Issue #1229, August 3, 2014
1. Latin America: 3 More Nations Recall Israel Envoys
2. Argentina: US Hedge Funds Force Bond Default
3. Mexico: Maya Campesinos Beat Monsanto in Court
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/policy, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: 3 More Nations Recall Israel Envoys
A total of five Latin American governments had recalled their ambassadors to Israel as of July 29 in an escalation of diplomatic protests against an operation the Israeli military had been carrying out in the Palestinian territory of Gaza since July 8 [see Update #1228]. With the Palestinian death toll passing 1,500—including more than 300 children--centrist and even rightwing Latin American governments started joining left and center-left government in distancing themselves from the main US ally in the Middle East.
Chile, El Salvador and Peru called their ambassadors home for consultations on July 29; Ecuador had already recalled its ambassador on July 17, followed by Brazil on July 24. While it condemned the firing of rockets into Israel by the Gaza-based Hamas organization, the center-left government of Chilean president Michelle Bachelet denounced Israeli attacks on the Palestinians as “collective punishment,” saying they “violate the principle of proportionality in the use of force, an indispensable requirement for the justification of legitimate defense.” El Salvador’s center-left government said it was responding to “the serious escalation in violence and the realization of indiscriminate bombing from Israel into the Gaza Strip,” while the centrist Peruvian government charged that Israel’s actions “constitute a new and reiterated violation of the basic norms of international humanitarian law.”
Also on July 29, four of the five members of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur)--Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela—issued a joint statement during a summit held in Caracas saying they “energetically condemn the disproportionate use of force by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, which in the majority affects civilians, including children and women.” Argentina and Uruguay didn’t recall their ambassadors, but the left-leaning government of Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner issued a statement expressing concern over the safety of an Argentine priest working in Gaza and that of 30 disabled children, nine elderly people and six nuns in his care. Venezuela broke off relations with Israel over a similar Israeli operation in Gaza in 2009; it is planning to send humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory now.
On July 30 the rightwing government of Paraguay, the one Mercosur member that didn’t join in the statement, called for “an immediate end to aggression and hostilities” in the Gaza Strip. The center-right government of Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos also seemed to be moving away from support of Israel. In a July 10 press release Colombia had condemned “acts of violence and terrorism against Israel,” without mentioning Israeli operations, but a July 22 statement from the Foreign Ministry said Colombia “rejects the military offensive by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip” and expresses condolences for “victims of Israel’s retaliatory actions.”
The harshest condemnation of Israel’s actions came from center-left Bolivian president Evo Morales, who on July 30 described Israel as a “terrorist state.” He announced that his government was cancelling an agreement that had been in effect since 1972 allowing Israelis to visit without a visa requirement. Bolivia has had limited diplomatic ties with Israel since 2009, when Morales’ government restricted relations to protest the Gaza operation then.
With the strong statements from its governments, Latin America “has set itself apart from other regional blocs,” according to Michael Shifter, the president of the centrist Washington, DC-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue. The “emerging consensus condemning Israel for its military actions in Gaza is not surprising,” he said, given that 11 Latin American governments had recognized Palestine as a state by 2011 [see Update #1153]. Farid Kahhat, a political scientist and Middle East expert with the Catholic University of Peru, noted that now “[i]t isn’t only the nations with left-leaning governments that have recalled their ambassadors… This transcends ideologies.”
The Israeli government continued to react angrily to the protests from Latin America. “Israel expresses its deep disappointment with the hasty decision of the governments of El Salvador, Peru and Chile to recall their ambassadors for consultations,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor said on July 30. “This step constitutes encouragement for Hamas, a group recognized as a terror organization by many countries around the world.” The statement was more moderate than Palmor’s dismissal of Brazil a week earlier as a “diplomatic dwarf,” a remark that led the Brazilian Jewish Confederation (CONIB), an umbrella body of Brazilian Jewish groups, to apologize to the government of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff on July 24. CONIB itself had charged that Rousseff’s administration had “a one-sided attitude to the conflict in Gaza in which the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticizes Israel and ignores the actions of the terrorist group Hamas,” but CONIB president Claudio Lottenberg called Palmor’s comments, which included a sneer at the Brazilian soccer team, “very unfortunate.” “Brazil has the right to express its point of view,” Lottenberg said. (Haaretz (Israel) 7/24/14 from Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 7/30/14 from staff; Wall Street Journal 7/30/14; Latin American Herald Tribune 7/30/14 from EFE; The Americas Blog 7/31/14)
*2. Argentina: US Hedge Funds Force Bond Default
The US financial services company Standard & Poor’s Ratings (S&P) declared Argentina in default the afternoon of July 30 after last-minute negotiations failed to produce an agreement between the country and a group of creditors who insisted that they be paid in full for the $1.5 billion in Argentine bonds they own. This was Argentina’s second default since an economic collapse in December 2001 brought on by a decade of extreme neoliberal austerity and privatization measures [see Update #621]. Opinions were divided on how the new default would affect the country, which was already entering a recession. “The ordinary Argentine citizen will be the real and ultimate victim,” Daniel Pollack, the mediator appointed by a US federal court in New York, said in a statement. But Argentine Economy Minister Axel Kicillof was defiant. “We aren't going to sign any agreement that would jeopardize the future of Argentines,” he said at a news conference after the negotiations ended on July 30.
The holdout creditors were led by US billionaire Paul Singer; two of his companies, Elliott Management and a subsidiary, NML Capital; and Aurelius Capital Management. NML and Aurelius are hedge funds of the type known as “vulture funds” for their practice of investing in weak debt that the debtors are likely to default on. These hedge funds bought up cheap Argentine bonds after the 2001 collapse. From 2005 to 2010 Argentina’s government negotiated settlements with the other bondholders, who agreed to accept exchange bonds at a 70% discount for the debt they were holding; this is a fairly standard arrangement for defaults by countries, like bankruptcy proceedings for a company or an individual. But Singer and his associates held out for full payment and took the case to a US federal court. In 2012 New York District judge Thomas Griesa ruled in Singer’s favor. He held that when Argentina paid the discounted exchange bonds, it also had to pay the holdouts in full. Argentina tried make a payment to the holders of the exchange bonds this June, placing $539 million in the Bank of New York Mellon, but the bank couldn’t pay out the money: Judge Griesa had ruled that any financial firm that distributed payments to the bondholders would be in contempt of court. Argentina turned to the US Supreme Court, but the justices rejected the appeal.
Estanislao Malic, an economist at the Scalabrini Ortiz Center for Economic and Social Studies in Buenos Aires, told the New York Times that the “default is not a drastic change.” “Argentina has been living in a default reality for over 10 years” since the earlier default, he explained. But there are implications for the global financial system, where exchange bonds have been a mechanism for resolving financial crises in the absence of any international bankruptcy procedures. “The danger here is all too easy to see,” British journalist Larry Elliott wrote on July 31. “The legacy of the financial crisis of 2007-08 is that many countries find themselves saddled with big budget deficits. In the event of another financial crisis, something that seems all too likely, there would be a wave of sovereign debt defaults.” The administration of US president Barack Obama appeared to agree on the seriousness of the threat: the US attorney general in New York, Preet Bharara, filed a brief in an appeals court in 2012 supporting Argentina against Judge Griesa.
Joseph Stiglitz, a former World Bank chief economist and now a Columbia University professor, called the US courts’ decisions in the case “America throwing a bomb into the global economic system.” “We don't know how big the explosion will be--and it’s not just about Argentina,” he said. (New York Times 7/30/14; McClatchy DC 7/31/14; BBC News 7/31/14; The Guardian (UK) 7/31/14)
*3. Mexico: Maya Campesinos Beat Monsanto in Court
A district court judge in the eastern Mexican state of Yucatán ruled in July against a license that the federal Agriculture Secretariat (Sagarpa) had granted the Missouri-based multinational Monsanto Company in 2012 for sowing 253,500 hectares with genetically modified (GM) soy in Yucatán and six other states. A group of campesinos from the Maya indigenous group filed a suit charging that the license endangered the traditional production of organic honey in a region including the Yucatán communities of Ticul, Santa Elena, Oxkutzcab, Tzucacab, Tekax, Peto and Tizimin. The judge’s ruling was “a great achievement because there is recognition of our legitimate right to make decisions about our territory and our livelihood,” Maya farmer Lorenzo Itzá Ek said. “[B]eekeeping is the main traditional economic activity we carry out, and we don’t want our honey contaminated with transgenics or with toxic products like agrochemicals that kill our bees.”
This was the third defeat for GM soy in eastern Mexico this year. In March and April a court in Campeche ruled in favor of two suits brought by Maya beekeepers from the Hopelchén and Pac-Chen communities in Campeche’s Cancabchen municipality. The decisions on GM soy follow a ruling in October 2013 by a federal judge that restrained Sagarpa and the Environment Secretariat (Semarnat) from granting further licenses for planting GM corn in Mexico [see Update #1195]. But Ximena Ramos, an adviser for the Litiga OLE legal assistance group, said the July ruling in Yucatán was especially important because the judge ordered a public consultation with the affected indigenous communities before any resolution could be made about the sowing of GM soy. This enforces “the multicultural principle in the Constitution, along with the human rights implied in the right to prior consultation with the Maya,” she said. (Terra Mexico 7/22/14; El Ciudadano (Chile) 7/30/14)
In related news, Brazilian farmers are calling on four multinational seed manufacturers to reimburse them for pesticide they used on GM corn they planted this year. According to Ricardo Tomczyk, president of the Aprosoja farm lobbying group in the southern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, the Spodoptera frugiperda (also known as the “corn leafworm” or “southern grassworm”) has developed a resistance to the poisonous protein in the type of GM corn known as “Bt corn.” The result is that farmers had to spend an average of 120 reais (about US$54) per hectare on pesticide to protect their crop, he said. The seed’s manufacturers are the US-based companies Monsanto, Dow Chemical Co and DuPont, and Syngenta AG, which is based in Switzerland. (Reuters 7/28/14)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/policy, US/immigration
Update on Latin American Responses to Israel's Siege on Gaza
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/update-on-latin-american-responses-to-israels-siege-on-gaza
What the NML vs Argentina case means for the world
http://alainet.org/active/75763
The World Cup Has Come and Gone and Brazil Didn’t Crash and Burn
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/the-world-cup-has-come-and-gone-and-brazil-didnt-crash-and-burn
Gunmen threaten to assassinate Yanomami leader (Brazil)
http://ww4report.com/node/13417
Medellín kingpin busted in Spain (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/13007#comment-452289
Obama Throws Another Bone to the Right on Venezuela
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/obama-throws-another-bone-to-the-right-on-venezuela
Inside Venezuela's "Proceso"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4971-inside-venezuelas-qprocesoq
Venezuela to Send Aid to Gaza, Welcome Refugees, as Regional Leaders Condemn Assault
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10820
US Policies Exacerbate Migration Crisis in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4962-us-policies-exacerbate-migration-crisis-in-guatemala
Guatemalan Court Rules in Favor of Indigenous People Over Goldcorp Mining in Sipacapa
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4963-guatemalan-court-rules-in-favor-of-indigenous-people-over-goldcorp-mining-in-sipacapa
Laws That Kill Protesters in Mexico
http://truth-out.org/news/item/25339-laws-that-kill-protesters-in-mexico
Defending Communication Rights: “We will not remain silent” (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12696
Understanding and Countering Corruption and Migrant Abuse by Mexico’s National Migration Institute
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4964-understanding-and-countering-corruption-and-migrant-abuse-by-mexicos-national-migration-institute
Reconstruction or Haiti's Latest Disaster? Tourism Development on Île-à-Vache Island
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beverly-bell/reconstruction-or-haitis_b_5606282.html
US Congress Passes Aid Accountability Legislation as Local Procurement Falls in Haiti
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/us-congress-passes-aid-accountability-legislation-as-local-procurement-falls-in-haiti
Police Should Not Be Managing the Drug Problem. Doctors Should Be. (US/policy)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/29/police-should-not-be-managing-drug-problem-doctors-should-be
We Reap What We Sow: The Link between Child Migrants and US Policy (US/immigration)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4965-we-reap-what-we-sow-the-link-between-child-migrants-and-us-policy
The Central American Child Refugee Crisis: Made in U.S.A. (US/immigration)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4966-the-central-american-child-refugee-crisis-made-in-usa
New Senate Bill Fails To Address Root Causes of Central American Migration (US/immigration)
therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12147
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Showing posts with label Bolivia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bolivia. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
WNU #1228: Latin Americans Protest Attack on Gaza
Issue #1228, July 27, 2014
1. Latin America: Gaza Attack Draws Strong Protests
2. Central America: Leaders Hold Summit on Child Migration
3. US: Police Try to Block Annual SOA Vigil
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: Gaza Attack Draws Strong Protests
An Israeli military offensive on the Palestinian territory of Gaza starting on July 8 has brought widespread condemnation from governments and activists in Latin America. The response to the current military action, which is codenamed “Operation Protective Edge,” follows a pattern set during a similar December 2008-January 2009 Israeli offensive in Gaza, “Operation Cast Lead,” when leftist groups and people of Arab descent mounted protests and leftist and center-left governments issued statements sharply criticizing the Israeli government [see Update #973].
