Notimex)

Some 5,000 Honduran students marched through the streets of Tegucigalpa in a protest led by former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) and backed by the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), a grassroots coalition that formed after a June 2009 military coup removed Zelaya from office. The Honduran march focused on violence against students, in particular the Oct. 22 murder of two university students, Alejandro Rafael Vargas Castellanos and Carlos David Pineda Rodríguez, apparently by a group of police agents with criminal connections [see Update #1104]. Vargas Castellanos’ mother is Julieta Castellanos, the rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), and she led the UNAH contingent at the march. In the spring of 2010 Julieta Castellanos was the target of a hunger strike by FNRP supporters because of layoffs of teachers at the university [see Update #1033], but now she has become a prominent figure in the movement to purge the police of corrupt agents. (AFP 11/24/11 via La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa))

*3. Latin America: Groups Protest Continued Violence Against Women
Women’s organizations throughout Latin America used the United Nation’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Nov. 25, to highlight continued abuse of women in the region and the failure of governments to take steps to reduce it.

In Chile the women’s rights center Corporación Humanas marked Nov. 25 by publicizing the results of a nationwide poll of women about their perception of their situation. Some 67% of those questioned said they thought the Chilean government had failed to take measures to prevent violence against women. About 54% believed that the violence had increased, 34% said it had stayed the same, and just 8% felt it had decreased. Some 73% said violence against women in couples was a problem that affects all women, because it is an extreme expression of machismo. So far this year there have been 38 femicides (misogynistic murders) in Chile. (Adital (Brazil) 11/25/11)

Hundreds of Salvadoran women marched in San Salvador to denounce the 582 femicides that that have occurred in the country in 2011 and to demand respect for women’s human rights and greater resources for groups working to defend women.

In Honduras more than 200 women marched through the center of Tegucigalpa and in front of the National Congress to demand justice and an end to impunity for those who rape or murder women or commit other violent acts against them. According to Grissel Amaya, the Public Ministry’s special prosecutor for crimes against women, more than 1,500 women were murdered in Honduras from 2008 to 2011. The Public Ministry received more than 20,000 reports of domestic violence during the period and more than 11,000 reports of sexual violence, Amaya told reporters on Nov. 25.

Thousands attended a demonstration in Guatemala City to demand an end to machista violence, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 650 women this year. Participants included university students, indigenous women, professionals and activists. (EFE 11/26/11 via La Opinión (Los Angeles))

In Mexico the Chamber of Deputies of the National Congress marked Nov. 25 with the publication of a book, Feminicidio en México; aproximación, tendencias y cambios 1985-2009, dealing with femicides over a 24-year period. The authors found that there had been 34,176 murders of women during the period and that the rate of these murders had increased by 68%. A total of 17.2% of the victims were under the age of 18.

One of the authors, María de la Paz López, noted in an interview that there had been a jump in murders of women from 2007 to 2009, after Mexico began militarizing the fight against narco-trafficking. She said the available data couldn’t establish a relation between the murders and the “drug war,” but she indicated that the recent climate of violence in Mexico provided an environment that could encourage violence against women. Like other Mexican specialists in the subject, the book’s authors stressed the importance of creating legislation that treats femicide as a separate criminal category [see Update #1084]. (Milenio (Mexico) 11/26/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/26/11)

In Haiti the feminist organization Haitian Women’s Solidarity (SOFA) was planning to send a caravan to Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau near the Dominican border, on Nov. 25 to “increase awareness on the part of the local authorities” about violence against women. SOFA spokesperson Olga Benoit said this was part of a long-term campaign to end the practice of accepting attacks on women as normal and downplaying their importance; eventually the group hopes to set up a center for victims of violence in the town. A total of 24,369 cases of violence against women were reported in Haiti from 2002 and 2011, according to figures released on Nov. 25 by the National Dialogue Against Violent Acts Committed Against Women. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/25/11, 11/26/11)

*4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Mexico

South America: Coming Together to Preserve the La Plata Basin
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3317-south-america-coming-together-to-preserve-the-la-plata-basin

Argentina Inundated with E-Waste
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3320--argentina-inundated-with-e-waste-

Brazil: Guarani Leader Slain by Masked Gunmen
http://ww4report.com/node/10581

Chevron Takes “Full Responsibility” for Brazil Oil Spill
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/21/chevron-takes-full-responsibility-for-brazil-oil-spill/

Peru: supposedly non-existent "uncontacted" tribesmen kill intruder
http://ww4report.com/node/10590

Peru: indefinite occupation declared to halt mine in Cajamarca
http://ww4report.com/node/10595

Ecuador: indigenous leader sentenced to prison for "defamation"
http://ww4report.com/node/10593

FARC executes prisoners in rescue attempt: Bogotá
http://ww4report.com/node/10587

Chávez repatriates Venezuelan gold from European banks
http://ww4report.com/node/10589

Interview with Gioconda Mota: The Fight for Abortion in Venezuela
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6650

Free Markets and the Food Crisis in Central America
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5726

France Approves Manuel Noriega’s Extradition to Panama
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/24/france-approves-manuel-noriegas-extradition-to-panama/

Thanksgiving Rally of the 99% Encachimbado and Indignado in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3324-thanksgiving-rally-of-the-99-encachimbado-and-indignado-in-el-sa

Ex-general Replaces Leftist Leader in El Salvador’s Security Cabinet as Washington Reasserts Influence in Central America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/3325-ex-general-replaces-leftist-leader-in-el-salvadors-security-cabinet-as-washington-reasserts-influence-in-central-america

Honduran Coup General Seeks Presidency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3318-honduran-coup-general-seeks-presidency

Belize Government Defies Supreme Court Ruling; Grants Oil Company Permit to Maya Lands
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3321-belize-government-defies-supreme-court-ruling-grants-oil-company-permit-to-maya-lands

Belize: government grants oil company permit to Maya lands
http://ww4report.com/node/10588

Mexico: Calderón to The Hague?
http://ww4report.com/node/10594

AMLO’s Moment (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/22/amlo%E2%80%99s-moment

Mexican Indigenous Community Boycotts Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3314-mexican-indigenous-community-boycotts-elections-

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1106: Colombian Students Suspend Strike

2011-11-22T06:27:00.008-05:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1106, November 20, 2011

1. Colombia: Students Suspend Strike, Continue Mobilizations
2. Haiti: Fired Unionists Push for Reinstatement
3. Mexico: US Unions Back Miners and Electrical Workers
4. US: SOA Protester Risks Arrest for Immigrant Rights
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Colombia: Students Suspend Strike, Continue Mobilizations
Students began returning to classes in Colombia’s public universities on Nov. 17, a day after the government of rightwing president Juan Manuel Santos formally withdrew a proposed law that the students considered an effort to privatize higher education. The Broad National Student Panel (MANE), the coordinating group for the student movement, quickly responded by announcing the suspension of a month-old strike that had shut down the country’s public universities and many of the private schools, although the group said students at some universities may stay on strike over local issues.

National student mobilizations will continue, according to MANE leaders, including a continental day of action on Nov. 24 that Colombian and Chilean students had planned earlier [see Update #1105]. Chilean schools have been on strike for six months in a similar struggle for public education. Students from Guatemala have also decided to join the Nov. 24 demonstrations, which may draw support in other countries as well.

In addition to withdrawing the proposed Law 112—an amendment to Law 30, which currently regulates higher education--President Santos’ government met another of the students’ conditions by agreeing to hold broad discussions on the higher education system with students, professors and administrators. The government also agreed not to cancel the current semester, but individual universities will be allowed to cancel if they feel they can’t make up the lost time.

“We know that what’s been accomplished so far is without any doubt a victory against the desire to privatize and in favor of a system of higher education with university autonomy and democracy, one that is national and has serious scientific and academic content,” MANE said in its announcement. But MANE spokesperson Álvaro Forero warned that the government might go back on its promises. “That’s why it’s [only] a suspension of the strike,” he said. The students are right to maintain their demonstrations and not to trust the government, historian Mauricio Archila told the Colombian weekly magazine Semana. “About 20% of the protests in Colombia between 1975 and 2010 happened because of [government] noncompliance with agreements or laws. There’s an historical reason for being distrustful.” (Semana 11/17/11; Adital (Brazil) 11/17/11; Colombia Reports 11/17/11)

President Santos' concessions to the students have brought criticism from his allies on the right. On Nov. 10 Santos’ cousin, Francisco Santos, posted a video blog on YouTube charging that the president “doesn't like to confront problems.” The students should be met “forcefully, with the legal arm of state repression,” including the use of electric shocks to control nonviolent protesters, according to Francisco Santos, who was vice president during the 2002-2010 administration of President Alvaro Uribe Vélez and is now a host on RCN radio. The video quickly went viral, outraging many viewers, and the former vice president, who handled human rights issues for the Uribe administration, posted an apology on Nov. 11. (Colombia Reports 11/11/11, ___ )

*2. Haiti: Fired Unionists Push for Reinstatement
Haitian activists have started an international campaign to force Port-au-Prince apparel assembly plants to rehire six union members who were dismissed in the last week of September, allegedly for their union activities [see Update #1099]. As part of the campaign, Yannick Etienne, an organizer with the Haitian leftist group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), was in Montreal on Nov. 14 meeting with local labor rights activists and with media to put pressure on Gildan Activewear Inc., a Montreal-based apparel firm that has garments stitched at one of the Haitian plants.

The fired workers are members of the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA), which was officially launched in September to organize in Haiti’s mostly non-union garment assembly sector; the plants produce for export, largely to North America, and benefit from tax exemptions. Four of the SOTA members worked at Genesis S.A., a plant in the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi) facility near the Port-au-Prince airport; the factory, which is owned by the wealthy Apaid family, produces almost exclusively for Gildan. A fifth unionist worked at another Sonapi plant, One World Apparel, which is owned by former presidential candidate Charles Henri Baker and stitches garments for Hanesbrands Inc., based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Etienne told the Montreal Gazette that Batay Ouvriye and SOTA are pushing Gildan “to demand explanations from its Haitian factories.” Gildan senior vice-president of public and affairs Peter Iliopoulos says the company is investigating the Genesis firings and SOTA’s accusation “is something that we take very seriously.” Hanesbrands spokesperson Matt Hill said the One World Apparel firing is “under investigation” as well, and the US company will take “appropriate action.” Better Work Haiti, a labor standards program partnered with the International Labor Organization (ILO), is also said to be investigating the firings. Despite the promises, “we are still waiting,” Etienne said. (Montreal Gazette 11/14/11)

Georges Sassine, who heads the Haitian factory owners’ association, denies SOTA’s charges. “These incidents, they have nothing to do with people trying to form a union,” he told Inter Press Service (IPS) in October. “Now suddenly, the whole international community is on my back telling me I’m against people organizing.” According to Sassine, the problem is Batay Ouvriye, which he believes is trying to shut down factories completely, not organize a union. One World Apparel’s Baker also claims not to oppose labor organizing but says it has to be done “in the right way.”

Despite the owners’ assertion that they allow organizing, only one of the 23 assembly plants in Haiti has a union, according to Richard Lavallée, Better Work Haiti's director. The one union plant, in Ouanaminthe in Northeast department at the Dominican border, was organized by Batay Ouvriye [see Update #829].

Former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), now the UN special envoy to Haiti, regularly promotes the creation of assembly plants as a way to develop Haiti’s economy. Last year IPS asked Clinton asked how this would be different from the growth of the assembly plant sector in the 1980s, which seemed to do nothing to improve Haiti’s economic situation. The 1980s manufacturing boom “couldn’t be sustained because nothing ever happened inside Haiti,” Clinton answered. “So this time what we're trying to do is build the capacity of Haitians to govern themselves…. It's a very different thing now. This is a piece of a much broader strategy.” (IPS 10/27/11)

*3. Mexico: US Unions Back Miners and Electrical Workers
On Nov. 16 the largest US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, presented its 2011 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award to Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, general secretary of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM). AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka and United Steelworkers (USW) president Leo Gerard made the presentation at ceremony in the federation’s Washington, DC headquarters; Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) and Rep. Mike Machaud (D-ME) also attended. The two US labor leaders both have links to the Mexican miners’ union: Trumka is the former head of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), and Gerard and the USW have been working closely with the SNTMMSRM, which represents steelworkers as well as miners.

Oralia Casso de Gómez, Gómez Urrutia’s wife, accepted the award. The union leader himself couldn’t attend because of a US refusal to grant him a visa for the ceremony. The US State Department would only say that the reasons were “confidential.” Gómez Urrutia has been living in exile in Vancouver, Canada, since 2006, after the government of former Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada (2000-2006) brought corruption charges against him.

The AFL-CIO award is the latest sign that the US labor movement is trying to build stronger links to independent unions in Mexico. Last year the SNTMMSRM and the USW were exploring the possibility of a merger [see Update #1040], and currently the AFL-CIO is supporting the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) in a complaint it filed on Oct. 27 against the Mexican government under the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), a side agreement negotiated along with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Current Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa abruptly laid off 44,000 SME members in October 2009, setting off a conflict between the government and the union which has still not been completely resolved [see Update #1097]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/17/11 from correspondent; Huffington Post 11/18/11; SDPnoticias.com (Mexico) 11/14/11; Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) press release 10/27/11 via Market Watch)

*4. US: SOA Protester Risks Arrest for Immigrant Rights
Thousands of activists attended the 21st annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), in front of the US Army's Fort Benning base in Columbus, Georgia, on Nov. 20. The SOA Watch movement, which sponsors the protests, opposes the army’s training of Latin American soldiers, noting that SOA graduates have been among the region's most notorious human rights violators.

