Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #991, May 31, 2009
1. Peru: Strike Backs Indigenous Protests
2. Mexico: Campesinos Blockade Oil Well
3. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Peru: Strike Backs Indigenous Protests
Peru’s largest labor confederation, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), held a one-day nationwide strike on May 27 in support of indigenous people who have been protesting since Apr. 9 in the country’s northeastern Amazon region against a package of laws they say will open up their lands to mining and drilling without consultation with local communities [see Update #986, which tentatively gave Apr. 13 as the day the protests started]. The CGTP strike came on the second day of a May 26-27 strike called by the Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep), an indigenous organization which has led the protests in the Amazon region.
On May 27 the CGTP held a march in Lima of some 5,000 workers, mostly from construction, mining and agriculture, from the Dos de Mayo plaza to the Congress building to support the indigenous demands and to push for wage and pension increases and an end to government efforts to criminalize protests. The slogans included: “The people united will never be defeated” and “Let the rich pay for the crisis, not the people.” There were no incidents in the march, which was guarded by 1,500 police agents. But in Iquitos, the capital of Loreto region and Maynas province in the Amazon region, police fired rubber bullets at a CGTP demonstration as protesters burned tires in the Plaza de Armas. From 11 to 16 people were wounded, according to different reports, and about 20 were arrested. The city was largely shut down; schools were closed and transportation was restricted. CGTP members also held strikes and marches in other cities, including the southern cities of Puno and Ayacucho.
Indigenous groups from outside the Amazon region observed the strike calls, as did a number of local organizations. In Cusco, members of the Machiguenga indigenous group blocked the train to the Machu Picchu archeological site starting on May 26; about 300 Machiguenga protested peacefully in Aguas Calientes, near the site, a major tourist attraction. Members of the Subregional Federation of Campesino and Urban Rondas blocked the Fernando Belaunde highway at the town of Chamaya in Jaén province in the northern department of Cajamarca on May 27. [Rondas started as campesino self-defense groups that the military used in the counterinsurgency against the Communist Party of Peru (PCP, “Shining Path”) rebels in the 1980s, but the groups later became independent of the government.] (ADN (Spain) 5/28/09 from EFE; Radio Programas del Perú (RPP) 5/27/09; La República (Peru) 5/28/09)
The laws Aidesep has been protesting were part of a package of more than 100 decrees that President Alan García signed in 2008 to bring Peru into compliance with a Free Trade Agreement (FTA, TLC in Spanish) with the US; the agreement went into effect earlier this year. Decrees affecting campesino and indigenous land rights provoked massive mobilizations during the summer of 2008 [see Update #954], and two decrees were repealed in August. This May the constitutional commission of the Congress ruled that one of the remaining decrees is unconstitutional, and Congress was scheduled to vote on repealing it at the end of May. But García continues to defend the package. "The Amazonian lands belong to the entire nation, not to a small group that lives there,” he said at a public event on May 16.
Since the protests started on Apr. 9 some 10,000 indigenous people, many of them armed with bows and arrows, have carried out actions that included blockades of major roads and waterways and the occupation of an airport. The protesters have closed down a pipeline belonging to the state-owned oil company Petróleos del Perú, SA (Petroperu); it normally carries 40,000 barrels a day. The privately owned Pluspetrol Perú has had to shut down its Block 1-AB field, which was producing 17,000 barrels a day last month. On May 9 the government declared a state of emergency in four regions, granting the army greater powers to repress the protests. The government also charged Aidesep president Alberto Pizango Chota with conspiring against the state. (Environment News Service 5/26/09; Bloomberg 5/26/09)
The Fourth Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples, which was being held in Puno, concluded on May 31 with Pizango calling for another national strike on June 3. "If we have to die, let them kill us; we’d rather die struggling so that our children can live with dignity,” he told the delegates, who chanted: “Pizango, brother, the summit is with you.” The delegates announced that they would organize encampments during the first week of July in front of Peruvian embassies in their own countries. (ADN 6/1/09)
*2. Mexico: Campesinos Blockade Oil Well
On May 20 about 100 residents of seven rural communities in Cunduacán municipality in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco blocked access to the Madrefil-1 oil well to demand compensation for what they say is damage to their communities. Drilling on the well, which belongs to Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the government’s giant oil monopoly, started at the beginning of the year. The campesinos say the work has already killed their crops and livestock and damaged their homes. “We asked the PEMEX engineers to take us into account, but they didn’t pay any attention,” one protester told the media.
On May 30 PEMEX officials said the blockade was creating the danger of an accident at the facility. Fifteen workers remained there; the campesinos reportedly wouldn’t let them leave. According to the officials, the real reasons for the blockade were electoral. PEMEX said state legislators and candidates for Tabasco’s Oct. 18 municipal and legislative elections had been meeting with the protesters. But the residents said they wouldn’t lift the blockade until PEMEX directors took action on their demands. (ADN 5/30/09 from EFE; El Financiero (Mexico) 5/29/09)
*3. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Cuba
Chile: Ex-Soldier Arrested for Víctor Jara Murder
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1880/1/
Argentine Factory in the Hands of the Workers: FASINPAT a Step Closer to Permanent Worker Control
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1875/1/
Uruguay: El Monarca Neighbors Build Their Own Town
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1881/68/
Bogus al-Qaeda bust in Brazil
http://ww4report.com/node/7372
Cochabamba (Bolivia): From War to Water Management
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1883/68/
Ecuador: Correa's Re-Election Poses More Challenges for Social Movements
https://nacla.org/node/5848
The Dark Side of Plan Colombia
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/ballve/single
New Military Base in Colombia Would Spread Pentagon Reach Throughout Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1884/68/
Costa Rica: Indigenous People Sidelined in Plans for Dam
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1878/68/
Mexico: peasant ecologist arrested in Chihuahua
http://ww4report.com/node/7374
Michoacán: 27 mayors and pubic officials arrested in federal sweep
http://ww4report.com/node/7375
A Rainbow Flag Over Habana
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1879/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
WNU #990: Colombian Banana Workers End Strike
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #990, May 24, 2009
1. Colombia: Banana Workers End Strike
2. Venezuela: Economic Growth Stalls
3. Mexico: “Disaster” Shrinks Economy 8.2%
4. Panama: Trouble for FTA in US Congress?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Vía Campesina
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Colombia: Banana Workers End Strike
On May 20 some 17,500 banana workers in Colombia’s northwestern Urabá region ended a strike they began on May 8 over pay and benefits. The workers won an 8% wage hike for the first year of the two-year contract and a cost-of-living adjustment for the next year; this is based on the Consumer Price Index (IPC in Spanish), which is expected to rise by 5% or less this year. The strikers also won benefits including funds for housing, recreation and culture, a bonus, and pay for the days lost to the strike. The banana workers were seeking a 9.2% wage increase the first year and the IPC adjustment plus 2% for the second year, along with other benefits and the creation of a fund to pay reparations to relatives of the victims of violence in Urabá. The owners had originally sought a five-year contract. Gilberto Torres, a spokesperson for the National Union of Agricultural Industry Workers (SINTRAINAGRO), said the union’s members “received the agreement very well.”
