As investigative journalist Allan Nairn said on Democracy Now! in January: "Well, you know, if you go and burn down your neighbor's house, don't complain when, as they run from the flames, they come onto your lawn."
By David L. Wilson and Jane Guskin, MRZine
March 13, 2016
The March 9 debate in Miami between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was the first chance the two candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination had to discuss immigration and its connections to trade and U.S. policy in Latin America. Unfortunately, neither candidate took advantage of the opportunity.
The mainstream "immigration debate" generally avoids mentioning the forces that have driven millions of Latin Americans to move here without legal authorization over the past forty years. The media and the politicians treat the migration either as a natural disaster ("flooding over the border") or as a second-rate science fiction movie ("the aliens are invading") -- with either scenario seen as deserving an aggressive response.[...]
Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/wg130316.html
Showing posts with label Cuba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cuba. Show all posts
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Monday, January 19, 2015
WNU #1251: Haitian President to Rule by Decree
Issue #1251, January 18, 2015
1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
Haiti entered a long-threatened period of constitutional crisis on Jan. 12 when terms expired for all 99 members of the Chamber of Deputies and for 10 of the country’s 30 senators; the terms had already run out for another third of the senators. Since the government had failed to hold overdue elections for these seats, Parliament no longer had a quorum to pass laws and President Martelly was free to rule by decree in the absence of a viable legislature. He and the leaders of Parliament had announced an agreement on Dec. 29 that would extend the legislators’ terms if Parliament met a Jan. 12 deadline to pass amendments to the electoral law [see Update #1249], but the deal didn’t win the agreement of the main opposition parties. The vote never took place.
The slide into direct presidential rule came on the day when Haitians were marking the fifth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and left tens or hundreds of thousands of people dead. (Radio-Canada 1/11/15 from correspondents; Radio France Internationale (RFI) 1/13/15 from correspondent)
Martelly’s opponents said they would continue with the anti-government demonstrations they have been sponsoring since the fall to demand Martelly’s resignation. On Jan. 15 an opposition coalition announced plans for marches in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 16, Jan. 17, Jan. 20, Jan. 22 and Jan. 23. The coalition includes the Patriotic Movement of the Democratic Opposition (Mopod) and a new political party, Pitit Desalin (“Children of Dessalines,” referring to the revolutionary hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines). Pitit Desalin’s leader is ex-senator Moïse Jean-Charles, who until late 2013 was associated with the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004) [see Update #1204]. FL itself has refrained from calling for Martelly’s resignation, but according to former FL senator Louis Gérald Gilles, the party is demanding the resignation of Martelly’s new prime minister, Evans Paul, a longtime Aristide opponent who hadn’t been confirmed by Parliament before it lost its quorum. If Paul doesn’t step down, Gilles said, FL will join the other opposition groups in demanding Martelly’s resignation. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/15/15; Haïti Libre 1/17/15)
As of Jan. 15 the so-called “Core Group”--the ambassadors of Brazil, Canada, France, Spain, the US and the European Union (EU), along with the special representatives of the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of American States (OAS)—had declared their countries’ “support for the president of the republic in the exercise of his constitutional duties.” The US had backed the failed agreement to extend the legislators’ terms, and US ambassador Pamela White angered many Haitians by attending a meeting of Parliament the evening of Jan. 11 when the deal was being discussed. She apparently hadn’t been invited. “You want to know what I think of Pamela White?” a passerby told an RFI correspondent the next day. “These people have long since been interfering in the country’s affairs. They’re the ones who chose Martelly, because he sold them the country.” The speaker was referring to interference by foreign powers in the 2010-2011 elections [see Update #1062]. (RFI 1/13/15; AlterPresse 1/15/15)
In contrast to the Core Group, the center-left government of Uruguay may react to the situation by withdrawing its troops from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), as it threatened in December [see Update #1249]. Uruguayan foreign minister Luis Almagro was reportedly planning an “emergency” visit to UN headquarters in New York to coordinate the withdrawal of his country’s 605 MINUSTAH members in the near future. (AlterPresse 1/15/15)
It was unclear how much effect the dissolution of Parliament would have on the government’s operations, which were already hampered by a longstanding stalemate between Martelly and the opposition, but an anti-mining coalition, the Mining Justice Collective (previously the “Collective Against Mining”), is concerned that the president may take advantage of the situation to impose a law that would greatly expand the mining sector [see Update #1230]. The measure, which was stalled in Parliament, would change Haiti’s 1976 mining code to allow the Bureau of Mines and Energy (BME) to sign directly with mining companies without having to win approval from Parliament, opening up northern Haiti to massive open-pit gold mining by foreign companies. The World Bank helped draft the law, and six Haitian groups filed a formal complaint with the bank on Jan. 7, noting that the measure was written without the public consultation often required by the bank’s own policies. (Upside Down World 1/13/15 from IPS)
*2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
At least seven people were injured, some seriously, on Jan. 12 when dozens of protesters tried to enter a Mexican military post in Iguala de la Independencia in the southwestern state of Guerrero, saying they were looking for students who were abducted in the area the night of Sept. 26-27 [see Update #1248]. The missing students had attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the town of Ayotzinapa, and the protesters were other students from the school and parents and relatives of the missing youths. The military post, staffed by the 47th Infantry Battalion, is near the sites where local police and others—possibly including soldiers and federal police--gunned down six people and abducted 43 students in the September violence. So far authorities have only identified the remains of one of the missing students, leaving 42 unaccounted for.
“[Y]ou too were complicit in the violent acts that happened in Iguala,” one of the parents told the soldiers, addressing them over a megaphone. “Today we’ve come to demand that you give us our children, because you know where they are…. Today we’re telling these cowardly and murderous soldiers that they aren’t good for anything but killing students, not for confronting organized crime, which they’re scared of.” Unable to get into the installation, a group of students commandeered a Coca-Cola delivery truck and knocked down one side of a gate. Inside the post the protesters were outnumbered by some 300 military and state police agents, who used tear gas and fire extinguishers in an attempt to disperse them. The protesters responded with rocks, which the agents hurled back. The injured included four parents, two students and one reporter from the Venezuela-based television network TeleSUR. Two demonstrators were detained and held for about one hour.
After being driven from the post, the protesters joined with members of the militant State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG) to march to the Iguala-Chilpancingo highway, where they set three trucks on fire. (La Jornada 1/13/15)
The Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) insists that the September attack was the work of municipal police from Iguala and nearby Cocula and the members of a local gang, Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”). In the official version, the gang members took the 43 students and executed them, incinerating the bodies at a dump in Cocula. The government has arrested 97 people in the case, and is pressing charges against former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa. Federal officials say the investigation has been completed, although they claim to be continuing the search for the 42 students who are still missing.
Insisting they had nothing to hide, on the evening of Jan. 13 federal authorities said they would make arrangements for the parents of the missing students to visit military installations. Federal governance secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong announced on Jan. 14 that the military would also invite the government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) to inspect the Iguala post, although he denied any involvement by the military in the September events. (LJ 1/14/15, 1/14/15, 1/15/15)
According to an investigative report published on Dec. 13 by the Mexican weekly Proceso, both the military and the federal police monitored the movements of the Ayotzinapa students the evening of Sept. 26 and were probably involved in the violence. Two researchers--Jorge Antonio Montemayor Aldrete from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Pablo Ugalde Vélez from Mexico City’s Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM)—have questioned the PGR’s conclusion that the missing students were killed and then incinerated at the Cocula dump. The researchers say it would be impossible to build a fire at the site that would be hot enough for the sort of full incineration the government claims. The military has its own modern crematoria, and the researchers have asked to see records of their use in late September. (LJ 1/4/15) The researchers also charge that vegetation shown in photos of the dump in November couldn’t have grown back so quickly after the intense heat from the supposed fire, and that if some students had been killed there, blood and other organic material would have left enough DNA in the soil for investigators to make positive identifications of the victims. (LJ 1/14/15)
In other news, a leader of the Triqui indigenous group, Julián González Domínguez, was kidnapped by 10 armed men from his home in Santiago Juxtlahuaca municipality, in Oaxaca near the Guerrero border, and was found dead at a nearby highway on Jan. 12, according to the Oaxaca International Indigenous Network (RIIO). González was a leader for many years in the Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULT); more recently, he was one of the founders of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), a new center-left party started by former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The Triqui zone has been the scene of violent conflicts between the MULT, the rival Independent Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULTI) and the Social Welfare Unity of the Triqui Region (UBISORT); the last organization is said to be a paramilitary group linked to the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #1054]. González’s community also had a longstanding agrarian dispute with a nearby community directed by the PRI-affiliated National Campesino Confederation (CNC). RIIO said that González had been receiving threats and that another member of his community was kidnapped and murdered in December. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR, or CIDH by its initials in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), had issued “cautionary measures” calling on the Mexican authorities to protect the Triqui leader’s life. (Sputnik News 1/13/15)
*3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
Some 150 supporters greeted Puerto Rican independence activist Norberto González Claudio at San Juan’s international airport on Jan. 15, hours after he was released from a federal prison in Coleman, Florida. González Claudio, a former member of the rebel Boricua Popular Army (EPB)-Macheteros, had served a three and one-half year prison term for his involvement in the group’s 1983 armed robbery of $7.1 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut—until then the largest heist on record. Arrested in May 2011 in the central Puerto Rican town of Cayey after spending 25 years as fugitive, González Claudio pleaded guilty in exchange for a shorter prison sentence [see Update #1133]. He was due to be released last September, but his time in Coleman was extended four months because of an alleged infraction. The activist’s relatives and colleagues saw this as part of a pattern of physical and psychological tortures they say he endured.
Supporters and relatives of another prisoner, Oscar López Rivera, were among the people greeting González Claudio at the airport. (El Nuevo Día (Guaynabo) 1/15/15; Univision 1/15/15 from Inter News Service; Hartford Courant 1/15/15 from AP)
López Rivera has been in the US prison system for 33 years for his role in another independence group, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) [see Update #871]. He refused to accept a clemency offer in 1999 from then-US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and is now apparently the last prisoner from the group. Fellow FALN member Haydée Beltrán Torres was released in 2009, and her husband, Carlos Alberto Torres, was released in 2010.
González Claudio was the last prisoner from the Macheteros group, whose leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, was shot dead by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September 2005 [see Update #1117]. Víctor Manuel Gerena, the Wells Fargo driver who carried out the 1983 robbery, is reportedly living in Cuba. Along with African-American activist Assata Shakur (formerly Joanne Chesimard) and FALN activist William Morales, Gerena has become a target of US politicians seeking the return of US political exiles from asylum in Cuba as a condition for improved relations between that country and the US [see World War 4 Report 12/24/15]. (Hunterdon County (NJ) Democrat 1/13/15)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Did Iran kill Argentine prosecutor?
http://ww4report.com/node/13911#comment-452733
French Economist Piketty Blasts Vulture Funds in Argentina Tour
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/French-Economist-Piketty-Blasts-Vulture-Funds-in-Argentina-Tour-20150117-0017.html
Brazil Truth Commission Details Extent of Rape During Military Dictatorship
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5187-brazil-truth-commission-details-extent-of-rape-during-military-dictatorship
Peru: protest legal assault on land rights
http://ww4report.com/node/13447#comment-452714
Peru: youth protest labor law
http://ww4report.com/node/13906
Ecuador: Defending the CONAIE beyond Its House
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5178-ecuador-defending-the-conaie-beyond-its-house
Ecuador: Correa blinks in stand-off with CONAIE
http://ww4report.com/node/13898
Colombia: will government answer FARC ceasefire?
http://ww4report.com/node/13897
Are the FARC narco-traffickers?
http://ww4report.com/node/13903
Straight Talk on How Maduro Measures Up to Chávez (Venezuela)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/09/maduro%27s-progress-economic-warfare
Economic Solutions: Two Perspectives from the Bolivarian Left (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11160
Rudy Giuliani Will Advise El Salvador on Security, Justice Reform
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/12/rudy-giuliani-will-advise-el-salvador-on-security-justice-reform/
El Salvador: Archbishop Romero Declared Martyr
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5180-archbishop-romero-declared-martyr
El Salvador's Other Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5172-el-salvadors-other-crisis
Poor Guatemalans Are Taking On North American Mining Companies-and Have the Bullet Wounds to Prove It
https://www.thenation.com/article/194809/poor-guatemalans-are-taking-north-american-mining-companies-and-have-bullet-wounds-pr
Justice in Guatemala Deferred, Again (Audio)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/14/justice-guatemala-deferred-again-audio
Guatemala postpones ex-dictator's genocide retrial
http://ww4report.com/node/13896
Trial on Guatemala’s Spanish Embassy Fire Resumes Today: The Rest is History (Video)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/19/trial-guatemala%E2%80%99s-spanish-embassy-fire-resumes-today-rest-history-video
2015 US Appropriations Act Maintains Restrictions On US Military Aid To Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5186-2015-us-appropriations-act-maintains-restrictions-on-us-military-aid-to-guatemala
Ayotzinapa: 100 Days of Rage, Sorrow and Struggle in Guerrero
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5181-ayotzinapa-100-days-of-rage-sorrow-and-struggle-in-guerrero
The L.A.-Ayotzinapa Connection (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14454
#Alertabachajón - Police Shoot at Indigenous Tseltales Trying to Recover Lands (Mexico)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/alertabachajon-police-shoot-indigenous-tseltales-trying-recover-lands/
Mexico’s Economy 2015: Boom, Bust or Burp?