Organizers estimated the crowd at about 5,000, while Columbus police said 3,007 people participated. Only one person, Theresa Cusimano of Denver, was arrested for trespassing on the fort’s property; she faces a maximum sentence of six months for her act of civil disobedience. The largest SOA protest to date was in 2006, when SOA Watch reported 22,000 participants [see Update #876], and the number of people arrested reached 85 in 2002. Attorney Bill Quigley, a professor of law at Loyola University in New Orleans who particpated, said he thought the lower activity this year resulted from the Occupy protests: “It’s a good thing that there’s so much going on around the country, and I think it reduced the turnout this year.” (Columbus Ledger-Enquirer 11/20/11; SOA Watch blog 11/20/11)

Chicago activist Chris Spicer, who was recently released from federal prison after serving a six-month sentence for civil disobedience at the 2010 SOA protest, was arrested again in nearby Lumpkin, Georgia, on Nov. 18, this time for trespassing at the Stewart Detention Center during a march of 270 people for immigrant rights. The Stewart facility is the country’s largest privately owned immigrant detention center. “The SOA and inhumane immigration policies are part of the same racist system of violence and domination,” Spicer said, referring to the fact that many immigrants to the US are refugees from violence by US-trained militaries. Stewart County judge Wayne Ammons set Spicer’s bail at $5,000. (SOA Watch blog 11/18/11)

*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico

Argentina: Beyond the ‘High Dollar’
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/17/argentina-beyond-%E2%80%98high-dollar%E2%80%99

Chile: When Triumphant Neoliberalism Begins to Crack
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3303-chile-when-triumphant-neoliberalism-begins-to-crack

Brazil deploys military forces, pledges
http://ww4report.com/node/10542

Masked Gunmen Attack Brazilian Indian Leader in Shock Execution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3313-masked-gunmen-attack-brazilian-indian-leader-in-shock-execution-

Brazil: Forced Evictions Must Not Mar Rio Olympics
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3306-brazil-forced-evictions-must-not-mar-rio-olympics

Bolivia agrees to restore US diplomatic ties
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3308-bolivia-agrees-to-restore-us-diplomatic-ties

A Political Victory for Bolivia
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/19/political-victory-bolivia

Colombia: new FARC chief "Timochenko" blasts Santos government
http://ww4report.com/node/10554

Colombian Student Protesters Demand Quality - and Equality
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3302-colombian-student-protesters-demand-quality-and-equality

Venezuela’s Economic Growth Doubles 2011 Forecast, Grows 4.2% in Third Quarter
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6642

Venezuela Sends National Guard To The Streets To Fight Crime
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/18/venezuela-sends-national-guard-to-the-streets-to-fight-crime/

U.S. Plays Shadowy Role in Salvadoran Security Minister’s Resignation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3310-us-plays-shadowy-role-in-salvadoran-security-ministers-resignation

Honduras: Wife Of Ousted President Zelaya To Run In 2013
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/17/honduras-wife-of-ousted-president-zelaya-to-run-in-2013/

Mexico: Zetas kill bloggers
http://ww4report.com/node/10540

Another Tijuana narco-tunnel uncovered (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10541

Ciudad Juárez Is Not Only Violence (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/18/ciudad-ju%C3%A1rez-not-only-violence

Mexico: Police Beatings, Jail Time and Threats Won’t Deter Indignadxs de Juarez Activists
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3311-mexico-police-beatings-jail-time-and-threats-wont-deter-juarez-activists

Mexico: PRI Wins Michoacan Governor Election, Preliminary Results Say
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/15/mexico-pri-wins-michoacan-governor-election-preliminary-results-say/

The Mexican Lefts Pick a Candidate
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/15/mexican-lefts-pick-candidate

Lopez Obrador to run for Mexican presidency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3307-lopez-obrador-to-run-for-mexican-presidency-

The Assault on Autonomous Education in Southeast Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3305-the-assault-on-autonomous-education-in-southeast-mexico

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1105: Chilean and Colombian Students Plan Simultaneous Demo

2011-11-15T09:03:00.002-05:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1105, November 13, 2011

1. South America: Chilean and Colombian Students Plan Simultaneous Demo
2. Haiti: NGO Petitions UN on Cholera as Vaccine Controversy Heats Up
3. Mexico: Government Proposes Its Own “Fast and Furious”
4. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. South America: Chilean and Colombian Students Plan Simultaneous Demo
Chilean students are planning to join with Colombian students in a binational demonstration on Nov. 24 as part of ongoing protests in defense of education in the two countries. Leaders of the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH) made the announcement after a 12-hour meeting on Nov. 12 in the Catholic University of the North in the city of Antofagasta; the leaders also called for local demonstrations in Chile on Nov. 14, 17 and 18.

Chilean students have been on strike for six months around demands to reverse the privatized and decentralized higher educational system put in place under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet; a similar strike began in Colombia on Oct. 11 and 12 to protest proposed legislation that students said would lead to privatization of their universities. These are the second and third major strikes by students in Latin America in the past two years; the first came in the spring of 2010, when students shut down Puerto Rico’s public university [see Updates #1057, 1102, 1104].

In both Chile and Colombia there are signs that the student strikers and the rightwing governments may be able to work out compromises. In Chile, Confech and secondary school leaders met with opposition senators and deputies on Nov. 9 in the port city of Valparaíso, where the National Congress holds its sessions; some 30,000 students and teachers marched there later in the day. Opposition politicians are now calling for free education for 70% of the poorer students at public universities, and possibly a similar measure for private universities; these politicians also propose returning control of the primary and secondary schools to the central government.

Under pressure from both students and the opposition, the government of Chilean president Sebastián Piñera has offered to increase the share of education by 7.2% in the budget for 2012--to $11.65 billion out of a total budget of $60 billion. The students have rejected this as “insufficient,” but political observers see a significant shift in Finance Minister Felipe Larraín acknowledgment that there may have to be changes in the tax structure. Previously the government insisted that it would not increase taxes. (La Tercera (Chile) 11/13/11; EFE 11/13/11 via El Nuevo Herald (Miami); La Jornada (Mexico) 11/10/11 from correspondent)

Chilean students too may be under pressure to settle after six months of protests. Public support for their demands remains high but seems to be slipping. Support for the demands fell to from 79% in September to 67% in October, according to a survey of 1,110 people by the Adimark GfK research group, while opposition to the students’ tactics rose from 45% to 57%. Support for President Piñera remained around 31%. (Bloomberg 11/7/11)

In Colombia the government moved toward a compromise after less than a month of strikes and mobilizations. On Nov. 9 President Juan Manuel Santos offered to withdraw his proposed changes to Law 30, which governs higher education, if the students ended the strike. The Broad National Student Panel (MANE), the strike’s national coordinating group, met on Nov. 12 to discuss Santos’ offer. The next day student leaders announced that they would lift the strike if the government met three conditions: it would need to suspend discussions of the proposed legislation in Congress, agree to a dialogue with the students on building a new educational system, and give guarantees that the academic period would be completed. (LJ 11/11/11 from AFP, DPA, Notimex; Europa Press 11/14/11)

Even while apparently considering a compromise, the two governments have continued to use force against the student movements. In Chile the carabineros militarized police arrested 57 protesters for “disorders and illegal occupation” at the Santiago de Chile University. Police agents claimed they found six Molotov cocktails during the raid, along with some acid and fuel. The university rector’s office said the protesters had maintained an occupation of school facilities despite a decision by a majority of students to end it while continuing the mobilization. (Adital (Brazil) 11/11/11 from TeleSUR)

In Colombia, police agents from the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD) and the Mobile Carabinero Squad (Emcar) used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a demonstration on Nov. 11 in Popayán municipality in the southwestern department of Cauca. Ten students were arrested. According to participants and local grassroots organizations, the demonstration, part of a national day of protest by students and unionists, had been peaceful until police agents intervened. The Isaías Francisco Cifuentes Human Rights Network of the Colombian Southwest said letters of protest could be sent to President Juan Manuel Santos (comunicacionesvp@presidencia.gov.co), Attorney General Viviane Morales, (denuncie@fiscalia.gov.co ) and other officials, along with a copy to redfcifuentes@gmail.com . (Adital 11/11/11)

Correction: The item originally omitted the date of the meeting in Antofagasta.

*2. Haiti: NGO Petitions UN on Cholera as Vaccine Controversy Heats Up
Sylvie van den Wildenberg, spokesperson for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), acknowledged in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 11 that the mission had received a petition for relief filed on behalf of hundreds of thousands of cholera victims. Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that the cholera epidemic that struck Haiti in October 2010 was caused by poor sanitation at a base operated by MINISTAH, a 10,000-member international military and police operation which has occupied the country since June 2004 [see Update #1094]. Almost 500,000 Haitians have contracted the disease over the past year, and some 6,500 have died from it. MINUSTAH and the United Nations (UN) have refused to accept responsibility for the epidemic. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/11/11)

The petition was filed on Nov. 3 by the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and its Haitian affiliate, the Bureau of International Lawyers (BAI). At a press conference in New York on Nov. 8, IJDH director Brian Concannon said the hope was that MINUSTAH would issue a public apology, set up a tribunal for evaluating the victims’ claims and fund a program to provide sanitation, potable water and medical treatment. Haitian grassroots organizations have made similar demands in the past [see Update #1086].

It isn’t clear whether any legal mechanisms exist that could compel MINUSTAH to compensate the victims. The occupation force is covered by a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between the Haitian government and the UN. The agreement requires MINUSTAH to set up a standing commission to handle claims, but after seven years in Haiti the force has still not created the commission. At the New York press conference Concannon said the petitioners will press their claims in a Haitian court if MINUSTAH fails to act on the petition, but he suggested that the real goal was to appeal to international public opinion. “We’re hoping that this is the case that’s too big to fail,” he said. (Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch 11/8/11)

Meanwhile, the Haitian government and Zanmi Lasante/Partners in Health, a Boston-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) that runs a network of clinics in Haiti, are planning a pilot program to vaccinate 100,000 people against cholera starting in January. Dr. Paul Farmer, a US medical doctor and a Partners in Health co-founder, announced the $870,000 program at an Oct. 19 press conference in Miami, saying that vaccination was now necessary because medical NGOs were withdrawing from Haiti. The vaccine, Shanchol, is produced by the Paris-based multinational Sanofi SA (formerly Sanofi-Aventis).

[Farmer also serves as the UN deputy special envoy to Haiti, assisting former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), while at the same time sitting on the board of directors of the IJDH, the group that filed the petition against MINUSTAH.]

Other medical experts question the value of vaccinations in fighting the water-borne epidemic when Haiti needs funding to build permanent infrastructure to make clean water available to the population. One problem with the vaccine is that has to be administered in two doses two weeks apart, a difficult procedure in a country where hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced because of a January 2010 earthquake. The French-based group Doctors Without Border (known by its French intitials, MSF) calculates that vaccinating the entire population of 9.5 million would cost $40 million; MSF says the vaccine’s protection starts to diminish after three years. (Reuters 10/19/11; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 11/10/11)

On Nov. 8 the New York Times noted that Cuban doctors in Haiti have had “a lead role” in fighting the epidemic. A Cuban clinic in Mirebalais in the Central Plateau was the first to report the outbreak, and since then the Cuban medical teams have treated 76,000 of the country’s nearly half million cases, with 272 fatalities—a mortality rate of just 0.36%. The average for the country is 1.4%, more than three times the rate at the Cuban clinics. (NYT 11/8/11)

*3. Mexico: Government Proposes Its Own “Fast and Furious”
At a Nov. 10 session, the Mexican Senate called on the government of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa to start criminal proceedings against US officials involved in two programs that let firearms enter Mexico illegally. The programs, Operation Wide Receiver in 2006 and 2007 and Operation Fast and Furious in 2009 and 2010, were supposed to help US agents trace illegal gun smuggling by monitoring suspect weapons purchases. But the agents lost track of some 2,300 firearms that were transported into Mexico, largely for the use of drug cartels [see Update #1104].

“If we sent packages of drugs to the US in a government operation,” said Jesús Murillo Karam, a senator from Hidalgo state for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), “they’d be asking us to put those officials in jail—and they’d be right, as we are when they send us arms this way.” The senators agreed that Mexico should demand the US officials’ extradition; they also expressed their support for an initiative by US attorney general Eric Holder for controlling gun sales near the Mexico-US border. (Prensa Latina 11/10/11; Milenio (Mexico) 11/11/11)

In the course of the debate, Sen. Pablo Gómez Alvarez, who represents the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), charged that President Calderón was proposing operations like Fast and Furious as part of his “war on drugs.” Sen. Gómez was referring to a package of amendments to the Federal Law Against Organized Crime that were sent to the Senate on Aug. 31, 2010; the Senate has yet to act on the proposed legislation. One section of the proposed amendments would allow the government to use “goods or resources that could be the object, instrument or product of crime…in order to permit, under close watch, their delivery, distribution or transportation within the national territory.” The goal would be “to identify and, if possible, detain, with the use of necessary technological advances, the persons or organizations involved.”

Gómez said the amendments would also allow for undercover agents to infiltrate criminal organizations, giving the agents a “license to kill,” like the fictitious James Bond. The senator called the measure “the best way for legally creating a criminal state in order to fight crime.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/13/11)

*4. Links to alternative sources on: Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

Paraguay Cattle Health Scare Blamed On Human Error
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/08/paraguay-cattle-health-scare-blamed-on-human-error/

Brazil: court approves controversial dam construction
http://ww4report.com/node/10528

Bolivia: TIPNIS 'Untouchable' But Still Controversial
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/11/bolivia-tipnis-untouchable-still-controversial

Bolivia agrees to restore US diplomatic ties —but just says no to DEA
http://ww4report.com/node/10525

Peru: anti-mining protesters occupy Cajamarca
http://ww4report.com/node/10531

Ecuador: indigenous leaders file OAS complaint against Correa
http://www.ww4report.com/node/9754#comment-329283

AFL-CIO Makes Two Major Labor Conflicts a Test of Labor Action Plan with Colombia
http://www.usleap.org/afl-cio-makes-two-major-labor-conflicts-test-labor-action-plan-colombia

Venezuela Rejects “Aggressive” Accusations by US Official Brownfield on Drug Trafficking
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6627

Nicaragua: Surviving the Legacy of U.S. Policy (Photo Essay)
https://nacla.org/nicaragua-surviving-legacy-us-policy-photo-essay

A Peaceful Nicaraguan Election Brings a Mandate for Sandinista Social Programs
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/nicaragua-archives-62/3296-a-peaceful-nicaraguan-election-brings-a-mandate-for-sandinista-social-programs

Amnesty calls on Nicaragua to investigate electoral violence
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10512#comment-329259

Voters Elect Presidents in Nicaragua and Guatemala
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/9/voters-elect-presidents-nicaragua-and-guatemala

Honduras: Purging Schools of Police Crime
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3299-honduras-purging-schools-of-police-crime

“Genocidal” General Wins Presidential Elections in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3293-genocidal-general-wins-presidential-elections-in-guatemala

Chiapas: political prisoners suspend hunger strike, fearing risk to lives (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10524

Report on the 2011 Observation and Solidarity Brigade to Zapatista Communities (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3297-report-on-the-2011-observation-and-solidarity-brigade-to-zapatista-communities

Mexico: HRW charges widespread rights abuses in "drug war"
http://ww4report.com/node/10523

Mexico: interior secretary killed in (mysterious?) air crash —again
http://ww4report.com/node/10526

The U.S. War in Mexico
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/8/us-war-mexico

Cuba: Same-Sex Couples Want to Be Counted
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3300-cuba-same-sex-couples-want-to-be-counted

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1104: Colombian Students Continue Massive Marches

2011-11-08T09:03:00.001-05:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1104, November 6, 2011

1. Colombia: Students Continue Strike, Massive Marches
2. Argentina: US Legislator Wants Release of "Dirty War" Files
3. Honduras: 300 Police Rifles "Disappear" as Drug Running Soars
4. Mexico: Both US Parties Hit by Gun Walking Scandal
5. Mexico: Film Documents Protests Against Oaxaca Mine
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Colombia: Students Continue Strike, Massive Marches
Tens of thousands of students and their supporters marched in cities across Colombia on Nov. 3 in a continuing struggle against proposed changes to Law 30, the legislation that has governed higher education since 1992. More than 1.8 million students from 37 public universities and at least 17 private ones have carried out an open-ended strike since Oct. 11 to protest the changes, which they say will “reduce education to a commodity.” They are also protesting Colombia’s free trade agreement (FTA) with the US, which the US Congress approved on Oct. 12 [see Updates #1101, 1102].

According to press reports, as many as 600,000 people joined the Nov. 3 demonstrations in 31 cities, including Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Manizales and Armenia. In Bogotá the sheer number of protesters forced the local mass transit system, TransMilenio, to shut down during the evening, and major roads, including routes 30 and 45, were impassable because of traffic jams. The Bogotá protests included a public debate in the late afternoon; Education Minister María Fernanda Campo and other officials were invited but failed to attend. Later, at least 10,000 protesters held an evening of celebration in the Plaza de Bolívar, with dancing, puppets and a “kiss-a-thon” illuminated with torches.

The government of rightwing president Juan Manuel Santos has already sent its legislative proposal to Congress, and a committee of the Chamber of Representatives of the Congress is scheduled to begin debating on Nov. 8. The changes would give more academic and financial independence to individual universities, but students say this would force the institutions to generate their own income, opening up the system to the profit motive and to exploitation by multinational corporations. The strikers are demanding free, high-quality public university education. “[I]n a soldier they invest 18 milion pesos [about $9,400],” the students said, referring to Colombia’s mandatory military service; “in a student, hardly more than 2 million [$1,044].”