In Argentina, dozens of people demonstrated on July 25 at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires to demand that the left-leaning government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner break off relations with Israel to repudiate “the brutal and criminal attack against the Palestinian people.” The protest was organized by the Argentine Committee of Solidarity With the Palestinian People and various left parties. While the government hasn’t broken relations with Israel, at a meeting of the United Nations (UN) Security Council Argentine representative Maria Cristina Perceval accused Israel of “indiscriminate abuse of militarism” and “disproportionate use of force.” (Terra Mexico 7/25/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
Some 5,000 Chileans marched to the Israeli embassy in Santiago on July 19 to protest the military operation. Some demonstrators glued pictures of children who have died in the attacks to the walls of the building; the marchers then proceeded to the US embassy to protest US support for the Israeli operation. The day before, on July 18, representatives of the Mapuche indigenous group joined some 200 protesters in Temuco, the capital of the southern region of Araucanía, in a march calling for “an end to the massacre of the Palestinian people.” The protest was organized by the Arab Union for Palestine in Temuco and included Romina Tuma, the regional housing secretary, who charged that the Israelis are committing genocide; President Michelle Bachelet supports the Palestinian people, Tuma added. Bachelet’s center-left government has in fact suspended free trade agreement negotiations with Israel to protest the Israeli operation, and the Foreign Ministry has announced plans for aid for Palestinian victims in Gaza, according to the Santiago Times. Chile has a population of about 300,0000 people of Middle Eastern and Arab ancestry. (AFP 7/21/14 via Times of Israel; Radio Bío Bío (Chile) 7/18/14; Mapu Express 7/18/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
Uruguay also condemned Israel’s military attacks. A government statement said the operation in Gaza “caused dozens of civilian deaths and injuries, including women and children, in a disproportionate response to the launch of rockets against the Israeli territory on the part of armed Palestinian groups.” The Palestinian organization Hamas came in for criticism as well, because of its “repeated [rocket] launchings that put the civilian population in central and southern Israel at risk.” (The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
Late on July 24 Brazil’s center-left government announced its condemnation of the “disproportionate use of force by Israel in the Gaza Strip, from which large numbers of civilian casualties, including women and children, resulted.” Foreign Ministry officials said that they had recalled the Brazilian ambassador to Israel for consultations, and that Brazil had voted in favor of a United Nations Human Rights Council (OHCHR) decision to send a team to investigate accusations of war crimes in the region. Israeli officials appeared to be infuriated by the snub from a country which has bought and leased billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and fighter planes from Israel in the last 15 years. “Such steps do not contribute to promote calm and stability in the region,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor announced on July 25. “Rather, they provide tailwind to terrorism, and naturally affect Brazil’s capacity to wield influence.” He called Brazil “a diplomatic dwarf” and sneered at the Brazilian soccer team for losing a World Cup match to Germany 7-1 on July 8. (News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP; Wall Street Journal online 7/24/14; Haaretz (Israel) 7/25/14; Washington Post 7/25/14)
Bolivian president Evo Morales has petitioned the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to consider opening a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.” Morales’ center-left government restricted diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009 because of the earlier operation against Gaza. (The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
Hundreds of Peruvians, many of them of Palestinian descent, protested at the Israeli embassy in Lima on July 25, calling for their own government to recall its ambassador to Israel. “Countries that don’t withdraw their ambassadors are becoming somewhat complicit in this massacre,” one of the protesters told the Canal N television channel. A week earlier, the government had expressed its great concern about the violence, condemning both the Israeli attack and the launching of rockets against Israel by Hamas. (Terra 7/25/14 from EFE)
Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patiño announced on July 17 that the center-left government of President Rafael Correa was recalling its ambassador to Israel for consultations “because of violence unleashed and deaths produced in the Gaza Strip.” “We condemn the Israeli military incursion in Palestinian territory; we demand an end to operations and indiscriminate attacks on a civilian population,” Patiño said. (El Universo (Quito) 7/17/14 from AFP) In related news, a July 12-16 meeting in Quito of the Women’s Collective of the South American section of the international small-scale farmers’ organization Vía Campesina denounced the Israeli operation as a “genocidal invasion” and demanded “respect for the principle of sovereignty and the right of Palestinian campesinas and campesinos to live, produce and remain in their land and territory.” The collective accused Israel of “colonial practices.” (Vía Campesina 7/22/14)
In Venezuela hundreds of protesters, including legislative deputies, demonstrated in Caracas on July 14 against the Israeli operation. The leftist government of then-president Hugo Chávez Frías broke off ties with Israel in 2009 to protest Operation Cast Lead. The government of current president Nicolás Maduro released a statement on July 19 charging that the latest attacks “initiated a higher phase of [Israel’s] policy of genocide and extermination with the ground invasion of Palestinian territory, killing innocent men, women, girls and boys.” The government “also rejects the cynical campaigns trying to condemn both parties equally, when it is clear you cannot morally compare occupied and massacred Palestine with the occupying state, Israel, which also possesses military superiority and acts on the margins of international law.” (HispanTV (Iran) 7/14/14; Chicago Tribune 7/19/14 from Reuters)
In Nicaragua hundreds of people marched to the UN office in Managua on July 14 to demand an end to the Israeli offensive, chanting: “No to genocide in Gaza and all of Palestine,” “Solidarity between the peoples” and “Long live free Palestine.” The marchers included the Palestinian ambassador to Nicaragua, Mohamed L. Saadat, who called for a “Palestine free of violence.” Along with Guatemala, Haiti, and Paraguay, Nicaragua hadn’t made an official statement on the conflict as of July 21. (Terra 7/14/14 from EFE; The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
About 50 students and other activists took to the streets in El Salvador on July 14 to protest the Israeli offensive. “Palestine is a free state, stop Israel’s terrorism” and “I’m no friend of Israel” were among the slogans the protesters chanted outside the Israeli embassy. “We want to show our indignation over the suffering of the Palestinian people, and so we demand that Israel end this genocide in the Gaza Strip,” Amalia Pineda, a representative of the Palestine Solidarity Network, told journalists. The center-left government of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén has condemned what it called “Israel’s increased armed aggression against the Gaza Strip,” citing the “loss of human lives, hundreds of injuries and the flight of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, besides serious material damage.” The UN’s legitimate self-defense clause “does not justify the use of disproportionate military force against another state, much less against its civilian population,” the government said. (Noticias 7/14/14; The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
In Mexico, indigenous Mayans who have converted to Islam held their first protest ever in the southeastern state of Chiapas. About 60 of the area’s 600 or 700 Tzotzil Muslims marched in San Cristóbal de las Casas on July 24 to demand that “the genocide end.” “We are few but we can’t be silent before the massacre against the people of Palestine,” Hibrahim Checheb, a representative of the Al-Kauz mosque, told a reporter. The group of Tzotziles, mostly from the nearby municipality of San Juan Chamula, converted about 18 years earlier. (La Jornada 7/24/14) Activists in Mexico City held a protest on July 11 outside the Foreign Relations Secretariat. About 300 people participated in the action, whose sponsors included the Solidarity With Palestine Coordinating Committee (Corsopal). The organizers expelled five members of a group called “Black Eagles” from the protest; they were carrying signs with anti-Semitic slogans. (Milenio (Mexico) 7/11/14)
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry charged Israel with “us[ing] its military and technological superiority to execute a policy of collective punishment with a disproportionate use of force which causes civilian casualties and enormous material damage.” The country’s Communist government broke off diplomatic ties with Israel in 1973 and has provided Palestinian groups with financial and diplomatic support over the years. (The Americas Blog 7/21/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
*2. Central America: Leaders Hold Summit on Child Migration
US president Barack Obama hosted a meeting in Washington, DC, on July 25 with three Central American presidents—Salvador Sánchez Cerén of El Salvador, Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala and Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras--to discuss the recent increase in unauthorized immigration to the US by unaccompanied minors [see Update #1227]. About 57,000 unaccompanied minors, mostly from the three Central American presidents’ countries, were detained at the Mexico-US border from October 2013 through June 2014. President Obama called for joint work to discourage further child migration; the US would do its part by making it clear that the minors would be repatriated unless they could convince US officials they were in danger if they returned, Obama said. The left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada headlined its coverage with the sentence: “The US has great compassion for child migrants; they’ll be deported: Obama.”
The Obama administration had been floating a proposal for setting up an office in Honduras, and possibly in El Salvador and Guatemala, to process youths and families seeking refugee status. But Obama played the idea down after the summit. “There may be some narrow circumstances in which there is humanitarian or refugee status that a family might be eligible for,” he said. “But I think it’s important to recognize that that would not necessarily accommodate a large number of additional migrants.” (La Jornada 7/26/14 from correspondent; Associated Press 7/26/14 via CBS (Washington, DC))
The Central American presidents all emphasized the importance of crime and poverty as forces motivating migration, but rightwing presidents Pérez and Hernández seemed mostly interested in getting more US military aid. The US-funded “drug war” programs in Colombia and Mexico, Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative, “were successful for the US and those two countries in the struggle against narco trafficking, but they gave us a tremendous problem,” Hernández said the day before the summit, referring to the relocation of some drug smuggling activities into Central America. “So we need to have our own plan.” (LJ 7/25/14 from AFP)
While media coverage stressed pressure on Obama from anti-immigrant conservatives, human rights groups and religious organizations were pressing him from the left. More than 40 organizations signed on to an open letter started by the DC-based Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) calling for the US to provide children and families with “all due [legal] protections.” “[M]ore border security will not help,” according to the open letter, which was released on July 24; the US must “face the root causes of violence at the community level.” Adam Isacson, WOLA’s senior associate for regional security policy, dismissed the calls for more military assistance to Central America. “What we’d like to see is a package of assistance to Central America that is focused entirely on the civilian side of what it takes to protect,” Isacson told the Inter Press Service (IPS): “getting police to respect people,” “a much stronger justice system,” and “more emphasis on creating opportunities…combined with Central American presidents’ commitment to raise more taxes from their wealthiest.”