The owners lost about $30 million during the 12-day strike; normally they would have shipped some 3.7 million cases during the period. Colombia is the world’s third largest banana exporter, after Ecuador and Costa Rica, with most exports going to Europe and the US. About 75% of Urabá’s economy depends on the industry, which employs some 19,500 workers at 296 plantations.
SINTRAINAGRO officials say more than 800 farmworkers have been killed in Urabá over the past 13 years, mostly by rightwing paramilitaries hired by growers to stop labor organizing. During the job action the union charged that the owners tried to bring in strikebreakers even though the strike was recognized by the Social Protection Ministry. Union officials also said strikers had received threatening messages. (El Tiempo (Colombia) 5/18/09; El Espectador (Colombia) 5/20/09; Reuters 5/20/09; Latin American Herald Tribune 5/21/09 from EFE)
*2. Venezuela: Economic Growth Stalls
Venezuela’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by just 0.3% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period the year before, the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) reported on May 19. Miguel Carpio, an economist at Banco Federal CA in Caracas, projected a zero growth rate for the year. Finance Minister Ali Rodríguez attributed the situation to the global economic downturn, which has cut the price of Venezuelan oil from an average of $87 per barrel last year to an average $42 per barrel so far in 2009; oil accounts for more than 90% of the country’s exports. The last time the GDP failed to grow was in 2003 during a shutdown of the oil sector by the political opposition to President Hugo Chávez Frías. The economy grew by 18.6% in 2004, 10.3% in 2005 and 2006, 8.4% in 2007, and 4.8% in 2008, according to the BCV. In March the government announced a 6.7% reduction in the national budget. (Bloomberg 5/19/09; Venezuelanalysis 5/21/09)
As growth stalls, Chávez’s leftist government seems to be tightening its control over the economy. On May 22 the government announced a deal to pay the Spanish banking multinational Banco Santander $1.05 billion for the nationalization of its local subsidiary, Banco de Venezuela. "We are working in all areas related to economic development," Vice President Ramón Carrizalez explained. Plans for the nationalization were announced in July, but negotiations dragged on for months over the purchase price. (AP 5/22/09 via Forbes) On May 21 President Chávez announced plans to nationalize several steel and iron companies. This was the beginning of "a process of nationalization to create an industrial complex," he said in a televised address. "Venezuelan workers are going to give a lesson to the world on how the working class has been resuscitated to make a revolution." (AFP 5/21/09)
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government is seeking up to $4.3 billion in loans from Brazil’s state development bank, according to the Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo. Some of the loans would be used to pay for work by Brazilian companies in Venezuela. The companies include Braskem (BRKM5.SA), Andrade Gutierrez and Odebrecht SA, Brazil's largest construction group, which is expanding the Caracas subway system. The loans may be announced when Chavez visits Brazil on May 26. (Reuters 5/22/09)
*3. Mexico: “Disaster” Shrinks Economy 8.2%
On May 20 the Mexican government’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) announced that the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 8.2% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period the year before. The next day Salomon Presburger, president of the Concamin business organization, told a Mexico City press conference that the country had already lost 300,000 jobs in 2009 and would probably lose a total of 600,000 during the year, half of them from the industrial sector, in which he expected a 12-13% contraction. He predicted that the numbers would be even worse when statistics come in on the effect of the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”), which has caused at least 74 deaths to date, has reduced tourism and led many companies to shut down for a week in late April and early May [see Update #988].
Presburger noted Mexico’s close economic ties with the US, now suffering its worst economic crisis since the 1930s. "The collapse of orders coming from the US and the sudden weakening of domestic demand, associated with the fall in household consumption and business investment, explains the accelerated decline of the industrial sector," he said. He compared the current crisis to the devastating recession that followed the financial collapse of December 1994. (Latin American Herald Tribune 5/21/09 from EFE)
“[I]n 2009 we have lost what we gained over many years,” José Ángel Gurría Treviño, a finance secretary during the administration of former president Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (1994-2000), said in a press conference in Madrid on May 22, “so that this isn’t a cycle, it’s a disaster. This isn’t an evolution; it’s a demolition. And yes, we calculated it badly.” But he insisted that “we who created this problem…are the ones who have to fix it.” Gurría is now general secretary of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes 30 industrialized countries with a “free market” orientation; Mexico is the only Latin American member. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/23/09)
On May 20, the US-based Moody's Investors Service called Mexico the "most vulnerable" among countries in the region. (Bloomberg 5/20/09)
*4. Panama: Trouble for FTA in US Congress?
On May 21 Assistant US Trade Representative Everett Eissenstat told a Senate Finance Committee hearing that the administration of US president Barack Obama won’t seek the approval of Congress for a free trade agreement (FTA) with Panama until the president has established a new "framework" for trade. "It's clear that trade agreements in the last few years have been much too divisive," Eissenstat said. "We want to make sure that Panama doesn't contribute to that divisiveness." This was a reversal from the administration’s plan in March to push for early approval of the pact; the change followed a statement by John Sweeney, president of the main US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, opposing the Panama FTA.