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-economy-2015-boom-bust-or-burp/
Mexican Labor 2014 in Review
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=232#1786
Farewell to the Grand Old Dean of Latin Journalism (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/farewell-to-the-grand-old-dean-of-latin-journalism/
US Politicians Descend on Cuba as Normalization Process Begins
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Politicians-Descend-on-Cuba-as-Normalization-Process-Begins-20150117-0014.html
Five Years After the Earthquake in Haiti, the Sad State of Democracy and Human Rights
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14409
It’s Been Five Years, and All the Money Raised is Gone: What did the Red Cross Accomplish in Haiti?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/its-been-five-years-and-all-the-money-raised-is-gone-what-did-the-red-cross-accomplish-in-haiti
Haitians Worry World Bank-Assisted Mining Law Could Result in “Looting”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5179-haitians-worry-world-bank-assisted-mining-law-could-result-in-looting
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Haiti: Deal Fails, Martelly Rules by Decree
Haiti entered a long-threatened period of constitutional crisis on Jan. 12 when terms expired for all 99 members of the Chamber of Deputies and for 10 of the country’s 30 senators; the terms had already run out for another third of the senators. Since the government had failed to hold overdue elections for these seats, Parliament no longer had a quorum to pass laws and President Martelly was free to rule by decree in the absence of a viable legislature. He and the leaders of Parliament had announced an agreement on Dec. 29 that would extend the legislators’ terms if Parliament met a Jan. 12 deadline to pass amendments to the electoral law [see Update #1249], but the deal didn’t win the agreement of the main opposition parties. The vote never took place.
The slide into direct presidential rule came on the day when Haitians were marking the fifth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and left tens or hundreds of thousands of people dead. (Radio-Canada 1/11/15 from correspondents; Radio France Internationale (RFI) 1/13/15 from correspondent)
Martelly’s opponents said they would continue with the anti-government demonstrations they have been sponsoring since the fall to demand Martelly’s resignation. On Jan. 15 an opposition coalition announced plans for marches in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 16, Jan. 17, Jan. 20, Jan. 22 and Jan. 23. The coalition includes the Patriotic Movement of the Democratic Opposition (Mopod) and a new political party, Pitit Desalin (“Children of Dessalines,” referring to the revolutionary hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines). Pitit Desalin’s leader is ex-senator Moïse Jean-Charles, who until late 2013 was associated with the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004) [see Update #1204]. FL itself has refrained from calling for Martelly’s resignation, but according to former FL senator Louis Gérald Gilles, the party is demanding the resignation of Martelly’s new prime minister, Evans Paul, a longtime Aristide opponent who hadn’t been confirmed by Parliament before it lost its quorum. If Paul doesn’t step down, Gilles said, FL will join the other opposition groups in demanding Martelly’s resignation. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 1/15/15; Haïti Libre 1/17/15)
As of Jan. 15 the so-called “Core Group”--the ambassadors of Brazil, Canada, France, Spain, the US and the European Union (EU), along with the special representatives of the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of American States (OAS)—had declared their countries’ “support for the president of the republic in the exercise of his constitutional duties.” The US had backed the failed agreement to extend the legislators’ terms, and US ambassador Pamela White angered many Haitians by attending a meeting of Parliament the evening of Jan. 11 when the deal was being discussed. She apparently hadn’t been invited. “You want to know what I think of Pamela White?” a passerby told an RFI correspondent the next day. “These people have long since been interfering in the country’s affairs. They’re the ones who chose Martelly, because he sold them the country.” The speaker was referring to interference by foreign powers in the 2010-2011 elections [see Update #1062]. (RFI 1/13/15; AlterPresse 1/15/15)
In contrast to the Core Group, the center-left government of Uruguay may react to the situation by withdrawing its troops from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), as it threatened in December [see Update #1249]. Uruguayan foreign minister Luis Almagro was reportedly planning an “emergency” visit to UN headquarters in New York to coordinate the withdrawal of his country’s 605 MINUSTAH members in the near future. (AlterPresse 1/15/15)
It was unclear how much effect the dissolution of Parliament would have on the government’s operations, which were already hampered by a longstanding stalemate between Martelly and the opposition, but an anti-mining coalition, the Mining Justice Collective (previously the “Collective Against Mining”), is concerned that the president may take advantage of the situation to impose a law that would greatly expand the mining sector [see Update #1230]. The measure, which was stalled in Parliament, would change Haiti’s 1976 mining code to allow the Bureau of Mines and Energy (BME) to sign directly with mining companies without having to win approval from Parliament, opening up northern Haiti to massive open-pit gold mining by foreign companies. The World Bank helped draft the law, and six Haitian groups filed a formal complaint with the bank on Jan. 7, noting that the measure was written without the public consultation often required by the bank’s own policies. (Upside Down World 1/13/15 from IPS)
*2. Mexico: Students’ Parents Storm Army Base
At least seven people were injured, some seriously, on Jan. 12 when dozens of protesters tried to enter a Mexican military post in Iguala de la Independencia in the southwestern state of Guerrero, saying they were looking for students who were abducted in the area the night of Sept. 26-27 [see Update #1248]. The missing students had attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the town of Ayotzinapa, and the protesters were other students from the school and parents and relatives of the missing youths. The military post, staffed by the 47th Infantry Battalion, is near the sites where local police and others—possibly including soldiers and federal police--gunned down six people and abducted 43 students in the September violence. So far authorities have only identified the remains of one of the missing students, leaving 42 unaccounted for.
“[Y]ou too were complicit in the violent acts that happened in Iguala,” one of the parents told the soldiers, addressing them over a megaphone. “Today we’ve come to demand that you give us our children, because you know where they are…. Today we’re telling these cowardly and murderous soldiers that they aren’t good for anything but killing students, not for confronting organized crime, which they’re scared of.” Unable to get into the installation, a group of students commandeered a Coca-Cola delivery truck and knocked down one side of a gate. Inside the post the protesters were outnumbered by some 300 military and state police agents, who used tear gas and fire extinguishers in an attempt to disperse them. The protesters responded with rocks, which the agents hurled back. The injured included four parents, two students and one reporter from the Venezuela-based television network TeleSUR. Two demonstrators were detained and held for about one hour.
After being driven from the post, the protesters joined with members of the militant State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG) to march to the Iguala-Chilpancingo highway, where they set three trucks on fire. (La Jornada 1/13/15)
The Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) insists that the September attack was the work of municipal police from Iguala and nearby Cocula and the members of a local gang, Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”). In the official version, the gang members took the 43 students and executed them, incinerating the bodies at a dump in Cocula. The government has arrested 97 people in the case, and is pressing charges against former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa. Federal officials say the investigation has been completed, although they claim to be continuing the search for the 42 students who are still missing.
Insisting they had nothing to hide, on the evening of Jan. 13 federal authorities said they would make arrangements for the parents of the missing students to visit military installations. Federal governance secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong announced on Jan. 14 that the military would also invite the government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) to inspect the Iguala post, although he denied any involvement by the military in the September events. (LJ 1/14/15, 1/14/15, 1/15/15)
According to an investigative report published on Dec. 13 by the Mexican weekly Proceso, both the military and the federal police monitored the movements of the Ayotzinapa students the evening of Sept. 26 and were probably involved in the violence. Two researchers--Jorge Antonio Montemayor Aldrete from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Pablo Ugalde Vélez from Mexico City’s Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM)—have questioned the PGR’s conclusion that the missing students were killed and then incinerated at the Cocula dump. The researchers say it would be impossible to build a fire at the site that would be hot enough for the sort of full incineration the government claims. The military has its own modern crematoria, and the researchers have asked to see records of their use in late September. (LJ 1/4/15) The researchers also charge that vegetation shown in photos of the dump in November couldn’t have grown back so quickly after the intense heat from the supposed fire, and that if some students had been killed there, blood and other organic material would have left enough DNA in the soil for investigators to make positive identifications of the victims. (LJ 1/14/15)
In other news, a leader of the Triqui indigenous group, Julián González Domínguez, was kidnapped by 10 armed men from his home in Santiago Juxtlahuaca municipality, in Oaxaca near the Guerrero border, and was found dead at a nearby highway on Jan. 12, according to the Oaxaca International Indigenous Network (RIIO). González was a leader for many years in the Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULT); more recently, he was one of the founders of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), a new center-left party started by former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The Triqui zone has been the scene of violent conflicts between the MULT, the rival Independent Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (MULTI) and the Social Welfare Unity of the Triqui Region (UBISORT); the last organization is said to be a paramilitary group linked to the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [see Update #1054]. González’s community also had a longstanding agrarian dispute with a nearby community directed by the PRI-affiliated National Campesino Confederation (CNC). RIIO said that González had been receiving threats and that another member of his community was kidnapped and murdered in December. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR, or CIDH by its initials in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), had issued “cautionary measures” calling on the Mexican authorities to protect the Triqui leader’s life. (Sputnik News 1/13/15)
*3. Puerto Rico: Machetero Prisoner Is Released
Some 150 supporters greeted Puerto Rican independence activist Norberto González Claudio at San Juan’s international airport on Jan. 15, hours after he was released from a federal prison in Coleman, Florida. González Claudio, a former member of the rebel Boricua Popular Army (EPB)-Macheteros, had served a three and one-half year prison term for his involvement in the group’s 1983 armed robbery of $7.1 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut—until then the largest heist on record. Arrested in May 2011 in the central Puerto Rican town of Cayey after spending 25 years as fugitive, González Claudio pleaded guilty in exchange for a shorter prison sentence [see Update #1133]. He was due to be released last September, but his time in Coleman was extended four months because of an alleged infraction. The activist’s relatives and colleagues saw this as part of a pattern of physical and psychological tortures they say he endured.
Supporters and relatives of another prisoner, Oscar López Rivera, were among the people greeting González Claudio at the airport. (El Nuevo Día (Guaynabo) 1/15/15; Univision 1/15/15 from Inter News Service; Hartford Courant 1/15/15 from AP)
López Rivera has been in the US prison system for 33 years for his role in another independence group, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) [see Update #871]. He refused to accept a clemency offer in 1999 from then-US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and is now apparently the last prisoner from the group. Fellow FALN member Haydée Beltrán Torres was released in 2009, and her husband, Carlos Alberto Torres, was released in 2010.
González Claudio was the last prisoner from the Macheteros group, whose leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, was shot dead by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September 2005 [see Update #1117]. Víctor Manuel Gerena, the Wells Fargo driver who carried out the 1983 robbery, is reportedly living in Cuba. Along with African-American activist Assata Shakur (formerly Joanne Chesimard) and FALN activist William Morales, Gerena has become a target of US politicians seeking the return of US political exiles from asylum in Cuba as a condition for improved relations between that country and the US [see World War 4 Report 12/24/15]. (Hunterdon County (NJ) Democrat 1/13/15)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti
Did Iran kill Argentine prosecutor?
http://ww4report.com/node/13911#comment-452733
French Economist Piketty Blasts Vulture Funds in Argentina Tour
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/French-Economist-Piketty-Blasts-Vulture-Funds-in-Argentina-Tour-20150117-0017.html
Brazil Truth Commission Details Extent of Rape During Military Dictatorship
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5187-brazil-truth-commission-details-extent-of-rape-during-military-dictatorship
Peru: protest legal assault on land rights
http://ww4report.com/node/13447#comment-452714
Peru: youth protest labor law
http://ww4report.com/node/13906
Ecuador: Defending the CONAIE beyond Its House
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5178-ecuador-defending-the-conaie-beyond-its-house
Ecuador: Correa blinks in stand-off with CONAIE
http://ww4report.com/node/13898
Colombia: will government answer FARC ceasefire?
http://ww4report.com/node/13897
Are the FARC narco-traffickers?
http://ww4report.com/node/13903
Straight Talk on How Maduro Measures Up to Chávez (Venezuela)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/09/maduro%27s-progress-economic-warfare
Economic Solutions: Two Perspectives from the Bolivarian Left (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11160
Rudy Giuliani Will Advise El Salvador on Security, Justice Reform
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/12/rudy-giuliani-will-advise-el-salvador-on-security-justice-reform/
El Salvador: Archbishop Romero Declared Martyr
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5180-archbishop-romero-declared-martyr
El Salvador's Other Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5172-el-salvadors-other-crisis
Poor Guatemalans Are Taking On North American Mining Companies-and Have the Bullet Wounds to Prove It
https://www.thenation.com/article/194809/poor-guatemalans-are-taking-north-american-mining-companies-and-have-bullet-wounds-pr
Justice in Guatemala Deferred, Again (Audio)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/14/justice-guatemala-deferred-again-audio
Guatemala postpones ex-dictator's genocide retrial
http://ww4report.com/node/13896
Trial on Guatemala’s Spanish Embassy Fire Resumes Today: The Rest is History (Video)
https://nacla.org/news/2015/01/19/trial-guatemala%E2%80%99s-spanish-embassy-fire-resumes-today-rest-history-video
2015 US Appropriations Act Maintains Restrictions On US Military Aid To Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5186-2015-us-appropriations-act-maintains-restrictions-on-us-military-aid-to-guatemala
Ayotzinapa: 100 Days of Rage, Sorrow and Struggle in Guerrero
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5181-ayotzinapa-100-days-of-rage-sorrow-and-struggle-in-guerrero
The L.A.-Ayotzinapa Connection (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14454
#Alertabachajón - Police Shoot at Indigenous Tseltales Trying to Recover Lands (Mexico)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/alertabachajon-police-shoot-indigenous-tseltales-trying-recover-lands/
Mexico’s Economy 2015: Boom, Bust or Burp?
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-economy-2015-boom-bust-or-burp/
Mexican Labor 2014 in Review
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=232#1786
Farewell to the Grand Old Dean of Latin Journalism (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/farewell-to-the-grand-old-dean-of-latin-journalism/
US Politicians Descend on Cuba as Normalization Process Begins
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Politicians-Descend-on-Cuba-as-Normalization-Process-Begins-20150117-0014.html
Five Years After the Earthquake in Haiti, the Sad State of Democracy and Human Rights
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14409
It’s Been Five Years, and All the Money Raised is Gone: What did the Red Cross Accomplish in Haiti?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/its-been-five-years-and-all-the-money-raised-is-gone-what-did-the-red-cross-accomplish-in-haiti
Haitians Worry World Bank-Assisted Mining Law Could Result in “Looting”
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5179-haitians-worry-world-bank-assisted-mining-law-could-result-in-looting
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
WNU #1247: Panamanians Remember US Invasion
Issue #1247, December 21, 2014
1. Panama: Victims Remember US Invasion
2. Cuba: US Agrees to Normalize Relations
3. Cuba: Leftists, US Firms Praise New Policy
4. Cuba: USAID Head Quits After Latest Scandal
5. Venezuela: US Imposes Sanctions on Officials
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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. Panama: Victims Remember US Invasion
Victims and survivors of the 1989 invasion of Panama by the US held a public ceremony on Dec. 20 to mark the 25th anniversary of the start of the military action. As they have for 25 years, the ceremony’s participants called for the US government to acknowledge the damage from the invasion, indemnify the victims and their survivors, and reveal the location of mass graves where some of the dead were buried. “There were bodies that were thrown in the sea, and there are bodies scattered in different places, so we can never finally offer them a tribute,” Trinidad Ayola, whose husband died defending an airport, told the AFP wire service. “Without justice there can’t be peace or reconciliation, and we can’t turn the page.” President Juan Carlos Varela attended the ceremony, announcing that the government would form a commission to consider the families’ demands, including the declaration of Dec. 20 as a national day of mourning. He is the first Panamanian president to attend the annual commemoration.