Student leaders insist that the government must withdraw the proposed changes before any negotiations can take place. The strike will continue indefinitely, they say, with mass demonstrations planned for each week—the same tactic Chilean students have used in a protest which has shut down much of Chile’s educational system since June [see Update #1102]. “[W]e will not permit the loss of public education,” Sergio Fernández, a spokesperson for the Colombian Student Organization (OCE), told Bogotá’s Radio W. “We would prefer to lose the semester, or whatever it takes, than to lose this right.” (Semana (Colombia) 11/3/11 from EFE and from staff; Prensa Latina 11/4/11; Colombia Reports 11/4/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/4/11 from PL, AFP, DPA, Notimex)

The 11 Congress members from the center-left Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) have joined with two representatives of the indigenous sectors and two from the Green Party (PV) to call for the government to withdraw its education proposal. The legislators argued that there can’t be a fair debate on the issue, since the government counts on the support of more than 90% of the legislators. When Education Minister Campo announced on Nov. 4 that the government would not withdraw the measure, PDS senator Camilo Romero Galeano called for her resignation. (Caracol (Colombia) 11/4/11; Radio Santa Fe (Bogotá) 11/4/11)

*2. Argentina: US Legislator Wants Release of "Dirty War" Files
A US Congress member, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), has written US president Barack Obama asking for the declassification of several US intelligence documents with information on the abduction of children in Argentina during the 1976-1983 “dirty war” against suspected leftists. An estimated 30,000 people were disappeared, including hundreds of pregnant women whose babies are believed to have been taken by the military dictatorship then in power and given to adoptive parents. Argentine authorities have been seeking in formation on these cases to aid in the prosecution of former officials and to allow children to be reunited with their biological relatives.

“Thousands of families have waited more than 30 years to learn the fates of their loved ones, and we have an opportunity to make a contribution to truth and justice by helping to bring this troubling chapter in Argentina’s history to a close,” Hinchey wrote. “I ask that you follow through on your administration’s commitment to openness by reviewing these files for declassification. The release of these documents would once again demonstrate our nation’s dedication to human rights and open government.”

Hinchey was referring to documents held by the US military, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central intelligence Agency (CIA). Last May the Republican majority in the House of Representatives voted down an amendment Hinchey wrote that would have required the director of national intelligence to issue a report to Congress on Argentine human rights violations under the military dictatorship. (Buenos Aires Herald 11/3/11; AP 11/3/11 via CBS News)

*3. Honduras: 300 Police Rifles "Disappear" as Drug Running Soars
Honduran police officials gave contradictory responses on Nov. 1 to a report published the day before about the disappearance of some 300 light automatic rifles (FAL, from the initials in Spanish) and 300,000 5.56-caliber bullets from a police unit. The weapons, which were in the control of the Cobras special operations police group, were taken from a Tegucigalpa warehouse in August or September; the Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo broke the story on Oct. 31.

National Police spokesperson Silvio Inestroza insisted that this was an old case, referring to the similar disappearance of 186 weapons in 2007, also from a Cobras unit. But Police Internal Affairs director Simeón Flores said that a new arms theft had been reported two months earlier, and he asked why it hadn’t been investigated. José Ricardo Ramírez del Cid, the newly appointed head of the National Police, said that he didn’t know the details but that he had appointed a commission to study the matter. (Fox News Latino 10/31/11; El Heraldo 11/2/11)

Police director Ramírez had in fact only been in office since Oct. 31. Security Secretary Pompeyo Bonilla appointed him to replace José Luis Muñoz Licona following another police scandal: Tegucigalpa police chief Jorge Alberto Barralaga Hernández released four agents who are suspects in the murder of two university students; he told them to take a few days off and report back on Oct. 30. The four suspects never reappeared, and Barralaga Hernandez and Muñoz Licona were both dismissed. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 10/31/11)

Adding to the embarrassments for the government, on Oct. 30 the Associated Press wire service quoted an unnamed US law enforcement official who called Honduras “the number one offload point for traffickers to take cocaine through Mexico to the US.” An estimated 250 to 300 tons of cocaine are shipped from South America through Honduras each year, according to the AP article. Much of the cocaine comes by sea, but Honduras is also the region’s main center for smuggling drugs by air. The unnamed US official said that 79% of the drug flights from South America to the north land in Honduras.

Large numbers of people are reportedly involved in the trade, from the populations of impoverished fishing communities to corrupt soldiers. Drug traffickers stole a military plane from the San Pedro Sula army base earlier this year, according to Alfredo Landaverde, a former adviser to the Honduran security ministry; he claims that soldiers were involved in the crime. Rich landowners with property on the coast have also profited. The authorities “seized 13 luxurious homes and ranches and 17 boats” in a mass raid in the last week of October, according to the AP article. (AP 10/30/11 via Miami Herald)

[One of the country’s richest landowners, cooking oil and food product magnate Miguel Facussé Barjum, may have been involved in three drug-related incidents at one of his properties in 2003 and 2004, according to a secret US diplomatic cable; see Update #1096.]

Meanwhile, the country’s homicide rate more than doubled from 2005 to 2010, according to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report, Global Study on Homicide 2011. Honduras registered 82.1 homicides for every 100,000 people in the country in 2010, the highest rate per capita in the world. (Fox News Latino 10/31/11)

A CID-Gallup poll from October found that 79% of Hondurans questioned consider violence and crime the country’s most important problems. Some 54% said the government of President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa was the most corrupt in Honduran history, and 63% thought the president “never” or “almost never” does what is best for the people. Lobo won the presidency in November 2009 in a controversial election organized by a de facto government installed after former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) was overthrown in a military coup. (Télam (Argentina) 10/28/11 via Terra.com; Honduras Culture and Politics 10/31/11)

*4. Mexico: Both US Parties Hit by Gun Walking Scandal
A scandal involving US law enforcement programs to let guns “walk” into Mexico has now widened to include the 2001-2008 administration of former president George W. Bush, a Republican, as well as the administration of current Democratic president Barack Obama. The latest revelations concern a program codenamed Operation Wide Receiver, in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) reportedly allowed some 350 or 400 guns to enter Mexico illegally during 2006 and 2007.

US media and legislators revealed in February that the ATF let some 2,000 firearms “walk” into Mexico during 2009 and 2010 in Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled effort to trace the activities of gun smugglers in the US Southwest [see Update #1103]. Led by Rep. Darryl Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-IA), Republican politicians have used the scandal to attack the Obama administration; some have called for the resignation of Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., who as head of the Justice Department is ultimately responsible for activities of the ATF.

In early October Issa and Grassley released documents and emails which they apparently thought further implicated Democratic Justice Department officials in Fast and Furious. But it seems that some of the material referred to the earlier program, Operation Wide Receiver, which instead implicated Republican officials. Wide Receiver “has not received a lot of attention,” the Washington Post noted on Oct. 6. (WP 10/6/11; New York Times 10/31/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/2/11 from unidentified wire services)

The partisan maneuvering over the two ATF operations has tended to obscure the larger issue of the impact of lax gun regulation in the US on Mexico’s “drug war,” which has led to the deaths of some 45,000 Mexicans since the beginning of 2007, 200 of them reportedly by weapons allowed to “walk” under Fast and Furious. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 1, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who heads the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said that of 94,000 firearms seized by Mexican authorities over the past five years, 64,000—68%--had come from the US. (LJ 11/2/11 from unidentified wire services)

*5. Mexico: Film Documents Protests Against Oaxaca Mine
Residents of San José del Progreso, a municipality in the Ocotlán district of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, say they are continuing their three-year struggle against a mine operated by Toronto-based Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. They blocked the entrance to the company’s San José mine for 40 days in the spring of 2009, charging that there had already been environmental damage even though the mine wasn’t yet in operation; they also said the authorities had licensed the project without community consultation. The protest was ended abruptly when some 700 police agents, armed with assault rifles and backed up by a helicopter, stormed the community on May 6 of that year [see Update #983 and World War 4 Report 5/27/09].

The mine is now operating, and residents report that it has depleted the area’s scarce water resources and has contaminated the subsoil with sulphuric acid. The community is currently fighting the project by using a 30-minute documentary to call national and international attention to the damage caused by mining in Oaxaca, where mining concessions take up 742,791 hectares, 7.78% of the state’s surface. The documentary, “Minas y Mentiras” (“Mines and Lies”), was produced by the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center and the Oaxacan Center in Defense of the Territories; it can be viewed on the internet at
http://vimeo.com/27948780. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/5/11)

*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

Latin American and Caribbean States Back Palestine UNESCO Vote
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/05/latin-american-and-caribbean-states-back-palestine-unesco-vote/

The Politics of Human Rights
https://nacla.org/news/2011/11/4/politics-human-rights

Remnants of Pinochet: Conservative Chilean Politicians Push for Harsher Measures Against Students
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3283-remnants-of-pinochet-conservative-chilean-politicians-push-for-harsher-measures-against-students

Brazil: "Occupy" Movement Rolls to Rio
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/3291-brazil-qoccupyq-movement-rolls-to-rio

Bolivia's Uncertain Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3284-bolivias-uncertain-revolution

The Bolivian TIPNIS March—In Photos
https://nacla.org/bolivian-tipnis-march-photos

Peru to Reopen Investigation into Forced Sterilizations of Women
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3288-peru-to-reopen-investigation-into-forced-sterilizations-of-women

Peru Fires Top Indigenous Rights Official After She Blocks Gas Project
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3287-peru-fires-top-indigenous-rights-official-after-she-blocks-gas-project-

Colombia's scandal-plagued DAS intelligence agency dissolved
http://ww4report.com/node/10493

Paramilitary Ties in Colombian Local Elections
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/31/paramilitary-ties-colombian-local-elections

Connecting the Dots: Colombian Army Officers and Civilian Killings
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3286-connecting-the-dots-colombian-army-officers-and-civilian-killings

Colombian army kills FARC leader "Alfonso Cano"
http://ww4report.com/node/10505

FARC succession struggle seen in wake of Alfonso Cano killing
http://ww4report.com/node/10510

Students and Workers Occupy Agroecology University: Statement from the Occupiers (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6605

Nicaragua: Ortega re-elected; US charges irregularities, voter intimidation
http://ww4report.com/node/10512

Attorneys Urge Court to Hear Lawsuit Against Honduran Coup Leader
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3290-attorneys-urge-court-to-hear-lawsuit-against-honduran-coup-leader-

Honduras Sends Hundreds Of Soldiers To The Street In Operation Lightning
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/02/honduras-sends-hundreds-of-soldiers-to-the-street-in-operation-lightning/

Guatemala: president-elect accused in 1980s genocide
http://ww4report.com/node/10511

Mexico: Wixáritari Indians Fight Mining in Sacred Desert Site
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3285-mexico-wixaritari-indians-fight-mining-in-sacred-desert-site

López Obrador, Supporters Found Morena, New Left Party (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=193#1356

Mexican Movement for Global Change Searches for Unity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3289-mexican-movement-for-global-change-searches-for-unity

The Days of the Dead (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/1/days-dead

Mexican Authorities Crack Down on Protests
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/november062011/mexico-rights.php

The Art of Ripping Off Mexican Electronic Workers
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5659

Canadian Labour Organizations Host SME Leaders; File NAALC Complaint in Support of SME (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=193#1357

Cuba Releases New Real Estate Rules, Will Allow Home Sales
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/04/cuba-releases-new-real-estate-rules-will-allow-home-sales/

Five years for a drop of water (Haiti)
http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/11/3/five-years-for-a-drop-of-water.html

Local Purchases of Rice as Food Aid Overstated (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/local-purchases-of-rice-as-food-aid-overstated

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

NYC, Nov. 7: John Mccutcheon Benefit Show for the People of Nicaragua

2011-11-02T22:14:00.000-04:00

Monday, November 7th, 2011 6:00PM to 8:00PM
Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew
263 West 86th St (corner West End Ave)
New York, NY 10024

Join Dos Pueblos to celebrate 24 years of solidarity with the people of Nicaragua and contribute to a global future of human rights and peace. The evening will feature a performance by award-winning singer/songwriter John McCutcheon, whose music can "reach into human doings and find strings that tie all of us together."

For more info please call 917-776-4246 or email info@tipitapa.org

“McCutcheon is the most impressive instrumentalist I ever heard”-- Johnny Cash

Check out Dos Pueblos and this event at:
Dos Pueblos Website: http://www.tipitapa.org/
Facebook: Dos Pueblos page Facebook event page:https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=269445889743901
Eventbrite: Dos Pueblos presents John McCutcheon

WNU #1103: Are Mexican Officials “in the Dark” on US Drug War?

2011-11-01T08:53:00.001-04:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1103, October 30, 2011

1. Mexico: Are Officials “Kept the Dark” About US Drug Operations?
2. Panama: Indigenous Groups Block Latest Mining Manuever
3. Haiti: A Legislator Is Jailed on Martelly’s Orders
4. Links to alternative sources on: Climate Change, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Mexico: Are Officials “Kept the Dark” About US Drug Operations?
On Oct. 26 Mexican officials emphatically denied that US agencies were violating Mexican sovereignty by carrying out undercover operations aimed at Mexican drug cartels. The presence of agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Mexico “isn’t something new, it’s been happening since a long time ago,” Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa Cantellano said at a press conference in Mexico City that was meant to be about Mexico’s participation in a Group of 20 meeting in Cannes, France, and in the Iberian-American Summit in Asunción, Paraguay. Espinosa Cantellano said she couldn’t reveal the number and location of the agents for security reasons, “but of course the government knows about this presence and we are very strict in watching out that the legal framework is applied.”

President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s spokesperson, Alejandra Sota Mirafuentes, insisted at the press conference that cooperation and exchange of information between the two governments “is and has been fully respectful of the Mexican legal framework, including the so-called ’92 rules, the bilateral agreements currently in effect.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/27/11)

The official denials came in response to an Oct. 25 article in the New York Times about US infiltration of Mexican criminal organizations. According to reporter Ginger Thompson, “Mexico is kept in the dark about the United States’ contacts with its most secret informants--including Mexican law enforcement officers, elected officials and cartel operatives.” This is “partly because of laws prohibiting American security forces from operating on Mexican soil,” Thompson wrote. “The Mexicans sort of roll their eyes and say we know it’s happening,” Woodrow Wilson Center security expert Eric Olson told the Times, “even though it’s not supposed to be happening.”

Thompson also noted that “complicated ethical issues tend to arise” when the US government uses informants who work in criminal enterprises. (NYT 10/25/11)

The revelations come as many Mexicans are growing more disillusioned with President Calderón’s US-backed “war on drugs,” in which 40,000 Mexicans have died since the beginning of 2007; Mexicans are also angry about the US government’s bungled Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed some 2,000 weapons to go illegally from the US to Mexico [see Updates #1079, 1095]. Adding to the tensions, on Oct. 28 Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told an interviewer on the CNN cable news network that 200 Mexicans had been killed by weapons that entered Mexico as a result of the program. (Notimex 10/29/11 via LJ)

These developments are likely to hurt Calderón’s center-right National Action Party (PAN) in the 2012 presidential election. The centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is clearly hoping to benefit in its efforts to regain the presidency, which the party held from the 1930s until the PRI’s Francisco Labastida Ochoa lost to PAN candidate Vicente Fox Quesada in 2000. Labastida himself, now a senator from the northern state of Sinaloa, was quick to condemn Calderón for the reported death toll from Fast and Furious. It is “shameful,” he said in an interview, that Calderón hasn’t taken concrete legal actions against the US government. Calderón’s administration has a “sellout” attitude, an “absolutely servile” attitude, according to Labastidia, who said he had “thought carefully” about which adjectives to use. (LJ 10/30/11)

*2. Panama: Indigenous Groups Block Latest Mining Manuever
A dispute between the government of rightwing Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli and the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group flared up again the week of Oct. 24 as the National Assembly began to debate changes to the Mining Code. Militant protests by the Ngöbe-Buglé and others last February and March forced the Assembly to rescind a law which opponents said would encourage open-pit mining for metals by foreign companies and endanger the environment [see Update #1070].