Also on July 24, two organizations, the New York-based Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and the DC-based Detention Watch Network, released a statement deploring conditions at the Artesia Family Detention Facility in New Mexico. After interviewing immigrant families at the detention center, 22 organizations concluded that “[t]he Administration’s intent to deport everyone as quickly as possible for optics is sacrificing critical due process procedures and sending families--mothers, babies, and children--back despite clear concerns for their safety in violation of US and international law.” (IPS 7/25/14 via Upside Down World)
*3. US: Police Try to Block Annual SOA Vigil
The US advocacy group SOA Watch reported on July 22 that the police in Columbus, Georgia, are trying to impose unacceptable restrictions on the annual vigil the group has held there every November since 1990 to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) [see Update #1200]. According to SOA Watch, Columbus police chief Ricky Boren wants to limit the vigil to 200 people on sidewalks outside the US Army’s Fort Benning, where WHINSEC is based. In previous years thousands of people have demonstrated at a gate leading to the base. Boren is also seeking to deny a permit for the group to post its stage and sound system at the usual spot.
“This year, more than any other, we are called to demonstrate our solidarity with the people of Latin America,” Roy Bourgeois, the Catholic priest who founded SOA Watch, said in response to the restrictions. “When our military training continues to target communities, forcing the unaccompanied migration of thousands of refugee children, we must speak out.” Noting that it won in federal courts in 2001 and 2002 against government efforts to restrict the vigils, SOA Watch has started a petition “calling on the Columbus police department to reverse its decision and to uphold the constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.” The petition can be accessed at http://org.salsalabs.com/o/727/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=16129. (SOA Watch press release 7/22/14; National Catholic Reporter 7/22/14)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
The BRICS Bank: part of a new financial architecture (Latin America)
http://alainet.org/active/75589
Land Rights in Latin America: Where are the Voices of Indigenous Women?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4955-land-rights-in-latin-america-where-are-the-voices-of-indigenous-women
Radical Cities – Latin America's revolutionary housing solutions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4949-radical-cities--latin-americas-revolutionary-housing-solutions
How Have Latin America’s Political Leaders Responded to Israel’s Siege on Gaza?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/how-have-latin-americas-political-leaders-responded-to-israels-siege-on-gaza
Challenging Myths About Chapare Coca Paste Production (Bolivia)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/22/challenging-myths-about-chapare-coca-paste-production
Bolivia’s Military and Police Protests: The “Children of Evo” Speak Out
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/7/25/bolivia%E2%80%99s-military-and-police-protests-%E2%80%9Cchildren-evo%E2%80%9D-speak-out
Amazon Oil Spill Has Killed Tons of Fish, Sickened Native People (Peru)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/amazon-oil-spill-killed-tons-fish-sickened-native-people-24886/
Peru Passes a Packet of Neoliberal Reforms, Erodes Environmental Protections and Labor Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/4956-peru-passes-a-packet-of-neoliberal-reforms-erodes-environmental-protections-and-labor-rights
Peru and Colombia: Community self-defense against megaminería
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12676
Is Water Still a Human Right in Ecuador?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4953-is-water-still-a-human-right-in-ecuador
Global Climate Change in Rural Colombia Is About More Than Just the Climate
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/23/global-climate-change-rural-colombia-about-more-just-climate
Chavista Debate More than Pragmatists vs Radicals (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10798
Child Migrants Are Refugees the U.S. Helped Create (Central America)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/21/child-migrants-are-refugees-us-helped-create
U.S. Turns Back on Child Migrants After Its Policies in Guatemala, Honduras Sowed Seeds of Crisis
www.democracynow.org/2014/7/17/us_turns_back_on_child_migrants
U.S., Regional Leaders Convene over Migration Crisis (Central America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4957-us-regional-leaders-convene-over-migration-crisis
Violence, Main Motor of Child Migration in El Salvador
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12671
Hondurans don’t need yet another neoliberal boondoggle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4948-hondurans-dont-need-yet-another-neoliberal-boondoggle
Guatemala: Opposition to Mining, the New Threat to National Security
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4952-guatemala-opposition-to-mining-the-new-threat-to-national-security
The Morena Party Obtains Legal Status, Prepares for 2015 Elections; What Will Morena Mean for Mexico’s Political Future?
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1738
Mexico Arrests Self-defense Force Leader Mireles and Others
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1727
Johnson Controls Workers in Reynosa Demand Their Rights (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1739
Mexican Fracking Foes Lose a Big Round
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexican-fracking-foes-lose-a-big-round/
Forgotten Refugees: Mexico’s Displacement Crisis
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12643
Migrant Shelter Faces Police Abuses on the Border (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/25/migrant-shelter-faces-police-abuses-border
Secretary General in Haiti for Cholera “Photo-op” as Transparency Questions Continue to Dog the UN
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/secretary-general-in-haiti-for-cholera-photo-op-as-transparency-questions-continue-to-dog-the-un
“Assessing Progress in Haiti Act” Passed by Congress
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/assessing-progress-in-haiti-act-passed-by-congress
Blowback on the Border (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12614
Massive Rights Violations Charged at New Mexico Detention Facility (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/massive-rights-violations-charged-at-new-mexico-detention-facility/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Latin America: Gaza Attack Draws Strong Protests
2. Central America: Leaders Hold Summit on Child Migration
3. US: Police Try to Block Annual SOA Vigil
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: Gaza Attack Draws Strong Protests
An Israeli military offensive on the Palestinian territory of Gaza starting on July 8 has brought widespread condemnation from governments and activists in Latin America. The response to the current military action, which is codenamed “Operation Protective Edge,” follows a pattern set during a similar December 2008-January 2009 Israeli offensive in Gaza, “Operation Cast Lead,” when leftist groups and people of Arab descent mounted protests and leftist and center-left governments issued statements sharply criticizing the Israeli government [see Update #973].
In Argentina, dozens of people demonstrated on July 25 at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires to demand that the left-leaning government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner break off relations with Israel to repudiate “the brutal and criminal attack against the Palestinian people.” The protest was organized by the Argentine Committee of Solidarity With the Palestinian People and various left parties. While the government hasn’t broken relations with Israel, at a meeting of the United Nations (UN) Security Council Argentine representative Maria Cristina Perceval accused Israel of “indiscriminate abuse of militarism” and “disproportionate use of force.” (Terra Mexico 7/25/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
Some 5,000 Chileans marched to the Israeli embassy in Santiago on July 19 to protest the military operation. Some demonstrators glued pictures of children who have died in the attacks to the walls of the building; the marchers then proceeded to the US embassy to protest US support for the Israeli operation. The day before, on July 18, representatives of the Mapuche indigenous group joined some 200 protesters in Temuco, the capital of the southern region of Araucanía, in a march calling for “an end to the massacre of the Palestinian people.” The protest was organized by the Arab Union for Palestine in Temuco and included Romina Tuma, the regional housing secretary, who charged that the Israelis are committing genocide; President Michelle Bachelet supports the Palestinian people, Tuma added. Bachelet’s center-left government has in fact suspended free trade agreement negotiations with Israel to protest the Israeli operation, and the Foreign Ministry has announced plans for aid for Palestinian victims in Gaza, according to the Santiago Times. Chile has a population of about 300,0000 people of Middle Eastern and Arab ancestry. (AFP 7/21/14 via Times of Israel; Radio Bío Bío (Chile) 7/18/14; Mapu Express 7/18/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
Uruguay also condemned Israel’s military attacks. A government statement said the operation in Gaza “caused dozens of civilian deaths and injuries, including women and children, in a disproportionate response to the launch of rockets against the Israeli territory on the part of armed Palestinian groups.” The Palestinian organization Hamas came in for criticism as well, because of its “repeated [rocket] launchings that put the civilian population in central and southern Israel at risk.” (The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
Late on July 24 Brazil’s center-left government announced its condemnation of the “disproportionate use of force by Israel in the Gaza Strip, from which large numbers of civilian casualties, including women and children, resulted.” Foreign Ministry officials said that they had recalled the Brazilian ambassador to Israel for consultations, and that Brazil had voted in favor of a United Nations Human Rights Council (OHCHR) decision to send a team to investigate accusations of war crimes in the region. Israeli officials appeared to be infuriated by the snub from a country which has bought and leased billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and fighter planes from Israel in the last 15 years. “Such steps do not contribute to promote calm and stability in the region,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor announced on July 25. “Rather, they provide tailwind to terrorism, and naturally affect Brazil’s capacity to wield influence.” He called Brazil “a diplomatic dwarf” and sneered at the Brazilian soccer team for losing a World Cup match to Germany 7-1 on July 8. (News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP; Wall Street Journal online 7/24/14; Haaretz (Israel) 7/25/14; Washington Post 7/25/14)
Bolivian president Evo Morales has petitioned the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to consider opening a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.” Morales’ center-left government restricted diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009 because of the earlier operation against Gaza. (The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
Hundreds of Peruvians, many of them of Palestinian descent, protested at the Israeli embassy in Lima on July 25, calling for their own government to recall its ambassador to Israel. “Countries that don’t withdraw their ambassadors are becoming somewhat complicit in this massacre,” one of the protesters told the Canal N television channel. A week earlier, the government had expressed its great concern about the violence, condemning both the Israeli attack and the launching of rockets against Israel by Hamas. (Terra 7/25/14 from EFE)
Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patiño announced on July 17 that the center-left government of President Rafael Correa was recalling its ambassador to Israel for consultations “because of violence unleashed and deaths produced in the Gaza Strip.” “We condemn the Israeli military incursion in Palestinian territory; we demand an end to operations and indiscriminate attacks on a civilian population,” Patiño said. (El Universo (Quito) 7/17/14 from AFP) In related news, a July 12-16 meeting in Quito of the Women’s Collective of the South American section of the international small-scale farmers’ organization Vía Campesina denounced the Israeli operation as a “genocidal invasion” and demanded “respect for the principle of sovereignty and the right of Palestinian campesinas and campesinos to live, produce and remain in their land and territory.” The collective accused Israel of “colonial practices.” (Vía Campesina 7/22/14)
In Venezuela hundreds of protesters, including legislative deputies, demonstrated in Caracas on July 14 against the Israeli operation. The leftist government of then-president Hugo Chávez Frías broke off ties with Israel in 2009 to protest Operation Cast Lead. The government of current president Nicolás Maduro released a statement on July 19 charging that the latest attacks “initiated a higher phase of [Israel’s] policy of genocide and extermination with the ground invasion of Palestinian territory, killing innocent men, women, girls and boys.” The government “also rejects the cynical campaigns trying to condemn both parties equally, when it is clear you cannot morally compare occupied and massacred Palestine with the occupying state, Israel, which also possesses military superiority and acts on the margins of international law.” (HispanTV (Iran) 7/14/14; Chicago Tribune 7/19/14 from Reuters)
In Nicaragua hundreds of people marched to the UN office in Managua on July 14 to demand an end to the Israeli offensive, chanting: “No to genocide in Gaza and all of Palestine,” “Solidarity between the peoples” and “Long live free Palestine.” The marchers included the Palestinian ambassador to Nicaragua, Mohamed L. Saadat, who called for a “Palestine free of violence.” Along with Guatemala, Haiti, and Paraguay, Nicaragua hadn’t made an official statement on the conflict as of July 21. (Terra 7/14/14 from EFE; The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
About 50 students and other activists took to the streets in El Salvador on July 14 to protest the Israeli offensive. “Palestine is a free state, stop Israel’s terrorism” and “I’m no friend of Israel” were among the slogans the protesters chanted outside the Israeli embassy. “We want to show our indignation over the suffering of the Palestinian people, and so we demand that Israel end this genocide in the Gaza Strip,” Amalia Pineda, a representative of the Palestine Solidarity Network, told journalists. The center-left government of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén has condemned what it called “Israel’s increased armed aggression against the Gaza Strip,” citing the “loss of human lives, hundreds of injuries and the flight of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, besides serious material damage.” The UN’s legitimate self-defense clause “does not justify the use of disproportionate military force against another state, much less against its civilian population,” the government said. (Noticias 7/14/14; The Americas Blog 7/21/14)
In Mexico, indigenous Mayans who have converted to Islam held their first protest ever in the southeastern state of Chiapas. About 60 of the area’s 600 or 700 Tzotzil Muslims marched in San Cristóbal de las Casas on July 24 to demand that “the genocide end.” “We are few but we can’t be silent before the massacre against the people of Palestine,” Hibrahim Checheb, a representative of the Al-Kauz mosque, told a reporter. The group of Tzotziles, mostly from the nearby municipality of San Juan Chamula, converted about 18 years earlier. (La Jornada 7/24/14) Activists in Mexico City held a protest on July 11 outside the Foreign Relations Secretariat. About 300 people participated in the action, whose sponsors included the Solidarity With Palestine Coordinating Committee (Corsopal). The organizers expelled five members of a group called “Black Eagles” from the protest; they were carrying signs with anti-Semitic slogans. (Milenio (Mexico) 7/11/14)
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry charged Israel with “us[ing] its military and technological superiority to execute a policy of collective punishment with a disproportionate use of force which causes civilian casualties and enormous material damage.” The country’s Communist government broke off diplomatic ties with Israel in 1973 and has provided Palestinian groups with financial and diplomatic support over the years. (The Americas Blog 7/21/14; Fox News Latino 7/23/14, some from AP)
*2. Central America: Leaders Hold Summit on Child Migration
US president Barack Obama hosted a meeting in Washington, DC, on July 25 with three Central American presidents—Salvador Sánchez Cerén of El Salvador, Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala and Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras--to discuss the recent increase in unauthorized immigration to the US by unaccompanied minors [see Update #1227]. About 57,000 unaccompanied minors, mostly from the three Central American presidents’ countries, were detained at the Mexico-US border from October 2013 through June 2014. President Obama called for joint work to discourage further child migration; the US would do its part by making it clear that the minors would be repatriated unless they could convince US officials they were in danger if they returned, Obama said. The left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada headlined its coverage with the sentence: “The US has great compassion for child migrants; they’ll be deported: Obama.”