The Panama agreement was considered the least controversial and easiest to pass of three FTAs negotiated by the administration of former president George W. Bush (2001-2009) but still awaiting approval from Congress; the other two pacts are with Colombia and South Korea. The Panama accord is backed by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Illinois-based Caterpillar Inc., which is seeking to supply machinery for a planned expansion of the Panama Canal. Trade between Panama and the US was $5.5 billion in 2008. (Bloomberg 5/21/09)
The FTA is a foreign policy priority both for outgoing Panamanian president Martin Torrijos of the center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and for the conservative president-elect, Ricardo Martinelli. Analysts in Panama think that to win US approval the Panamanian government will have to meet US demands on unionization, child labor, environmental issues and banking secrecy laws. (Prensa Latina 5/22/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Vía Campesina
Colombian sought in Buenos Aires Jewish center attack
http://ww4report.com/node/7354
Bolivia's ex-prez goes on trial in absentia on "genocide" charges
http://ww4report.com/node/7336
Bolivian Senate to hold impeachment trial for chief justice
http://ww4report.com/node/7356
Abraham’s Last Rap: Bolivian Hip-Hop Hero Dies in El Alto
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1874/1/
Diplomacy Underground: Tunnel Proposed to Grant Bolivia Access to Sea
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1864/1/
Bolivia Declassified: USAID Responds to Freedom of Information Act Request
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1866/1/
Israel: Venezuela, Bolivia supply Iran with uranium
http://ww4report.com/node/7363
Cerro de Pasco, Peru: Mining, Red Lakes, and Piles of Waste
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1872/68/
Ecuador's Future for Canadian Transnationals: An Exchange of Indigenous Perspectives
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1871/1/
Obama Seeks $46 Million for Military Base in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1870/68/
Colombia scores blow against Valle Cartel
http://ww4report.com/node/7338
Colombia's senate approves referendum on extending presidential term limits
http://ww4report.com/node/7337
Lawsuit Accuses Dole of Funding Death Squads (Colombia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1867/68/
Colombia: pyramid victims kidnap nine
http://ww4report.com/node/7360
Colombia: ELN appeals to FARC to end "fratricidal war"
http://ww4report.com/node/7359
Colombia: scandal-tainted Freddy Padilla is new defense chief
http://ww4report.com/node/7358
Venezuela: Chávez, media mogul trade accusations following police raid
http://ww4report.com/node/7355
Attorney's slaying polarizes Guatemala
http://ww4report.com/node/7339
Video Accusing Guatemalan President of Murder Unleashes Political Crisis, Deepens Social Divisions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1862/1/
Mexico: shake-up in wake of Zacatecas jailbreak
http://ww4report.com/node/7353
Mexico: crackdown in wake of Zacatecas jailbreak sparks protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7335
Megaprojects and Militarization: A Perfect Storm in Mexico
https://nacla.org/node/5830
House and Senate Pass New Military Aid to Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1869/68/
Building a Transnational Peasant Movement
https://nacla.org/node/5831
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #990, May 24, 2009
1. Colombia: Banana Workers End Strike
2. Venezuela: Economic Growth Stalls
3. Mexico: “Disaster” Shrinks Economy 8.2%
4. Panama: Trouble for FTA in US Congress?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Vía Campesina
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Colombia: Banana Workers End Strike
On May 20 some 17,500 banana workers in Colombia’s northwestern Urabá region ended a strike they began on May 8 over pay and benefits. The workers won an 8% wage hike for the first year of the two-year contract and a cost-of-living adjustment for the next year; this is based on the Consumer Price Index (IPC in Spanish), which is expected to rise by 5% or less this year. The strikers also won benefits including funds for housing, recreation and culture, a bonus, and pay for the days lost to the strike. The banana workers were seeking a 9.2% wage increase the first year and the IPC adjustment plus 2% for the second year, along with other benefits and the creation of a fund to pay reparations to relatives of the victims of violence in Urabá. The owners had originally sought a five-year contract. Gilberto Torres, a spokesperson for the National Union of Agricultural Industry Workers (SINTRAINAGRO), said the union’s members “received the agreement very well.”
The owners lost about $30 million during the 12-day strike; normally they would have shipped some 3.7 million cases during the period. Colombia is the world’s third largest banana exporter, after Ecuador and Costa Rica, with most exports going to Europe and the US. About 75% of Urabá’s economy depends on the industry, which employs some 19,500 workers at 296 plantations.
SINTRAINAGRO officials say more than 800 farmworkers have been killed in Urabá over the past 13 years, mostly by rightwing paramilitaries hired by growers to stop labor organizing. During the job action the union charged that the owners tried to bring in strikebreakers even though the strike was recognized by the Social Protection Ministry. Union officials also said strikers had received threatening messages. (El Tiempo (Colombia) 5/18/09; El Espectador (Colombia) 5/20/09; Reuters 5/20/09; Latin American Herald Tribune 5/21/09 from EFE)
*2. Venezuela: Economic Growth Stalls
Venezuela’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by just 0.3% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period the year before, the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) reported on May 19. Miguel Carpio, an economist at Banco Federal CA in Caracas, projected a zero growth rate for the year. Finance Minister Ali Rodríguez attributed the situation to the global economic downturn, which has cut the price of Venezuelan oil from an average of $87 per barrel last year to an average $42 per barrel so far in 2009; oil accounts for more than 90% of the country’s exports. The last time the GDP failed to grow was in 2003 during a shutdown of the oil sector by the political opposition to President Hugo Chávez Frías. The economy grew by 18.6% in 2004, 10.3% in 2005 and 2006, 8.4% in 2007, and 4.8% in 2008, according to the BCV. In March the government announced a 6.7% reduction in the national budget. (Bloomberg 5/19/09; Venezuelanalysis 5/21/09)
As growth stalls, Chávez’s leftist government seems to be tightening its control over the economy. On May 22 the government announced a deal to pay the Spanish banking multinational Banco Santander $1.05 billion for the nationalization of its local subsidiary, Banco de Venezuela. "We are working in all areas related to economic development," Vice President Ramón Carrizalez explained. Plans for the nationalization were announced in July, but negotiations dragged on for months over the purchase price. (AP 5/22/09 via Forbes) On May 21 President Chávez announced plans to nationalize several steel and iron companies. This was the beginning of "a process of nationalization to create an industrial complex," he said in a televised address. "Venezuelan workers are going to give a lesson to the world on how the working class has been resuscitated to make a revolution." (AFP 5/21/09)
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government is seeking up to $4.3 billion in loans from Brazil’s state development bank, according to the Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo. Some of the loans would be used to pay for work by Brazilian companies in Venezuela. The companies include Braskem (BRKM5.SA), Andrade Gutierrez and Odebrecht SA, Brazil's largest construction group, which is expanding the Caracas subway system. The loans may be announced when Chavez visits Brazil on May 26. (Reuters 5/22/09)
*3. Mexico: “Disaster” Shrinks Economy 8.2%
On May 20 the Mexican government’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) announced that the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 8.2% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period the year before. The next day Salomon Presburger, president of the Concamin business organization, told a Mexico City press conference that the country had already lost 300,000 jobs in 2009 and would probably lose a total of 600,000 during the year, half of them from the industrial sector, in which he expected a 12-13% contraction. He predicted that the numbers would be even worse when statistics come in on the effect of the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”), which has caused at least 74 deaths to date, has reduced tourism and led many companies to shut down for a week in late April and early May [see Update #988].
Presburger noted Mexico’s close economic ties with the US, now suffering its worst economic crisis since the 1930s. "The collapse of orders coming from the US and the sudden weakening of domestic demand, associated with the fall in household consumption and business investment, explains the accelerated decline of the industrial sector," he said. He compared the current crisis to the devastating recession that followed the financial collapse of December 1994. (Latin American Herald Tribune 5/21/09 from EFE)
“[I]n 2009 we have lost what we gained over many years,” José Ángel Gurría Treviño, a finance secretary during the administration of former president Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (1994-2000), said in a press conference in Madrid on May 22, “so that this isn’t a cycle, it’s a disaster. This isn’t an evolution; it’s a demolition. And yes, we calculated it badly.” But he insisted that “we who created this problem…are the ones who have to fix it.” Gurría is now general secretary of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes 30 industrialized countries with a “free market” orientation; Mexico is the only Latin American member. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/23/09)
On May 20, the US-based Moody's Investors Service called Mexico the "most vulnerable" among countries in the region. (Bloomberg 5/20/09)
*4. Panama: Trouble for FTA in US Congress?