An ad hoc commission of the Assembly and a coordinating committee of indigenous groups then negotiated a new bill incorporating indigenous demands for protection of their territory and the environment. But the bill that finally appeared before the Assembly in October, Law 394, retained objectionable features of the previous law, according to the indigenous groups, which blocked the Pan American highway in protest.

“The government isn’t complying with the accords, which is a clear sign that we have to start up our actions again,” Ngöbe-Buglé activist Rogelio Montezuma said on Oct. 24 as the National Front in Defense of Economic and Social Rights (Frenadeso) and the Traditional General Ngöbe-Buglé Congress demonstrated outside the National Assembly. “We, the original peoples, are telling the national government we don’t want mining.” (Adital (Brazil) 10/28/11; Prensa Latina 10/28/11)

As of Oct. 28, the government and the indigenous groups had come to an agreement about Law 394, according to Commerce and Industry Minister Ricardo Quijano, who said “the mining bill will not affect the [indigenous] territories” and won’t include the features the indigenous groups objected to. There were reports that the government would offer an additional bill including measures agreed to in the negotiations between the indigenous groups and the National Assembly’s ad hoc commission. (TVN Noticias (Panama) 10/28/11)

*3. Haiti: A Legislator Is Jailed on Martelly’s Orders
Haitian police arrested legislative deputy Arnel Bélizaire at Port-au-Prince’s international airport on Oct. 27 as he returned from an official visit to France; the agents then took him to the National Penitentiary in the capital. Chamber of Deputies president Sorel Jacynthe and a delegation of other legislators were kept from entering the airport to welcome Bélizaire, while several hundred demonstrators protested outside and chanted slogans against Haitian president Michel Martelly. The president himself left for the US the same day for unexplained health reasons. This was his second medical trip to the US since he took office in May; he was expected to return on Nov. 6.

Martelly’s government charged that Bélizaire, who represents the Delmas and Tabarre districts of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, had taken advantage of the January 2010 earthquake to escape from the penitentiary, where he had been imprisoned on a weapons charge since 2004. Martelly and Bélizaire had had a shouting match in the National Palace on Oct. 12, and on Oct. 14 and 16 Martelly made a request for the justice system to arrest fugitives from justice who were in the Parliament.

Bélizaire was released on Oct. 28, but the arrest resulted in strong protests from legislators, who noted that their immunity from prosecution could only be suspended by the Parliament itself. There were also questions about the claim that Bélizaire was a fugitive from justice, since the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) had cleared him to run for the deputy post in the November 2010 elections; he won the seat in a March 2011 runoff. Right after the arrest, 71 of the 99 members of the Chamber of Deputies signed a resolution demanding the resignation of Justice Minister Josué Pierre-Louis, Interior Minister Thierry Mayard-Paul and other officials, while 16 of the 30 senators signed a resolution charging that Martelly harbored a “desire…to restore dictatorship.” (AlterPresse (Haiti) 10/27/11, 10/28/11; AP 10/28/11 via CBS News)

Security employees at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport held a brief strike on Oct. 28 to protest actions by Interior Minister Mayard-Paul and his bodyguards during Bélizaire’s arrest. Employees charged that in addition to violating the airport security zone, Mayard-Paul had personally hit several of the airport guards. (Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 10/29/11)

Arnel Bélizaire—whose first name is also given as “Anel,” following the pronunciation in Haitian Creole—seems to have an interesting and contradictory record. According to Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), Bélizaire was arrested on Sept. 14, 1995, for abus de confiance (breach of trust or embezzlement) but was freed four days later. He was arrested again on Oct. 14, 2004, for possession of automatic weapons, Espérance says, but escaped from the National Penitentiary during a mysterious mass jailbreak on Feb. 19, 2005. Dominican authorities arrested Bélizaire on charges of auto theft and weapons possession on July 2, 2005; he was quickly extradited to Haiti and returned to the National Penitentiary on July 4. (Haïti Libre (Haiti) 10/24/11)

Currently Bélizaire seems to have some connection to the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004), since he ran for deputy as a candidate of the Veye Yo (“Watch Them”) party, which ran FL politicians when the FL itself was denied ballot status [see Update #1039]. But when he escaped from prison in 2005 Bélizaire was described as a leader of the ex-soldiers who helped overthrow Aristide in February 2004 [see Update #786]. He even claimed that while he was in prison in February 2005 the de facto government of Gérard Latortue offered him $10,000 to murder Aristide’s prime minister, Yvon Neptune, who was also in the National Penitentiary. But he said he decided instead to protect Neptune during the chaos of the Feb. 19 jailbreak. (People’s World 5/13/05)

It is not clear whether Deputy Bélizaire is the Anel Bélizaire who was held in US immigration detention at the Krome center in Florida starting in 1998; the detainee carried out a hunger strike there in 1999 and 2000. (Immigration News Briefs January 2000)

*4. Links to alternative sources on: Climate Change, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

Climate Change Vulnerability Index released as floods clobber listed nations (Central America, Mexico, Haiti)
http://ww4report.com/node/10484

Argentina: ex-military officers sentenced to life for crimes against humanity
http://ww4report.com/node/10477

Cristina Kirchner and Argentina's Good Fortune
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3272-cristina-kirchner-and-argentinas-good-fortune

Uruguay scraps 'dirty war' amnesty
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3281-uruguay-scraps-dirty-war-amnesty-

Brazilians Get Ready to Dig Up the Truth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3275-brazilians-get-ready-to-dig-up-the-trut

Brazil and Colombia: An Unexpected Alliance
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5633

Peru: government fires new indigenous affairs official after she blocks gas project
http://ww4report.com/node/10481

Unrest threatens Ecuador development projects
http://ww4report.com/node/10480

Is the FARC Retaking the Military Offensive in Colombia?
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/24/farc-retaking-military-offensive-colombia

Colombia: ex-guerilla to be Bogotá mayor
http://ww4report.com/node/10485

Venezuela Passes New Leasing Law Proposed by Popular Initiative
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6588

El Salvador: Water Bill Stagnates in Congress
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3282-el-salvador-water-bill-stagnates-in-congress

WikiLeaks Honduras: US Linked to Brutal Businessman
http://www.thenation.com/article/164120/wikileaks-honduras-us-linked-brutal-businessman

Justice and Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala: 1954 Revisited
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3279-justice-and-jacobo-arbenz-in-guatemala-1954-revisited

As Firm as a Tree: Portraits of Diodora, a Guatemalan Anti-Mining Activist
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3273-2011-10-as-firm-as-a-tree-portraits-of-diodora

"Anonymous" hackstivists threaten to expose Zeta secrets (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/10482

Mexico's ex-prez Fox again speaks out for drug legalization
http://ww4report.com/node/10483

Mexico Goverment-Drug Cartel Collusion: The Hybrid Threat
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/26/mexico-goverment-drug-cartel-collusion-hybrid-threat

Double Speak and Intervention in Mexico
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/25/double-speak-and-intervention-mexico

Mexico: Café sin Carbono?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3274-mexico-cafe-sin-carbono

The UN and Human Rights: Condemning the U.S. Embargo of Cuba
https://nacla.org/news/2011/10/26/un-and-human-rights-condemning-us-embargo-cuba

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1102: Haitians Protest UN on Cholera Outbreak Anniversary

2011-10-25T08:10:00.003-04:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1102, October 23, 2011

1. Haiti: Anti-UN Protest Marks Anniversary of Cholera Outbreak
2. Chile: Student Strikers Occupy Congressional Budget Meeting
3. Colombia: Education Protests Shut Down 32 Universities
4. Honduras: Human Rights Center Created for Aguán Valley
5. Links to alternative sources on: Food Crisis, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Haiti: Anti-UN Protest Marks Anniversary of Cholera Outbreak
Haitian activists marched in Port-au-Prince on Oct. 19 to demand the immediate withdrawal of the thousands of foreign soldiers and police agents in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH); they also called for the United Nations to pay compensation for the country’s current cholera epidemic. The organizers chose Oct. 19 for the protest to mark one year since the outbreak started, apparently because of poor sanitary conditions among Nepalese troops at a MINUSTAH base near Mirebalais in the Central Plateau.

The disease, unknown in Haiti for at least a half century, has sickened hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the past year and has killed 6,559, according to government figures. The international health organization Doctors Without Borders (known by its initials in French, MSF) estimated that 75-80% of cholera cases reported in the world so far in 2011 have been in Haiti. The United Nations continues to deny responsibility despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the disease came from its troops [see Update #1094].

“MINUSTAH must leave,” the protesters chanted as they marched towards the capital’s main cemetery, where they burned a small coffin representing the mission. More than 100 people took part, according to the on-line Haitian news service AlterPresse; the leftist group Batay Ouvriye, which participated, estimated the crowd at 400. This was the third sizeable demonstration against MINUSTAH in the past two months; protests have increased since evidence became public that Uruguayan troops had sexually abused Haitian youths in the southern coastal town of Port-Salut [see Update #1095]. (AlterPresse 10/20/11, ___, 10/21/11)

The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on Oct. 15 to extend MINUSTAH’s mandate for another year; the force, led by Brazilian officers, has been occupying Haiti since June 2004. The 15 nations on the council voted to reduce the mission by some 2,750, leaving 7,340 soldiers and 3,241 police agents, about the same number as before a January 2010 earthquake devastated much of southern Haiti. The Security Council also called for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “to continue to take the necessary measures to ensure full compliance of all...personnel with the United Nations zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse.” (AFP 10/15/11 via Montreal Gazette)

*2. Chile: Student Strikers Occupy Congressional Budget Meeting
About 50 Chilean students and their supporters took over a congressional budget subcommittee’s meeting in Santiago on Oct. 20 to demand that the government hold a binding plebiscite on their demands. A massive student movement has paralyzed universities and secondary schools for nearly six months around calls for reversing the privatization and decentralization of the education system that started during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Various polls show about 80% of the population supporting the students’ demands, which won some 87% of the more than one million votes case in a nonbinding grassroots plebiscite students and teachers held Oct. 7-9 [see Update #1100].

Bursting into a meeting attended by Education Minister Felipe Bulnes and some university rectors along with senators and deputies, the protesters unfurled a banner reading “Plebiscite now” and drove Bulnes from the room. The activists remained for eight hours, live-streaming the occupation on the internet and calling for supporters to gather at the building. Senate president Guido Girardi, a member of the opposition to the government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera, promised not to bring in the police to remove the demonstrators, as had happened to protesters earlier in the day at a session of the Chamber of Deputies in the Congress building in the city of Valparaíso.

The protesters ended the occupation in the evening after a group of senators and deputies agreed to the protesters’ demand that they introduce a constitutional amendment to allow an official plebiscite on education. The current Constitution, ratified in 1980 under the Pinochet government, limits plebiscites to special cases, such as clashes between the executive and legislative branches. In a sign of the students’ distrust of politicians, the occupiers required the legislators to sign a written agreement.

The takeover of the budget meeting followed two days of student mobilizations. The first day, Oct. 18, brought burning barricades to the streets of Santiago and an incident in which a bus was set on fire and the driver was injured. The police reported 61 arrests, but President Piñera’s spokesperson, Andrés Chadwick, insisted that the country was “in absolute normality” and that “there is no strike.” Tens of thousands of protesters marched in a national mobilization on the second day, Oct. 19. The media estimated the crowd in Santiago at 60,000, while the police gave the number as 25,000. The organizers—the Teachers Association of Chile and the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH)—said 300,000 people had participated nationwide. The police reported 263 arrests.

“The struggle we’re in isn’t easy,” student leader Camila Vallejo Dowling said. “The government has closed the door on us, it doesn’t want to listen, it isn’t capable of seeing the situation Chile is living through: an historic moment for making structural changes in education.” She added that the struggle might have to go on past this year. (InfoBAE (Argentina) 10/20/11 from Emol.com (Chile) and La Tercera (Chile); TeleSUR 10/20/11 via YouTube; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/19/11, 10/20/11 from correspondent and unidentified wire services)

*3. Colombia: Education Protests Shut Down 32 Universities
On Oct. 12 Colombian university students proceeded with plans announced in September to carry out an open-ended strike against proposed changes to the education system that they say will lead to privatization. A total of 32 public universities have gone on strike, according to the Broad National Student Panel (MANE), a national coordinating group, which has called for weekly demonstrations in support of the strike, including a special national mobilization at all public universities on Oct. 26.

The students say they will stay on strike until the government withdraws a proposal for amendments to Law 30, which has governed education since 1992, and agrees to talks around the student movement’s demands. The strikers are also planning discussions with professors and university workers “so that we can jointly construct the model of the university that we want,” according to Sergio Fernández, a spokesperson for the Colombian Student Organization (OCE). Fernández said a gathering in Bogotá on Nov. 12-13 will bring together students, professors, workers and others “to construct a different proposal for higher education.” (El Universal (Cartagena) 10/17/11; Notimex 10/22/11 via Diario de Yucatán (Mexico))

A medical student, Yan Farid Cheng Lugo, was killed by a homemade explosive device and 10 others were wounded in Cali, in the western department of Valle del Cauca, during the nationwide demonstrations that marked the first day of the strike on Oct. 12. MANE charged that the student’s death was not an accident, as the police claim. In MANE’s account, a group of unidentified people hurled the device from a bridge as some 15,000 students marched in the local protest. “We have reported and verified on repeated occasions that government agents infiltrate our actions in order to legitimize repression and the murder of students,” MANE wrote, “and for this reason we demand that the government clarify its participation in these actions that have put the student movement in mourning today.” (Prensa Latina 10/13/11)

In other news, Colombian authorities arrested US Navy gunner’s mate Lemar Deion Burton on Oct. 12 as he attempted to leave the country at Bogotá’s El Dorado airport; they charge that he was carrying about five kilograms of high-grade cocaine. The US Navy said Burton was based with the Navy Munitions Command at Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily, Italy, and was visiting Colombia on personal leave. Burton is not part of the US military mission in Colombia, according to the US embassy, so he is not covered by the immunity agreement that protects mission members from prosecution in Colombian courts. (ABC News blog 10/19/11)

*4. Honduras: Human Rights Center Created for Aguán Valley
Honduran and international human rights and grassroots organizations announced on Oct. 21 that they were forming a center to monitor and prevent rights violations in northern Honduras’ Lower Aguán Valley, where dozens of people have been killed over the past two years in land conflicts [see Update #1096]. The Human Rights Monitoring Center for the Aguán is scheduled to open on Nov. 11; it will be based in the city of Tocoa, Colón department.

According to Wilfredo Paz Zúniga, the center’s spokesperson and also the local coordinator for the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) coalition, the center’s functions will include stationing observers at demonstrations, land occupations and highway blockades to avert excessive use of force by police agents; protecting people whose lives are threatened; assisting victims of violence or repression; taking preventive measures; reporting human rights violations; and collecting information for legal action against rights violators.