Codenamed “Operation Just Cause,” the invasion was ordered by then-president George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) and overseen by armed forces head Gen. Colin Powell. The stated goal was to capture Panamanian military leader Manuel Antonio Noriega, a longtime asset of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in order to restore democracy and end cocaine trafficking through Panama. Others have suggested that Bush invaded because Noriega refused to help the US attack the government of Nicaragua, then headed by the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), and because he wouldn’t renegotiate the Torrijos-Carter treaty, in which the US agreed to return control of the Panama Canal to Panama in 1999. After serving out a prison sentence in the US, Noriega was extradited to Panama in 2011 and remains in prison there.
According to official sources, 314 Panamanian soldiers and 23 US soldiers died in the invasion. The Panamanian government says some 200 civilians were killed, but Panamanian human rights organizations estimate that more than a thousand died. US bombing caused widespread damage in the country, setting off fires in Panama City’s impoverished El Chorrillo neighborhood that destroyed some 4,000 homes.
Panamanians may not have been the only victims of the invasion. Writing in TomDispatch on Dec. 21, New York University history professor Greg Grandin concluded that the success of “Just Cause”--both in achieving its military goals and in influencing US public opinion--encouraged US leaders to larger and even bloodier military interventions. “[T]he invasion of Panama was the forgotten warm-up for the first Gulf War, which took place a little over a year later,” according to Grandin. “The road to Baghdad, in other words, ran through Panama City. It was George H.W. Bush’s invasion of that small, poor country 25 years ago that inaugurated the age of preemptive unilateralism, using ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ as both justifications for war and a branding opportunity.” (El Siglo (Panama) 12/18/14 from AFP; Fox News Latino 12/21/14; TomDispatch 12/21/14)
*2. Cuba: US Agrees to Normalize Relations
In a surprise move, Cuban president Raúl Castro and US president Barack Obama announced in separate television appearances on Dec. 17 that their two countries were now working to renew diplomatic relations, which the US broke off nearly 54 years earlier, in January 1961, under former president Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961). The two countries were releasing a total of 58 prisoners in the agreement, officials said, and the US will loosen some restrictions on contacts with Cuba by US residents; however, the US government’s 52-year-old embargo against trade with Cuba will remain in effect.
The accord was worked out in 18 months of secret discussions and meetings, apparently with some mediation from Argentine-born Catholic pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio). President Castro said the agreement “in no way means that the heart of the matter has been resolved,” but he added that “the progress made in our exchanges proves that it is possible to find solutions to many problems.” President Obama described the previous US policy towards Cuba as “an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests” and said the accord will “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas.”
As part of the agreement Cuba released US citizen Alan Gross, who had been serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba since 2011 for his work there as a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) [see Update #1241]. At the same time the US released Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández and Ramón Labañino, three of the “Cuban Five,” a group of Cuban agents that US courts convicted in 2001 of espionage-related activities; the other two agents, René González and Fernando González, were released earlier after serving their sentences [see Update #1211]. Cuban officials said Gross, who was unwell, was freed for humanitarian reasons. Apparently the three Cubans were not exchanged for Gross but for a US spy who had been imprisoned in Cuba for nearly 20 years. The Cuban government also agreed to release 53 Cubans that the US had described as “political prisoners.” (New York Times 12/18/14)
Cuban and US officials refused to name the US spy who was released, but unidentified former US intelligence agents told the media they were certain the spy was Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, a Cuban cryptologist who was arrested in 1995 and was serving a 25-year sentence for revealing Cuban secret codes to the US. Reportedly his actions helped lead US intelligence to the exposure of a number of important Cuban agents in the US: the Cuban Five, Ana Belén Montes [see Update #664], Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Myers. Although officials said the spy was freed and sent to the US as part of the deal, as of Dec. 19 Sarraff Trujillo’s relatives said they hadn’t heard from him and were concerned for his safety. (Los Angeles Times 12/18/14; NYT 12/19/14 from AP)
The US government is to ease restrictions on different categories of travel to Cuba by US residents--for family visits, official visits, and journalistic, professional, educational and religious activities, and public performance--and travelers will also be able to bring back $400 worth of goods, including up to $100 in tobacco and alcohol products. However, private tourism will still be forbidden. Banking connections will be increased, and US residents will be able to send family members in Cuba $2,000 every three months, up from $500 at present. The US State Department has been instructed to “re-evaluate” its 22-year-old listing of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” a designation which has been questioned even by establishment groups like the Council on Foreign Relations think tank. The US president lacks the authority to end the trade embargo, which Congress has mandated through various laws, but on Dec. 17 Obama asked for an “honest and serious debate about lifting” it. (Boston Globe 12/17/14; NYT 12/18/14; US Today 12/19/14)
*3. Cuba: Leftists, US Firms Praise New Policy
US president Barack Obama’s Dec. 17 announcement that the US would restore diplomatic relations with Cuba was “an historic triumph for the society and the government of the island,” the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada asserted in an editorial the next day. “[T]he hostility converted into Washington’s government policy has arrived at its end—although the repeal of the blockade laws is still pending—and this occurred without Havana’s having made any concession in its political and economic model.” The paper added that the policy change demonstrated “the correctness of the position of the Latin American governments, which advocated for decades for an end to the official US hostility to Cuba.” (LJ 12/18/14)
The change won praise from Latin American leaders on both the left and the right. “For us, social fighters, today is an historic day,” center-left Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said at conference of South American countries in Argentina. “We imagined we would never see this moment.” Venezuela’s leftist president Nicolás Maduro, attending the same conference, called the move an “historic victory for the Cuban people…. [W]e have to recognize the gesture from President Barack Obama, a courageous and necessary gesture.” Center-right Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos expressed his hope that the new policy would lead to attaining “the dream of having a continent where there is total peace.” (Washington Post 12/18/14 from correspondents)
The response in the US was generally favorable, despite heavy media coverage of opponents of the policy change like Cuban-American senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ). A poll by Zogby Analytics found 56% of US voters in favor of the new policy and only 27% opposed. Among Latino voters, 70% supported the policy and 21% opposed it.
Support seemed to be especially strong among US business groups hoping to take advantage of the new relationship. “We deeply believe that an open dialogue and commercial exchange between the US and Cuban private sectors will bring shared benefits, and the steps announced today will go a long way in allowing opportunities for free enterprise to flourish,” US Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donahue said on Dec. 17. Some US corporations did more than just support the move. Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc., personal care product maker Colgate-Palmolive Company and the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies have each spent tens of thousands of dollars lobbying for an end to the embargo. The liquor company Bacardi Limited and the Swedish-owned General Cigar Company have also been lobbying, while Carnival Cruise Lines, Marriott Hotels & Resorts, the Coca Cola Company and heavy equipment manufacturer John Deere have all expressed interest in doing business in Cuba. (The Hill 12/17/14; Fortune 12/18/14; LJ 12/20/14 from correspondent)
*4. Cuba: USAID Head Quits After Latest Scandal
On Dec. 17, less than a week after the Associated Press (AP) wire service reported on a failed effort by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to co-opt Cuban hip-hop artists, agency administrator Rajiv Shah announced that he was leaving his post in February. Shah’s announcement came the same day as news that the US was moving towards normalizing relations with Cuba and that the Cuban government had released imprisoned USAID contractor Alan Gross. Shah didn’t give a reason for his resignation but said he had “mixed emotions.” In a statement released that day US president Barack Obama said Shah, who has headed the USAID since December 2009, “has been at the center of my administration’s efforts to advance our global development agenda.” (Bellingham (WA) Herald 12/17/14 from AP)
According to a Dec. 11 AP article, documents obtained by the wire service show that from 2009 to 2011 USAID “secretly infiltrated Cuba's underground hip-hop movement, recruiting unwitting rappers to spark a youth movement against the government.” The program, which the AP describes as “amateurish and profoundly unsuccessful,” was run through Washington, DC-based private contractor Creative Associates International and employed the services of Serbian rock promoter Rajko Bozic, who claims to have been part of the Serbian student movement that helped remove Slobodan Milosevic from power in 2000. The project’s contractors ended up “putting themselves and their targets at risk” and “compromising Cuba's vibrant hip-hop culture,” AP investigative reporters concluded. (AP 12/11/14)
AP reported earlier this year on two other failed USAID “democracy promotion” projects, also contracted through Creative Associates: the ZunZuneo “Cuban Twitter” program and an effort to build an anti-government youth movement. All three projects were carried out during Shah’s tenure as USAID administrator, although they appear to have started before he took over [see Updates #1215, 1230].
Shah, a former executive with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, preceded his resignation with a visit to Haiti over the weekend of Dec. 19. There he signed a partnership agreement with the healthcare nonprofit Partners in Health’s Haitian branch, Zanmi Lasante; he reportedly also met with Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer, who was the Obama’s administration’s first choice to head USAID. (Devex 12/17/14) Like the Cuban programs, USAID projects for Haiti have experienced a number of failures under Shah. The “New Settlement Program,” for example, was supposed to build 4,000 houses by 2012 to replace homes lost in the earthquake that struck southern Haiti in January 2010; the cost was to be about $53 million. Only about 816 houses had been built when USAID’s inspector general issued a report in April 2014, but the program’s cost had soared to $90 million. According to a Nov. 20 news item by the DC-based nonprofit Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), 750 of the houses are so badly constructed that they will need millions of dollars of repairs. (CEPR 11/20/14; Fiscal Times 12/9/14)
*5. Venezuela: US Imposes Sanctions on Officials
On Dec. 18 US president Barack Obama signed a bill into law that will impose sanctions on those Venezuela officials that the US government decides were involved in repressing demonstrators during rightwing protests last spring. The measure, which Congress passed the week before, would deny visas to the officials and freeze any assets they may hold in the US. Diplomats in Venezuela said dozens of officials could be affected, although the US is not expected to publish their names. A total of 43 people were reportedly killed in the three months of demonstrations, including government supporters, government opponents and security agents.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro noted that Obama signed the bill just one day after announcing plans to normalize relations with Cuba following a half-century of sanctions. “These are the contradictions of an empire that seeks to impose its domination by whatever means, underestimating the power and conscience of our fatherland,” Maduro wrote in his Twitter account on Dec. 18. In a New York Times op-ed National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello Rondón noted the “unfortunate coincidence” that Congress passed the sanctions bill “just as scores of people demonstrating against police brutality were being arrested on the streets of New York and other cities” and “a Senate report revealed the extent of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency” [see Update #1246]. (NYT 12/19/14; Reuters 12/19/14)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, US/immigration
Climate Justice: Uniting Struggles Across Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5156-climate-justice-uniting-struggles-across-latin-america
The Torture Consensus in U.S. Democracy (Latin America)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/12/19/torture-consensus-us-democracy
Argentina: Dock Workers End Strike at Major Grain Port
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Argentina-Dock-Workers-End-Strike-at-Major-Grain-Port------------20141219-0037.html
Argentina: Mining Corporations vs. Democracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/5155-argentina-mining-corporations-vs-democracy
PEC 215: No Vote by Special Commission of Brazilian House
https://intercontinentalcry.org/pec-215-no-vote-by-special-commission-of-brazilian-house-26664/
Gratitude for the Defense of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil
https://intercontinentalcry.org/gratitude-defense-rights-indigenous-peoples-brazil/
Denunciation of the Suppression of Rights and Attempts to End the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil
https://intercontinentalcry.org/denunciation-suppression-rights-attempts-end-indigenous-peoples-brazil/
Peru: campesino family scores win against mine
http://ww4report.com/node/13834
An Open Letter from Boaventura de Sousa Santos to Ecuadorian President Correa on Kicking the CONAIE Indigenous Movement Out of its Headquarters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5150-an-open-letter-from-boaventura-de-sousa-santos-to-ecuadorian-president-correa-on-kicking-the-conaie-indigenous-movement-out-of-its-headquarters
CONAIE Indigenous Organization Evicted from Headquarters by Ecuadorian Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5152-conaie-indigenous-organization-evicted-from-headquarters-by-ecuadorian-government
Ecuador: Correa acts against CONAIE
http://ww4report.com/node/13833
Colombia: FARC declare ceasefire —amid fighting
http://ww4report.com/node/13831
Colombia: corrupt cops caught in crackdown
http://ww4report.com/node/13830
Beyond Ayotzinapa: How U.S. Intervention in Colombia Paved the Way for Mexico’s Human Rights Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5153-beyond-ayotzinapa-how-us-intervention-in-colombia-paved-the-way-for-mexicos-human-rights-crisis
Venezuela sanctions highlight US hypocrisy on human rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5157-venezuela-sanctions-highlight-us-hypocrisy-on-human-rights
Tomgram: Greg Grandin, How the Iraq War Began in Panama
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175937/tomgram%3A_greg_grandin%2C_how_the_iraq_war_began_in_panama
The Struggle for Indigenous Land and Autonomy in Honduras
https://intercontinentalcry.org/the-struggle-for-indigenous-land-and-autonomy-in-honduras-26652/
Mining interests in Guatemala challenged by indigenous direct democracy
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/mining-interests-guatemala-challenged-indigenous-direct-democracy/
Unearthing the Truth: Mexican State Violence Beyond Ayotzinapa
https://nacla.org/news/2014/12/22/unearthing-truth-mexican-state-violence-beyond-ayotzinapa
The Revolution of Lupe Reyes (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-revolution-of-lupe-reyes/
Collapse of Oil Prices, Fall in Peso Exacerbate Mexican Crisis
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=231#1780
Mining Water in Sonora: Grupo México’s “Irregular” Water Permits in the Sonora, Yaqui, and San Pedro River Basins (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13998
Making Mining Dreams Come True in Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14055
Mining, Megaprojects, and Metrosexuals in Sonora (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14062
Atento Workers Seeking Democratic Union Lose Election Re-run (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=231#1781
#Fergazinapa: Liberating Our Outrage, Remapping Our Action (Mexico/US)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/12/16/fergazinapa-liberating-our-outrage-remapping-our-action
Report on "Solidarity from the Ground Up: an Organizers' Tri-national Exchange" (Mexico/US/Canada)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=231#1785
Do Cubans Really Want U.S.-Style Internet Freedom?