On May 21 Assistant US Trade Representative Everett Eissenstat told a Senate Finance Committee hearing that the administration of US president Barack Obama won’t seek the approval of Congress for a free trade agreement (FTA) with Panama until the president has established a new "framework" for trade. "It's clear that trade agreements in the last few years have been much too divisive," Eissenstat said. "We want to make sure that Panama doesn't contribute to that divisiveness." This was a reversal from the administration’s plan in March to push for early approval of the pact; the change followed a statement by John Sweeney, president of the main US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, opposing the Panama FTA.
The Panama agreement was considered the least controversial and easiest to pass of three FTAs negotiated by the administration of former president George W. Bush (2001-2009) but still awaiting approval from Congress; the other two pacts are with Colombia and South Korea. The Panama accord is backed by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Illinois-based Caterpillar Inc., which is seeking to supply machinery for a planned expansion of the Panama Canal. Trade between Panama and the US was $5.5 billion in 2008. (Bloomberg 5/21/09)
The FTA is a foreign policy priority both for outgoing Panamanian president Martin Torrijos of the center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and for the conservative president-elect, Ricardo Martinelli. Analysts in Panama think that to win US approval the Panamanian government will have to meet US demands on unionization, child labor, environmental issues and banking secrecy laws. (Prensa Latina 5/22/09)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Vía Campesina
Colombian sought in Buenos Aires Jewish center attack
http://ww4report.com/node/7354
Bolivia's ex-prez goes on trial in absentia on "genocide" charges
http://ww4report.com/node/7336
Bolivian Senate to hold impeachment trial for chief justice
http://ww4report.com/node/7356
Abraham’s Last Rap: Bolivian Hip-Hop Hero Dies in El Alto
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1874/1/
Diplomacy Underground: Tunnel Proposed to Grant Bolivia Access to Sea
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1864/1/
Bolivia Declassified: USAID Responds to Freedom of Information Act Request
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1866/1/
Israel: Venezuela, Bolivia supply Iran with uranium
http://ww4report.com/node/7363
Cerro de Pasco, Peru: Mining, Red Lakes, and Piles of Waste
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1872/68/
Ecuador's Future for Canadian Transnationals: An Exchange of Indigenous Perspectives
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1871/1/
Obama Seeks $46 Million for Military Base in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1870/68/
Colombia scores blow against Valle Cartel
http://ww4report.com/node/7338
Colombia's senate approves referendum on extending presidential term limits
http://ww4report.com/node/7337
Lawsuit Accuses Dole of Funding Death Squads (Colombia)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1867/68/
Colombia: pyramid victims kidnap nine
http://ww4report.com/node/7360
Colombia: ELN appeals to FARC to end "fratricidal war"
http://ww4report.com/node/7359
Colombia: scandal-tainted Freddy Padilla is new defense chief
http://ww4report.com/node/7358
Venezuela: Chávez, media mogul trade accusations following police raid
http://ww4report.com/node/7355
Attorney's slaying polarizes Guatemala
http://ww4report.com/node/7339
Video Accusing Guatemalan President of Murder Unleashes Political Crisis, Deepens Social Divisions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1862/1/
Mexico: shake-up in wake of Zacatecas jailbreak
http://ww4report.com/node/7353
Mexico: crackdown in wake of Zacatecas jailbreak sparks protests
http://ww4report.com/node/7335
Megaprojects and Militarization: A Perfect Storm in Mexico
https://nacla.org/node/5830
House and Senate Pass New Military Aid to Mexico
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1869/68/
Building a Transnational Peasant Movement
https://nacla.org/node/5831
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Monday, May 18, 2009
Links but No Update for May 17, 2009
[We are unable to send out an Update this week because of travel. We'll be back next week. Below are links to stories from other sources.]
Paraguay: Soy: A Hunger for Land
https://nacla.org/node/5798
Diplomacy Underground: Tunnel Proposed to Grant Bolivia Access to Sea
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1864/1/
USAID's Silent Invasion in Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1865/1/
Bolivia: Plan 3000: Resistance and Social Change at the Heart of Racism
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6093
Peru: Canadian oil company signs deal to explore uncontacted tribe's land
http://ww4report.com/node/7312
Swinging from the Right: Correa and Social Movements in Ecuador http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1856/1/
Colombia: In Radio Diversia “After the Burglary...Came the Threats” http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1863/68/
Assassinations Continue in Colombia http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1857/68/
Beyond the Media Hysteria on Hugo Chávez
https://nacla.org/node/5809
Venezuela: Chávez takes hardline pasta policy
http://ww4report.com/node/7321
Campaign Against School of the Americas Lobbies El Salvador http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1858/68/
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left - Carlos Alarcón http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1861/1/
Landmark Developments in Guatemalan Human Rights
https://nacla.org/node/5818
Video Accusing Guatemalan President of Murder Unleashes Political Crisis, Deepens Social Divisions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1862/1/
Mexico: Swine Flu Reveals Flaws in Global Public Health System
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6108
Obama and the Future of Cuban-U.S. Relations
http://www.nacla.org/node/5812
Compañero Obama? Obama Mends Fences with Latin America http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1855/1/
Paraguay: Soy: A Hunger for Land
https://nacla.org/node/5798
Diplomacy Underground: Tunnel Proposed to Grant Bolivia Access to Sea
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1864/1/
USAID's Silent Invasion in Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1865/1/
Bolivia: Plan 3000: Resistance and Social Change at the Heart of Racism
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6093
Peru: Canadian oil company signs deal to explore uncontacted tribe's land
http://ww4report.com/node/7312
Swinging from the Right: Correa and Social Movements in Ecuador http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1856/1/
Colombia: In Radio Diversia “After the Burglary...Came the Threats” http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1863/68/
Assassinations Continue in Colombia http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1857/68/
Beyond the Media Hysteria on Hugo Chávez
https://nacla.org/node/5809
Venezuela: Chávez takes hardline pasta policy
http://ww4report.com/node/7321
Campaign Against School of the Americas Lobbies El Salvador http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1858/68/
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left - Carlos Alarcón http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1861/1/
Landmark Developments in Guatemalan Human Rights
https://nacla.org/node/5818
Video Accusing Guatemalan President of Murder Unleashes Political Crisis, Deepens Social Divisions
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1862/1/
Mexico: Swine Flu Reveals Flaws in Global Public Health System
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6108
Obama and the Future of Cuban-U.S. Relations
http://www.nacla.org/node/5812
Compañero Obama? Obama Mends Fences with Latin America http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1855/1/
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
WNU #989: Haitians Protest Lynching in DR
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #989, May 10, 2009
1. Haiti: Protests Over Lynching in DR
2. Honduras: Government Blamed in 1995 Murder
3. Brazil: Dam Protesters Arrested
4. Links to alternative sources on: Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: Protests Over Lynching in DR
Dozens of Haitian activists held a sit-in in front of the Dominican embassy in Pétionville, an eastern suburb of Port-au-Prince, on the morning of May 8 to protest the lynching of Haitian national Carlos Nérilus in Santo Domingo on May 2. The activists denounced both the failure of Dominican authorities to protect Haitian nationals and what they said was the “laissez-faire” policy of the Haitian government; they demanded the immediate recall of Fritz Cinéas, Haiti’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic. The sit-in was organized by the Support Group for the Repatriated and Refugees (GARR), the Platform of Haitian Organizations for the Defense of Human Rights (POHDH) and the National Coordinating Committee of Nongovernmental Actors (CONANE). A Dominican embassy official, Pastor Vásquez, met with a delegation of five activists accompanied by journalists; Ambassador Rubén Silié was away from the embassy.