In the area’s most recent violence, campesino Segundo Mendoza Ramos was killed on Oct. 15 and two other campesinos were wounded by gunfire the next day, according to the Honduras office of the European organization FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN). The incidents were reportedly connected to efforts by private security guards for a major landowner, Miguel Facussé Barjum, to end a land occupation by members of a campesino group, the Campesino Movement of National Reclamation (MCRN). (Adital (Brazil) 10/21/11)

*5. Links to alternative sources on: Food Crisis, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico

The Food Crisis Strikes Again
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5606

'Argentine Strength' Carrying Cristina Fernandez to Presidential Re-Election
https://nacla.org/news/2011/10/20/argentine-strength-carrying-cristina-fernandez-presidential-re-election

Argentina: Divided Opposition Goes All Out for…Second Place
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3269-argentina-divided-opposition-goes-all-out-forsecond-place

Chile: Mapuche protest Panqui hydro project
http://ww4report.com/node/10454

Militarism in Paraguay: The Other Side of the Economic Model
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5581

Landmark Vote in Brazil Upholds Indigenous Rights on Belo Monte
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3266-landmark-vote-in-brazil-upholds-indigenous-rights-on-belo-monte

The Rubber Tappers of Sao Bernardo, Brazil: Struggling Still in the Memory of Chico Mendes - Photo Essay and Report
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/3270-photo-essay-and-article-the-rubber-tappers-of-sao-bernardo-brazil-struggling-still-in-the-memory-of-chico-mendes

TIPNIS Marchers, Bolivian Voters Send Wake-Up Call to Evo Morales
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/20/tipnis-marchers-bolivian-voters-send-wake-call-evo-morales

Bolivia: anti-road protesters in dialogue with Evo Morales
http://ww4report.com/node/10456

Bolivians spoil ballots in judicial elections?
http://ww4report.com/node/10414#comment-328852

Peru: park rangers in incident with "uncontacted" indigenous band
http://ww4report.com/node/10455

Peru: Humala's first scandal involves ag-biz land-grab
http://ww4report.com/node/10459

Peru: ton of cocaine seized in Sendero stronghold
http://ww4report.com/node/10460

Uncovering the U.S. War in Colombia
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/17/uncovering-us-war-colombia

Colombia: When Humanitarian Law Is Just Rhetoric
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3265-colombia-when-humanitarian-law-is-just-rhetoric

US Presidential Candidates Attack Chavez as Campaign Strategy; Say God Made US an Empire (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6574

Guatemala: ex-dictator Oscar Mejía declared a fugitive
http://ww4report.com/node/10453

NAFTA Is Starving Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5617

The Birds and the Bees and the GMOs (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5589

Agrotoxins Kill (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5585

The President, the PRI, and the Poet (PRI)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/18/president-pri-and-poet

The Trenches of Mexico: “You Can’t Call the Police on the Army”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3271-the-trenches-of-mexico-you-cant-call-the-police-on-the-army

Mexico City Legislators Push To Ban Bullfighting
http://latindispatch.com/2011/10/18/mexico-city-legislators-push-to-ban-bullfighting/

Occupy Tijuana Tests Rights
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october222011/occupy-tijuana.php

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1101: Latin American Indignados Join the “Occupy” Protests

2011-10-18T08:21:00.001-04:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1101, October 16, 2011

1. Latin America: Thousands of Indignados Join the “Occupy” Protests
2. Latin America: Leaders and Writers Assess Occupy Wall Street
3. Trade: US Congress Approves Colombia and Panama FTAs
4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

==> If you’re in the New York metropolitan area this week, don’t forget the final two days of our massive book giveaway, Oct. 19 and Oct. 22. More information at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2011/10/still-more-free-books-from-new-york.html

*1. Latin America: Thousands of Indignados Join the “Occupy” Protests
Joining others in more than 900 cities around the world, Latin American activists protested on Oct. 15 to demonstrate their discontent with the global economic system. The demonstrations got a significant boost from Occupy Wall Street, a US movement that started with an action in New York on Sept. 17, but the Latin American protests also referenced the Real Democracy Now movement that developed in Spain last spring; the Spanish protests were inspired in turn by protests in Tunisia and Egypt at the beginning of the year. In Spanish-speaking countries the movement is widely known as “15-M,” from May 15, the day when protests started in Madrid. Like the Spanish protesters, Latin American participants call themselves los indignados and las indignadas—“the angry ones,” or “the indignant ones.”

Thousands of Chileans marked the global day of action by marching with music and dancing from the University of Chile campus in central Santiago along the Alameda avenue to the O’Higgins Park. They called for reform of the political system and for a constituent assembly to write a new constitution to replace the current document, which was created under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). The protesters also backed the demands of student strikers for a free public education system and expressed opposition to the HidroAysén project, a plan to build a complex of five dams that environmentalists say would threaten fjords and valleys in the Patagonia region [see Updates #1081, 1100]. Organizers estimated that 5,000 people participated; the police didn’t give an estimate. Similar protests were scheduled for other cities, including Arica, Iquique, Coquimbo, La Serena and Valparaíso. (Radio Universidad de Chile 10/15/11; Observador Global (Argentina) 10/15/11; Adital (Brazil) 10/14/11)

More than 1,000 Argentines, many wearing masks or costumes, marched on Oct. 15 from the Plaza del Congreso de la Nación in central Buenos Aires to the Plaza de Mayo. The marchers included Juan Marino, the leader of the Revolutionary Piquetero Tendency (TPR), part of a movement of the unemployed that developed in response to the neoliberal policies of former president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999) and the financial crisis of 2001. “It can’t go on like this,” said another marcher, Bernardo Molina. “The rich created the crisis, and we, the poor, always end up paying.” Argentines also demonstrated in La Plata, Córdoba, Mar del Plata, Rosario, Mendoza, Tucumán, Jujuy and other cities. (People’s Daily (China) 10/16/11)

In Brazil, some 200 people, mostly youths, gathered under a heavy rain at Sao Paulo’s Museo de Arte on Paulista Avenue in the banking and commercial district, while others met in the Largo de Sao Bento, a colonial building in the center of the city. Some participants were from political parties, but one group of youths carried a sign saying they rejected parties. There were also protests in Rio de Janeiro and other cities. (ANSA 10/15/11)

About 500 Peruvians marked the global day of action with a gathering at the Plaza San Martín in the center of Lima. Slogans on their signs included: “Wake up,” “Raise your voice, demand change,” and “The earth and the water belong to the people, not to the businesses.” The mobilization was “peaceful, apolitical and nonpartisan,” Luis Álvarez, from the Take the Plaza collective, which had called the protest, told Radio Programas del Perú (RPP). (EFE 10/15/11 via Qué.es (Spain))

In Colombia about 70 indignados and indignadas met at Bogotá’s National Park to call for a regeneration of the democratic and economic system. The group originally planned to march to Plaza de Bolívar, in front of the presidential palace, but participants decided to stay in the park and develop the movement by holding an assembly in which they exchanged opinions on what should be the principles of the “15-O” (Oct. 15) movement. They also made signs expressing themes of the global movement, such as “Real democracy now,” mixed with references to local issues, such as “No to mining.” (EFE 10/15/11 via El Espectador (Bogotá))

Like their Colombian counterparts, the approximately 400 protesters who gathered at the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City on Oct. 15 focused on both local and global issues, from the Mexican government’s “war on drugs” to consumerism and fraudulent banking practices. The group that called for the mobilization, the Permanent Assembly of Mexican Indignados, read a communiqué saying that “the country is hurling itself into the disaster of daily and widespread violence; into unemployment and hunger; into the violation of the most fundamental rights; into the destruction of the social fabric and the loss of human values.” “If those below get moving, those above fall down,” “Less tele and more vision,” and “If they won’t let us dream, we won’t let them sleep” were among the signs, along with “We’ve had it up to here” (Estamos hasta la madre), a slogan which has dominated Mexican demonstrations for much of this year [see Update #1079].

There were protests in 20 other Mexican cities, including a sit-in at the Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada de Jalapa plaza in the eastern state of Veracruz and at the Explanada de los Héroes in the central plaza of Monterrey in the northern state of Nuevo León. (Observador Global 10/15/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/16/11, ___ )

*2. Latin America: Leaders and Writers Assess Occupy Wall Street
Latin America’s protests on the Oct. 15 global day of action around the economic system were not especially large--in comparison either to the massive protests in Europe that day or to many Latin American demonstrations around the same issues over recent years. But for leaders, writers and activists in the region the day was an historic event, both because of the participation of people around the globe and because of the unusual leading role of a movement based in the US.

“We agree with some of the expressions that some movements have used around the world [in] demonstrations like the ones we see in the US and other countries,” Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, a member of the center-left Workers Party (PT), said in an official speech in Porto Alegre on Oct. 14. She noted that she herself had taken a slogan from these movements: “No, we’re not going to pay for your crisis.” (ANSA 10/15/11)

Hugo Chávez Frías, the leftist president of Venezuela, warned US rulers that “something’s germinating” in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Rather than “trying to stop the peaceful march of Venezuela,” he said at an Oct. 15 cabinet meeting broadcast by the government’s television network, Venezolana de Televisión (VTV), US leaders should “worry instead about the indignados they have there in the heart of Wall Street. Today there were marches in half the world, in all the world. Let them worry about that.” (EFE 10/15/11 via El Nuevo Herald (Miami))

Oct. 15 “is going to be an unforgettable date for the human race,” organizers of the protests in Chile wrote on their website. “This will be the first universal gathering of citizens for a better world.” “I have great joy in my heart because for the first time in the history of the planet all of humanity is raising its voice against a dominant power which has kept us lulled to sleep and which is responsible for the current global crisis,” one of the older protesters in Colombia, Jorge Reyes, told the Spanish wire service EFE. The renowned Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano called the 15-M movement a “pure vitamin of hope” which shows that “everything can change” and “we’re not condemned to living in the most dangerous universal dictatorship, that of the masters of finance.” (Adital (Brazil) 10/14/11; EFE 10/15/11 via El Espectador (Bogotá))

An editorial in Mexico’s left-leaning daily La Jornada noted: “[T]he fact that the protests have appeared in scenarios as different from each other as the developed nations of Europe and the peripheral nations of Latin America, Asia and Africa confirms once again the destabilizing and self-destructive character of economic globalization.” The world financial centers have “succeeded in globalizing discontent and indignation.” But the paper warned that “the appearance of these spontaneous expressions of dissent…and the justified unrest of the demonstrators aren’t enough to change [the] status quo…for that it is necessary to have a massive participation of the majority sectors of the world population.” (LJ 10/16/11)

*3. Trade: US Congress Approves Colombia and Panama FTAs
Just as opposition to neoliberal economic policies was generating new protests around the world, on Oct. 12 the US Congress passed long-delayed neoliberal free trade agreements (FTAs, or TLCs in Spanish) with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. The three agreements were negotiated by the administration of former US president George W. Bush (2001-2009); the Colombia FTA was signed in 2006, and the Korea and Panama FTAs were signed in 2007. But approval by Congress was delayed because of partisan maneuvering and the unpopularity of previous agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Many Democrats and US labor leaders opposed the Colombia pact because of continuing murders of unionists in the South American country [see Update #1099].

Despite this opposition, the FTAs passed Congress with large majorities. The vote in the House of Representative was 262-167 for the Colombia agreement, 278-151 for Korea and 300-129 for Panama; the Senate voted 66-33 for the Colombia FTA, 83-15 for Korea and 77-22 for Panama. The agreements will eliminate or reduce tariffs restricting imports from the US, improve protection for what US companies consider their intellectual property rights, and give freer access for US investors. The US International Trade Commission (USTR) projects that the three FTAs will boost US national exports by about $13 billion a year, some 0.1% of the US gross domestic product (GDP). (The Jurist 10/13/11)

“More jobs will be created in both countries” through the Colombia-US FTA, Ricardo Tribín, former president of the Colombia Chamber of Commerce, told the Miami radio station WQBA after the pact was approved. “[I]n the case of Florida it was almost necessary to approve it, because of the problem of unemployment,” he said. “Now it just needs to be implemented.” (EFE 10/13/11 via WQBA) US president Barack Obama and Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos made similar claims. Obama said the pact would stimulate the stagnant US economy, while Santos promised a permanent 1% increase in Colombia’s growth rate, the creation of 250,000 new jobs and a 6% rise in exports.

But Mauricio Cabrera Galvis, a columnist for the daily Vanguardia in the northern department of Santander, wrote that the Colombian government hadn’t explained how it arrived at such high figures for job growth. The USTR only projected 7,000 new jobs for the US, with exports to Colombia growing by $1.1 billion a year and Colombia’s exports growing by much less--just $487 million. Moreover, some Colombian business people are worried that labor protection clauses in the FTA will raise wages and reduce their competitive edge, Cabrera wrote. (Vanguardia 10/16/11)

Colombian labor leaders didn’t share this concern about increased wages. The unionists, who have repeatedly demonstrated against the FTA [see Update #1075], expect that the FTA “will bring a great loss of jobs and the destruction of the agricultural sector, which isn’t prepared for the competition” with US agribusiness, in the words of Tarcisio Mora, who heads the Unitary Workers Central (CUT), Colombia’s main labor federation. (TeleSUR 10/13/11 via Adital (Brazil)) Colombian economist Mario Alejandro Valencia went further. Noting that the US Congress passed the FTA on Oct. 12, when Latin Americans commemorate the beginning of the European invasion and colonization of the region, Valencia charged that the pact “legally decrees the recolonization of Colombia, this time at the hands of the US multinationals, the most powerful that have ever existed.” (Prensa Rural (Colombia) 10/14/11)

Union leaders in Panama had the same concerns. “With this treaty Panamanian agriculture and employment will obviously be affected,” Samuel Rivera, from the National Council of Organized Workers (Conato), told the French wire service AFP. “This is a fight between a heavyweight and a flyweight… [W]ith the [government] subsidies that US products get, there is no human way our country can compete.” (AFP 10/13/11 via Estrategia y Negocios (Honduras))

*4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

The Year in Revolts: A South American Perspective of the Arab Spring
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3257-the-year-in-revolts-a-south-american-perspective-of-the-arab-spring

Argentina to Wall Street: Latin American Social Movements and the Occupation of Everything
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3254-argentina-to-wall-street-latin-american-social-movements-and-the-occupation-of-everything

Argentine connection in Iran assassination plot alleged
http://ww4report.com/node/10433

Chile: Mapuche march on Santiago to mark Columbus invasion
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10417

‘A Poetic Concept of Identity’: An Interview with Mapuche Poet David Aniñir Guilitraro (Chile)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3260-a-poetic-concept-of-identity-an-interview-with-mapuche-poet-david-aninir-guilitraro-

Paraguay: indigenous Aché defend land with bows and arrows
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10423

Bolivia cancels controversial Amazon highway —for now
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10414

Has Bolivia really canceled Amazon highway project?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10424

Bolivia's TIPNIS Conflict Moves to La Paz
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/14/bolivias-tipnis-conflict-moves-la-paz

Ecuador: Mining in Times of Referendums
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/3262-ecuador-mining-in-times-of-referendums-

Colombian workers, students hit streets in nationwide protests
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10413

Colombia: nomadic Amazon tribe caught between paras, guerillas
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10416

Abortion Ban Rejected By Colombian Senate
http://latindispatch.com/2011/10/13/abortion-ban-rejected-by-colombian-senate/

Reflections on the U.S.-Colombia FTA Agreement Approved Yesterday by Congress
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/13/reflections-us-colombia-fta-agreement-approved-yesterday-congress

Colombian Senator: Trade Deal "Worst Decision" to Date
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3259-colombian-senator-trade-deal-qworst-decisionq-to-date

Workers in Nationalised Companies in Venezuela Demand More Worker Control
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6554

Conjugal Visits For Gay Couples Legalized In Costa Rica
http://latindispatch.com/2011/10/13/conjugal-visits-for-gay-couples-legalized-in-costa-rica/

Guatemala: Former President Mejía Declared Fugitive For Genocide
http://latindispatch.com/2011/10/14/guatemala-former-president-mejia-declared-fugitive-for-genocide/

Oaxaca: displaced Triqui struggle for the land (Mexico)
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10415

Gangsters or Paramilitaries: What’s in a Name? (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/11/gangsters-or-paramilitaries-what%E2%80%99s-name

Mexico: 20 dead in Matamoros prison riot
http://ww4report.com/node/10432

The Cockamamie Iran-Mexico Terrorist Plot
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5564

Iran-Contra Remix for the Twenty-First Century (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/14/iran-contra-remix-twenty-first-century

Mexico: Rural Women Organize to Weather Multiple Crises
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3255-mexico-rural-women-organise-to-weather-multiple-crises

Occupy Wall Street Movement Breaks Borders (Mexico)
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october172011/occupy-new-mexico.php

Cuban 5: Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover, Other Celebrities Ask Obama To Send René González Home
http://latindispatch.com/2011/10/11/cuban-5-susan-sarandon-danny-glover-other-celebrities-ask-obama-to-send-rene-gonzalez-home/

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

STILL MORE free books from the New York Nicaragua Solidarity Network!