https://nacla.org/news/2014/12/20/do-cubans-really-want-us-style-internet-freedom
Raúl Castro: The New Opening With the USA (Cuba)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5158-raul-castro-the-new-opening-with-the-usa
The Fight against Migrant Family Detention Continues (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14131
Migrant Deaths and Displacement Soar in 2014(US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/migrant-deaths-and-displacement-soar-in-2014/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://alainet.org/index.phtml.en
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/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. Panama: Victims Remember US Invasion
2. Cuba: US Agrees to Normalize Relations
3. Cuba: Leftists, US Firms Praise New Policy
4. Cuba: USAID Head Quits After Latest Scandal
5. Venezuela: US Imposes Sanctions on Officials
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, 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. Panama: Victims Remember US Invasion
Victims and survivors of the 1989 invasion of Panama by the US held a public ceremony on Dec. 20 to mark the 25th anniversary of the start of the military action. As they have for 25 years, the ceremony’s participants called for the US government to acknowledge the damage from the invasion, indemnify the victims and their survivors, and reveal the location of mass graves where some of the dead were buried. “There were bodies that were thrown in the sea, and there are bodies scattered in different places, so we can never finally offer them a tribute,” Trinidad Ayola, whose husband died defending an airport, told the AFP wire service. “Without justice there can’t be peace or reconciliation, and we can’t turn the page.” President Juan Carlos Varela attended the ceremony, announcing that the government would form a commission to consider the families’ demands, including the declaration of Dec. 20 as a national day of mourning. He is the first Panamanian president to attend the annual commemoration.
Codenamed “Operation Just Cause,” the invasion was ordered by then-president George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) and overseen by armed forces head Gen. Colin Powell. The stated goal was to capture Panamanian military leader Manuel Antonio Noriega, a longtime asset of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in order to restore democracy and end cocaine trafficking through Panama. Others have suggested that Bush invaded because Noriega refused to help the US attack the government of Nicaragua, then headed by the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), and because he wouldn’t renegotiate the Torrijos-Carter treaty, in which the US agreed to return control of the Panama Canal to Panama in 1999. After serving out a prison sentence in the US, Noriega was extradited to Panama in 2011 and remains in prison there.
According to official sources, 314 Panamanian soldiers and 23 US soldiers died in the invasion. The Panamanian government says some 200 civilians were killed, but Panamanian human rights organizations estimate that more than a thousand died. US bombing caused widespread damage in the country, setting off fires in Panama City’s impoverished El Chorrillo neighborhood that destroyed some 4,000 homes.
Panamanians may not have been the only victims of the invasion. Writing in TomDispatch on Dec. 21, New York University history professor Greg Grandin concluded that the success of “Just Cause”--both in achieving its military goals and in influencing US public opinion--encouraged US leaders to larger and even bloodier military interventions. “[T]he invasion of Panama was the forgotten warm-up for the first Gulf War, which took place a little over a year later,” according to Grandin. “The road to Baghdad, in other words, ran through Panama City. It was George H.W. Bush’s invasion of that small, poor country 25 years ago that inaugurated the age of preemptive unilateralism, using ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ as both justifications for war and a branding opportunity.” (El Siglo (Panama) 12/18/14 from AFP; Fox News Latino 12/21/14; TomDispatch 12/21/14)
*2. Cuba: US Agrees to Normalize Relations
In a surprise move, Cuban president Raúl Castro and US president Barack Obama announced in separate television appearances on Dec. 17 that their two countries were now working to renew diplomatic relations, which the US broke off nearly 54 years earlier, in January 1961, under former president Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961). The two countries were releasing a total of 58 prisoners in the agreement, officials said, and the US will loosen some restrictions on contacts with Cuba by US residents; however, the US government’s 52-year-old embargo against trade with Cuba will remain in effect.
The accord was worked out in 18 months of secret discussions and meetings, apparently with some mediation from Argentine-born Catholic pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio). President Castro said the agreement “in no way means that the heart of the matter has been resolved,” but he added that “the progress made in our exchanges proves that it is possible to find solutions to many problems.” President Obama described the previous US policy towards Cuba as “an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests” and said the accord will “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas.”
As part of the agreement Cuba released US citizen Alan Gross, who had been serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba since 2011 for his work there as a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) [see Update #1241]. At the same time the US released Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández and Ramón Labañino, three of the “Cuban Five,” a group of Cuban agents that US courts convicted in 2001 of espionage-related activities; the other two agents, René González and Fernando González, were released earlier after serving their sentences [see Update #1211]. Cuban officials said Gross, who was unwell, was freed for humanitarian reasons. Apparently the three Cubans were not exchanged for Gross but for a US spy who had been imprisoned in Cuba for nearly 20 years. The Cuban government also agreed to release 53 Cubans that the US had described as “political prisoners.” (New York Times 12/18/14)
Cuban and US officials refused to name the US spy who was released, but unidentified former US intelligence agents told the media they were certain the spy was Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, a Cuban cryptologist who was arrested in 1995 and was serving a 25-year sentence for revealing Cuban secret codes to the US. Reportedly his actions helped lead US intelligence to the exposure of a number of important Cuban agents in the US: the Cuban Five, Ana Belén Montes [see Update #664], Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Myers. Although officials said the spy was freed and sent to the US as part of the deal, as of Dec. 19 Sarraff Trujillo’s relatives said they hadn’t heard from him and were concerned for his safety. (Los Angeles Times 12/18/14; NYT 12/19/14 from AP)
The US government is to ease restrictions on different categories of travel to Cuba by US residents--for family visits, official visits, and journalistic, professional, educational and religious activities, and public performance--and travelers will also be able to bring back $400 worth of goods, including up to $100 in tobacco and alcohol products. However, private tourism will still be forbidden. Banking connections will be increased, and US residents will be able to send family members in Cuba $2,000 every three months, up from $500 at present. The US State Department has been instructed to “re-evaluate” its 22-year-old listing of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” a designation which has been questioned even by establishment groups like the Council on Foreign Relations think tank. The US president lacks the authority to end the trade embargo, which Congress has mandated through various laws, but on Dec. 17 Obama asked for an “honest and serious debate about lifting” it. (Boston Globe 12/17/14; NYT 12/18/14; US Today 12/19/14)
*3. Cuba: Leftists, US Firms Praise New Policy
US president Barack Obama’s Dec. 17 announcement that the US would restore diplomatic relations with Cuba was “an historic triumph for the society and the government of the island,” the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada asserted in an editorial the next day. “[T]he hostility converted into Washington’s government policy has arrived at its end—although the repeal of the blockade laws is still pending—and this occurred without Havana’s having made any concession in its political and economic model.” The paper added that the policy change demonstrated “the correctness of the position of the Latin American governments, which advocated for decades for an end to the official US hostility to Cuba.” (LJ 12/18/14)
The change won praise from Latin American leaders on both the left and the right. “For us, social fighters, today is an historic day,” center-left Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said at conference of South American countries in Argentina. “We imagined we would never see this moment.” Venezuela’s leftist president Nicolás Maduro, attending the same conference, called the move an “historic victory for the Cuban people…. [W]e have to recognize the gesture from President Barack Obama, a courageous and necessary gesture.” Center-right Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos expressed his hope that the new policy would lead to attaining “the dream of having a continent where there is total peace.” (Washington Post 12/18/14 from correspondents)
The response in the US was generally favorable, despite heavy media coverage of opponents of the policy change like Cuban-American senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ). A poll by Zogby Analytics found 56% of US voters in favor of the new policy and only 27% opposed. Among Latino voters, 70% supported the policy and 21% opposed it.
Support seemed to be especially strong among US business groups hoping to take advantage of the new relationship. “We deeply believe that an open dialogue and commercial exchange between the US and Cuban private sectors will bring shared benefits, and the steps announced today will go a long way in allowing opportunities for free enterprise to flourish,” US Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donahue said on Dec. 17. Some US corporations did more than just support the move. Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc., personal care product maker Colgate-Palmolive Company and the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies have each spent tens of thousands of dollars lobbying for an end to the embargo. The liquor company Bacardi Limited and the Swedish-owned General Cigar Company have also been lobbying, while Carnival Cruise Lines, Marriott Hotels & Resorts, the Coca Cola Company and heavy equipment manufacturer John Deere have all expressed interest in doing business in Cuba. (The Hill 12/17/14; Fortune 12/18/14; LJ 12/20/14 from correspondent)
*4. Cuba: USAID Head Quits After Latest Scandal
On Dec. 17, less than a week after the Associated Press (AP) wire service reported on a failed effort by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to co-opt Cuban hip-hop artists, agency administrator Rajiv Shah announced that he was leaving his post in February. Shah’s announcement came the same day as news that the US was moving towards normalizing relations with Cuba and that the Cuban government had released imprisoned USAID contractor Alan Gross. Shah didn’t give a reason for his resignation but said he had “mixed emotions.” In a statement released that day US president Barack Obama said Shah, who has headed the USAID since December 2009, “has been at the center of my administration’s efforts to advance our global development agenda.” (Bellingham (WA) Herald 12/17/14 from AP)
According to a Dec. 11 AP article, documents obtained by the wire service show that from 2009 to 2011 USAID “secretly infiltrated Cuba's underground hip-hop movement, recruiting unwitting rappers to spark a youth movement against the government.” The program, which the AP describes as “amateurish and profoundly unsuccessful,” was run through Washington, DC-based private contractor Creative Associates International and employed the services of Serbian rock promoter Rajko Bozic, who claims to have been part of the Serbian student movement that helped remove Slobodan Milosevic from power in 2000. The project’s contractors ended up “putting themselves and their targets at risk” and “compromising Cuba's vibrant hip-hop culture,” AP investigative reporters concluded. (AP 12/11/14)
AP reported earlier this year on two other failed USAID “democracy promotion” projects, also contracted through Creative Associates: the ZunZuneo “Cuban Twitter” program and an effort to build an anti-government youth movement. All three projects were carried out during Shah’s tenure as USAID administrator, although they appear to have started before he took over [see Updates #1215, 1230].
Shah, a former executive with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, preceded his resignation with a visit to Haiti over the weekend of Dec. 19. There he signed a partnership agreement with the healthcare nonprofit Partners in Health’s Haitian branch, Zanmi Lasante; he reportedly also met with Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer, who was the Obama’s administration’s first choice to head USAID. (Devex 12/17/14) Like the Cuban programs, USAID projects for Haiti have experienced a number of failures under Shah. The “New Settlement Program,” for example, was supposed to build 4,000 houses by 2012 to replace homes lost in the earthquake that struck southern Haiti in January 2010; the cost was to be about $53 million. Only about 816 houses had been built when USAID’s inspector general issued a report in April 2014, but the program’s cost had soared to $90 million. According to a Nov. 20 news item by the DC-based nonprofit Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), 750 of the houses are so badly constructed that they will need millions of dollars of repairs. (CEPR 11/20/14; Fiscal Times 12/9/14)
*5. Venezuela: US Imposes Sanctions on Officials
On Dec. 18 US president Barack Obama signed a bill into law that will impose sanctions on those Venezuela officials that the US government decides were involved in repressing demonstrators during rightwing protests last spring. The measure, which Congress passed the week before, would deny visas to the officials and freeze any assets they may hold in the US. Diplomats in Venezuela said dozens of officials could be affected, although the US is not expected to publish their names. A total of 43 people were reportedly killed in the three months of demonstrations, including government supporters, government opponents and security agents.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro noted that Obama signed the bill just one day after announcing plans to normalize relations with Cuba following a half-century of sanctions. “These are the contradictions of an empire that seeks to impose its domination by whatever means, underestimating the power and conscience of our fatherland,” Maduro wrote in his Twitter account on Dec. 18. In a New York Times op-ed National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello Rondón noted the “unfortunate coincidence” that Congress passed the sanctions bill “just as scores of people demonstrating against police brutality were being arrested on the streets of New York and other cities” and “a Senate report revealed the extent of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency” [see Update #1246]. (NYT 12/19/14; Reuters 12/19/14)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, US/immigration
Climate Justice: Uniting Struggles Across Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5156-climate-justice-uniting-struggles-across-latin-america
The Torture Consensus in U.S. Democracy (Latin America)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/12/19/torture-consensus-us-democracy
Argentina: Dock Workers End Strike at Major Grain Port
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Argentina-Dock-Workers-End-Strike-at-Major-Grain-Port------------20141219-0037.html
Argentina: Mining Corporations vs. Democracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/5155-argentina-mining-corporations-vs-democracy
PEC 215: No Vote by Special Commission of Brazilian House
https://intercontinentalcry.org/pec-215-no-vote-by-special-commission-of-brazilian-house-26664/
Gratitude for the Defense of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil
https://intercontinentalcry.org/gratitude-defense-rights-indigenous-peoples-brazil/
Denunciation of the Suppression of Rights and Attempts to End the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil
https://intercontinentalcry.org/denunciation-suppression-rights-attempts-end-indigenous-peoples-brazil/
Peru: campesino family scores win against mine
http://ww4report.com/node/13834
An Open Letter from Boaventura de Sousa Santos to Ecuadorian President Correa on Kicking the CONAIE Indigenous Movement Out of its Headquarters
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5150-an-open-letter-from-boaventura-de-sousa-santos-to-ecuadorian-president-correa-on-kicking-the-conaie-indigenous-movement-out-of-its-headquarters
CONAIE Indigenous Organization Evicted from Headquarters by Ecuadorian Government
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/5152-conaie-indigenous-organization-evicted-from-headquarters-by-ecuadorian-government
Ecuador: Correa acts against CONAIE
http://ww4report.com/node/13833
Colombia: FARC declare ceasefire —amid fighting
http://ww4report.com/node/13831
Colombia: corrupt cops caught in crackdown
http://ww4report.com/node/13830
Beyond Ayotzinapa: How U.S. Intervention in Colombia Paved the Way for Mexico’s Human Rights Crisis
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5153-beyond-ayotzinapa-how-us-intervention-in-colombia-paved-the-way-for-mexicos-human-rights-crisis
Venezuela sanctions highlight US hypocrisy on human rights
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5157-venezuela-sanctions-highlight-us-hypocrisy-on-human-rights
Tomgram: Greg Grandin, How the Iraq War Began in Panama
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175937/tomgram%3A_greg_grandin%2C_how_the_iraq_war_began_in_panama
The Struggle for Indigenous Land and Autonomy in Honduras
https://intercontinentalcry.org/the-struggle-for-indigenous-land-and-autonomy-in-honduras-26652/
Mining interests in Guatemala challenged by indigenous direct democracy
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/mining-interests-guatemala-challenged-indigenous-direct-democracy/
Unearthing the Truth: Mexican State Violence Beyond Ayotzinapa
https://nacla.org/news/2014/12/22/unearthing-truth-mexican-state-violence-beyond-ayotzinapa
The Revolution of Lupe Reyes (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-revolution-of-lupe-reyes/
Collapse of Oil Prices, Fall in Peso Exacerbate Mexican Crisis
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=231#1780
Mining Water in Sonora: Grupo México’s “Irregular” Water Permits in the Sonora, Yaqui, and San Pedro River Basins (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13998
Making Mining Dreams Come True in Mexico
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14055
Mining, Megaprojects, and Metrosexuals in Sonora (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14062
Atento Workers Seeking Democratic Union Lose Election Re-run (Mexico)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=231#1781
#Fergazinapa: Liberating Our Outrage, Remapping Our Action (Mexico/US)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/12/16/fergazinapa-liberating-our-outrage-remapping-our-action
Report on "Solidarity from the Ground Up: an Organizers' Tri-national Exchange" (Mexico/US/Canada)
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=231#1785
Do Cubans Really Want U.S.-Style Internet Freedom?