Two more groups of protesters, mostly students, arrived later in the morning, bringing the crowd to a total of about 150. The newcomers tore down the sign in front of the embassy and wrote “Dominican criminals, Dominican murderers” on the walls. The Associated Press wire service reported that they also threw rocks and broke a window. The youths then proceeded to the nearby Dominican consulate, where police agents prevented them from tearing down the Dominican flag; later they paralyzed traffic in Pétionville. Meanwhile, the human rights groups led a peaceful march to Haitian prime minister Michèle Pierre-Louis’ office, where they tried to deliver a document. In contrast to the Dominican embassy, the prime minister’s office wouldn’t receive a delegation of activists if journalists were included. The protesters refused to accept the condition and marched on to the National Palace to deliver a message to President René Préval. (AlterPresse 5/8/09; Chicago Tribune 5/8/09 from AP; GARR press release 5/4/09)
Nérilus was murdered on 12th Street in Santo Domingo’s Buenos Aires neighborhood on the afternoon of May 2. A man reportedly tortured Nérilus and then cut off his head with an axe while an angry crowd looked on; some people filmed the incident with their cellphones. There is no evidence that the local police attempted to intervene. The killing was said to be in revenge for the decapitation of a Dominican business owner, Pascual de León Lara, allegedly by a Haitian, the day before in another Santo Domingo neighborhood, but it not clear whether Nérilus and his killer had a direct connection to De León Lara’s murder. Dominican authorities later arrested a suspect, Confesor Reyes, and on May 8 a Santo Domingo Province judge, Elizabeth Esperanza Rodríguez Espinal, ordered a three-month detention of Reyes while the case is being investigated. According to one report, Reyes has also been identified as Rusbert de León Lara, Pascual de León Lara’s brother. (Radio Kiskeya 5/3/09; Listín Diario 5/4/09, 5/9/09; Chicago Tribune 5/8/09 from AP)
In other news, after months of delays the Haitian Senate voted unanimously on May 5 to approve a measure raising the minimum wage to 200 gourdes a day (about $4.96) from its current rate of 70 gourdes. The Chamber of Deputies approved the measure earlier in the year [see Update #984]. To become law, the raise still needs to be approved by President Préval and published in the official gazette, Le Moniteur. Business owners strongly opposed the new minimum wage, and it is not clear what measures are planned to enforce it. (AlterPresse 5/6/09)
*2. Honduras: Government Blamed in 1995 Murder
The Costa Rica-based Inter-American Human Rights Court (CIDH) of the Organization of American States (OAS) ruled on May 6 that the Honduran government shared responsibility for the murder of environmental activist Blanca Jeannette Kawas Fernández at her home in Tela on Feb. 6, 1995. Kawas Fernández, the president of the Foundation for the Protection of the Natural Resources of Lancetilla, Punta Sal and Texiguat (Prolansate), had accused timber companies of illegal exploitation of the Punta Sal peninsula and of plans for its illegal appropriation, along with damage to the National Park and other protected sites. She had also opposed several economic development plans in the region.
In its ruling, which was published on May 8, the CIDH found that although the murder was carried out on behalf of “private interests,” it was “facilitated” by government agents; the court found that at least one government agent had participated in the killing, which was followed by other acts of violence and intimidation against environmental activists. The CIDH ordered the government to carry out a national campaign to raise awareness about the importance of the work of defenders of the environment and the contributions they make to the defense of human rights. According to the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), an alliance of Latin American human rights groups, this is the first time the CIDH has ruled on the killing of an environmental activist and the first time it has recognized “an undeniable relation between the protection of the environment and the implementation of other human rights." (Adital 5/8/09; Univision 5/8/09 from AFP)
*3. Brazil: Dam Protesters Arrested
The Movement of People Harmed by Dams (MAB) and the local branch of Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”) held a vigil the evening of May 7 at the Mártires de Abril Plaza in Belém, capital of the northern Brazilian state of Pará, to demand the release of 18 people arrested on Apr. 26 when the state’s militarized police broke up a sit-in near the Tucuruí dam. The prisoners each face at least 11 charges; if convicted they could be sentenced to 35 years in prison. The vigil, which was supported by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), campesino unions and the regional fishers’ movement, was part of what organizers called the “Campaign Against the Criminalization of Social Movements.” The Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) of the Catholic Church notes that 17 people have been killed in the Tucuruí region over the past three years in struggles over land use.
Some 350-400 people had set up an encampment on Apr. 24 in a work area for the locks along the Tocantins River at the Tucuruí Hydroelectric Plant, about 380 km southwest of Belém. They were protesting violence in the countryside and demanding agricultural resources, infrastructural work and the development of fishing to benefit some 900 families in the area. On Apr. 25 the protesters called for talks with the state and federal government and the Eletronorte company. But on the morning of Apr. 26 more than 100 state militarized police, including a group of 55 sent from Belém, moved in on the encampment. “They arrived beating some people,” said Daiane Carlos Hohn of the MAB’s national directorate. Press reports said there was some resistance from protesters armed with homemade bombs and metal and wooden clubs but that no one was seriously injured. (Adital 4/27/09, 5/7/09; O Globo (Brazil) 4/26/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
Uruguayans Call for a National Vote on Impunity Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1844/1/
Paraguay: ranchers seek license to destroy uncontacted tribe's land
http://ww4report.com/node/7290
The Fun House Mirror: Distortions and Omissions in the News on Bolivia
https://nacla.org/node/5786
Bolivia: Plan 3000 - Resistance and Social Change at the Heart of Racism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1849/68/
Venezuela: Chávez seizes oil service companies
http://ww4report.com/node/7295
Venezuela's Opposition: Back Into the Frying Pan
https://nacla.org/node/5777
Pacific Rim Mining to sue El Salvador in CAFTA court
http://ww4report.com/node/7288
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left - Oswaldo Natarén
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1851/1/
Oaxaca: Police Raid Communities around Trinidad Mine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1854/1/
Mexican Civil Society and NGOs Speak Out Against US Militarization
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/05/mexican-civil-society-speaks-out.html
Outbreak of Deadly New Swine Flu Strain, Warning to Rethink Agricultural Trade Model
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6102
Advice for Obama from South America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1850/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #989, May 10, 2009
1. Haiti: Protests Over Lynching in DR
2. Honduras: Government Blamed in 1995 Murder
3. Brazil: Dam Protesters Arrested
4. Links to alternative sources on: Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Haiti: Protests Over Lynching in DR
Dozens of Haitian activists held a sit-in in front of the Dominican embassy in Pétionville, an eastern suburb of Port-au-Prince, on the morning of May 8 to protest the lynching of Haitian national Carlos Nérilus in Santo Domingo on May 2. The activists denounced both the failure of Dominican authorities to protect Haitian nationals and what they said was the “laissez-faire” policy of the Haitian government; they demanded the immediate recall of Fritz Cinéas, Haiti’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic. The sit-in was organized by the Support Group for the Repatriated and Refugees (GARR), the Platform of Haitian Organizations for the Defense of Human Rights (POHDH) and the National Coordinating Committee of Nongovernmental Actors (CONANE). A Dominican embassy official, Pastor Vásquez, met with a delegation of five activists accompanied by journalists; Ambassador Rubén Silié was away from the embassy.