The Obama administration had been floating a proposal for setting up an office in Honduras, and possibly in El Salvador and Guatemala, to process youths and families seeking refugee status. But Obama played the idea down after the summit. “There may be some narrow circumstances in which there is humanitarian or refugee status that a family might be eligible for,” he said. “But I think it’s important to recognize that that would not necessarily accommodate a large number of additional migrants.” (La Jornada 7/26/14 from correspondent; Associated Press 7/26/14 via CBS (Washington, DC))
The Central American presidents all emphasized the importance of crime and poverty as forces motivating migration, but rightwing presidents Pérez and Hernández seemed mostly interested in getting more US military aid. The US-funded “drug war” programs in Colombia and Mexico, Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative, “were successful for the US and those two countries in the struggle against narco trafficking, but they gave us a tremendous problem,” Hernández said the day before the summit, referring to the relocation of some drug smuggling activities into Central America. “So we need to have our own plan.” (LJ 7/25/14 from AFP)
While media coverage stressed pressure on Obama from anti-immigrant conservatives, human rights groups and religious organizations were pressing him from the left. More than 40 organizations signed on to an open letter started by the DC-based Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) calling for the US to provide children and families with “all due [legal] protections.” “[M]ore border security will not help,” according to the open letter, which was released on July 24; the US must “face the root causes of violence at the community level.” Adam Isacson, WOLA’s senior associate for regional security policy, dismissed the calls for more military assistance to Central America. “What we’d like to see is a package of assistance to Central America that is focused entirely on the civilian side of what it takes to protect,” Isacson told the Inter Press Service (IPS): “getting police to respect people,” “a much stronger justice system,” and “more emphasis on creating opportunities…combined with Central American presidents’ commitment to raise more taxes from their wealthiest.”
Also on July 24, two organizations, the New York-based Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and the DC-based Detention Watch Network, released a statement deploring conditions at the Artesia Family Detention Facility in New Mexico. After interviewing immigrant families at the detention center, 22 organizations concluded that “[t]he Administration’s intent to deport everyone as quickly as possible for optics is sacrificing critical due process procedures and sending families--mothers, babies, and children--back despite clear concerns for their safety in violation of US and international law.” (IPS 7/25/14 via Upside Down World)
*3. US: Police Try to Block Annual SOA Vigil
The US advocacy group SOA Watch reported on July 22 that the police in Columbus, Georgia, are trying to impose unacceptable restrictions on the annual vigil the group has held there every November since 1990 to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) [see Update #1200]. According to SOA Watch, Columbus police chief Ricky Boren wants to limit the vigil to 200 people on sidewalks outside the US Army’s Fort Benning, where WHINSEC is based. In previous years thousands of people have demonstrated at a gate leading to the base. Boren is also seeking to deny a permit for the group to post its stage and sound system at the usual spot.
“This year, more than any other, we are called to demonstrate our solidarity with the people of Latin America,” Roy Bourgeois, the Catholic priest who founded SOA Watch, said in response to the restrictions. “When our military training continues to target communities, forcing the unaccompanied migration of thousands of refugee children, we must speak out.” Noting that it won in federal courts in 2001 and 2002 against government efforts to restrict the vigils, SOA Watch has started a petition “calling on the Columbus police department to reverse its decision and to uphold the constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.” The petition can be accessed at http://org.salsalabs.com/o/727/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=16129. (SOA Watch press release 7/22/14; National Catholic Reporter 7/22/14)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
The BRICS Bank: part of a new financial architecture (Latin America)
http://alainet.org/active/75589
Land Rights in Latin America: Where are the Voices of Indigenous Women?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4955-land-rights-in-latin-america-where-are-the-voices-of-indigenous-women
Radical Cities – Latin America's revolutionary housing solutions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4949-radical-cities--latin-americas-revolutionary-housing-solutions
How Have Latin America’s Political Leaders Responded to Israel’s Siege on Gaza?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/how-have-latin-americas-political-leaders-responded-to-israels-siege-on-gaza
Challenging Myths About Chapare Coca Paste Production (Bolivia)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/22/challenging-myths-about-chapare-coca-paste-production
Bolivia’s Military and Police Protests: The “Children of Evo” Speak Out
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/7/25/bolivia%E2%80%99s-military-and-police-protests-%E2%80%9Cchildren-evo%E2%80%9D-speak-out
Amazon Oil Spill Has Killed Tons of Fish, Sickened Native People (Peru)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/amazon-oil-spill-killed-tons-fish-sickened-native-people-24886/
Peru Passes a Packet of Neoliberal Reforms, Erodes Environmental Protections and Labor Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/4956-peru-passes-a-packet-of-neoliberal-reforms-erodes-environmental-protections-and-labor-rights
Peru and Colombia: Community self-defense against megaminería
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12676
Is Water Still a Human Right in Ecuador?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/4953-is-water-still-a-human-right-in-ecuador
Global Climate Change in Rural Colombia Is About More Than Just the Climate
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/23/global-climate-change-rural-colombia-about-more-just-climate
Chavista Debate More than Pragmatists vs Radicals (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10798
Child Migrants Are Refugees the U.S. Helped Create (Central America)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/21/child-migrants-are-refugees-us-helped-create
U.S. Turns Back on Child Migrants After Its Policies in Guatemala, Honduras Sowed Seeds of Crisis
www.democracynow.org/2014/7/17/us_turns_back_on_child_migrants
U.S., Regional Leaders Convene over Migration Crisis (Central America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4957-us-regional-leaders-convene-over-migration-crisis
Violence, Main Motor of Child Migration in El Salvador
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12671
Hondurans don’t need yet another neoliberal boondoggle
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4948-hondurans-dont-need-yet-another-neoliberal-boondoggle
Guatemala: Opposition to Mining, the New Threat to National Security
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4952-guatemala-opposition-to-mining-the-new-threat-to-national-security
The Morena Party Obtains Legal Status, Prepares for 2015 Elections; What Will Morena Mean for Mexico’s Political Future?
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1738
Mexico Arrests Self-defense Force Leader Mireles and Others
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1727
Johnson Controls Workers in Reynosa Demand Their Rights (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=226#1739
Mexican Fracking Foes Lose a Big Round
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexican-fracking-foes-lose-a-big-round/
Forgotten Refugees: Mexico’s Displacement Crisis
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12643
Migrant Shelter Faces Police Abuses on the Border (Mexico)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/7/25/migrant-shelter-faces-police-abuses-border
Secretary General in Haiti for Cholera “Photo-op” as Transparency Questions Continue to Dog the UN
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/secretary-general-in-haiti-for-cholera-photo-op-as-transparency-questions-continue-to-dog-the-un
“Assessing Progress in Haiti Act” Passed by Congress
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/assessing-progress-in-haiti-act-passed-by-congress
Blowback on the Border (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12614
Massive Rights Violations Charged at New Mexico Detention Facility (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/massive-rights-violations-charged-at-new-mexico-detention-facility/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Monday, July 8, 2013
WNU #1183: Leaders React to Bolivian Plane Incident
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1183, July 7, 2013
1. Latin America: Leaders React to Blocking of Bolivian Flight
2. Guatemala: Residents Protest Cement Factory Opening
3. Mexico: Nine Indigenous Prisoners Released in Chiapas
4. Argentina: Israel Secretly Bought Uranium in 1960s
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: Leaders React to Blocking of Bolivian Flight
In a bizarre and largely unexplained incident, on July 2 several Western European countries denied the use of their airspace to a Bolivian plane carrying the country’s president, Evo Morales, home from a gas exporting countries forum in Moscow. The Bolivians made an unscheduled landing in Vienna, where Austrian authorities reportedly inspected the plane with President Morales’ permission. After a 13-hour stopover in Vienna, the flight was cleared with the Western European countries and proceeded to La Paz, where it landed late on July 3.
The decision to block the plane from leaving Europe was apparently based on a rumor that former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee Edward Snowden was on board. Snowden, who is wanted by the US for stealing and publishing classified documents, is reportedly in a Moscow airport applying for asylum from a number of countries. According to Bolivian authorities, France, Portugal, Spain and Italy all denied Morales’ plane the use of their airspace, presumably at the request of the US. (Le Monde (Paris) 7/3/13, some from AFP, Reuters; El País (Madrid) 7/5/13)
The incident came less than two days after a June 30 report in the British daily The Guardian that documents obtained by Snowden showed the US had been spying on diplomatic representatives of 38 countries, including France, Italy, Greece and Mexico, one of the closest US allies in Latin America. The article didn’t indicate which Mexican mission was subject to US espionage. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/1/13 from AFP, Reuters, The Independent (UK))
On the evening of July 3 the French government partially apologized to Bolivia. “The foreign affairs minister [Laurent Fabius] has telephoned his Bolivian counterpart to inform him of France’s regrets following the mishap [contretemps] caused to President Morales by the delays in the confirmation of authorization for the overflight of the [national] territory by the president’s plane,” a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson said. (Le Monde 7/3/13, some from AFP, Reuters) Spanish foreign affairs minister José Manuel García-Margallo refused to make a similar gesture. “Spain doesn’t need to apologize,” he said on Spanish television, “because the airspace was never closed and the original stopover [for refueling] was never cancelled.” García-Margallo claimed that Spain had instead offered to mediate with the other countries. Bolivian authorities continued to blame Spain.