2011-10-14T11:38:00.000-04:00

REALLY and TRULY LAST CHANCE GIVEAWAY!! Everything must go!!
===================================================
Saturday, Oct. 15, 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Wednesday, Oct. 19, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Saturday, Oct. 22, 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm
At 339 Lafayette Street, buzzer 11 (or buzzer 10 if there's no answer)
(at Bleecker Street in Manhattan; 6 train to Bleecker Street, or D or F trains to Broadway-Lafayette; also, B and M trains on weekday; a short ride from Occupy Wall Street)
===================================================
Free books * Magazines * T-shirts and political buttons from historic campaigns, and more

We said we were having our final book giveaway last spring, but we were wrong. We found still more books as we cleared out the old Nicaragua Solidarity Network office, and then we remembered that we'd left other books at a different location. And we'd forgotten about the boxes of T-shirts, buttons and magazines.

Here are just some of the rare and exciting items that are yours for the asking:

* Books on Latin America: Rigoberta Menchu, the Sandinista Revolution and the Contra Wars, John Ross on Mexico...even a pamphlet about the Zapatistas in Czech.

* Books in Spanish: political analysis, the poetry of Ernesto Cardenal, a children's coloring book, a Spanish-Miskito phrase book...

* Books in English on all sorts of subjects: know-your-rights brochures from the Center for Constitutional Rights, a coffee table book with 100 Chinese revolutionary posters, a Russian dictionary, a biography of Alan Turing, books on construction, on how to mix cement (from the NY-Nicaragua Construction Brigade's collection)...

* Back issues of Envío (in English).

* Historic isssues of NACLA's Report on the Americas, all the way back to 1969.

* T-shirts from FMLN campaigns. Buttons from the FSLN's unsuccessful 1990 campaign. And much more.

We'd love to give you more time to come check out all these books and memorabilia, but we have to be out of the office by the end of the month. Everything really has to go this time, so come on to 339 Lafayette and take it away. For updated information, check http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/, or write us at weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com

WNU #1100: Chile Government Meets Students With Repression

2011-10-11T01:06:00.001-04:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1100, October 9, 2011

1. Chile: Government Meets Students With Repression
2. Haiti: Protesters Demand Decent Jobs and Housing
3. Puerto Rico: Governor Promises to Clean Up the Police
4. Mexico: “Walked” US Guns Found at Cartel Enforcer’s Home
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com.

*1. Chile: Government Meets Students With Repression
In what appeared to be a sudden increase in repression, Chile’s militarized carabineros police used water cannons and tear gas to break up an unauthorized march by student strikers in Santiago on Oct. 6. Many protesters responded by throwing rocks and sticks at the agents. More than 130 people were arrested during the confrontations, and 25 police agents and dozens of civilians were injured. The police action came one day after student leaders and the rightwing government of President Sebastián Piñera broke off talks they had been holding on education reform.

The weekly student demonstrations in favor of reversing the country’s highly privatized education system have frequently resulted in violent clashes at the end of the route [see Update #1098], but on Oct. 6 the police moved against the marchers almost as soon as they began walking from the Plaza Italia along the central Alameda (Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue) toward the La Moneda presidential palace. Student leaders--including Camila Vallejo Dowling, president of the Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) and a spokesperson for the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH)--were hit by the water and were affected by the tear gas. Two journalists were injured: CNN reporter Nicolás Oyarzún and Megavisión camera operator Jorge Rodríguez. Chilevisión reporter Luis Narváez was arrested when he asked for the identity of an agent who had beaten a Chilevisión camera operator.

In another sign that President Piñera is moving towards increased repression, on Oct. 2 the government proposed legislation with harsher penalties for people who occupy schools or public or private buildings, or who cause damage in protests. Students have occupied many universities and secondary schools during more than four months of strikes for education reform.

Student leaders accused the government of sabotaging the negotiations by refusing to consider the strikers’ demand for free public education and instead continuing to push for subsidized education for the poorest 40% of students. “We, the students and social actors, weren’t the ones who wanted to break off the discussion,” FECH president Vallejo said on Oct. 8. “It was the government itself, because they don’t have the political capacity, they don’t have the will to take into consideration the demands of the great majorities of our country.” At a meeting on Oct. 8, CONFECH decided to call for two days of strikes and protests on Oct. 18 and 19. (Prensa Latina 10/6/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/7/11 from correspondent; Radio Universidad de Chile 10/8/11)

As of the afternoon of Oct. 9, 1,032,803 Chileans had voted in the National Plebiscite for Education, a three-day grassroots referendum on the demands of the student strikers, organizers of the voting said. According to Jaime Gajardo, president of the Teachers Association of Chile, preliminary results showed 89% to 95% of participants supporting the demand for a free public education system administered by the national government. Organizers said 723,614 people voted at 1,711 tables set up on Oct. 7 in public spaces throughout the country, and 309,189 more voted on the internet; the tables closed down after the first two days, but internet voting was to continue through the end of Oct. 9.

Plebiscite organizers admitted that they didn’t have the ability to prevent people from using false taxpayer identification numbers (RUTs) to vote more than once, but they said they would use data base analysis to try to determine the percentage of fraudulent votes. Gajardo noted the lines at the voting tables and the festive mood among the ten thousands of voters. “Could anyone question that there was a high rate of participation?” he asked. (Radio Universidad de Chile 10/9/11)

*2. Haiti: Protesters Demand Decent Jobs and Housing
Chanting “This has to change,” some 200 Haitians marked World Day for Decent Work on Oct. 7 with a march to the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi), where most of Port-au-Prince’s low-wage assembly plants are located. Some of the marchers had their faces covered to keep from being identified; managers at three Sonapi plants fired a total of six officers of the newly formed Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA) in the last week of September [see Update #1099]. Police agents from the Departmental Unit for the Maintenance of Order (UDMO) were stationed at the industrial park to keep the marchers from accessing the plants.

The jobs at these factories, which stitch garments for export, are basically temporary and don’t offer decent pay or benefits, according to Yanick Etienne of the leftist group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”). Évèle Fanfan, one of the march’s organizers, said that jobs should be a real factor in social mobility. “If a worker is employed in an assembly plant, his or her children shouldn’t have to work there in the future,” Fanfan said. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 10/7/11)

Four days earlier, on Oct. 3, the Collective of Organizations for the Defense of the Right to Housing held a rally outside the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MAST) to demand a government housing program to replace the tens of thousands of homes destroyed in a devastating earthquake in January 2010. Among the protesters were representatives of various camps where thousands of the homeless have been living since the quake, and delegates from the Grito de los Excluidos (“Cry of the Excluded”), an organization that sponsors mobilizations in Latin America and the Caribbean each year on Oct. 12. The delegates were from various Caribbean countries, including Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico; there were also participants from Chile, France and the US. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 10/6/11)

On Oct. 4 the Senate voted 17 to three, with nine abstentions, to confirm President Michel Martelly’s choice of Garry Conille as prime minister; the Chamber of Deputies had already approved the nomination on Sept. 16 [see Update #1099]. In an interview with the Reuters wire service after the Senate vote, the new prime minister appeared to have the same concerns as the organizers of the Oct. 3 and Oct. 7 protests. His top priority was “jobs, jobs, jobs,” Conille said, along with getting the rebuilding process in motion. “The Haitian people have been incredibly patient,” he told Reuters. “I think we need to move faster. We need to change lives faster.... We still have about 600,000 people living under tents, we still have tons and tons of debris to be collected.”

But grassroots organizations remained skeptical about Conille, who has served as chief of staff for former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), the UN’s special envoy to Haiti. Conille will “defend Clinton’s interests,” not Haiti’s, Philefrant Saintnaré, a spokesperson for the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), told the online Haitian news service AlterPresse. “Haiti is in a phase of recolonization,” Saintnaré said; with Conille in office, the imperialist forces will be able to fulfill their dream “of monopolizing the peasants’ lands in order to set up free-trade zones [tax-exempt industrial parks] and to produce biofuels.” (Reuters 10/5/11 via AlterNet; AlterPresse 10/6/11)

*3. Puerto Rico: Governor Promises to Clean Up the Police
Rightwing Puerto Rican governor Luis Fortuño is now trying to control damage from a Sept. 8 report by the US Justice Department condemning unconstitutional conduct by the island’s police force [see World War 4 Report 9/10/11]. The report cited “continued civil rights violations,” “the failure to implement meaningful reforms,” discrimination against Dominicans, and failure to report and investigate alleged sex crimes and domestic violence. The US government’s criticisms followed repeated charges of police brutality from Puerto Rican student protesters and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [see Update #1079].

Gov. Fortuño says that he has been working to end abuses in the department since he took office in 2009. His reforms have included appointing an independent monitor, replacing police superintendent José Figueroa Sancha, improving training programs, and instituting a detailed “use of force” policy. “Most of the problems occurred before my time,” Fortuño told the New York Times in an interview. “I accept responsibility. My mandate is to change that. But this will take time. It was years in the making, and it will take years to fix.”

But there are many questions about the impact and direction of Fortuño’s reform program. The Times notes that just this summer a police department internal affairs agent, Norman Torrens, was suddenly demoted after he reported that police in Vega Alta in the north were manipulating crimes statistics. Torrens is now suing the deparment.

One example Fortuño gave the Times of his reform efforts was his decision to get “expert” advice from the New York City Police Department after Puerto Rican police agents clubbed and pepper-sprayed student protesters, apparently without provocation, at the Capitol building on June 30, 2010 [see Update #1039]. (NYT 10/5/11) On Sept. 24 of this year, less than two weeks before the Times article appeared, New York police officers themselves were videotaped pepper-spraying youthful protesters from the Occupy Wall Street movement for no apparent reason.

*4. Mexico: “Walked” US Guns Found at Cartel Enforcer’s Home
Forty of the firearms that Mexican police seized on Apr. 30 at the home of an alleged drug trafficker in Ciudad Juárez in the northern state of Chihuahua turn out to among the 2,000 weapons that reached Mexico as a result of the US government’s bungled Operation Fast and Furious [see Update #1095]. The house, which was empty when police arrived, belonged to José Antonio Torres Marrufo, considered by US authorities a top enforcer for the Sinaloa drug cartel of Joaquín Guzmán Loera ("El Chapo"). The weapons were bought legally in Phoenix, Arizona, then taken to El Paso, Texas, and smuggled across the border to Ciudad Juárez.

Fast and Furious was an effort by the US Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to catch suspected gun smugglers by letting rifles “walk” after they were purchased instead of arresting the purchasers immediately. The intent was to trace the smugglers’ activities, but ATF agents lost track of some 2,000 weapons, which apparently got into Mexico. Officials assume the drug cartels received most of them and that the weapons have been used in the fighting that has led to some 40,000 deaths in the last five years. “These Fast and Furious guns were going to Sinaloans, and they are killing everyone down there,” an unidentified “US government source” told the Los Angeles Times. About 100 weapons seem to have gone through El Paso. “But that's only how many we know came through Texas,” the source said. “Hundreds more had to get through.” (LAT 10/8/11)

Meanwhile, ammunition is apparently even easier to buy and to smuggle than assault rifles. While ammunition sales are strictly regulated in Mexico, there are few limits in the US. The 1968 Federal Gun Control Act required ammunition sellers to be licensed and to keep a log of all ammunition sales, but these restrictions were eliminated in the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act. Many states regulate ammunition sales to some extent, but a few, including Arizona, have virtually no regulation. Federal agents seized 95,416 rounds of ammunition at Arizona's six ports of entry along the Mexican border in the last fiscal year. The ammunition in Mexico is “all coming from the US," Jose Wall, a senior ATF trafficking agent in Phoenix, told USA Today. “I can't remember where I've seen ammunition from anywhere but the US.” (USA Today 10/9/11)

*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba

A View from Inside an 'Occupied' Chilean School
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3249-a-view-from-inside-an-occupied-chilean-school

China-Brazil Relations: Disputes with Regional Implications
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5525

Man Sentenced to Jail for Racism against Brazilian Indians
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3243-man-sentenced-to-jail-for-racism-against-brazilian-indians

Bolivia: Exploiting the TIPNIS Conflict
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/7/bolivia-exploiting-tipnis-conflict

TIPNIS March in Bolivia: A Letter to Evo Morales from Pablo Solon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/3247-tipnis-march-in-bolivia-a-letter-to-evo-morales-from-pablo-solon

Dancing With the Devil: Drug War Politics in Bolivia
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/5/dancing-devil

New oil deal for indigenous peoples in Peru, Bolivia?
http://ww4report.com/node/10398

Peru: 300 women liberated from sex slavery in Amazon
http://ww4report.com/node/10396

Colombian Students Mobilise Against Education Reforms
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3253-colombian-students-mobilise-against-education-reforms

US-Colombia: Long-Stalled Trade Accords Move Forward
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3246-us-colombia-long-stalled-trade-accords-move-forward

Venezuela and Russia Sign Bilateral Accords Worth $8 Billion
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6545

El Salvador: For Salvadoran Activist, It Is Necessary to Change the Development Paradigm
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/3251-el-salvador-for-salvadoran-activist-it-is-necessary-to-change-the-development-paradigm

Civil Society Combats Growing Militarism in Post-Coup Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3244-civil-society-combats-growing-militarism-in-post-coup-honduras

Obama Meets With Honduran President Lobo; Praises Return To Democracy
http://latindispatch.com/2011/10/06/obama-meets-with-honduran-president-lobo-praises-return-to-democracy/

The Deadliest Place in the World for a Journalist (Honduras)
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7432

Guatemala Maya petition OAS body for justice
http://www.ww4report.com/node/9264#comment-328649

UN urges probe into Mexico journalist deaths
http://ww4report.com/node/10394

Mexico: another Sinaloa Cartel kingpin busted —but still not El Chapo
http://ww4report.com/node/10395

Mexico: Mata Zetas jack up Veracruz body count
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10407

The Train of the Flies (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/4/train-flies

Documents Claim U.S. Attorney General Holder Knew About “Fast and Furious” In 2010 (Mexico)
http://latindispatch.com/2011/10/04/documents-claim-u-s-attorney-general-holder-knew-about-fast-and-furious-in-2010/

Cuba: Salvaging a Revolution?
https://nacla.org/news/2011/10/6/cuba-salvaging-revolution

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1099: Haitian Garment Bosses Fight Unionization Drive

2011-10-04T09:35:00.003-04:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1099, October 2, 2011

1. Haiti: Garment Bosses Fight New Unionization Drive
2. Haiti: Martelly Backs Clinton Aide, Army Restoration
3. Honduras: Police Find Shipment of Arms From US
4. Trade: US Unions Fight Colombia and Panama FTAs
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, 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. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Haiti: Garment Bosses Fight New Unionization Drive
The management of two Port-au-Prince apparel factories owned by wealthy and powerful Haitians--Gerald Apaid and former presidential candidate Charles Henri Baker--fired a total of five officers of a new garment workers union between Sept. 23 and Sept. 25, a little more than a week after the union announced its formation.