https://nacla.org/news/2014/12/20/do-cubans-really-want-us-style-internet-freedom
Raúl Castro: The New Opening With the USA (Cuba)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5158-raul-castro-the-new-opening-with-the-usa
The Fight against Migrant Family Detention Continues (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14131
Migrant Deaths and Displacement Soar in 2014(US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/migrant-deaths-and-displacement-soar-in-2014/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://alainet.org/index.phtml.en
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
WNU #1241: Missing Mexican Students Reported Dead
Issue #1241, November 9, 2014
1. Mexico: Missing Students Reported Dead
2. Costa Rica: Port Strike Ends, Issues Remain
3. Dominican Republic: Government Quits OAS Rights Court
4. Cuba: Will US Swap Jailed Agents for Gross?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Missing Students Reported Dead
A group of 43 Mexican teachers’ college students missing since the night of Sept. 26-27 [see Update #1239] were killed by gang members and their bodies were burned and disposed of in Cocula municipality in the southwestern state of Guerrero, federal attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam announced at a Nov. 7 press conference in Mexico City. Three members of the Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”) criminal organization confessed to having participated in the execution of the students and the incineration of their bodies, according to Murillo Karam, who said the remains were so thoroughly burned that it might be difficult to extract DNA for identification. The Mexican government is planning to send the remains to technicians in Austria. The attorney general said he understood the skepticism of the students’ parents about his office’s findings, more than a month after the events: “It’s natural…and it doesn’t surprise me.”
As of Nov. 7 Mexican authorities said 74 people had been arrested in connection with the massacre of the students, who attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa; they were attacked by municipal police and gang members in Iguala de la Independencia the evening of Sept. 26 as they were raising money to attend an Oct. 2 demonstration in Mexico City. Three students and three bystanders were killed in the initial attack, and the municipal police detained another 43 students, apparently turning them over to Guerreros Unidos members to be executed. Former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife, María de los Angeles Pineda, reportedly ordered the attack; they were arrested in Mexico City on Nov. 4 and face charges of participation in organized crime, offenses against health, and illegal privation of liberty. Abarca made no declaration when he was brought before judges on Nov. 6. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/7/14, 11/8/14)
On Nov. 7 a federal court issued a formal order for the imprisonment of seven soldiers charged in another notorious massacre, the execution of suspected gang members on June 30 in Tlatlaya municipality, México state. The government is charging the soldiers with killing eight suspects who had surrendered after a shootout with the soldiers. The government’s semi-autonomous National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) concluded on Oct. 21 that the number executed was 15; a total of 22 suspects died in the incident, including people killed in the shootout. (LJ 11/8/14)
The arrests and criminal charges in the two massacres seem unlikely to stop the wave of protests that started after the Sept. 26 attacks. Thousands of people marched from Los Pinos, the presidential residence, to the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City on Nov. 5 as part of the third National and Global Day of Action for Ayotzinapa; many carried signs blaming Mexico’s three main political parties and charging that the Iguala massacre was the work of “the narco-state.” Students in more than 80 schools and universities carried out strikes that day or planned to carry out strikes later; there were also calls for a nationwide general strike on Nov. 20, the holiday marking the start of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. (LJ 11/6/14, 11/6/14)
Students and others demonstrated again in Mexico City the evening of Nov. 8, the day after Attorney General Murillo announced that the missing Ayotzinapa students had been killed. The march route was from the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) to the Zócalo; when the protest reached the giant plaza, many marchers seized metal police barricades and employed them to batter the doors of the National Palace, a 16th-century building largely used for ceremonies and for housing a group of murals by Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Frustrated protesters set fire to the doors; at least two people were injured and a number were arrested. There were also protests that day in Baja California, Chiapas, Jalisco, México state, Oaxaca, Querétaro and Veracruz. (LJ 11/9/14, 11/9/14)
In the midst of this crisis, Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was scheduled to leave for a Nov. 9-15 trip to China and Australia to attend two international conferences, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Beijing and the Group of 20 (G20) Leaders’ Summit in Brisbane. (Univision 11/9/14, some from unidentified wire services)
The problems in Mexico seemed not to concern some important international investors seeking to take advantage of Peña Nieto’s success in opening up the energy and telecommunication sectors to private capital [see Update #1240]. “We’re very excited with what’s happening in Mexico and with its reform agenda,” Gary Cohn, president of the New York-based multinational Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., investment bank, said during a visit to Mexico in early November. “Our clients are excited about the opportunities opening up in the Mexican economy, whether in the gas and petroleum field or, on the other hand, in telecommunications.” He insisted that what US financial advisers are calling “the Mexican Moment” will go on for some time. Asked about the Ayotzinapa massacre, Cohn replied: “No one is pleased to see these events, no one is happy to see them, but I believe that the Mexicans themselves seem to be the ones who are more focused [on these events] than the rest of the world. I don’t mean to minimize them, but it happens in other parts of the world.” (Terra Mexico 11/5/14 from Reforma, quotations retranslated from Spanish)
*2. Costa Rica: Port Strike Ends, Issues Remain
The Costa Rican government and unionized dockworkers at the city of Limón on the Caribbean coast reached an accord the night of Nov. 5 ending a strike that started on Oct. 22. The strikers agreed to return to work on Nov. 6 in exchange for the government’s promise that the port’s management, the Board of Port Administration and Economic Development of the Atlantic Shelf (JAPDEVA), wouldn’t penalize them for striking; people arrested for damaging containers on Oct. 24 will still be subject to prosecution. The accord did not address the strike’s issue—a 33-year concession for the port granted to the Dutch company APM Terminals, a subsidiary of the giant Danish shipping multinational A.P. Moller-Maersk Group [see Update #1239, which incorrectly gave the time period for the concession as 30 years]. The parties agreed to continue negotiations on this issue, although the government insisted that clause 9.1 of the concession contract, which concerns APM Terminal’s monopoly on handling containers, was not negotiable.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the parties reached the agreement ending the strike. Ronaldo Blear, the secretary general of the JAPDEVA Workers Union (SINTRAJAP), pointed to the role played in the talks by Montserrat Solano, the government’s defender of the habitants (a position equivalent to the ombudsperson in other countries). The leftist Frente Amplio (“Broad Front”) political party reportedly pressured SINTRAJAP to settle; the party is close to the union. The government too was under pressure. Although it managed to keep Limón’s two terminals open with foreign contract labor, shipping companies had been complaining about delays. According to the government the port was operating at 60% capacity, but the union put the number at 40%. There had also been a threat of broader strike support. Union spokesperson José Luis Castillo told a local radio program in early November that SINTRAJAP was negotiating with similar Latin American organizations to keep other ports in the region from receiving ships that had sailed from Limón. (El País (Costa Rica) 11/5/14, some from DPA; La Nación 11/6/14; Tico Times (Costa Rica) 11/6/14)
In related news, relatives of the late US unionist Gilberto Soto issued an open letter on Nov. 5, calling on the Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to reopen its investigation into Soto’s murder, which took place exactly 10 years earlier in Usulután, El Salvador. A Salvadoran-born naturalized US citizen and an organizer for the US-based International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Soto was murdered after he had arrived in the country to meet with port workers from El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, and with Central American drivers who hauled shipping containers; this was in connection with a proposed joint project to document systematic violations of workers’ rights by Maersk [see Update #772]. Citing a publication by the Office of the Prosecutor for the Defense of Human Rights (PDDH), the open letter charged that there were irregularities in the initial investigation. IBT president James Hoffa and Richard Trumka, the president of the largest US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, signed on to the letter, along with a number of labor and human rights organizations. (La Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 11/6/14)
*3. Dominican Republic: Government Quits OAS Rights Court
The Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Tribunal (TC) ruled on Nov. 4 that the country must withdraw from the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CorteIDH), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS). The TC’s ruling, Decision 256-14, was based on a technicality involving a 1999 agreement with the OAS court, but observers assumed that the TC was actually reacting to an Oct. 22 announcement that the human rights court had condemned the Dominican Republic’s treatment of immigrants and their descendants, notably the TC’s controversial Decision 168-13 of September 2013, which declared that no one born to undocumented immigrant parents since 1929 was a citizen [see Update #1221]. The 2013 decision excludes thousands of Haitian-descended Dominicans from citizenship; it has been met with protests from international human rights groups, the Haitian government and many Dominicans, including members of the country’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) [see Update #1213].
The OAS court’s 173-page decision, dated Aug. 28, concerns the treatment of a number of Haitian immigrants some 15 years ago. However, the OAS judges' ruling included a condemnation of Decision 168-13, which they said violated the human rights of the Dominican-born people it deprived of citizenship; the human rights court also ruled that a law the Dominican Congress passed in May to resolve the problem was inadequate. The court expressed “deep concern” after the Dominican Republic announced its decision to withdraw from the court’s jurisdiction.
Dominican legal experts say it is unclear whether the Dominican Republic can withdraw from the OAS court without also withdrawing from the OAS. Constitutional law professor Nassef Perdomo cited the 1998 case of a naturalized Peruvian citizen, Baruch Ivcher Bronstein, who was stripped of his citizenship by the government of President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) [see Update #452]. “The OAS isn’t going to recognize [the decision to withdraw from the court],” Perdomo said, “as it didn’t recognize it with Peru when Alberto Fujimori’s government tried to leave the court, which was recorded in the documentation for the Ivcher Bronstein case.” However, two countries appear to have withdrawn successfully in the past: Trinidad and Tobago in 1999 and Venezuela in 2013. (Hoy (Santo Domingo) 10/22/14; TeleSUR 10/22/14; Washington Post 11/4/14 from AP; 7 Días (Santo Domingo) 11/5/14; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 11/7/14)
*4. Cuba: Will US Swap Jailed Agents for Gross?
In a Nov. 2 editorial, the New York Times, possibly the most politically influential US newspaper, called for the US government to free three imprisoned Cuban agents in exchange for the release of US citizen Alan Gross, who has been serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba since 2011 for his work there as a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) [see Update #1216]. The Cubans are three of the “Cuban Five,” a group of agents convicted in 2001 of espionage against the US; they insisted they were spying on Cuban-American terrorists based in southern Florida, not on the US. Two have already been released on probation after serving time, and two more are scheduled for release within the next 10 years, but the group’s leader, Gerardo Hernández, was sentenced to two life terms. In 2012 Cuba indicated that it was open to exchanging Gross for the Cuban agents [see Update #1175].