Two more groups of protesters, mostly students, arrived later in the morning, bringing the crowd to a total of about 150. The newcomers tore down the sign in front of the embassy and wrote “Dominican criminals, Dominican murderers” on the walls. The Associated Press wire service reported that they also threw rocks and broke a window. The youths then proceeded to the nearby Dominican consulate, where police agents prevented them from tearing down the Dominican flag; later they paralyzed traffic in Pétionville. Meanwhile, the human rights groups led a peaceful march to Haitian prime minister Michèle Pierre-Louis’ office, where they tried to deliver a document. In contrast to the Dominican embassy, the prime minister’s office wouldn’t receive a delegation of activists if journalists were included. The protesters refused to accept the condition and marched on to the National Palace to deliver a message to President René Préval. (AlterPresse 5/8/09; Chicago Tribune 5/8/09 from AP; GARR press release 5/4/09)
Nérilus was murdered on 12th Street in Santo Domingo’s Buenos Aires neighborhood on the afternoon of May 2. A man reportedly tortured Nérilus and then cut off his head with an axe while an angry crowd looked on; some people filmed the incident with their cellphones. There is no evidence that the local police attempted to intervene. The killing was said to be in revenge for the decapitation of a Dominican business owner, Pascual de León Lara, allegedly by a Haitian, the day before in another Santo Domingo neighborhood, but it not clear whether Nérilus and his killer had a direct connection to De León Lara’s murder. Dominican authorities later arrested a suspect, Confesor Reyes, and on May 8 a Santo Domingo Province judge, Elizabeth Esperanza Rodríguez Espinal, ordered a three-month detention of Reyes while the case is being investigated. According to one report, Reyes has also been identified as Rusbert de León Lara, Pascual de León Lara’s brother. (Radio Kiskeya 5/3/09; Listín Diario 5/4/09, 5/9/09; Chicago Tribune 5/8/09 from AP)
In other news, after months of delays the Haitian Senate voted unanimously on May 5 to approve a measure raising the minimum wage to 200 gourdes a day (about $4.96) from its current rate of 70 gourdes. The Chamber of Deputies approved the measure earlier in the year [see Update #984]. To become law, the raise still needs to be approved by President Préval and published in the official gazette, Le Moniteur. Business owners strongly opposed the new minimum wage, and it is not clear what measures are planned to enforce it. (AlterPresse 5/6/09)
*2. Honduras: Government Blamed in 1995 Murder
The Costa Rica-based Inter-American Human Rights Court (CIDH) of the Organization of American States (OAS) ruled on May 6 that the Honduran government shared responsibility for the murder of environmental activist Blanca Jeannette Kawas Fernández at her home in Tela on Feb. 6, 1995. Kawas Fernández, the president of the Foundation for the Protection of the Natural Resources of Lancetilla, Punta Sal and Texiguat (Prolansate), had accused timber companies of illegal exploitation of the Punta Sal peninsula and of plans for its illegal appropriation, along with damage to the National Park and other protected sites. She had also opposed several economic development plans in the region.
In its ruling, which was published on May 8, the CIDH found that although the murder was carried out on behalf of “private interests,” it was “facilitated” by government agents; the court found that at least one government agent had participated in the killing, which was followed by other acts of violence and intimidation against environmental activists. The CIDH ordered the government to carry out a national campaign to raise awareness about the importance of the work of defenders of the environment and the contributions they make to the defense of human rights. According to the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), an alliance of Latin American human rights groups, this is the first time the CIDH has ruled on the killing of an environmental activist and the first time it has recognized “an undeniable relation between the protection of the environment and the implementation of other human rights." (Adital 5/8/09; Univision 5/8/09 from AFP)
*3. Brazil: Dam Protesters Arrested
The Movement of People Harmed by Dams (MAB) and the local branch of Vía Campesina (“Campesino Way”) held a vigil the evening of May 7 at the Mártires de Abril Plaza in Belém, capital of the northern Brazilian state of Pará, to demand the release of 18 people arrested on Apr. 26 when the state’s militarized police broke up a sit-in near the Tucuruí dam. The prisoners each face at least 11 charges; if convicted they could be sentenced to 35 years in prison. The vigil, which was supported by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), campesino unions and the regional fishers’ movement, was part of what organizers called the “Campaign Against the Criminalization of Social Movements.” The Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) of the Catholic Church notes that 17 people have been killed in the Tucuruí region over the past three years in struggles over land use.
Some 350-400 people had set up an encampment on Apr. 24 in a work area for the locks along the Tocantins River at the Tucuruí Hydroelectric Plant, about 380 km southwest of Belém. They were protesting violence in the countryside and demanding agricultural resources, infrastructural work and the development of fishing to benefit some 900 families in the area. On Apr. 25 the protesters called for talks with the state and federal government and the Eletronorte company. But on the morning of Apr. 26 more than 100 state militarized police, including a group of 55 sent from Belém, moved in on the encampment. “They arrived beating some people,” said Daiane Carlos Hohn of the MAB’s national directorate. Press reports said there was some resistance from protesters armed with homemade bombs and metal and wooden clubs but that no one was seriously injured. (Adital 4/27/09, 5/7/09; O Globo (Brazil) 4/26/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico
Uruguayans Call for a National Vote on Impunity Law
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1844/1/
Paraguay: ranchers seek license to destroy uncontacted tribe's land
http://ww4report.com/node/7290
The Fun House Mirror: Distortions and Omissions in the News on Bolivia
https://nacla.org/node/5786
Bolivia: Plan 3000 - Resistance and Social Change at the Heart of Racism
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1849/68/
Venezuela: Chávez seizes oil service companies
http://ww4report.com/node/7295
Venezuela's Opposition: Back Into the Frying Pan
https://nacla.org/node/5777
Pacific Rim Mining to sue El Salvador in CAFTA court
http://ww4report.com/node/7288
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left - Oswaldo Natarén
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1851/1/
Oaxaca: Police Raid Communities around Trinidad Mine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1854/1/
Mexican Civil Society and NGOs Speak Out Against US Militarization
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/05/mexican-civil-society-speaks-out.html
Outbreak of Deadly New Swine Flu Strain, Warning to Rethink Agricultural Trade Model
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6102
Advice for Obama from South America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1850/68/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
WNU #988: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #988, May 3, 2009
1. Latin America: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
2. Panama: Rightwinger Wins Presidency
3. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Curaçao, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Latin America: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
In Latin America, as in much of the world, the traditional International Workers Day marches this May 1 focused on the global economic crisis and especially on increases in the unemployment rate, which is approaching 10% in many areas.