Johny Deshommes, a spokesperson for the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA), lost his job at Apaid’s Genesis S.A. factory on Sept. 23 when he asked to be allowed to go home because of a fever. Three other members of SOTA’s executive committee, Brevil Claude, Wilner Eliacint and Cénatus Vilaire, were fired on Sept. 25 when they tried to meet with the human resources director to discuss Deshommes’ firing; Genesis management brought in two police agents to intimidate and threaten the unionists before they were allowed to leave. SOTA’s secretary, Mitial Rubin, was fired from Baker’s One World Apparel after he had leafleted workers outside the factory.

A third apparel company in the capital, Richard Coles’ Multiwear SA, fired union member Hilaire Jean-François on Sept. 30, and there are reports of harassment of other unionists.

The factories, located in the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi) facility near the Port-au-Prince airport, are tax-exempt assembly plants producing largely for export (known in Spanish as maquiladoras). None of the Sonapi factories are unionized, and unions have been kept out of most Haitian assembly plants, although the leftist group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”) succeeded in organizing a union in 2004 at the assembly plants in Ouanaminthe at the Dominican border in the Northeast department [see Update #829].

SOTA’s formation was announced on Sept. 15 at a press conference in Port-au-Prince with representatives of Batay Ouvriye. Representatives of Haitian and international organizations also attended, including Camille Charlmers, executive secretary of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), and Víctor Báez Mosqueira, secretary general of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (CSA-TUCA). The union has registered with Haiti’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MAST).

The firings have received some international attention: the General Union of Guadeloupe Workers (UGTG), which led a 44-day general strike in the French Caribbean colony of Guadaloupe in 2008 [see Update #988], denounced the companies’ actions and declared its solidarity with SOTA. Batay Ouvriye has announced plans to file complaints with the Haitian authorities about the situation, and the group is asking solidarity activists to email the factory owners and the Association des Industries d’Haïti (ADIH, a factory owners’ group) demanding the reinstatement of the unionists and full collective bargaining rights for assembly plant workers. The emails can be sent to Mr. Gerard Apaid/Genesis at gapaid33166@yahoo.com; Mr. Charles Henry Baker/One World Apparel at chbaker@pbapparel.com; Mr. Richard Coles/Multiwear at rcoles@multitex.com; and ADIH at administration@adih.ht, with copies to Batay Ouvriye at batay@batayouvriye.org. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 9/16/11, 9/29/11, 9/30/11; Batay Ouvriye press release 9/27/11 via anarkismo.net 9/28/11, press release 10/1/11 via email)

In other labor news, the Association of Elementary School Teachers of Port-au-Prince Municipal Schools (ASIEMP) threatened to start an open-ended strike in the capital on Oct. 4, the day after schools open for the fall, to demand five months’ back pay the union says is owed to a group of 800 teachers. The week before, on Sept. 28, some 30 members and supporters of the National Union of Haitian Teachers (UNNOH) marched in Port-au-Prince to demand that President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) promulgate a law regulating school fees. Parliament passed the law in 2009, but it has never gone into effect. The marchers also demanded reinstatement of laid-off teachers and restoration of a bonus; they expressed doubts that the president really intends to carry out a plan he has announced for free public education. (AlterPresse 9/29/11, ___; Haïti Libre (Haiti) 9/30/11)

*2. Haiti: Martelly Backs Clinton Aide, Army Restoration
The Haitian Senate was scheduled to start discussions on President Michel Martelly’s latest nominee for prime minister, Garry Conille, on Oct. 3. The Chamber of Deputies voted 89-0 on Sept. 16 in favor of the nomination after Parliament rejected Martelly’s two previous choices. The government has been administered by acting prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive, a holdover from the previous administration, ever since Martelly took office in May.

Garry Conille is the resident coordinator for the United Nations Development Program in Niger and has been an assistant to former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), the United Nations’ special envoy for Haiti and the co-president of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC, or CIRH in French and Spanish). The choice of Conille has been controversial because of his long association with Clinton, who was already being referred to in political circles as the de facto “governor of Haiti” [see Update #1096]. According to the Miami Herald, Conille insists “that he’s not the international community’s candidate.” (MH 9/17/11 from correspondent; Haïti Libre (Haiti) 10/1/11)

In another controversial move, Martelly is apparently planning to reinstitute the Armed Forces of Haiti (FAd’H), which was abolished on Jan. 6, 1995 by then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004). A document entitled “Haiti Security: All the Details on the Project for the New National Force,” not yet released officially, describes a plan for an initial force with 3,500 members; recruitment would begin in October or November.

Grassroots movements strongly oppose the plan. Osnel Jean-Baptiste, spokesperson for Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen ("Small Haitian Peasants Unity"), said that if the army returns, it “will only work for one part” of the population and that the wounds from the old military’s acts of repression have not yet healed. Yanick Étienne, a spokesperson for the leftist group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), called the proposed army “one more force against the people. This won’t be an army that will defend the nation’s interests.” (AlterPresse (Haiti) 9/29/11)

*3. Honduras: Police Find Shipment of Arms From US
Honduran police spokesperson Julián Hernández announced on Sept. 30 that agents had discovered an illegal shipment of arms from the US in Puerto Cortés, the country’s main port, in the northern department of Cortés. The arms, hidden in several boxes containing garments, included five rifles, an Uzi submachine gun, a pistol and a supply of ammunition. It was sent via Guatemala from a “Héctor Figueroa” in the US to a “Concepción Duarte,” who reportedly lives in San Francisco de la Paz in eastern Honduras.

The authorities reported discovering another shipment of arms from the US on Sept. 8; this one was sent to a man identified as “Pablo Flores,” who was said to have died in a confrontation with the police in northern Honduras. (EFE 9/30/11 via Terra (Spain))

Northern Honduras, especially the Lower Aguán Valley area, has been the site of violent struggles over land over the past two years and has also seen increased activity by drug smugglers and other criminals [see Updates #1094, 1096]. The government has responded to growing violence by militarizing the region, but local grassroots organizations say that while the military presence has done little to end killings and other criminal activity, it has increased the repression of campesino groups. On Sept. 30, the same day the latest arms discovery was announced, Honduran and international organizations opened a four-day conference in Tocoa, Colón department, entitled “Gathering Against Militarization, Occupation and Repression in Honduras: Militant Solidarity With the Lower Aguán.” (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 9/30/11; Adital (Brazil) 9/30/11)

*4. Trade: US Unions Fight Colombia and Panama FTAs
Richard Trumka, president of the US’s AFL-CIO labor federation, sent a letter to US president Barack Obama on Sept. 26 opposing any immediate action on a proposed free trade agreement (FTA, TLC in Spanish) with Colombia. Obama is expected to send the Colombia-US FTA for approval to Congress in the next few weeks. Trumka, whose federation is the largest union group in the US, said a labor action plan that Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos agreed to in April has proven ineffective. According to the AFL-CIO, Colombian workers are still forced to sign pactos colectivos--salary and benefit agreements imposed by employers--or to join cooperatives that act as company unions. So far this year, 22 unionists have been murdered in Colombia, including 15 since the labor action plan went into effect, Trumka wrote. (AFL-CIO Now blog 9/26/11)

The AFL-CIO has initiated a “call-in day” on Oct. 4 against the Colombia-US FTA and against similar deals with South Korea and Panama. The federation says that the Korea FTA, “is the biggest trade deal since NAFTA” (the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1993) and “would displace an estimated 159,000 net US jobs, mostly in manufacturing.” The AFL-CIO described Panama as a “tax haven for money launderers and tax dodgers” with “a history of failing to protect workers’ rights.” Activists can call US representatives at 800-718-1008 to oppose the agreements. (Alliance for Global Justice 9/28/11)

*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti

Long Live the Students! (Chile)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5516

Photo Essay - A Clash of Classes: Chilean Students Fight for a Better Education System
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3235-photo-essay-a-clash-of-classes-chilean-students-fight-for-a-better-education-system

Chile: police attack Mapuche community after clash at timber camp
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10386

Brazil: Judge Suspends Belo Monte Dam Construction In Amazon
http://latindispatch.com/2011/09/30/brazil-judge-suspends-belo-monte-dam-construction-in-amazon/

Bolivia: interior minister next to resign over Amazon repression
http://ww4report.com/node/10372

Bolivia: defense minister resigns over Amazon repression
http://ww4report.com/node/10360

Bolivia: General Strike Protests Crackdown on Native March
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/3241-bolivia-general-strike-protests-crackdown-on-native-march

Bolivia: Amazon protest march resumes in tense atmosphere
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10385

An Open Letter to Our Friends About the Current Situation in Bolivia
http://democracyctr.org/blog/archives/1636

'We Are All TIPNIS' (Bolivia)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/9/30/we-are-all-tipnis

Peru: government to mediate in dispute over Tacna copper mine
http://ww4report.com/node/10371

Painkillers and Pens Used to Placate Peru’s Indians as Gas Giants Move In
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3232-painkillers-and-pens-used-to-placate-perus-indians-as-gas-giants-move-in

Ecuador: Criminalization of the Social Protest in Times of the ‘Citizen Revolution’
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/3234-ecuador-criminalization-of-the-social-protest-in-times-of-the-citizen-revolution

Latest UNDP Report on Colombia: 'It's the Rural Economy, Stupid.'
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/9/26/latest-undp-report-colombia-its-rural-economy-stupid

U.S. President Obama Nominates Chavez Critic for Top Latin America Post
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6526

Book Review - Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba Are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/cuba-archives-43/3231-book-review-revolutionary-doctors-how-venezuela-and-cuba-are-changing-the-worlds-conception-of-health-care-

Nicaragua: journalist flees country after death threats over "re-contra" reportage
http://www.ww4report.com/node/1038

Drug War Meets Dirty War In Guerrero (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5482

Mexico: severed heads left as grisly message to striking teachers in Acapulco
http://ww4report.com/node/10370

Why Such Extreme Violence? (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5486

Paramilitary Justice (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/9/27/paramilitary-justice-2

Wife Of Mexican Drug Lord “El Chapo” Guzmán Gives Birth In U.S.
http://latindispatch.com/2011/09/27/wife-of-mexican-drug-lord-el-chapo-guzman-gives-birth-in-u-s/

Haiti Urged to Bring Jean-Claude Duvalier to Justice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3236-haiti-urged-to-bring-jean-claude-duvalier-to-justice

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1098: Chilean Students March as President Makes UN Speech

2011-09-27T08:38:00.002-04:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1098, September 25, 2011

1. Chile: Student Strikers March as President Makes UN Speech
2. Colombia: Students Build for National Strike
3. Honduras: Cops Arrest More Aguán Campesinos
4. Central America: Abuse Continues in US-Linked Maquilas
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Amazon region, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Haiti, Puerto Rico

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

1. Chile: Student Strikers March as President Makes UN Speech
Chilean students took to the streets on Sept. 22 to push their demands for free public education and a reversal of the privatization policies started under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Organizers estimated that 180,000 people marched in Santiago, with thousands more protesting in major cities like Concepción, Talca, Temuco and Valparaíso, making the protest one of the larger demonstrations in the nearly four months since secondary and university students began striking at their schools [see Update #1094]. Following a familiar pattern, the march was generally peaceful until a confrontation started between the police and a few hooded youths at the end of the route. About 50 arrests were reported.

“We’ve shut this government up,” Camilo Ballesteros, president of the Federation of Santiago de Chile University Students (FEUSACH), said at the conclusion of the march, near the La Moneda presidential palace. “We’ve got this park filled with students, filled with conviction and happiness.” Analysts had suggested that the movement was ebbing when just 10,000 people came out for a march a week earlier. Andrés Chadwick, spokesperson for rightwing president Sebastián Piñera, responded to the massive turnout on Sept. 22 by saying “a bigger or smaller march isn’t going to change the basic concern of the government” to resolve the issues through dialogue.

President Piñera himself was in New York on Sept. 22 to address the United Nations General Assembly. His government was ready for “the greatest reform, and it has promised the greatest economic, human, professional and technical resources for advancing towards a true revolution in our educational system,” he told the delegates, promising coverage for vulnerable sectors of the population and free schooling for those who need it. (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/23/11 from correspondent)

Three students from the Darío Salas High School in Santiago were hospitalized on Sept. 23 due to the effects of a two-month hunger strike in support of the movement's demands. Cristián Silva, a spokesperson for the strikers, said their health was in a delicate state but they were ready to resume the fast once their condition was stabilized. Eight students remain on hunger strike at High School A-131 in the city of Buin, in Maipo province, part of Greater Santiago. There have been hunger strikes at about 30 schools in the Santiago area. (TeleSUR 9/24/11, with information from EFE, Europa Press, InfoBAE)

2. Colombia: Students Build for National Strike
An operation by the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD) of Colombia’s National Police in Pamplona University in the northern department of Norte de Santander on Sept. 20 set off a confrontation between police and students that left four students and two police agents injured; two students were arrested. The students had started blocking the school’s main entrances on Sept. 16 to protest high tuition costs, to demand improvements in the school’s program and infrastructure, and to oppose a national education “reform” bill. The riot police reportedly used tear gas in an effort to remove the protesters, who responded with rocks and sticks.

A number of Colombian organizations denounced the police incursion. “We vehemently reject the repression of the students, the entry of the ESMAD on campuses and the criminalization of student protest, the militarization of university campuses and all repressive action against the student body,” the Iván David Ortiz Human Rights Monitoring Center wrote in response to the police operation.

Two days later, on Sept. 22, 100 or more students, some of them hooded, confronted ESMAD agents at the District University in the center of Bogotá. The police used stun grenades, water cannons and tear gas, while the protesters threw rocks and homemade grenades. Ten protesters were arrested, according to Gen. Francisco Patiño, commander of the Bogotá Metropolitan Police. Three of those arrested were minors and were turned over to their parents, but the others could face up to two years in prison, Patiño said.

Colombian students and teachers have been organizing against changes that President Juan Manuel Santos has proposed for Law 30, which has been in effect since 1992; the protesters say the new version of the law would lead to privatization of the education system. Thousands participated in a protest against Santos’ proposals on Sept. 7 [see World World 4 Report 9/8/11], and the Federation of University Students (FEU) has called for a national “consultation” on Oct. 5-6. This would be followed by a national strike on Oct. 12 on the model of the protests that have paralyzed Chilean schools for nearly four months. (Adital (Brazil) 9/20/11; Prensa Latina 9/20/11, 9/24/11; Terra (Colombia) 9/22/11)

According to an opinion poll carried out by the Datexco firm and published by the Colombian daily El Tiempo on Sept. 23, 67.1% of Colombians support the call for a strike on Oct. 12, 30.9% oppose it, and 2.0% don’t know about it. The pollsters surveyed 700 people in 13 cities. (Notimex 9/23/11 via SDPnoticias.com (Mexico))

3. Honduras: Cops Arrest More Aguán Campesinos
According to human rights organizations in Honduras, between 200 and 600 soldiers and police agents raided the campesino community of Rigores in the northern department of Colón on the afternoon of Sept. 19. Residents reported that security forces broke into homes, destroying utensils and hitting both adults and children. There was also a report of homes being set on fire. Two minors were arrested: 15-year-old Darwin Leonel Cartagena and 16-year-old Santos Bernabé Cruz Aldana, the son of local campesino leader Rodolfo Cruz. As of Sept. 20 the community had still not learned where the youths were.