The Times editorial called an exchange the “only…plausible way to remove Mr. Gross from an already complicated equation.” The paper suggested that US president Barack Obama could arrange the exchange by commuting the remaining three prisoners’ sentences, which “would be justified considering the lengthy time they have served, the troubling questions about the fairness of their trial, and the potential diplomatic payoff in clearing the way toward a new bilateral relationship.” (NYT 11/2/14)
There is no clear evidence that the Obama administration is considering an exchange. However, in a discussion with reporters at the Reuters wire service’s New York office on Oct. 31, an important figure in the US government, UN ambassador Samantha Power, gave an unusual commendation to Cuba. Speaking about her visit to Liberia to observe emergency medical work to contain an Ebola outbreak, she said: “Although I did not encounter them personally, I have to commend Cuba for sending 265 medical professionals early,” she said. “I think they announced that going on almost two months ago, and they are sending another 200 on top of that 265. That is a big gap and a big need.” When the Daily Beast asked whether she was signaling a diplomatic thaw with Cuba, Powers simply answered: “We're working on Ebola side by side.” (Daily Beast 11/1/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Latin America: Gendering Peasant Movements, Gendering Food Sovereignty
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5110-latin-america-gendering-peasant-movements-gendering-food-sovereignty
Canada Accused of Failing to Prevent Mining Abuses in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5114-canada-accused-of-failing-to-prevent-mining-abuses-in-latin-america
The arrest of Cristian Labbé breathes new life into Chile's human rights struggle
https://opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/nick-macwilliam/arrest-of-cristian-labb%C3%A9-breathes-new-life-into-chile%27s-human-rights-st
Sao Paulo Suffering from Historic Water Crisis (Brazil)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Sao-Paulo-Suffering-from-Historic-Water-Crisis-20141108-0015.html
Peru: unrest mounts in Cajamarca
http://ww4report.com/node/13700
FARC fighters face indigenous justice (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/13708
Venezuela: For the Barrios, the Difference Between Repression and Revolution Depends on National Security
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11003
Venezuela: Invisible No More
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5112-venezuela-invisible-no-more
Honduran Army Has Greater Amount of Legal Powers, Report Says
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Honduran-Army-Has-Greater-Amount-of-Legal-Powers-Report-Says-20141108-0022.html
Honduras claims blow against Sinaloa Cartel
http://ww4report.com/node/13711
Indigenous Women in Guatemala Demand End to State of Prevention
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/5113-indigenous-women-in-guatemala-demand-end-to-state-of-prevention
In Guatemala, indigenous communities prevail against Monsanto
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/guatemala-indigenous-communities-prevail-monsanto/
Guatemala: reparations in abuses linked to hydro
http://ww4report.com/node/13712
Ayotzinapa Demands Justice One Month After the Disappearances (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/11/03/ayotzinapa-demands-justice-one-month-after-disappearances
Why the Normalistas Are Still Smiling (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/11/06/why-normalistas-are-still-smiling
Mexican Gang Suspected of Killing 43 Students Admits to Mass Murder
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5117-mexican-gang-suspected-of-killing-43-students-admits-to-mass-murder-
Statement by the Mesoamerican Working Group on the Impact of U.S. Security Assistance on Human Rights in Mexico, Central America, and Colombia (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5116-statement-by-the-mesoamerican-working-group-on-the-impact-of-us-security-assistance-on-human-rights-in-mexico-central-america-and-colombia
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/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. Mexico: Missing Students Reported Dead
2. Costa Rica: Port Strike Ends, Issues Remain
3. Dominican Republic: Government Quits OAS Rights Court
4. Cuba: Will US Swap Jailed Agents for Gross?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Missing Students Reported Dead
A group of 43 Mexican teachers’ college students missing since the night of Sept. 26-27 [see Update #1239] were killed by gang members and their bodies were burned and disposed of in Cocula municipality in the southwestern state of Guerrero, federal attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam announced at a Nov. 7 press conference in Mexico City. Three members of the Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”) criminal organization confessed to having participated in the execution of the students and the incineration of their bodies, according to Murillo Karam, who said the remains were so thoroughly burned that it might be difficult to extract DNA for identification. The Mexican government is planning to send the remains to technicians in Austria. The attorney general said he understood the skepticism of the students’ parents about his office’s findings, more than a month after the events: “It’s natural…and it doesn’t surprise me.”
As of Nov. 7 Mexican authorities said 74 people had been arrested in connection with the massacre of the students, who attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa; they were attacked by municipal police and gang members in Iguala de la Independencia the evening of Sept. 26 as they were raising money to attend an Oct. 2 demonstration in Mexico City. Three students and three bystanders were killed in the initial attack, and the municipal police detained another 43 students, apparently turning them over to Guerreros Unidos members to be executed. Former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife, María de los Angeles Pineda, reportedly ordered the attack; they were arrested in Mexico City on Nov. 4 and face charges of participation in organized crime, offenses against health, and illegal privation of liberty. Abarca made no declaration when he was brought before judges on Nov. 6. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/7/14, 11/8/14)
On Nov. 7 a federal court issued a formal order for the imprisonment of seven soldiers charged in another notorious massacre, the execution of suspected gang members on June 30 in Tlatlaya municipality, México state. The government is charging the soldiers with killing eight suspects who had surrendered after a shootout with the soldiers. The government’s semi-autonomous National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) concluded on Oct. 21 that the number executed was 15; a total of 22 suspects died in the incident, including people killed in the shootout. (LJ 11/8/14)
The arrests and criminal charges in the two massacres seem unlikely to stop the wave of protests that started after the Sept. 26 attacks. Thousands of people marched from Los Pinos, the presidential residence, to the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City on Nov. 5 as part of the third National and Global Day of Action for Ayotzinapa; many carried signs blaming Mexico’s three main political parties and charging that the Iguala massacre was the work of “the narco-state.” Students in more than 80 schools and universities carried out strikes that day or planned to carry out strikes later; there were also calls for a nationwide general strike on Nov. 20, the holiday marking the start of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. (LJ 11/6/14, 11/6/14)
Students and others demonstrated again in Mexico City the evening of Nov. 8, the day after Attorney General Murillo announced that the missing Ayotzinapa students had been killed. The march route was from the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) to the Zócalo; when the protest reached the giant plaza, many marchers seized metal police barricades and employed them to batter the doors of the National Palace, a 16th-century building largely used for ceremonies and for housing a group of murals by Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Frustrated protesters set fire to the doors; at least two people were injured and a number were arrested. There were also protests that day in Baja California, Chiapas, Jalisco, México state, Oaxaca, Querétaro and Veracruz. (LJ 11/9/14, 11/9/14)
In the midst of this crisis, Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was scheduled to leave for a Nov. 9-15 trip to China and Australia to attend two international conferences, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Beijing and the Group of 20 (G20) Leaders’ Summit in Brisbane. (Univision 11/9/14, some from unidentified wire services)
The problems in Mexico seemed not to concern some important international investors seeking to take advantage of Peña Nieto’s success in opening up the energy and telecommunication sectors to private capital [see Update #1240]. “We’re very excited with what’s happening in Mexico and with its reform agenda,” Gary Cohn, president of the New York-based multinational Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., investment bank, said during a visit to Mexico in early November. “Our clients are excited about the opportunities opening up in the Mexican economy, whether in the gas and petroleum field or, on the other hand, in telecommunications.” He insisted that what US financial advisers are calling “the Mexican Moment” will go on for some time. Asked about the Ayotzinapa massacre, Cohn replied: “No one is pleased to see these events, no one is happy to see them, but I believe that the Mexicans themselves seem to be the ones who are more focused [on these events] than the rest of the world. I don’t mean to minimize them, but it happens in other parts of the world.” (Terra Mexico 11/5/14 from Reforma, quotations retranslated from Spanish)
*2. Costa Rica: Port Strike Ends, Issues Remain
The Costa Rican government and unionized dockworkers at the city of Limón on the Caribbean coast reached an accord the night of Nov. 5 ending a strike that started on Oct. 22. The strikers agreed to return to work on Nov. 6 in exchange for the government’s promise that the port’s management, the Board of Port Administration and Economic Development of the Atlantic Shelf (JAPDEVA), wouldn’t penalize them for striking; people arrested for damaging containers on Oct. 24 will still be subject to prosecution. The accord did not address the strike’s issue—a 33-year concession for the port granted to the Dutch company APM Terminals, a subsidiary of the giant Danish shipping multinational A.P. Moller-Maersk Group [see Update #1239, which incorrectly gave the time period for the concession as 30 years]. The parties agreed to continue negotiations on this issue, although the government insisted that clause 9.1 of the concession contract, which concerns APM Terminal’s monopoly on handling containers, was not negotiable.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the parties reached the agreement ending the strike. Ronaldo Blear, the secretary general of the JAPDEVA Workers Union (SINTRAJAP), pointed to the role played in the talks by Montserrat Solano, the government’s defender of the habitants (a position equivalent to the ombudsperson in other countries). The leftist Frente Amplio (“Broad Front”) political party reportedly pressured SINTRAJAP to settle; the party is close to the union. The government too was under pressure. Although it managed to keep Limón’s two terminals open with foreign contract labor, shipping companies had been complaining about delays. According to the government the port was operating at 60% capacity, but the union put the number at 40%. There had also been a threat of broader strike support. Union spokesperson José Luis Castillo told a local radio program in early November that SINTRAJAP was negotiating with similar Latin American organizations to keep other ports in the region from receiving ships that had sailed from Limón. (El País (Costa Rica) 11/5/14, some from DPA; La Nación 11/6/14; Tico Times (Costa Rica) 11/6/14)
In related news, relatives of the late US unionist Gilberto Soto issued an open letter on Nov. 5, calling on the Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to reopen its investigation into Soto’s murder, which took place exactly 10 years earlier in Usulután, El Salvador. A Salvadoran-born naturalized US citizen and an organizer for the US-based International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Soto was murdered after he had arrived in the country to meet with port workers from El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, and with Central American drivers who hauled shipping containers; this was in connection with a proposed joint project to document systematic violations of workers’ rights by Maersk [see Update #772]. Citing a publication by the Office of the Prosecutor for the Defense of Human Rights (PDDH), the open letter charged that there were irregularities in the initial investigation. IBT president James Hoffa and Richard Trumka, the president of the largest US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, signed on to the letter, along with a number of labor and human rights organizations. (La Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 11/6/14)
*3. Dominican Republic: Government Quits OAS Rights Court
The Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Tribunal (TC) ruled on Nov. 4 that the country must withdraw from the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CorteIDH), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS). The TC’s ruling, Decision 256-14, was based on a technicality involving a 1999 agreement with the OAS court, but observers assumed that the TC was actually reacting to an Oct. 22 announcement that the human rights court had condemned the Dominican Republic’s treatment of immigrants and their descendants, notably the TC’s controversial Decision 168-13 of September 2013, which declared that no one born to undocumented immigrant parents since 1929 was a citizen [see Update #1221]. The 2013 decision excludes thousands of Haitian-descended Dominicans from citizenship; it has been met with protests from international human rights groups, the Haitian government and many Dominicans, including members of the country’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) [see Update #1213].
The OAS court’s 173-page decision, dated Aug. 28, concerns the treatment of a number of Haitian immigrants some 15 years ago. However, the OAS judges' ruling included a condemnation of Decision 168-13, which they said violated the human rights of the Dominican-born people it deprived of citizenship; the human rights court also ruled that a law the Dominican Congress passed in May to resolve the problem was inadequate. The court expressed “deep concern” after the Dominican Republic announced its decision to withdraw from the court’s jurisdiction.
Dominican legal experts say it is unclear whether the Dominican Republic can withdraw from the OAS court without also withdrawing from the OAS. Constitutional law professor Nassef Perdomo cited the 1998 case of a naturalized Peruvian citizen, Baruch Ivcher Bronstein, who was stripped of his citizenship by the government of President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) [see Update #452]. “The OAS isn’t going to recognize [the decision to withdraw from the court],” Perdomo said, “as it didn’t recognize it with Peru when Alberto Fujimori’s government tried to leave the court, which was recorded in the documentation for the Ivcher Bronstein case.” However, two countries appear to have withdrawn successfully in the past: Trinidad and Tobago in 1999 and Venezuela in 2013. (Hoy (Santo Domingo) 10/22/14; TeleSUR 10/22/14; Washington Post 11/4/14 from AP; 7 Días (Santo Domingo) 11/5/14; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 11/7/14)
*4. Cuba: Will US Swap Jailed Agents for Gross?
In a Nov. 2 editorial, the New York Times, possibly the most politically influential US newspaper, called for the US government to free three imprisoned Cuban agents in exchange for the release of US citizen Alan Gross, who has been serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba since 2011 for his work there as a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) [see Update #1216]. The Cubans are three of the “Cuban Five,” a group of agents convicted in 2001 of espionage against the US; they insisted they were spying on Cuban-American terrorists based in southern Florida, not on the US. Two have already been released on probation after serving time, and two more are scheduled for release within the next 10 years, but the group’s leader, Gerardo Hernández, was sentenced to two life terms. In 2012 Cuba indicated that it was open to exchanging Gross for the Cuban agents [see Update #1175].
The Times editorial called an exchange the “only…plausible way to remove Mr. Gross from an already complicated equation.” The paper suggested that US president Barack Obama could arrange the exchange by commuting the remaining three prisoners’ sentences, which “would be justified considering the lengthy time they have served, the troubling questions about the fairness of their trial, and the potential diplomatic payoff in clearing the way toward a new bilateral relationship.” (NYT 11/2/14)
There is no clear evidence that the Obama administration is considering an exchange. However, in a discussion with reporters at the Reuters wire service’s New York office on Oct. 31, an important figure in the US government, UN ambassador Samantha Power, gave an unusual commendation to Cuba. Speaking about her visit to Liberia to observe emergency medical work to contain an Ebola outbreak, she said: “Although I did not encounter them personally, I have to commend Cuba for sending 265 medical professionals early,” she said. “I think they announced that going on almost two months ago, and they are sending another 200 on top of that 265. That is a big gap and a big need.” When the Daily Beast asked whether she was signaling a diplomatic thaw with Cuba, Powers simply answered: “We're working on Ebola side by side.” (Daily Beast 11/1/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Latin America: Gendering Peasant Movements, Gendering Food Sovereignty
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5110-latin-america-gendering-peasant-movements-gendering-food-sovereignty
Canada Accused of Failing to Prevent Mining Abuses in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5114-canada-accused-of-failing-to-prevent-mining-abuses-in-latin-america
The arrest of Cristian Labbé breathes new life into Chile's human rights struggle
https://opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/nick-macwilliam/arrest-of-cristian-labb%C3%A9-breathes-new-life-into-chile%27s-human-rights-st
Sao Paulo Suffering from Historic Water Crisis (Brazil)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Sao-Paulo-Suffering-from-Historic-Water-Crisis-20141108-0015.html
Peru: unrest mounts in Cajamarca
http://ww4report.com/node/13700
FARC fighters face indigenous justice (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/13708
Venezuela: For the Barrios, the Difference Between Repression and Revolution Depends on National Security
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11003
Venezuela: Invisible No More
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5112-venezuela-invisible-no-more
Honduran Army Has Greater Amount of Legal Powers, Report Says
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Honduran-Army-Has-Greater-Amount-of-Legal-Powers-Report-Says-20141108-0022.html
Honduras claims blow against Sinaloa Cartel
http://ww4report.com/node/13711
Indigenous Women in Guatemala Demand End to State of Prevention
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/5113-indigenous-women-in-guatemala-demand-end-to-state-of-prevention
In Guatemala, indigenous communities prevail against Monsanto
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/guatemala-indigenous-communities-prevail-monsanto/
Guatemala: reparations in abuses linked to hydro
http://ww4report.com/node/13712
The Blazing Ashes of Ayotzinapa (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-blazing-ashes-of-ayotzinapa/Ayotzinapa Demands Justice One Month After the Disappearances (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/11/03/ayotzinapa-demands-justice-one-month-after-disappearances
Why the Normalistas Are Still Smiling (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/11/06/why-normalistas-are-still-smiling
Mexican Gang Suspected of Killing 43 Students Admits to Mass Murder
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5117-mexican-gang-suspected-of-killing-43-students-admits-to-mass-murder-
Statement by the Mesoamerican Working Group on the Impact of U.S. Security Assistance on Human Rights in Mexico, Central America, and Colombia (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5116-statement-by-the-mesoamerican-working-group-on-the-impact-of-us-security-assistance-on-human-rights-in-mexico-central-america-and-colombia
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/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, October 6, 2014
WNU #1236: Mass Graves May Hold Missing Mexican Students
Issue #1236, October 5, 2014
1. Mexico: Mass Graves May Hold Missing Students
2. Argentina: UN Group Condemns Vulture Funds
3. Haiti: “Justice Denied” by Duvalier’s Death?
4. Cuba: Kissinger Planned to “Clobber a Pipsqueak”
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Mass Graves May Hold Missing Students
On Oct. 4 authorities in the southwestern state of Guerrero announced that they had found charred human remains in a group of mass graves in Iguala de La Independencia municipality, at Pueblo Viejo community in the countryside northwest of the city. Guerrero chief prosecutor Iñaky Blanco Cabrera would only say that there were human bones and that specialists would need to use DNA tests to identify the victims. State police agents at the site on Oct. 4 told reporters off the record that there could be anywhere from four to 19 bodies, but on Oct. 5 Blanco Cabrera said the total number was 28. It seemed likely that the remains were of teachers’ college students missing since the night of Sept. 26-27, when Iguala police opened fire on three buses carrying students from the militant Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, located in the town of Ayotzinapa [see Update #1235]. Originally 25 students were reported missing after the incident, but parents and student leaders later raised the number to 43.