About 10,000 Chileans marched in Santiago on May 1 in a protest organized by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the country’s largest labor confederation. CUT president Arturo Martínez demanded “a new law that distributes the wealth,” a right to strike without the threat of firings and replacement workers, and an end to the practice of letting firms lay workers off “because of the company’s needs.” After the main demonstration had ended, small groups of people wearing masks attacked the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. Dozens of people were arrested. (La Opinión (Los Angeles) 5/2/09 from AP)
Some 100,000 Argentine unionists gathered in downtown Buenos Aires on Apr. 30 for an early May Day event that was in effect a rally for President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007). Their supporters in the populist Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) face serious challenges in June congressional elections. "What is being debated is not the form of a model of government,” said Hugo Morano, president of the General Workers Confederation (CGT). “What is being debated is the fundamental question, and it's [whether] to snatch away from us the victories we have reached in recent times. The choice is to support a national, people's model that has as its objective dignifying humans, or we go back to the decade of the '90s, where they robbed us and took everything from us."
Argentina experienced massive privatizations and corruption under the neoliberal policies of president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999), which were followed by a financial collapse in 2001. Economic growth returned under Kirchner and Fernández but halted with the onset of the global crisis in 2008. Moyano has reportedly persuaded Kirchner to include union officials on the PJ ticket in June. (Latin American Herald Tribune 4/30/09 from EFE)
In Brazil thousands of workers participated in celebrations in the main cities on May 1, with performances by musical groups and speeches by union leaders calling for lower interest rates to stimulate the economy in response to the crisis. (La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
In Bolivia President Evo Morales marked May 1 by signing a decree nationalizing the Bolivian subsidiary of British aviation fuel supplier AirBP in a ceremony before a massive crowd in La Paz’s Plaza de Armas. Morales ordered the military and state oil company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) to take over AirBP, which owns 12 jet fuel service stations at airports in La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Tarija, Beni and Pando. Morales--who had previously nationalized oil and telecommunications companies--also extended workers' benefits, requiring employers to provide mandatory severance pay after 90 months of continuous work and to provide social security coverage for temporary employees. (AFP 5/1/09; La Tribuna (Honduras) 5/1/09 from AFP)
Thousands of workers marched in Ecuador’s main cities carrying signs with slogans such as “Let the gringos pay for the capitalist crisis,” and “Reject the government’s labor policy.” At the Quito march, Edwin Bedoya, vice president of the Unified Workers Front, praised some of the changes made by the government of leftist president Rafael Correa. “But we criticize others,” Bedoya said, “like the layoffs of the compañeros at Petroecuador” (Empresa Estatal Petróleos del Ecuador, the state-owned oil company).
In Colombia, unions and retirees’ organizations mobilized thousands of workers with slogans against unemployment, President Alvaro Uribe’s bid for reelection and the ongoing violence against unionists. Marchers also called for a negotiated settlement to the armed conflict with leftist rebels such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “We believe that peace with social justice has to be developed here,” Unitary Workers Central (CUT) president Tarsicio Mora said in Bogotá, calling the government’s neoliberal economic model a failure.
Unions supporting Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez held a massive march in Caracas, which also witnessed confrontations between police agents and opposition unionists at a separate march which the police dispersed with tear gas and water cannons.
Thousands of workers marched in 11 cities in Honduras with slogans against the US-sponsored Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This was the fourth year in a row that the three main labor federations marched together despite their political differences.
Thousands of Cubans took part in the traditional government-sponsored march, headed by President Raúl Castro, to the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. Slogans included calls for economic efficiency and support for the government, established by the 1959 Revolution. (La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
Mexico’s three main labor federations--the centrist Congress of Labor (CT), the independent National Workers Union (UNT) and the more radical Mexican Union Front (FSM)--called off their planned May Day activities in Mexico City following recommendations from health officials trying to control the spread of the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”). Health Secretary José Angel Córdova Villalobos ordered a suspension of all non-essential services from May 1 to May 5; the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry (CANACINTRA) said its members didn’t have to pay wages to workers during the forced layoffs. (MRzine 5/1/09)
More than 30,000 Mexicans marched on May 1 despite the suspension of May Day activities in Mexico City. The largest march was in Puebla, capital of the eastern central state of Puebla. Some 25,000 people from 15 unions and campesino and activist groups participated in a UNT march to the city’s zócalo (main plaza). “Face masks aren’t enough to silence the conscience of the people” and “More harmful than the influenza—the government without shame” were among the chants. The largest contingent was made up of dissidents from sections 23 and 51 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE). Teachers were also a major force in a march of about 3,000 workers in Tuxtla Gutiérrez in the southeastern state of Chiapas and in a protest by 1,000 workers in Cuernavaca in the central state of Morelos, where teachers fought the government’s Alliance for Quality Education (ACE) program last fall [see Update #968]. Smaller marches were held in other states, including Oaxaca, Guanajuato and Chihuahua. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/2/09)
Haitian riot police used tear gas to disperse a march of several hundred students, teachers, unionists and others a few blocks from the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, causing panic and minor injuries. The marchers—organized by the Collective for Another May 1 around demands to raise the minimum wage [see Update #984]--regrouped later in the Champ de Mars, the capital’s main plaza, where the government of President René Préval was holding an agricultural and crafts fair around the theme: “solidarity between employers, workers, peasants and artisans to reinforce national production.” “It’s not normal for us to be unable to demonstrate peacefully and freely on May 1,” said a member of the organizing committee of the collective, which is made up of the Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP), Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen ("Small Haitian Peasants Unity"), Batay Ouvriye ("Workers Struggle") and other groups. (AlterPresse 5/1/09, __)
In the French Caribbean department of Guadeloupe, some 20,000 people marked May 1 with a celebration of the 44-day general strike that won an increase in the minimum wage and price reductions for basic necessities earlier in the year [see Update #982]. The demonstrators marched to Petit-Canal, the burial site of unionist Jacques Bino, who was killed on Feb. 17 in a night of violence during the generally peaceful strike. This was the first united May Day march for the island’s leading labor organizations: the General Union of Guadeloupe Workers (UGTG), led by Elie Domota; the General Confederation of Labor of Guadeloupe (CGTG), led by Jean-Marie Nomertin; and the more radical Central of United Workers (CTU). But the march showed signs of tensions in the Collective Against Extreme Exploitation (LKP), the coalition that led the general strike: the CTU’s Alex Lollia denounced the LKP as a “petit bourgeois movement.” (Le Monde (France) 5/2/09)
In Puerto Rico the Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL), a coalition of 22 unions, held a one-day general strike and a march to protest what unionists said was a plan by Gov. Luis Fortuño to respond to the economic crisis by laying off 30,000-60,000 public employees and by “dismantling” the state through “the privatization of the country’s essential public services.” According to the police, 30,000 people participated in demonstrations in San Juan, during which Rafael Feliciano, leader of the militant Teachers’ Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR), shouted “murderer” at Police Superintendent José Figueroa Sancha. (Feliciano said later that Figueroa was involved in the killing of independence activist Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in September 2005.) Gov. Fortuño, of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP), said he was studying alternatives for the workers to be laid off by the law he has proposed; he claimed that 40 states in the US have laid off public employees because of the crisis without giving any thought to situation of the workers. (TeleSUR 5/1/09; El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico) 5/1/09).