While US government has remained silent on the issue, it issued extradition requests to Bolivia and Venezuela for Snowden at about the same time as the incident. (El País 7/5/13) President Morales and Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro both rejected the request. Maduro announced the rejection on July 4 and released the text of the request Venezuela had received. Dated July 3, the request called for “Snowden’s provisional arrest should Snowden seek to travel to or transit through Venezuela. Snowden is a flight risk because of the substantial charges he is facing and his current and active attempts to remain a fugitive.” Maduro also reaffirmed Venezuela’s 2005 extradition request for former CIA “asset” Luis Posada Carriles, a Miami resident who is wanted for allegedly masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian flight out of Caracas in which 73 people died. The US has ignored the request [see Update #1075]. (TeleSUR 7/4/13; The Guardian (UK) 7/6/13 from correspondent and unidentified wire services)
The blocking of Morales’ plane quickly brought condemnation from most Latin American countries, including some US allies. Even before Morales had landed in La Paz on July 3, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela had all rejected the European countries’ actions. Mexico’s government issued a statement regretting the incident and calling for respect for diplomatic norms, such as the immunity traditionally enjoyed by heads of state. An editorial in the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada noted the irony that “the Latin American countries rise in defense of international law, while the authorities of European countries, which pride themselves on defending freedoms and the rule of law, show signs of an attitude of backwardness, submissiveness and political dependency in relation to the superpower.” (LJ 7/4/13)
The incident also seemed to encourage some Latin American governments to more open defiance of the US. On July 5 Nicaragua and Venezuela offered Snowden asylum; Bolivia made a similar offer shortly afterwards. (The Guardian 7/6/13)
*2. Guatemala: Residents Protest Cement Factory Opening
Some 1,000 or more indigenous and campesino Guatemalans demonstrated on July 5 in San Juan Sacatepéquez municipality, about 30 km northwest of Guatemala City in Guatemala department, to protest the inauguration of a cement processing plant. According to José Tucuy, a member of the leadership group for 12 local communities, the plant will affect 64,000 residents, who are mostly members of the Kaqchikel Mayan group. Protesters said the plant will contaminate the environment and use up scarce water resources. The plant is part of a “mega-project…a highway of several kilometers that will pass through our community, destroying our woods and forcing people to migrate to other places,” another resident, Ramona García, told reporters. “My family doesn’t eat grey cement, my family eats corn,” the protesters chanted.
Cementos Progreso, the Guatemalan company that owns the plant, said the facility wasn’t open yet. The company was simply holding a Mayan ceremony on July 5 to ask “Mother Earth for permission…to transform primary material and give it other uses,” according to a Cementos Progreso presss release. Tomás Calvo, an indigenous spiritual leader, was to lead the ceremony, with local supporters of the project expected to attend. The company says the plant will employ 2,000 residents.
Local people have been organizing against the plant at least since December 2007, when 12 police agents were injured and 17 campesinos were arrested. One campesino was killed during a protest on June 23, 2008, and 43 were arrested [see Update #999]. The 12 communities had held a consultation on the project on May 13, 2007, in which 8,940 people participated; 8,936 voted against the plant. Cementos Progreso is the main company in Grupo Novella, owned by the rightwing Novella family, which is a major donor to the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei. They are closely connected to the Widmann family, the owners of the agribusiness Ingenio Chabil Utzaj S.A., which in 2011 displaced indigenous people in the Polochic Valley in the northeastern department of Alta Verapaz [see Updates #1093, 1162]. (Siglo 21 (Guatemala) 7/5/13 from EFE; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 7/5/13; El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 7/5/13 from AP; Desinformémonos (Mexico) 7/1/13)
*3. Mexico: Nine Indigenous Prisoners Released in Chiapas
The southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas released nine indigenous prisoners from its Los Llanos prison near San Cristóbal de las Casas in the state’s highland region on July 4. State governor Manuel Velasco Coello arrived at the prison from Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital, to deliver the release papers in person. The nine prisoners, described as adherents of the 2006 Other Campaign of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), had participated in hunger strikes and other actions over several years to win their freedom. Rosa López Díaz, the only woman in the group, was pregnant when she was arrested in 2007; she lost her child, reportedly as a result of torture.
Under pressure from Mexican and international groups, the state appears to have started releasing EZLN allies imprisoned on questionable charges. Francisco Sántiz López was freed on Jan. 25 [see Update #1161]. But the best known of the prisoners, the schoolteacher Alberto Patishtán Gómez [see Update #1173], remains at Los Llanos, along with a prisoner named Alejandro Díaz Sántiz. Patishtán was allowed to take part in the release of the nine prisoners on July 4. He walked a few meters out of the prison and told the relatives, with a smile: “I’m turning the compañeros over to you here; I’m still staying here, but one shouldn’t lose hope.” He then walked back into the prison with Gov. Velasco Coello and various officials. “We’ll go on struggling until we achieve the release of compañero Alberto and all the compañeros who are still prisoners,” former prisoner Rosario Díaz Méndez promised after his release. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/5/13)
*4. Argentina: Israel Secretly Bought Uranium in 1960s
According to declassified British and US documents that the Washington, DC-based research group National Security Archive (NSA) made public on June 25, Israel secretly bought 80-100 tons of Argentine uranium oxide (“yellowcake”) in the 1963-1964 period. The uranium ore was purchased to be used as fuel at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert and ultimately for producing plutonium for the country’s clandestine nuclear weapons program. France had cut off Israel’s supply of French uranium, and the Israeli government was looking for new sources, including South Africa and Argentina. The Argentine president at the time was Arturo Umberto Illia (1963-66) of the centrist Radical Civic Union (UCR).
British and US intelligence learned of the purchases from Canadian intelligence in March 1964 and received confirmation from the US embassy in Buenos Aires that September. The UK and the US were concerned that an Israeli nuclear weapons program would have a destabilizing effect on the Middle East. They tried to get information from Israel and to persuade Argentina to apply stronger safeguards to uranium sales, with little success in either effort.
Canada, the UK and the US “routinely acted with the utmost discretion when sharing intelligence information about the Israeli nuclear program,” the NSA noted, and “they kept the entire yellowcake sale secret. On this matter there were no leaks; the issue never reached the US media then or later.” The US documents on the sales were declassified in the middle 1990s, according to the NSA, but “they lingered in a relatively obscure folder in the State Department’s central foreign policy files at the US National Archives. They may never have been displayed in public before, as the file appeared to be previously untouched.” (NSA 6/25/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 7/2/13 from correspondent)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
The Challenges of the Pacific Alliance: Regional Sovereignty in Latin America or a Pampered Periphery (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4354-the-challenges-of-the-pacific-alliance-regional-sovereignty-in-latin-america-or-a-pampered-periphery
On Edward Snowden, UNASUR and Double Standards (Latin America)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/7/8/edward-snowden-unasur-and-double-standards
Social Unrest and Political Reform in Brazil
http://nacla.org/news/2013/7/4/social-unrest-and-political-reform-brazil
Brazil: Private Transit, Public Protests
http://ww4report.com/node/12399
The Meaning of and Perspectives for the Street Demonstrations in Brazil
http://portside.org/2013-07-01/meaning-and-perspectives-street-demonstrations-brazil
Peru: police fire on Cajamarca protesters —again
http://ww4report.com/node/12422
Peru: developers raze ancient pyramid
http://ww4report.com/node/12411
Bill Weinberg speaks on land and freedom in Peru
http://ww4report.com/node/12407
In Snowden's Bid for Asylum, Ecuador Prioritizes Sovereignty
http://nacla.org/news/2013/7/2/snowdens-bid-asylum-ecuador-prioritizes-sovereignty
Blasts shut Colombia's second largest oil pipeline
http://ww4report.com/node/12421
Colombia: top neo-para commander escapes
http://ww4report.com/node/12420
NATO Sets its Sights on Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4361-nato-sets-its-sights-on-colombia
Introduction: Chavismo After Chávez (Venezuela)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/7/2/introduction-chavismo-after-ch%C3%A1vez
Maduro: Venezuela Will Offer Snowden Political Asylum
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9812
Revisiting the Cincinnati Enquirer vs. Chiquita (Central America)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/7/4/revisiting-cincinnati-enquirer-vs-chiquita
A Road Trip to Save El Salvador’s Water
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/4360-a-road-trip-to-save-el-salvadors-water-
Vocabulary Lessons (Honduras)
http://thebaffler.com/past/vocabulary_lessons
Mexico: Indigenous Oaxacan Political Prisoners Caught in the Drug War Prison Boom
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4358-indigenous-oaxacan-political-prisoners-caught-in-the-drug-war-prison-boom
Torture in Mexico: "I Still Think it was a Nightmare"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4352-torture-in-mexico-qi-still-think-it-was-a-nightmareq
Mexico’s Rich Flourish
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-rich-flourish/
USAID’s Lack of Expertise, Reliance on Contractors Puts Sustainability of Caracol in Doubt (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/usaids-lack-of-expertise-reliance-on-contractors-puts-sustainability-of-caracol-in-doubt
Immigration Reform: The View From Below (US/immigration)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4367-immigration-reform-the-view-from-below
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1183, July 7, 2013
1. Latin America: Leaders React to Blocking of Bolivian Flight
2. Guatemala: Residents Protest Cement Factory Opening
3. Mexico: Nine Indigenous Prisoners Released in Chiapas
4. Argentina: Israel Secretly Bought Uranium in 1960s
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: Leaders React to Blocking of Bolivian Flight
In a bizarre and largely unexplained incident, on July 2 several Western European countries denied the use of their airspace to a Bolivian plane carrying the country’s president, Evo Morales, home from a gas exporting countries forum in Moscow. The Bolivians made an unscheduled landing in Vienna, where Austrian authorities reportedly inspected the plane with President Morales’ permission. After a 13-hour stopover in Vienna, the flight was cleared with the Western European countries and proceeded to La Paz, where it landed late on July 3.
The decision to block the plane from leaving Europe was apparently based on a rumor that former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee Edward Snowden was on board. Snowden, who is wanted by the US for stealing and publishing classified documents, is reportedly in a Moscow airport applying for asylum from a number of countries. According to Bolivian authorities, France, Portugal, Spain and Italy all denied Morales’ plane the use of their airspace, presumably at the request of the US. (Le Monde (Paris) 7/3/13, some from AFP, Reuters; El País (Madrid) 7/5/13)
The incident came less than two days after a June 30 report in the British daily The Guardian that documents obtained by Snowden showed the US had been spying on diplomatic representatives of 38 countries, including France, Italy, Greece and Mexico, one of the closest US allies in Latin America. The article didn’t indicate which Mexican mission was subject to US espionage. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/1/13 from AFP, Reuters, The Independent (UK))
On the evening of July 3 the French government partially apologized to Bolivia. “The foreign affairs minister [Laurent Fabius] has telephoned his Bolivian counterpart to inform him of France’s regrets following the mishap [contretemps] caused to President Morales by the delays in the confirmation of authorization for the overflight of the [national] territory by the president’s plane,” a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson said. (Le Monde 7/3/13, some from AFP, Reuters) Spanish foreign affairs minister José Manuel García-Margallo refused to make a similar gesture. “Spain doesn’t need to apologize,” he said on Spanish television, “because the airspace was never closed and the original stopover [for refueling] was never cancelled.” García-Margallo claimed that Spain had instead offered to mediate with the other countries. Bolivian authorities continued to blame Spain.