At least six people were killed in three different attacks during the violence on Sept. 26-27: three students from the Ayotzinapa college, including one whose body was mutilated and showed signs of torture; a soccer player and the driver of a bus carrying the player’s team; and a woman in a taxi. As of Oct. 4, 30 people had been arrested for the attacks on the students, including 22 Iguala police agents, and Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez had taken leave from office. Federal security officials suggested that two criminal gangs in the area, Los Rojos (“The Reds”) and Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”), were behind the attacks and may have been angry because the students, notorious in the state for their radical protests, had caused problems for businesses the gangs used for laundering drug money. State prosecutor Blanco said there is evidence that “various members of the Iguala municipal police are part of” Guerreros Unidos.
Thousands of students, teachers and parents demonstrated in the state capital, Chilpancingo, on Oct. 2 to demand the return of the missing students and to observe the 46th anniversary of a massacre of at least 44 students and their supporters by the military in the Tlatelolco housing development in Mexico City on Oct. 2, 1968 [see Update #1195]. The protest, whose organizers included the Federation of Socialist Campesino Students of Mexico (FECSM) and the State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG), opened with a four-hour march through the city starting at the Margarita Maza de Juárez park; FECSM activists then led a blockade of the nearby Mexico City-Acapulco highway that lasted six hours, until 9 pm. The protest finally ended when the Guerrero state governance secretary, Jesús Martínez Garnelo, agreed to hold a meeting the next day with the parents of the missing students. (The Guardian (UK) 9/30/14 from correspondent; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/3/14, 10/5/14, 10/5/14; Houston Chronicle 10/5/14 from AP)
Thousands of students and others also marched in Mexico City on Oct. 2 to commemorate the Tlatelolco massacre and to demand the return of the missing Ayotzinapa students. Organizers said 30,000 people participated; the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) police estimated the crowd at 9,000. The marchers included students from the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), a huge and prestigious public technical university where protests began in late September against plans to change curriculum and fees. At the closing rally in Mexico City’s massive Zócalo, the protesters heard a recorded message from imprisoned Guerrero community activist Nestora Salgado [see Update #1231] and a speech by a representative of the Yaqui indigenous group in his native language calling for the release of Mario Luna Romero and Fernando Jiménez Gutiérrez, two Yaqui environmental and indigenous rights activists arrested in September by the government of the northern state of Sonora. (LJ 10/3/14)
Activists held Oct. 2 protests in 10 other states, including Baja California Norte, Chihuahua, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Morelos, Nayarit, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas. In the southeastern state of Chiapas organizers said 12,000 students, teachers and social activists marched in the capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, while a total of 900 people marched in two separate demonstrations in San Cristóbal de las Casas. Teachers’ unions sponsored demonstrations in Oaxaca City, the capital of the southern state of Oaxaca, and in five other Oaxaca municipalities. (LJ 10/3/14)
On Oct. 3 federal governance secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong announced after a meeting with IPN student leaders that the planned changes at the university were being dropped and that IPN general director Yoloxóchitl Bustamante Díez had resigned. Osorio Chang made the announcement at a demonstration attended by an estimated 18,000 youths, according to estimates by the DF police. (CNN México 10/3/14)
*2. Argentina: UN Group Condemns Vulture Funds
The Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution on Sept. 26 condemning “the activities of vulture funds” and regretting the effect payments to the funds could have “on the capacity of governments to fulfill their human rights obligations.” The resolution was presented by Argentina, which was forced into technical default on July 30 after US district judge Thomas Griesa in New York blocked the country from paying interest to its bondholders unless it settled with US two hedge funds, NML Capital and Aurelius Capital Management [see Update #1230]; the two companies are known as “vulture funds,” investment groups that try to profit by buying weak debt the debtors are likely to default on. Argentina’s effort in Geneva was backed by Algeria, Brazil, Russia and Venezuela. The Human Rights Council approved the resolution in a 33-5 vote, with nine countries abstaining; the opposing votes came from Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Japan and the US. “Vulture funds aren’t just an economic problem,” said Argentine foreign relations minister Héctor Timerman, who was in Geneva for the vote. “They represent a political, social problem that affects the lives of all the citizens” in many countries since they deprive governments of resources they could use for social services.
The vote in Geneva was Argentina’s second success in international diplomacy during the month. At a plenary meeting in New York on Sept. 9 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution promoted by Argentina entitled “Towards the establishment of a multilateral legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring processes.” Currently countries have to negotiate debt restructuring deals with their creditors when they are unable to meet their debt obligations; the resolution seeks to set up an international system for countries similar to bankruptcy proceedings for companies and individuals. Argentina’s present default resulted from NML Capital and Aurelius Capital Management’s refusal to join with the other creditors in a settlement Argentina had worked out for its massive 2002 default. The General Assembly resolution was sponsored by the Group of 77 (G77), joined by China; 124 countries voted for the measure, while 11 voted against it and 41 abstained. (United Nations 9/10/14; BBC 9/26/14; Adital (Brazil) 9/30/14)
Meanwhile, Argentina is trying to circumvent Judge Griesa’s decision blocking interest payments to the bondholders that have settled with the country. In September Argentina’s Congress passed legislation allowing the bondholders to be paid in Argentina rather than New York, taking the issue out of the judge’s jurisdiction. An obviously irritated Griesa declared Argentina in contempt of court during a hearing on Sept. 29. It is not clear what effect the judge’s contempt declaration will have. “We are in uncharted waters,” Arturo Porzecanski, an economist at American University’s School of International Service, told the New York Times. (NYT 9/29/14)
*3. Haiti: “Justice Denied” by Duvalier’s Death?
Former Haitian “president for life” Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier (1971-1986) died suddenly of a heart attack the night of Oct. 3 at a friend’s home in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Pétionville, according to his lawyer, Reynold Georges. He was 63. Duvalier succeeded his father, François (“Papa Doc”) Duvalier, at the age of 19. The older Duvalier had built and maintained a brutal dictatorship from 1957 until his death in 1971. The brutality continued under his son; an estimated 30,000 people were killed during the family’s 29 years in power. Massive demonstrations and the withdrawal of US support forced Duvalier to flee to France on Feb. 7, 1986, reportedly carrying off millions of dollars looted from the national treasury. He returned to Haiti on Jan. 16, 2011. Despite facing corruption charges, Duvalier never came to trial; he also never came to trial for human rights abuses committed by his regime, although a court finally ruled on Feb. 20, 2014 that the human rights cases against him could proceed [see Update #1210].
“I direct my sincere sympathies to the family and to the entire nation on this sad occasion,” current Haitian president Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) wrote in his Twitter account, @MichelJMartelly, on Oct. 4. In contrast, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) organization said the ex-dictator’s passing resulted in “justice denied.” According to HRW special counsel Reed Brody, it was “a shame that the Haitian justice system could not bring ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier to trial before he died. Duvalier’s death robs Haiti of what could have been the most important human rights trial in its history.” But Haitian activist Danièle Magloire, of the Collective Against Impunity, told the online Haitian news service AlterPresse that “[t]he struggle for justice continues.” She called for judicial action against Duvalier’s collaborators and followers and warned against plans to organize a state funeral for the ex-dictator. “This would be one more effort to rehabilitate Duvalier,” she charged, calling the Martelly government “Duvalierist.” (AlterPresse 10/4/14, 10/4/14; HRW 10/4/14)
*4. Cuba: Kissinger Planned to “Clobber a Pipsqueak”
On Oct. 1 the National Security Archive, a Washington, DC-based research organization, published declassified US government documents about secret contingency plans that the administration of former US president Gerald Ford (1974-1977) made in 1976 for a possible military attack on Cuba. Then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger called for the plans in response to Cuba’s decision in late 1975 to send troops to support the left-leaning government of Angola against rebels funded by South Africa and the US; he was furious that Cuba had defied the US after a round of secret negotiations he had sponsored in 1975 aimed at normalizing relations between the two countries.
In meetings at the White House in February and March 1976, Kissinger talked about “clobbering the Cubans” and the need to “smash” Cuba’s leader at the time, Fidel Castro Ruz--a “pipsqueak,” according to Kissinger. “I think sooner or later we have to crack the Cubans.… I think we have to humiliate them,” the secretary of state said. “If there is a perception overseas that we are so weakened by our internal debate [over Vietnam] so that it looks like we can't do anything about a country of eight million people, then in three or four years we are going to have a real crisis,” Kissinger told Ford at another meeting. Donald Rumsfeld, who was secretary of defense under Ford as well as under former president George W. Bush (2001-2009), was involved in the planning for actions which ranged from economic sanctions to a naval blockade or even air strikes.
Security advisers warned Kissinger that “a Cuban/Soviet response [to the attacks] could escalate in areas that would maximize US casualties and thus provoke stronger response.” A situation that could lead to a military strike on Cuba “should be serious enough to warrant further action in preparation for general war,” they said. Kissinger and Ford were apparently willing to risk this, although they agreed that the attacks shouldn’t be carried out until after the 1976 elections. The plans were shelved when Ford lost to Jimmy Carter.
Documents on Kissinger’s plans to attack Cuba are available on the National Security Archive’s website and are also described in a new book, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana, by Peter Kornbluh, the director of the group’s Chile Documentation Project, and American University professor William M. LeoGrande. (National Security Archive 10/1/14; New York Times 10/1/14; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/2/14 from correspondent) The new information was made public just as Kissinger, now 91, was busily promoting his own latest book, World Order, in radio and television interviews and at public events. (Washington Post 9/18/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Latin America on a Dangerous Precipice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5075-latin-america-on-a-dangerous-precipice
Argentina’s Warning on Sovereign Debt
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12932
Vaca Muerta, Argentina’s New Development Frontier
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5072-vaca-muerta-argentinas-new-development-frontier
Coordinadora Arauco Malleco: Recovering Pre-Colonial Autonomy in Wallmapu (Chile)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/recovering-pre-colonial-autonomy-wallmapu-25677/
Uruguay: Environmental Analyst Eduardo Gudynas Dissects the Myth of President José Mujica
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/uruguay-archives-48/5071-uruguay-environmental-analyst-eduardo-gudynas-dissects-the-myth-of-president-jose-mujica
Brazilian Elections: What Happens Next?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5079-brazilian-elections-what-happens-next
Marina and Dilma: Different Visions for the Brazilian Economy
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
Brazil: Dilma or Marina—Or Luciana?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5070-brazil-dilma-or-marinaor-luciana
Indigenous towns swallowed up by São Paulo, South America’s biggest city (Brazil)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12940
Bolivia: Elections in the Time of Evo
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/9/30/bolivia-elections-time-evo
The great electoral “trafa” (Peru)
http://alainet.org/active/77626
Choosing Lima’s New Mayor amid Scandal and Transit Reform (Peru)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/10/1/choosing-lima%E2%80%99s-new-mayor-amid-scandal-and-transit-reform
Colombia: UN report blasts military justice bill
http://ww4report.com/node/13589
Venezuelan PSUV Legislators Allege Uribe May Be Behind Murder of Robert Serra
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Venezuelan-PSUV-Legislators-Allege-Uribe-May-Be-Behind-Murder-of-Robert-Serra-20141004-0030.html
Venezuela Takes Over Clorox Factory
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10937
Municipality in El Salvador Bans Mining in Binding Vote
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5074-municipality-in-el-salvador-bans-mining-in-binding-vote
Hillary Clinton admits role in Honduran coup aftermath
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5073-hillary-clinton-admits-role-in-honduran-coup-aftermath
Another Massacre of Indigenous People in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/5068-another-massacre-of-indigenous-people-in-guatemala
Massacre and State of Exception in San Juan Sacatepéquez, Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5069-massacre-and-state-of-exception-in-san-juan-sacatepequez-guatemala
Echoes of ’68: Youth Massacres, Repression and Resistance Jolt Mexico
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/echoes-of-68-youth-massacres-repression-and-resistance-jolt-mexico/
PPT confirms an extremely serious situation in the area of communication and media (Mexico)
http://alainet.org/active/77575
CEO of Mexican Bank Banamex Resigns Over Fraud Scandal
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/CEO-of-Mexican-Bank-Banamex-Resigns-Over-Fraud-Scandal-20141004-0005.html
National Day of Maize in Mexico: Protecting the Sacred Plant
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5067-national-day-of-maize-in-mexico-protecting-the-sacred-plant
Mexican Court Drops Criminal Charges Against Miners’ Leader
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=228#1751
Guanajuato: campesino protesters occupy city (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/13590
Covering Up for Walmart: The Mexico Scandal
https://www.warresisters.org/covering-walmart-mexico-scandal
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/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. Mexico: Mass Graves May Hold Missing Students
2. Argentina: UN Group Condemns Vulture Funds
3. Haiti: “Justice Denied” by Duvalier’s Death?
4. Cuba: Kissinger Planned to “Clobber a Pipsqueak”
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Mass Graves May Hold Missing Students
On Oct. 4 authorities in the southwestern state of Guerrero announced that they had found charred human remains in a group of mass graves in Iguala de La Independencia municipality, at Pueblo Viejo community in the countryside northwest of the city. Guerrero chief prosecutor Iñaky Blanco Cabrera would only say that there were human bones and that specialists would need to use DNA tests to identify the victims. State police agents at the site on Oct. 4 told reporters off the record that there could be anywhere from four to 19 bodies, but on Oct. 5 Blanco Cabrera said the total number was 28. It seemed likely that the remains were of teachers’ college students missing since the night of Sept. 26-27, when Iguala police opened fire on three buses carrying students from the militant Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, located in the town of Ayotzinapa [see Update #1235]. Originally 25 students were reported missing after the incident, but parents and student leaders later raised the number to 43.