This was the second raid on the Rigores community in three days. On Sept. 16 soldiers and police arrested 21 people [not 40, as we reported in Update #1097, following our sources]. The detained campesinos, who were released later, said the police treated them cruelly during their captivity, threatening to kill women and children if they returned to their homes and to murder human rights activists who supported the campesinos. The Rigores community is one of a number of communities and organizations that have been struggling for years in the Lower Aguán Valley for land currently held by large landowners; as many as 51 campesinos have died in the conflicts in the region over the past two years. (Red Morazánica de Información 9/20/11 via Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (Honduras); Adital (Brazil) 9/20/11)

The attacks on Rigores appeared to be in retaliation for the deaths of a soldier and a police agent near there on Sept. 16 in what the authorities said was an ambush of a patrol vehicle by guerrilla forces. Campesinos denied from the beginning that there was an ambush and suggested that a drunken soldier accidentally detonated a grenade inside the vehicle. Vitalino Alvarez, a spokesperson for the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), told Honduran media that the road is straight where rebels allegedly ambushed the patrol vehicle and that there aren’t enough trees and bushes there to provide cover for attackers. Alvarez says he went to the hospital right after the attack and saw injuries that were consistent with a grenade explosion, not an assault with rifles. (Honduras Culture and Politics blog 9/20/11)

4. Central America: Abuse Continues in US-Linked Maquilas
Managers at two factories in northern Honduras owned by the US clothing firm Delta Apparel, Inc. are continuing to threaten women employees suffering from work-related injuries, according to a Sept. 22 statement by the Honduran Women’s Collective (CODEMUH). The group, which reported labor abuses at the plants in July [see Update #1090], said injured workers had applied to the Labor and Social Security Secretariat (STSS) to have the company reassign them to other work. Management has responded by saying there are no other jobs available and these employees aren’t competent at the work, CODEMUH reported. The two plants are Delta Apparel Honduras and Delta Apparel Cortés, maquiladoras (tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export) in Cortés department. (Adital (Brazil) 9/23/11)

Students in the US are now campaigning against university contracts with Silver Star Merchandising, a Dallas Cowboys affiliate, because of reports of labor abuse at two apparel maquiladoras that the firm has used in El Salvador and one in Indonesia. The US group United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) reported harassment of union supporters at both Salvadoran plants; there were also reports of contaminated drinking water and illegal compulsory overtime at one of these factories. The University of Southern California has already signed a contract with Silver Star for producing college-logo apparel, and Ohio State University is considering a similar contract. News reports didn’t identify the two Salvadoran factories. (New York Times 9/24/11)

In July 2010 a campaign by USAS at several universities forced the US sportswear giant Nike, Inc to pay $1.54 million to some 1,600 workers laid off by two Nike subcontractors in Honduras [see Update #1042].

*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Amazon region, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Haiti, Puerto Rico

Latin America's left at the crossroads
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3228-latin-americas-left-at-the-crossroads

Pan-Amazonian indigenous groups issue action plan at Manaus summit
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10352

Bolivia's ex-drug czar sentenced in US following DEA set-up
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10353

Bolivia’s TIPNIS Conflict Moves Beyond Regional Borders
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/9/23/bolivia%E2%80%99s-tipnis-conflict-moves-beyond-regional-borders

Bolivia: indigenous protesters break blockade —take foreign minister hostage?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10356

Peru: 25 injured as peasants block access to copper mine
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10354

Showdown in Peru: Indigenous Communities Kick Out Canadian Mining Company
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/3229-showdown-in-peru-indigenous-communities-kick-out-canadian-mining-company-

Federal appeals court allows damages against Chevron for Ecuador oil spill
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10343

US-Colombia FTA will be ratified this month: Santos .
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/19182-us-colombia-fta-will-be-ratified-by-the-end-of-the-month-santos.html

Measuring the Poor in Colombia or a Poor Measurement?
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/9/19/measuring-poor-colombia-or-poor-measurement

Chávez Helped Mediate Release Of American Hikers From Iran
http://latindispatch.com/2011/09/23/chavez-helped-mediate-release-of-american-hikers-from-iran/

US tilting to Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico's narco wars?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10344

Fathers, Mothers and Lost Children Travel Together on the Caravan for Peace
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5392

Mexico: Peace Movement Meets Zapatistas
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3225-mexico-peace-movement-meets-zapatistas

Mexico: Former President Zedillo Sued For 1997 Acteal Massacre
http://latindispatch.com/2011/09/20/mexico-former-president-zedillo-sued-for-1997-acteal-massacre/

Nonviolence Grows in Mexico
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/9/20/nonviolence-grows-mexico

Mexican Constitution Now Recognizes Right to Food
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5432

Electrical Workers End Sit-in, Claim Victory
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=192#1342

Teachers Strike, March for Safety in the Workplace (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=192#1346

More GM crops in Puerto Rico: Why We Should Worry
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3226-more-gm-crops-in-puerto-rico-why-we-should-worry

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/

WNU #1097: Have Mexican Electrical Workers Won Their Two-Year Struggle?

2011-09-19T23:40:00.001-04:00

Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1097, September 18, 2011

1. Mexico: Have Electrical Workers Won Their Two-Year Struggle?
2. Honduras: Campesinos Arrested as Aguán Violence Continues
3. Argentina: Ex-President Walks in Arms Smuggling Case
4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Andes region, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Mexico: Have Electrical Workers Won Their Two-Year Struggle?
Leaders of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) reached an agreement with Mexico’s federal government on Sept. 13 that ended a sit-in the unionists had been holding in Mexico City’s main plaza, the Zócalo, since March. In exchange for stopping the protest, the union received a pledge that the authorities would negotiate a way for some 16,720 laid-off members to return to work. The government also agreed to free up union funds worth 21 million pesos (about $1.6 million) that it had frozen and to review the cases of SME members arrested in the two years of struggle between the authorities and the unionists.

The SME members packed up their tents and belongings and vacated the plaza in time for maintenance crews to begin preparing for Mexican Independence Day celebrations, which are traditionally held there on Sept. 15 and 16. Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, the head of the government of the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), thanked the union for “freeing” the Zócalo. Union leaders said Ebrard, who is seeking the nomination of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) for the 2012 presidential election, was key to the negotiations.

The face-off between the government and the SME, one of the country’s largest independent unions, began the night of Oct. 10, 2009, when Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa abruptly liquidated the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) and terminated some 44,000 employees [see Update #1007]. About 27,280 workers accepted the government’s severance package, but the others followed the union leadership’s strategy, which combined negotiations with militant protests, including a 90-day hunger strike last year and joint actions with other unions [see Updates #1041, 1066]. SME general secretary Martín Esparza Flores and his slate easily won reelection in a vote last June by the remaining active union members and the retirees. Meanwhile, residents of the central area of Mexico that had been served by the LFC complained about frequent blackouts and high electricity bills after the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) took on LFC’s customers.

The respected labor law expert Néstor de Buen wrote on Sept. 18 that Esparza had had a “notable success” in winning the Sept. 13 agreement with the government. Esparza himself was more cautious. The government has agreed to hold weekly meetings to resolve the employment issue by Nov. 30, but it has yet to start rehiring the laid-off workers. At the Zócalo on Sept. 13 Esparza told union members that the accord was part of the struggle, but that pressure from the workers was still necessary. He said the SME leaders didn’t have confidence in the government; instead, they trusted the members’ capacity for mobilizing. (La Jornada (Mexico) 9/14/11, 9/18/11; Mexican Labor News & Analysis, August 2011)

*2. Honduras: Campesinos Arrested as Aguán Violence Continues
Honduran authorities say armed rebels killed a police agent and a soldier in a military-police patrol the afternoon of Sept. 16 in the Lower Aguán Valley, the site of numerous violent struggles over land over the past two years [see Updates #1094, 1096]. According to Gen. René Osorio Canales, head of the Armed Forces Joint General Staff, the soldiers and police agents were in two vehicles carrying out a routine patrol at the La Consentida estate, in Sonaguera municipality in the northern department of Colón, when they were ambushed by “people with high-caliber weapons, people who have dedicated themselves to guerrilla activities.”

Police agent Antony Costly was killed at the scene, and Mariano García Bernal, a soldier, died later at a hospital. A police agent and two soldiers were wounded. The patrols were part of the Xatruch II deployment that President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa ordered into the area on Aug. 15 in what the government said was a response to the violence there. (AFP 9/17/11 via Univisión TV; Proceso Digital (Honduras) 9/17/11; El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 9/18/11)

Campesinos from the area gave activists and human right workers a different account. They said there was an ongoing dispute over ownership of the La Consentida estate, which is held by a producer for Standard Fruit. Campesinos had occupied it but were removed earlier in this month. They returned on Sept. 16, and private guards at the estate called in the police and military. According to the campesinos, the two deaths resulted from a grenade exploding inside one of the vehicles—a grenade the agents and soldiers may have been planning to throw out the window at the campesinos. After the explosion, the patrols arrested some 40 campesinos from the nearby Rigores community, and apparently took them to a police station in Tocoa municipality.

As of Sept. 17 human rights groups were asking for calls and faxes, in Spanish, to the Tocoa police station (+504 2444-3101, +504 2444-3105, fax +504 2444-3105). Adrienne Pine, a professor at American University in Washington, DC, called on the night of Sept. 16 and asked a woman who answered the phone how the campesinos from Rigores were being treated. “Like dogs,” the woman answered. "Are they being tortured?” Pine asked. The woman laughed and said: “If only that were true.” (Quotha blog 9/17/11, ___)

*3. Argentina: Ex-President Walks in Arms Smuggling Case
By a vote of two to one, on Sept. 13 a three-judge panel in Buenos Aires declared former Argentine president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) innocent of involvement in the government's clandestine sales of arms to Ecuador and Croatia from 1991 to 1995. The judges also acquitted former defense minister Oscar Camilión, former air force head Brig. Gen. Juan Paulik, Menem’s former brother-in-law Emir Yoma, and 14 other defendants. Prosecutor Mariano Borinsky, who had asked for an eight-year prison term for Menem, said his office would appeal the decision, although he himself is leaving his post to accept a judgeship.

Menem is the first former Argentine president ever to be tried on corruption charges. He was a close US ally during his time in office, and he vigorously pushed a neoliberal economic agenda of privatization and austerity. Two years after he left office, the economy collapsed and Argentina was unable to meet its debt obligations, resulting in what at the time was the largest default in history.

Using three secret decrees signed by Menem and his ministers, the Argentine military sold weapons to Croatia and Ecuador under the pretense that the weapons were going to Panama and Venezuela. Sales of weapons to Croatia and Ecuador were banned at the time by international agreements. Croatia was covered by an embargo of weapons for the warring former Yugoslav republics; Argentina was on the committee that was supposed to enforce the ban, and it supplied 800 United Nations peacekeepers to the region. At the same time, the Argentine government was secretly selling Croatia 6,500 tons of heavy cannons, antitank missiles and other weapons.

As a signatory of the Rio Protocol of 1942, Argentina was committed to guaranteeing a peaceful resolution to any border conflicts between Peru and Ecuador, but when a brief war broke out between the two countries over borders in 1995, Argentina secretly sold Ecuador 8,000 FAL combat rifles and 75 tons of munitions.

The Argentine daily Clarín wrote that the Sept. 13 acquittal “seemed to surprise even the defendants.” The paper, which is critical of the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, also noted that until recently Menem, now a senator from La Rioja province, was in a faction of the Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) that strongly opposes the PJ faction that Fernández heads. Now Menem is running for reelection to his Senate seat as an ally of the Fernández faction. The elections will take place on Oct. 23, and the court plans to wait until after the vote to release its written decision in the arms smuggling case; this will show its reasoning for acquitting the defendants. (Clarín 9/14/11, 9/15/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 9/14/11 from correspondent)

The trial, which began in October 2008 [see Update #978], has been hampered by the loss of evidence and potential witnesses. In late 1995 nine workers died in an explosion at a military arsenal involved in the case; the explosion apparently destroyed key evidence. Two potential witnesses died in a helicopter crash, and two more died from unexpected heart attacks. Another possible witness, retired navy captain Horacio Pedro Estrada, died of a gunshot wound in his Buenos Aires apartment in August 1998 in what the authorities ruled was a suicide. According to press accounts at the time, Estrada, who was right-handed, was shot in the left side of his head, and his hands showed no traces of gunpowder [see Update #449].

*4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Andes region, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti

Streets of Latin America Offer US a Roadmap for Social Change
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3213-streets-of-latin-america-offer-us-a-roadmap-for-social-change

WikiLeaks cables reveal US fear of indigenous movements in Andes
http://ww4report.com/node/10320

Bolivia’s 9/11: The Pando Massacre and the TIPNIS Conflict
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/9/18/bolivia%E2%80%99s-911-pando-massacre-and-tipnis-conflict

Indigenous peoples "bribed" in Peru's Amazon oil zones, Survival International charges
http://ww4report.com/node/10323

Strikes halt operations at Freeport McMoRan mines in Peru, Indonesia
http://ww4report.com/node/10322

Colombia: former intelligence chief gets 25 years for paramilitary collaboration
http://ww4report.com/node/10318

Colombia: Uribe's Former Intelligence Chief Sent to Prison
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3223-colombia-uribes-former-intelligence-chief-sent-to-prison

Colombian Human Rights Defenders Targeted for Prosecution: The Case of Principe Gabriel Gonzalez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3221-colombian-human-rights-defenders-targeted-for-prosecution-the-case-of-principe-gabriel-gonzalez

Colombia: protests shut down oil production
http://ww4report.com/node/10319

Buenaventura, Colombia: Where Free Trade Meets Mass Graves
https://nacla.org/news/2011/9/16/buenaventura-colombia-where-free-trade-meets-mass-graves

Venezuelan President Signs Major Deal with Chinese Development Bank
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6492

Venezuela: Chávez criticizes OAS human rights court ruling
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10336

White House censures Venezuelan officials for "narco-terrorist" ties
http://ww4report.com/node/10333

White House expands drug watch list to include all Central America
http://ww4report.com/node/10332

Colombia's police train Salvadoran law enforcement at US-funded installation
http://ww4report.com/node/10330

El Salvador recognizes Palestine, deploys soldiers to Afghanistan
http://ww4report.com/node/10331

Biofuel (the New Banana) Republic (Honduras)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/9/15/biofuel-new-banana-republic

New Film Tracks Struggle for Justice After Guatemalan Genocide (Video)
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/15/granito_how_to_nail_a_dictator

The War Over Land in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3219-the-war-over-land-in-guatemala

Pérez Molina Leads Guatemala Election But Faces November Run-Off
http://latindispatch.com/2011/09/12/perez-molina-leads-guatemala-election-but-faces-november-run-off/

Guatemala and Mexico
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/9/13/guatemala-and-mexico

On the Mexico-Guatemala Border, Migrants Demand End to the Violence
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5339

Mexico: cartels threaten bloggers
http://ww4report.com/node/10328

Mexico Drug War Attacks Social Media Users; Bodies Hung From Nuevo Laredo Bridge
http://latindispatch.com/2011/09/14/mexico-drug-war-attacks-social-media-users-bodies-hung-from-nuevo-laredo-bridge/

Guerrero Protesters Demand Education, Not War (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5329

Mexico: Indigenous Communities Defend Themselves Without the Government's “Permission”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3214-mexico-indigenous-communities-defend-themselves-without-the-governments-permission

Mexico: Peace Caravan "Has Made Us Feel Stronger"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3222-mexico-peace-caravan-qhas-made-us-feel-strongerq

Newly Wikileaked Cables Provide Context to Anti-MINUSTAH Backlash in the Wake of Scandals
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/newly-wikileaked-cables-provide-context-to-anti-minustah-backlash-in-the-wake-of-scandals

For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/

For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/

END

Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Our weekly Immigration News Briefs has ended publication; for news, information and announcements in support of action for immigrant rights in the United States, subscribe to Immigrant Action at:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/immigrantaction
You can also visit the Immigrant Action blog at:
http://immigrantaction.blogspot.com/

Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/