While US government has remained silent on the issue, it issued extradition requests to Bolivia and Venezuela for Snowden at about the same time as the incident. (El País 7/5/13) President Morales and Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro both rejected the request. Maduro announced the rejection on July 4 and released the text of the request Venezuela had received. Dated July 3, the request called for “Snowden’s provisional arrest should Snowden seek to travel to or transit through Venezuela. Snowden is a flight risk because of the substantial charges he is facing and his current and active attempts to remain a fugitive.” Maduro also reaffirmed Venezuela’s 2005 extradition request for former CIA “asset” Luis Posada Carriles, a Miami resident who is wanted for allegedly masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian flight out of Caracas in which 73 people died. The US has ignored the request [see Update #1075]. (TeleSUR 7/4/13; The Guardian (UK) 7/6/13 from correspondent and unidentified wire services)
The blocking of Morales’ plane quickly brought condemnation from most Latin American countries, including some US allies. Even before Morales had landed in La Paz on July 3, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela had all rejected the European countries’ actions. Mexico’s government issued a statement regretting the incident and calling for respect for diplomatic norms, such as the immunity traditionally enjoyed by heads of state. An editorial in the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada noted the irony that “the Latin American countries rise in defense of international law, while the authorities of European countries, which pride themselves on defending freedoms and the rule of law, show signs of an attitude of backwardness, submissiveness and political dependency in relation to the superpower.” (LJ 7/4/13)
The incident also seemed to encourage some Latin American governments to more open defiance of the US. On July 5 Nicaragua and Venezuela offered Snowden asylum; Bolivia made a similar offer shortly afterwards. (The Guardian 7/6/13)
*2. Guatemala: Residents Protest Cement Factory Opening
Some 1,000 or more indigenous and campesino Guatemalans demonstrated on July 5 in San Juan Sacatepéquez municipality, about 30 km northwest of Guatemala City in Guatemala department, to protest the inauguration of a cement processing plant. According to José Tucuy, a member of the leadership group for 12 local communities, the plant will affect 64,000 residents, who are mostly members of the Kaqchikel Mayan group. Protesters said the plant will contaminate the environment and use up scarce water resources. The plant is part of a “mega-project…a highway of several kilometers that will pass through our community, destroying our woods and forcing people to migrate to other places,” another resident, Ramona García, told reporters. “My family doesn’t eat grey cement, my family eats corn,” the protesters chanted.
Cementos Progreso, the Guatemalan company that owns the plant, said the facility wasn’t open yet. The company was simply holding a Mayan ceremony on July 5 to ask “Mother Earth for permission…to transform primary material and give it other uses,” according to a Cementos Progreso presss release. Tomás Calvo, an indigenous spiritual leader, was to lead the ceremony, with local supporters of the project expected to attend. The company says the plant will employ 2,000 residents.
Local people have been organizing against the plant at least since December 2007, when 12 police agents were injured and 17 campesinos were arrested. One campesino was killed during a protest on June 23, 2008, and 43 were arrested [see Update #999]. The 12 communities had held a consultation on the project on May 13, 2007, in which 8,940 people participated; 8,936 voted against the plant. Cementos Progreso is the main company in Grupo Novella, owned by the rightwing Novella family, which is a major donor to the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei. They are closely connected to the Widmann family, the owners of the agribusiness Ingenio Chabil Utzaj S.A., which in 2011 displaced indigenous people in the Polochic Valley in the northeastern department of Alta Verapaz [see Updates #1093, 1162]. (Siglo 21 (Guatemala) 7/5/13 from EFE; Prensa Libre (Guatemala) 7/5/13; El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 7/5/13 from AP; Desinformémonos (Mexico) 7/1/13)
*3. Mexico: Nine Indigenous Prisoners Released in Chiapas
The southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas released nine indigenous prisoners from its Los Llanos prison near San Cristóbal de las Casas in the state’s highland region on July 4. State governor Manuel Velasco Coello arrived at the prison from Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital, to deliver the release papers in person. The nine prisoners, described as adherents of the 2006 Other Campaign of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), had participated in hunger strikes and other actions over several years to win their freedom. Rosa López Díaz, the only woman in the group, was pregnant when she was arrested in 2007; she lost her child, reportedly as a result of torture.
Under pressure from Mexican and international groups, the state appears to have started releasing EZLN allies imprisoned on questionable charges. Francisco Sántiz López was freed on Jan. 25 [see Update #1161]. But the best known of the prisoners, the schoolteacher Alberto Patishtán Gómez [see Update #1173], remains at Los Llanos, along with a prisoner named Alejandro Díaz Sántiz. Patishtán was allowed to take part in the release of the nine prisoners on July 4. He walked a few meters out of the prison and told the relatives, with a smile: “I’m turning the compañeros over to you here; I’m still staying here, but one shouldn’t lose hope.” He then walked back into the prison with Gov. Velasco Coello and various officials. “We’ll go on struggling until we achieve the release of compañero Alberto and all the compañeros who are still prisoners,” former prisoner Rosario Díaz Méndez promised after his release. (La Jornada (Mexico) 7/5/13)
*4. Argentina: Israel Secretly Bought Uranium in 1960s
According to declassified British and US documents that the Washington, DC-based research group National Security Archive (NSA) made public on June 25, Israel secretly bought 80-100 tons of Argentine uranium oxide (“yellowcake”) in the 1963-1964 period. The uranium ore was purchased to be used as fuel at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert and ultimately for producing plutonium for the country’s clandestine nuclear weapons program. France had cut off Israel’s supply of French uranium, and the Israeli government was looking for new sources, including South Africa and Argentina. The Argentine president at the time was Arturo Umberto Illia (1963-66) of the centrist Radical Civic Union (UCR).
British and US intelligence learned of the purchases from Canadian intelligence in March 1964 and received confirmation from the US embassy in Buenos Aires that September. The UK and the US were concerned that an Israeli nuclear weapons program would have a destabilizing effect on the Middle East. They tried to get information from Israel and to persuade Argentina to apply stronger safeguards to uranium sales, with little success in either effort.
Canada, the UK and the US “routinely acted with the utmost discretion when sharing intelligence information about the Israeli nuclear program,” the NSA noted, and “they kept the entire yellowcake sale secret. On this matter there were no leaks; the issue never reached the US media then or later.” The US documents on the sales were declassified in the middle 1990s, according to the NSA, but “they lingered in a relatively obscure folder in the State Department’s central foreign policy files at the US National Archives. They may never have been displayed in public before, as the file appeared to be previously untouched.” (NSA 6/25/13; La Jornada (Mexico) 7/2/13 from correspondent)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, US/immigration
The Challenges of the Pacific Alliance: Regional Sovereignty in Latin America or a Pampered Periphery (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4354-the-challenges-of-the-pacific-alliance-regional-sovereignty-in-latin-america-or-a-pampered-periphery
On Edward Snowden, UNASUR and Double Standards (Latin America)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/7/8/edward-snowden-unasur-and-double-standards
Social Unrest and Political Reform in Brazil
http://nacla.org/news/2013/7/4/social-unrest-and-political-reform-brazil
Brazil: Private Transit, Public Protests
http://ww4report.com/node/12399
The Meaning of and Perspectives for the Street Demonstrations in Brazil
http://portside.org/2013-07-01/meaning-and-perspectives-street-demonstrations-brazil
Peru: police fire on Cajamarca protesters —again
http://ww4report.com/node/12422
Peru: developers raze ancient pyramid
http://ww4report.com/node/12411
Bill Weinberg speaks on land and freedom in Peru
http://ww4report.com/node/12407
In Snowden's Bid for Asylum, Ecuador Prioritizes Sovereignty
http://nacla.org/news/2013/7/2/snowdens-bid-asylum-ecuador-prioritizes-sovereignty
Blasts shut Colombia's second largest oil pipeline
http://ww4report.com/node/12421
Colombia: top neo-para commander escapes
http://ww4report.com/node/12420
NATO Sets its Sights on Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4361-nato-sets-its-sights-on-colombia
Introduction: Chavismo After Chávez (Venezuela)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/7/2/introduction-chavismo-after-ch%C3%A1vez
Maduro: Venezuela Will Offer Snowden Political Asylum
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9812
Revisiting the Cincinnati Enquirer vs. Chiquita (Central America)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/7/4/revisiting-cincinnati-enquirer-vs-chiquita
A Road Trip to Save El Salvador’s Water
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/4360-a-road-trip-to-save-el-salvadors-water-
Vocabulary Lessons (Honduras)
http://thebaffler.com/past/vocabulary_lessons
Mexico: Indigenous Oaxacan Political Prisoners Caught in the Drug War Prison Boom
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4358-indigenous-oaxacan-political-prisoners-caught-in-the-drug-war-prison-boom
Torture in Mexico: "I Still Think it was a Nightmare"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4352-torture-in-mexico-qi-still-think-it-was-a-nightmareq
Mexico’s Rich Flourish
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-rich-flourish/
USAID’s Lack of Expertise, Reliance on Contractors Puts Sustainability of Caracol in Doubt (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/usaids-lack-of-expertise-reliance-on-contractors-puts-sustainability-of-caracol-in-doubt
Immigration Reform: The View From Below (US/immigration)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4367-immigration-reform-the-view-from-below
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Monday, May 20, 2013
WNU #1177: Argentine Dictator Dies in Prison
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1177, May 19, 2013
1. Argentina: Ex-Dictator Videla Dies in Prison
2. Latin America: 7 Ex-Rulers Remain Jailed or on Trial
3. Brazil: 30,000 People Displaced for Sports Events
4. Mexico: Activists Protest GMO Corn With Giant Banner
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Argentina: Ex-Dictator Videla Dies in Prison
Former Argentine dictator Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1981) died the morning of May 17 in the Marcos Paz prison in Buenos Aires province, where he was serving a 50-year sentence for crimes against humanity. He was 87. Videla led the coup that removed then-president Isabel Perón from office on Mar. 24, 1976 and started a period of military rule that lasted until 1983. Videla himself was made de facto president on Mar. 29, 1976 and held the office until March 1981, when he was replaced by Gen. Roberto Viola.
Human rights groups estimate that 30,000 people were disappeared during the “dirty war” against suspected leftists that the military junta carried out. Some 5,000 people are known to have died, and about 500 children were given up for adoption under false names after their parents were killed; so far 108 of the children have learned their real identities. The military leaders were sentenced to life in prison during the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989), but two laws passed in 1986 and 1987 gave them immunity from any further trials, and President Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999) granted pardons in 1989 and 1990. The Supreme Court overturned the immunity laws in 2005, and in December 2010 a court convicted Videla of crimes against humanity. At the time of his death the former dictator was on trial for his role in Operation Condor, in which South American military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s aided each other in repressing opponents; his last court appearance was on May 14.