At least six people were killed in three different attacks during the violence on Sept. 26-27: three students from the Ayotzinapa college, including one whose body was mutilated and showed signs of torture; a soccer player and the driver of a bus carrying the player’s team; and a woman in a taxi. As of Oct. 4, 30 people had been arrested for the attacks on the students, including 22 Iguala police agents, and Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez had taken leave from office. Federal security officials suggested that two criminal gangs in the area, Los Rojos (“The Reds”) and Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”), were behind the attacks and may have been angry because the students, notorious in the state for their radical protests, had caused problems for businesses the gangs used for laundering drug money. State prosecutor Blanco said there is evidence that “various members of the Iguala municipal police are part of” Guerreros Unidos.
Thousands of students, teachers and parents demonstrated in the state capital, Chilpancingo, on Oct. 2 to demand the return of the missing students and to observe the 46th anniversary of a massacre of at least 44 students and their supporters by the military in the Tlatelolco housing development in Mexico City on Oct. 2, 1968 [see Update #1195]. The protest, whose organizers included the Federation of Socialist Campesino Students of Mexico (FECSM) and the State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG), opened with a four-hour march through the city starting at the Margarita Maza de Juárez park; FECSM activists then led a blockade of the nearby Mexico City-Acapulco highway that lasted six hours, until 9 pm. The protest finally ended when the Guerrero state governance secretary, Jesús Martínez Garnelo, agreed to hold a meeting the next day with the parents of the missing students. (The Guardian (UK) 9/30/14 from correspondent; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/3/14, 10/5/14, 10/5/14; Houston Chronicle 10/5/14 from AP)
Thousands of students and others also marched in Mexico City on Oct. 2 to commemorate the Tlatelolco massacre and to demand the return of the missing Ayotzinapa students. Organizers said 30,000 people participated; the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) police estimated the crowd at 9,000. The marchers included students from the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), a huge and prestigious public technical university where protests began in late September against plans to change curriculum and fees. At the closing rally in Mexico City’s massive Zócalo, the protesters heard a recorded message from imprisoned Guerrero community activist Nestora Salgado [see Update #1231] and a speech by a representative of the Yaqui indigenous group in his native language calling for the release of Mario Luna Romero and Fernando Jiménez Gutiérrez, two Yaqui environmental and indigenous rights activists arrested in September by the government of the northern state of Sonora. (LJ 10/3/14)
Activists held Oct. 2 protests in 10 other states, including Baja California Norte, Chihuahua, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Morelos, Nayarit, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas. In the southeastern state of Chiapas organizers said 12,000 students, teachers and social activists marched in the capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, while a total of 900 people marched in two separate demonstrations in San Cristóbal de las Casas. Teachers’ unions sponsored demonstrations in Oaxaca City, the capital of the southern state of Oaxaca, and in five other Oaxaca municipalities. (LJ 10/3/14)
On Oct. 3 federal governance secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong announced after a meeting with IPN student leaders that the planned changes at the university were being dropped and that IPN general director Yoloxóchitl Bustamante Díez had resigned. Osorio Chang made the announcement at a demonstration attended by an estimated 18,000 youths, according to estimates by the DF police. (CNN México 10/3/14)
*2. Argentina: UN Group Condemns Vulture Funds
The Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution on Sept. 26 condemning “the activities of vulture funds” and regretting the effect payments to the funds could have “on the capacity of governments to fulfill their human rights obligations.” The resolution was presented by Argentina, which was forced into technical default on July 30 after US district judge Thomas Griesa in New York blocked the country from paying interest to its bondholders unless it settled with US two hedge funds, NML Capital and Aurelius Capital Management [see Update #1230]; the two companies are known as “vulture funds,” investment groups that try to profit by buying weak debt the debtors are likely to default on. Argentina’s effort in Geneva was backed by Algeria, Brazil, Russia and Venezuela. The Human Rights Council approved the resolution in a 33-5 vote, with nine countries abstaining; the opposing votes came from Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Japan and the US. “Vulture funds aren’t just an economic problem,” said Argentine foreign relations minister Héctor Timerman, who was in Geneva for the vote. “They represent a political, social problem that affects the lives of all the citizens” in many countries since they deprive governments of resources they could use for social services.
The vote in Geneva was Argentina’s second success in international diplomacy during the month. At a plenary meeting in New York on Sept. 9 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution promoted by Argentina entitled “Towards the establishment of a multilateral legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring processes.” Currently countries have to negotiate debt restructuring deals with their creditors when they are unable to meet their debt obligations; the resolution seeks to set up an international system for countries similar to bankruptcy proceedings for companies and individuals. Argentina’s present default resulted from NML Capital and Aurelius Capital Management’s refusal to join with the other creditors in a settlement Argentina had worked out for its massive 2002 default. The General Assembly resolution was sponsored by the Group of 77 (G77), joined by China; 124 countries voted for the measure, while 11 voted against it and 41 abstained. (United Nations 9/10/14; BBC 9/26/14; Adital (Brazil) 9/30/14)
Meanwhile, Argentina is trying to circumvent Judge Griesa’s decision blocking interest payments to the bondholders that have settled with the country. In September Argentina’s Congress passed legislation allowing the bondholders to be paid in Argentina rather than New York, taking the issue out of the judge’s jurisdiction. An obviously irritated Griesa declared Argentina in contempt of court during a hearing on Sept. 29. It is not clear what effect the judge’s contempt declaration will have. “We are in uncharted waters,” Arturo Porzecanski, an economist at American University’s School of International Service, told the New York Times. (NYT 9/29/14)
*3. Haiti: “Justice Denied” by Duvalier’s Death?
Former Haitian “president for life” Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier (1971-1986) died suddenly of a heart attack the night of Oct. 3 at a friend’s home in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Pétionville, according to his lawyer, Reynold Georges. He was 63. Duvalier succeeded his father, François (“Papa Doc”) Duvalier, at the age of 19. The older Duvalier had built and maintained a brutal dictatorship from 1957 until his death in 1971. The brutality continued under his son; an estimated 30,000 people were killed during the family’s 29 years in power. Massive demonstrations and the withdrawal of US support forced Duvalier to flee to France on Feb. 7, 1986, reportedly carrying off millions of dollars looted from the national treasury. He returned to Haiti on Jan. 16, 2011. Despite facing corruption charges, Duvalier never came to trial; he also never came to trial for human rights abuses committed by his regime, although a court finally ruled on Feb. 20, 2014 that the human rights cases against him could proceed [see Update #1210].
“I direct my sincere sympathies to the family and to the entire nation on this sad occasion,” current Haitian president Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) wrote in his Twitter account, @MichelJMartelly, on Oct. 4. In contrast, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) organization said the ex-dictator’s passing resulted in “justice denied.” According to HRW special counsel Reed Brody, it was “a shame that the Haitian justice system could not bring ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier to trial before he died. Duvalier’s death robs Haiti of what could have been the most important human rights trial in its history.” But Haitian activist Danièle Magloire, of the Collective Against Impunity, told the online Haitian news service AlterPresse that “[t]he struggle for justice continues.” She called for judicial action against Duvalier’s collaborators and followers and warned against plans to organize a state funeral for the ex-dictator. “This would be one more effort to rehabilitate Duvalier,” she charged, calling the Martelly government “Duvalierist.” (AlterPresse 10/4/14, 10/4/14; HRW 10/4/14)
*4. Cuba: Kissinger Planned to “Clobber a Pipsqueak”
On Oct. 1 the National Security Archive, a Washington, DC-based research organization, published declassified US government documents about secret contingency plans that the administration of former US president Gerald Ford (1974-1977) made in 1976 for a possible military attack on Cuba. Then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger called for the plans in response to Cuba’s decision in late 1975 to send troops to support the left-leaning government of Angola against rebels funded by South Africa and the US; he was furious that Cuba had defied the US after a round of secret negotiations he had sponsored in 1975 aimed at normalizing relations between the two countries.
In meetings at the White House in February and March 1976, Kissinger talked about “clobbering the Cubans” and the need to “smash” Cuba’s leader at the time, Fidel Castro Ruz--a “pipsqueak,” according to Kissinger. “I think sooner or later we have to crack the Cubans.… I think we have to humiliate them,” the secretary of state said. “If there is a perception overseas that we are so weakened by our internal debate [over Vietnam] so that it looks like we can't do anything about a country of eight million people, then in three or four years we are going to have a real crisis,” Kissinger told Ford at another meeting. Donald Rumsfeld, who was secretary of defense under Ford as well as under former president George W. Bush (2001-2009), was involved in the planning for actions which ranged from economic sanctions to a naval blockade or even air strikes.
Security advisers warned Kissinger that “a Cuban/Soviet response [to the attacks] could escalate in areas that would maximize US casualties and thus provoke stronger response.” A situation that could lead to a military strike on Cuba “should be serious enough to warrant further action in preparation for general war,” they said. Kissinger and Ford were apparently willing to risk this, although they agreed that the attacks shouldn’t be carried out until after the 1976 elections. The plans were shelved when Ford lost to Jimmy Carter.
Documents on Kissinger’s plans to attack Cuba are available on the National Security Archive’s website and are also described in a new book, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana, by Peter Kornbluh, the director of the group’s Chile Documentation Project, and American University professor William M. LeoGrande. (National Security Archive 10/1/14; New York Times 10/1/14; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/2/14 from correspondent) The new information was made public just as Kissinger, now 91, was busily promoting his own latest book, World Order, in radio and television interviews and at public events. (Washington Post 9/18/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Latin America on a Dangerous Precipice
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5075-latin-america-on-a-dangerous-precipice
Argentina’s Warning on Sovereign Debt
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12932
Vaca Muerta, Argentina’s New Development Frontier
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5072-vaca-muerta-argentinas-new-development-frontier
Coordinadora Arauco Malleco: Recovering Pre-Colonial Autonomy in Wallmapu (Chile)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/recovering-pre-colonial-autonomy-wallmapu-25677/
Uruguay: Environmental Analyst Eduardo Gudynas Dissects the Myth of President José Mujica
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/uruguay-archives-48/5071-uruguay-environmental-analyst-eduardo-gudynas-dissects-the-myth-of-president-jose-mujica
Brazilian Elections: What Happens Next?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5079-brazilian-elections-what-happens-next
Marina and Dilma: Different Visions for the Brazilian Economy
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
Brazil: Dilma or Marina—Or Luciana?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5070-brazil-dilma-or-marinaor-luciana
Indigenous towns swallowed up by São Paulo, South America’s biggest city (Brazil)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/12940
Bolivia: Elections in the Time of Evo
http://nacla.org/blog/2014/9/30/bolivia-elections-time-evo
The great electoral “trafa” (Peru)
http://alainet.org/active/77626
Choosing Lima’s New Mayor amid Scandal and Transit Reform (Peru)
http://nacla.org/news/2014/10/1/choosing-lima%E2%80%99s-new-mayor-amid-scandal-and-transit-reform
Colombia: UN report blasts military justice bill
http://ww4report.com/node/13589
Venezuelan PSUV Legislators Allege Uribe May Be Behind Murder of Robert Serra
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Venezuelan-PSUV-Legislators-Allege-Uribe-May-Be-Behind-Murder-of-Robert-Serra-20141004-0030.html
Venezuela Takes Over Clorox Factory
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10937
Municipality in El Salvador Bans Mining in Binding Vote
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5074-municipality-in-el-salvador-bans-mining-in-binding-vote
Hillary Clinton admits role in Honduran coup aftermath
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5073-hillary-clinton-admits-role-in-honduran-coup-aftermath
Another Massacre of Indigenous People in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/5068-another-massacre-of-indigenous-people-in-guatemala
Massacre and State of Exception in San Juan Sacatepéquez, Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5069-massacre-and-state-of-exception-in-san-juan-sacatepequez-guatemala
Echoes of ’68: Youth Massacres, Repression and Resistance Jolt Mexico
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/echoes-of-68-youth-massacres-repression-and-resistance-jolt-mexico/
PPT confirms an extremely serious situation in the area of communication and media (Mexico)
http://alainet.org/active/77575
CEO of Mexican Bank Banamex Resigns Over Fraud Scandal
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/CEO-of-Mexican-Bank-Banamex-Resigns-Over-Fraud-Scandal-20141004-0005.html
National Day of Maize in Mexico: Protecting the Sacred Plant
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5067-national-day-of-maize-in-mexico-protecting-the-sacred-plant
Mexican Court Drops Criminal Charges Against Miners’ Leader
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=228#1751
Guanajuato: campesino protesters occupy city (Mexico)
http://ww4report.com/node/13590
Covering Up for Walmart: The Mexico Scandal
https://www.warresisters.org/covering-walmart-mexico-scandal
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/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/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