Videla never apologized for the violence of the military regime. “Our objective was to discipline an anarchized society,” he said in an interview published in 2012 [see Update #1125]. The generals wanted “to get away from a populist, demagogic vision; in relation to the economy, to go to a liberal market economy. We wanted to discipline unionism and crony capitalism.” On the military practice of keeping pregnant captives alive until they’d given birth and then executing them, Videla said in court that the women, “whom I respect as mothers, were active militants in the machinery of terror. And many of them used their embryonic children as human shields at the time that they were operating as combatants.” (Adital (Brazil) 5/17/13 from TeleSUR; La Jornada (Mexico) 5/18/13 from correspondent)
The US government was aware of the military junta’s crimes. “We want a stable situation,” then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger told Argentine foreign minister, Adm. Cesar Augusto Guzzetti in 1976, according to declassified US documents. “We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before [the US] Congress gets back, the better” [see Update #723]. In December 1982 then-assistant secretary of state for human rights Elliott Abrams described a discussion he had with Argentine ambassador Lucio Alberto García del Solar about the “[c]hildren born to prisoners or children taken from their families during the dirty war.” Abrams wrote that he told the ambassador that “[w]hile the disappeared were dead, these children were alive and this was in a sense the gravest humanitarian problem.” Despite the “humanitarian problem,” Abrams had the US government certify that the dictatorship was making progress on human rights [see Update #1110].
*2. Latin America: 7 Ex-Rulers Remain Jailed or on Trial
The death of former Argentine dictator Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1981) on May 17 brings to seven the number of Latin American and Caribbean de facto heads of state who are now in prison or facing criminal charges for their acts while in power. All but one were charged in the last decade.
Former Bolivian dictator Luis García Meza (1980-81), known as the “narco-dictator,” has been serving a 30-year sentence since 1995; charges against him included sedition, genocide and the theft of the diaries of Argentine-born guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara [see Update #926]. He seized power in a coup in 1980 but was forced to resign in 1981. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/19/13 from AFP)
Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April 2009 for crimes that included the deaths of 25 people, two kidnappings, corruption and illicit enrichment [see Updates #1019, 1109]. Although he was elected democratically in 1990, Fujimori seized dictatorial powers with a “self-coup” in 1992. He was hospitalized on May 17 of this year with gastroduodenitis, according to his daughter, rightwing politician Keiko Fujimori. She blamed his condition on depression. The former president has been seeking a pardon on grounds of ill health. (La Nación (Argentina) 5/18/13 from DPA, AFP)
Former Uruguayan de facto president Gregorio Alvarez (1981-1985) was sentenced to 25 years in prison in October 2009 for 37 aggravated homicides committed from 1977 to 1978 as part of Operation Condor, a program coordinating repression in several South American nations [see Update #1030]. Alvarez’s presidency came during Uruguay’s 1973-1985 period of military rule.
Gen. Reynaldo Bignone (1982-1983), the last president in Argentina’s 1976-1983 military regime, was sentenced to 25 years of prison in 2010 for crimes committed in the Campo de Mayo, a military camp that included four torture centers during the dictatorship. In April 2011 he received an additional sentence, this one for life in prison, for crimes against humanity [see Update #1076].
Former Guatemalan dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983) was sentenced to 80 years in prison on May 10 of this year for genocide and crimes against humanity during the bloodiest period of the country’s 1960-1996 civil war [see Update #1176].
Francisco Morales Bermúdez, who headed Peru’s military dictatorship from 1975 to 1980, has never been convicted, but in 2007 the Italian justice system requested his detention and extradition for the disappearance of 25 Italians in South America in connection with Operation Condor. In February 2012 an Argentine judge also charged him with participation in Condor. He doesn’t face any charges in Peru. (LJ 5/19/13 from AFP)
Like Morales Bermúdez, former Haitian “president for life" (1971-1986) Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier has never been convicted. In January 2012 investigative judge Carvès Jean ruled that Duvalier should stand trial for corruption under his regime, but the judge said the statute of limitations had run out for human rights violations. A Port-au-Prince appeals court panel has been considering challenges from people who say they were victims and are demanding that the former dictator be tried for human rights abuses as well as corruption; Duvalier was forced to appear in court for one session on Feb. 28 [see Update #1166]. On May 16 the judges heard summations from the different parties; a ruling is expected soon.
Carvès Jean, the judge who exempted Duvalier from the human rights charges, was promoted to the Port-au-Prince appeals court on May 9. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 5/17/13; LJ 5/19/13 from AFP)
*3. Brazil: 30,000 People Displaced for Sports Events
A total of 3,099 families have been removed from their homes in Rio de Janeiro and another 7,843 have been threatened with removal as part of Brazil’s preparations for hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, according to a study released on May 15 by the Popular Committee of the World Cup and the Olympics. The group estimates that 30,000 people have been affected, based on the average number of people in the households. The study, “Mega-Events and Human Rights Violations in Rio de Janeiro,” was produced with the collaboration of the impacted communities, the Institute for Urban and Regional Research and Planning (Ippur) and other groups, including the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Global Justice.
The city government initially offered 18,000 reais (about US$8,872) for each home. Residents said this wasn’t enough even to buy the land for a new house. The city finally agreed to pay 40,000 reais (US$19,735), which residents said would pay for a two-bedroom house in the hills. “What we’re seeing is an urban restructuring project without any participation of society,” said Orlando Alves dos Santos Junior, an urban planning professor and one of the coordinators of the May 15 study. “In fact, what’s going on under this pretext [of preparation for the sports events] is a serious urban intervention, on the basis of the real estate industry. The presence of inhabitants from the poorest classes has become an obstacle to be removed from the path.” (Adital (Brazil) 5/17/13 from Canal Ibase (Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses))
*4. Mexico: Activists Protest GMO Corn With Giant Banner
Four activists from the Mexican branch of the international environmental organization Greenpeace climbed the Estela de Luz monument in downtown Mexico City on May 16 to protest efforts by multinational companies to increase the commercial use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the country’s corn crops. The protesters unfurled a 70-meter banner reading “No GMO” and showing an ear of corn with a time bomb. Near the monument Greenpeace spokesperson Aleira Lara told reporters that transgenic corn is a time bomb for the Mexican countryside, since it endangers the 59 native strains of corn. The activists continued the protest for four hours and then left in a van; the Mexico City police made no effort to arrest them.
Now a favorite site for protests, the 104-meter Estela de Luz was built by the center-right administration of former president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) for the 2010 commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the War of Independence and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. It cost more than 1 billion pesos (US$78 million), five times the initial estimate. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/17/13; Hispanically Speaking News 5/17/13)
The Mexican government still regulates the planting of transgenic corn, but it has begun allowing its use in crops for consumption. The Missouri-based biotech giant Monsanto Company and other multinationals now have outstanding requests for permission to expand the sowing of transgenic corn in northern and western states; activists say this will cover millions of hectares and the seeds will contaminate native corn [see Update #1174]. According to Camila Montecinos from the Chilean office of the Barcelona-based group Grain, the contamination is in fact intentional, “a carefully and perversely planned strategy” for marketing patented GMO seeds. The multinationals “chose maize, soy and canola because of their enormous potential for contamination,” Montecinos says, since the pollen is carried by the wind. “When contamination spreads, the companies claim that the presence of transgenic crops must be recognized and legalized.” (Truth-Out 5/10/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
A Healthy Life: Weighing Hydroelectricity’s Costs as the Climate Changes Around Us (Chile)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/5/17/healthy-life-weighing-hydroelectricity%E2%80%99s-costs-climate-changes-around-us
Uruguay: Birth of a Movement Against Mining and Extractivism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/uruguay-archives-48/4297-uruguay-birth-of-a-movement-against-mining-and-extractivism
What Changes Lay Ahead for Paraguay?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/4292-what-changes-lay-ahead-for-paraguay
After a Two-decade Occupation, Brazil's Landless Workers Movement Wins Land Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4296-after-a-two-decade-occupation-brazils-landless-workers-movement-wins-land-rights-
Brazil: The Biggest Extractivist in South America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4293-brazil-the-biggest-extractivist-in-south-america
Displaced by Gold Mining in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4290-displaced-by-gold-mining-in-colombia
Potato Farmers in Colombia Rebel Against Trade Laws, Rising Production Costs
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4295-potato-farmers-in-colombia-rebel-against-trade-laws-rising-production-costs
Venezuelan Peasants Relaunch the “War on Latifundio” in Lara State
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9233
Inside La Piedrita: Venezuela’s Popular Militias and the Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/4303-inside-la-piedrita-venezuelas-popular-militias-and-the-revolution
Indigenous Nicaraguans Fight to the Death for Their Last Forest
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/nicaragua-archives-62/4301-indigenous-nicaraguans-fight-to-the-death-for-their-last-forest
Noam Chomsky, Scholars Ask NY Times Public Editor to Investigate Bias on Honduras and Venezuela
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/14/noam-chomsky-and-scholars-ask-ny-times-public-editor-investigate-bias-honduras-and-ve
U.S. Still Supports Honduran Death Squads
http://ww4report.com/node/12251
U.S. Supported Former Ally Ríos Montt While Aware of Atrocities Committed by the Dictatorship (Guatemala)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/us-supported-former-ally-rios-montt-while-aware-of-atrocities-committed-by-the-dictatorship
Additional Evidence on Perez Molina (Guatemala)
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/additional-evidence-on-perez-molina.html
Follow Guatemala's Lead: Convene a Genocide Case Grand Jury
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/follow-guatemalas-lead-convene-genocide.html
Guatemala: So they weren’t “Zetas” after all
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4289-guatemala-so-they-werent-zetas-after-all
Despite Historic Conviction, Genocide Continues in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4300-despite-historic-conviction-genocide-continues-in-guatemala
Belize: Mayan pyramid bulldozed by road construction firm
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4298-belize-mayan-pyramid-bulldozed-by-road-construction-firm
Mother’s Day in Mexico: A Day of Grief and Indignation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4287-mothers-day-in-mexico-a-day-of-grief-and-indignation
Juarez Mothers Renew International Campaign (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/2013/05/13/juarez-mothers-renew-international-campaign/
Border Poppies (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/2013/05/16/border-poppies/
Internet Trends in Mexico
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/2013/05/17/internet-trends-in-mexico/
Assata Shakur and Cuba – U.S. Relations
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/16/assata-shakur-and-cuba-%E2%80%93-us-relations
Mrs. Clinton Can Have Her Factories: a Haitian Sweatshop Worker Speaks
http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/another-haiti-possible/mrs-clinton-can-have-her-factories-haitian-sweatshop-worker-speaks
An Interview with an Organizer for Batay Ouvriye (Haiti)
http://onestruggle.net/2013/05/01/interview-with-batay-ouvriye/
Haiti's Former President Préval Has Credible Charges that UN Tried to Remove Him
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/
Immigrant Workers Are Organizing in New York -- With or Without Immigration Reform (US/immigration)
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/wilson170513.html
Death and the Immigration Control Complex (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/15/death-and-immigration-control-complex
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1177, May 19, 2013
1. Argentina: Ex-Dictator Videla Dies in Prison
2. Latin America: 7 Ex-Rulers Remain Jailed or on Trial
3. Brazil: 30,000 People Displaced for Sports Events
4. Mexico: Activists Protest GMO Corn With Giant Banner
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Argentina: Ex-Dictator Videla Dies in Prison
Former Argentine dictator Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1981) died the morning of May 17 in the Marcos Paz prison in Buenos Aires province, where he was serving a 50-year sentence for crimes against humanity. He was 87. Videla led the coup that removed then-president Isabel Perón from office on Mar. 24, 1976 and started a period of military rule that lasted until 1983. Videla himself was made de facto president on Mar. 29, 1976 and held the office until March 1981, when he was replaced by Gen. Roberto Viola.
Human rights groups estimate that 30,000 people were disappeared during the “dirty war” against suspected leftists that the military junta carried out. Some 5,000 people are known to have died, and about 500 children were given up for adoption under false names after their parents were killed; so far 108 of the children have learned their real identities. The military leaders were sentenced to life in prison during the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989), but two laws passed in 1986 and 1987 gave them immunity from any further trials, and President Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999) granted pardons in 1989 and 1990. The Supreme Court overturned the immunity laws in 2005, and in December 2010 a court convicted Videla of crimes against humanity. At the time of his death the former dictator was on trial for his role in Operation Condor, in which South American military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s aided each other in repressing opponents; his last court appearance was on May 14.
Videla never apologized for the violence of the military regime. “Our objective was to discipline an anarchized society,” he said in an interview published in 2012 [see Update #1125]. The generals wanted “to get away from a populist, demagogic vision; in relation to the economy, to go to a liberal market economy. We wanted to discipline unionism and crony capitalism.” On the military practice of keeping pregnant captives alive until they’d given birth and then executing them, Videla said in court that the women, “whom I respect as mothers, were active militants in the machinery of terror. And many of them used their embryonic children as human shields at the time that they were operating as combatants.” (Adital (Brazil) 5/17/13 from TeleSUR; La Jornada (Mexico) 5/18/13 from correspondent)
The US government was aware of the military junta’s crimes. “We want a stable situation,” then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger told Argentine foreign minister, Adm. Cesar Augusto Guzzetti in 1976, according to declassified US documents. “We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before [the US] Congress gets back, the better” [see Update #723]. In December 1982 then-assistant secretary of state for human rights Elliott Abrams described a discussion he had with Argentine ambassador Lucio Alberto García del Solar about the “[c]hildren born to prisoners or children taken from their families during the dirty war.” Abrams wrote that he told the ambassador that “[w]hile the disappeared were dead, these children were alive and this was in a sense the gravest humanitarian problem.” Despite the “humanitarian problem,” Abrams had the US government certify that the dictatorship was making progress on human rights [see Update #1110].
*2. Latin America: 7 Ex-Rulers Remain Jailed or on Trial
The death of former Argentine dictator Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1981) on May 17 brings to seven the number of Latin American and Caribbean de facto heads of state who are now in prison or facing criminal charges for their acts while in power. All but one were charged in the last decade.
Former Bolivian dictator Luis García Meza (1980-81), known as the “narco-dictator,” has been serving a 30-year sentence since 1995; charges against him included sedition, genocide and the theft of the diaries of Argentine-born guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara [see Update #926]. He seized power in a coup in 1980 but was forced to resign in 1981. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/19/13 from AFP)
Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April 2009 for crimes that included the deaths of 25 people, two kidnappings, corruption and illicit enrichment [see Updates #1019, 1109]. Although he was elected democratically in 1990, Fujimori seized dictatorial powers with a “self-coup” in 1992. He was hospitalized on May 17 of this year with gastroduodenitis, according to his daughter, rightwing politician Keiko Fujimori. She blamed his condition on depression. The former president has been seeking a pardon on grounds of ill health. (La Nación (Argentina) 5/18/13 from DPA, AFP)
Former Uruguayan de facto president Gregorio Alvarez (1981-1985) was sentenced to 25 years in prison in October 2009 for 37 aggravated homicides committed from 1977 to 1978 as part of Operation Condor, a program coordinating repression in several South American nations [see Update #1030]. Alvarez’s presidency came during Uruguay’s 1973-1985 period of military rule.
Gen. Reynaldo Bignone (1982-1983), the last president in Argentina’s 1976-1983 military regime, was sentenced to 25 years of prison in 2010 for crimes committed in the Campo de Mayo, a military camp that included four torture centers during the dictatorship. In April 2011 he received an additional sentence, this one for life in prison, for crimes against humanity [see Update #1076].
Former Guatemalan dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983) was sentenced to 80 years in prison on May 10 of this year for genocide and crimes against humanity during the bloodiest period of the country’s 1960-1996 civil war [see Update #1176].
Francisco Morales Bermúdez, who headed Peru’s military dictatorship from 1975 to 1980, has never been convicted, but in 2007 the Italian justice system requested his detention and extradition for the disappearance of 25 Italians in South America in connection with Operation Condor. In February 2012 an Argentine judge also charged him with participation in Condor. He doesn’t face any charges in Peru. (LJ 5/19/13 from AFP)
Like Morales Bermúdez, former Haitian “president for life" (1971-1986) Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier has never been convicted. In January 2012 investigative judge Carvès Jean ruled that Duvalier should stand trial for corruption under his regime, but the judge said the statute of limitations had run out for human rights violations. A Port-au-Prince appeals court panel has been considering challenges from people who say they were victims and are demanding that the former dictator be tried for human rights abuses as well as corruption; Duvalier was forced to appear in court for one session on Feb. 28 [see Update #1166]. On May 16 the judges heard summations from the different parties; a ruling is expected soon.
Carvès Jean, the judge who exempted Duvalier from the human rights charges, was promoted to the Port-au-Prince appeals court on May 9. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 5/17/13; LJ 5/19/13 from AFP)
*3. Brazil: 30,000 People Displaced for Sports Events
A total of 3,099 families have been removed from their homes in Rio de Janeiro and another 7,843 have been threatened with removal as part of Brazil’s preparations for hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, according to a study released on May 15 by the Popular Committee of the World Cup and the Olympics. The group estimates that 30,000 people have been affected, based on the average number of people in the households. The study, “Mega-Events and Human Rights Violations in Rio de Janeiro,” was produced with the collaboration of the impacted communities, the Institute for Urban and Regional Research and Planning (Ippur) and other groups, including the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Global Justice.
The city government initially offered 18,000 reais (about US$8,872) for each home. Residents said this wasn’t enough even to buy the land for a new house. The city finally agreed to pay 40,000 reais (US$19,735), which residents said would pay for a two-bedroom house in the hills. “What we’re seeing is an urban restructuring project without any participation of society,” said Orlando Alves dos Santos Junior, an urban planning professor and one of the coordinators of the May 15 study. “In fact, what’s going on under this pretext [of preparation for the sports events] is a serious urban intervention, on the basis of the real estate industry. The presence of inhabitants from the poorest classes has become an obstacle to be removed from the path.” (Adital (Brazil) 5/17/13 from Canal Ibase (Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses))
*4. Mexico: Activists Protest GMO Corn With Giant Banner
Four activists from the Mexican branch of the international environmental organization Greenpeace climbed the Estela de Luz monument in downtown Mexico City on May 16 to protest efforts by multinational companies to increase the commercial use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the country’s corn crops. The protesters unfurled a 70-meter banner reading “No GMO” and showing an ear of corn with a time bomb. Near the monument Greenpeace spokesperson Aleira Lara told reporters that transgenic corn is a time bomb for the Mexican countryside, since it endangers the 59 native strains of corn. The activists continued the protest for four hours and then left in a van; the Mexico City police made no effort to arrest them.
Now a favorite site for protests, the 104-meter Estela de Luz was built by the center-right administration of former president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) for the 2010 commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the War of Independence and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. It cost more than 1 billion pesos (US$78 million), five times the initial estimate. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/17/13; Hispanically Speaking News 5/17/13)
The Mexican government still regulates the planting of transgenic corn, but it has begun allowing its use in crops for consumption. The Missouri-based biotech giant Monsanto Company and other multinationals now have outstanding requests for permission to expand the sowing of transgenic corn in northern and western states; activists say this will cover millions of hectares and the seeds will contaminate native corn [see Update #1174]. According to Camila Montecinos from the Chilean office of the Barcelona-based group Grain, the contamination is in fact intentional, “a carefully and perversely planned strategy” for marketing patented GMO seeds. The multinationals “chose maize, soy and canola because of their enormous potential for contamination,” Montecinos says, since the pollen is carried by the wind. “When contamination spreads, the companies claim that the presence of transgenic crops must be recognized and legalized.” (Truth-Out 5/10/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
A Healthy Life: Weighing Hydroelectricity’s Costs as the Climate Changes Around Us (Chile)
http://nacla.org/news/2013/5/17/healthy-life-weighing-hydroelectricity%E2%80%99s-costs-climate-changes-around-us
Uruguay: Birth of a Movement Against Mining and Extractivism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/uruguay-archives-48/4297-uruguay-birth-of-a-movement-against-mining-and-extractivism
What Changes Lay Ahead for Paraguay?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/4292-what-changes-lay-ahead-for-paraguay
After a Two-decade Occupation, Brazil's Landless Workers Movement Wins Land Rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4296-after-a-two-decade-occupation-brazils-landless-workers-movement-wins-land-rights-
Brazil: The Biggest Extractivist in South America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4293-brazil-the-biggest-extractivist-in-south-america
Displaced by Gold Mining in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4290-displaced-by-gold-mining-in-colombia
Potato Farmers in Colombia Rebel Against Trade Laws, Rising Production Costs
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4295-potato-farmers-in-colombia-rebel-against-trade-laws-rising-production-costs
Venezuelan Peasants Relaunch the “War on Latifundio” in Lara State
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9233
Inside La Piedrita: Venezuela’s Popular Militias and the Revolution
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/4303-inside-la-piedrita-venezuelas-popular-militias-and-the-revolution
Indigenous Nicaraguans Fight to the Death for Their Last Forest
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/nicaragua-archives-62/4301-indigenous-nicaraguans-fight-to-the-death-for-their-last-forest
Noam Chomsky, Scholars Ask NY Times Public Editor to Investigate Bias on Honduras and Venezuela
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/14/noam-chomsky-and-scholars-ask-ny-times-public-editor-investigate-bias-honduras-and-ve
U.S. Still Supports Honduran Death Squads
http://ww4report.com/node/12251
U.S. Supported Former Ally Ríos Montt While Aware of Atrocities Committed by the Dictatorship (Guatemala)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/us-supported-former-ally-rios-montt-while-aware-of-atrocities-committed-by-the-dictatorship
Additional Evidence on Perez Molina (Guatemala)
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/additional-evidence-on-perez-molina.html
Follow Guatemala's Lead: Convene a Genocide Case Grand Jury
http://www.allannairn.org/2013/05/follow-guatemalas-lead-convene-genocide.html
Guatemala: So they weren’t “Zetas” after all
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4289-guatemala-so-they-werent-zetas-after-all
Despite Historic Conviction, Genocide Continues in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/4300-despite-historic-conviction-genocide-continues-in-guatemala
Belize: Mayan pyramid bulldozed by road construction firm
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4298-belize-mayan-pyramid-bulldozed-by-road-construction-firm
Mother’s Day in Mexico: A Day of Grief and Indignation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4287-mothers-day-in-mexico-a-day-of-grief-and-indignation
Juarez Mothers Renew International Campaign (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/2013/05/13/juarez-mothers-renew-international-campaign/
Border Poppies (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/2013/05/16/border-poppies/
Internet Trends in Mexico
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/2013/05/17/internet-trends-in-mexico/
Assata Shakur and Cuba – U.S. Relations
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/16/assata-shakur-and-cuba-%E2%80%93-us-relations
Mrs. Clinton Can Have Her Factories: a Haitian Sweatshop Worker Speaks
http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/another-haiti-possible/mrs-clinton-can-have-her-factories-haitian-sweatshop-worker-speaks
An Interview with an Organizer for Batay Ouvriye (Haiti)
http://onestruggle.net/2013/05/01/interview-with-batay-ouvriye/
Haiti's Former President Préval Has Credible Charges that UN Tried to Remove Him
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/
Immigrant Workers Are Organizing in New York -- With or Without Immigration Reform (US/immigration)
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/wilson170513.html
Death and the Immigration Control Complex (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/5/15/death-and-immigration-control-complex
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
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