*2. Panama: Rightwinger Wins Presidency
Millionaire supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli of the conservative Democratic Change (CD) party easily won Panama’s presidential election on May 3. With 80% of the ballots counted at around 10 pm, Martinelli had 60.62% of the votes, against 36.97% for Balbina Herrera of the governing center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). Under current president Martín Torrijos, Panama has had economic growth rates approaching double digits, but growth has slowed with the global crisis. Media analysts note that Martinelli’s victory goes against the recent trend in Latin America for voters to replace conservative governments with left or center-left governments. The PRD had been losing support from the left; at Panama’s May 1 celebrations, labor and activist organizations urged the thousands of participants to abstain from the voting or leave their ballots blank. Herrera was also hurt by her ties to former dictator Manual Noriega. (Reuters 5/3/09; La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
*3. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Curaçao, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba
Argentina: Water is Worth More Than Gold! 300 Organizations Collectively Say "No To Open-Pit Mining"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1840/1/
Argentine May Day Massacre-100 Years Ago: Simón Radowitzky, Anarchist and Legend
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1843/68/
Paraguay: Protests and Rubber Bullets Greet Return of Dictatorship Criminal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1842/1/
Webs of intrigue tangle Bolivia conspiracy case
http://ww4report.com/node/7262
Oil, neo-Nazi connections claimed in Bolivian conspiracy
http://ww4report.com/node/7262#comment-317129
Peruvian Indigenous Peoples Mobilize Across the Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1833/68/
Correa Triumphs in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1838/68/
Colombia: Paramilitary Chief Says He Helped Finance Uribe’s Campaign
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1834/68/
The US-Colombia FTA and National Insecurity: A Call for Ethical Foreign Policy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1835/1/
Chávez refuses cooperation against FARC guerillas
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7277
Debrief: New Report on Venezuela's Re-Election Referendum
https://nacla.org/node/5741
Curaçao: Hezbollah connection in narco bust?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1840/1/
Nicaraguan workers' case against Dole dismissed
http://ww4report.com/node/3827#comment-317110
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1839/1/
El Salvador’s LGBT Movement Continues the Fight
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1832/1/
Mexico’s Swine Flu and the Globalization of Disease
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/04/mexicos-swine-flu-and-globalization-of.html
May Day: Juárez workers defy flu curfew
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7279
Rights group urges Mexico to hold soldiers accountable for abuses
http://ww4report.com/node/7266
Juárez femicide cases go before Inter-American Court of Human Rights
http://ww4report.com/node/7264
The Political Opportunism of Drug War "Spillover"
https://nacla.org/node/5745
The Bigger Picture of the Cuban Embargo and Travel Ban
https://nacla.org/node/5769
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #988, May 3, 2009
1. Latin America: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
2. Panama: Rightwinger Wins Presidency
3. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Curaçao, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Latin America: May Day Marches Focus on Crisis
In Latin America, as in much of the world, the traditional International Workers Day marches this May 1 focused on the global economic crisis and especially on increases in the unemployment rate, which is approaching 10% in many areas.
About 10,000 Chileans marched in Santiago on May 1 in a protest organized by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the country’s largest labor confederation. CUT president Arturo Martínez demanded “a new law that distributes the wealth,” a right to strike without the threat of firings and replacement workers, and an end to the practice of letting firms lay workers off “because of the company’s needs.” After the main demonstration had ended, small groups of people wearing masks attacked the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. Dozens of people were arrested. (La Opinión (Los Angeles) 5/2/09 from AP)
Some 100,000 Argentine unionists gathered in downtown Buenos Aires on Apr. 30 for an early May Day event that was in effect a rally for President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007). Their supporters in the populist Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) face serious challenges in June congressional elections. "What is being debated is not the form of a model of government,” said Hugo Morano, president of the General Workers Confederation (CGT). “What is being debated is the fundamental question, and it's [whether] to snatch away from us the victories we have reached in recent times. The choice is to support a national, people's model that has as its objective dignifying humans, or we go back to the decade of the '90s, where they robbed us and took everything from us."
Argentina experienced massive privatizations and corruption under the neoliberal policies of president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999), which were followed by a financial collapse in 2001. Economic growth returned under Kirchner and Fernández but halted with the onset of the global crisis in 2008. Moyano has reportedly persuaded Kirchner to include union officials on the PJ ticket in June. (Latin American Herald Tribune 4/30/09 from EFE)
In Brazil thousands of workers participated in celebrations in the main cities on May 1, with performances by musical groups and speeches by union leaders calling for lower interest rates to stimulate the economy in response to the crisis. (La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
In Bolivia President Evo Morales marked May 1 by signing a decree nationalizing the Bolivian subsidiary of British aviation fuel supplier AirBP in a ceremony before a massive crowd in La Paz’s Plaza de Armas. Morales ordered the military and state oil company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) to take over AirBP, which owns 12 jet fuel service stations at airports in La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Tarija, Beni and Pando. Morales--who had previously nationalized oil and telecommunications companies--also extended workers' benefits, requiring employers to provide mandatory severance pay after 90 months of continuous work and to provide social security coverage for temporary employees. (AFP 5/1/09; La Tribuna (Honduras) 5/1/09 from AFP)
Thousands of workers marched in Ecuador’s main cities carrying signs with slogans such as “Let the gringos pay for the capitalist crisis,” and “Reject the government’s labor policy.” At the Quito march, Edwin Bedoya, vice president of the Unified Workers Front, praised some of the changes made by the government of leftist president Rafael Correa. “But we criticize others,” Bedoya said, “like the layoffs of the compañeros at Petroecuador” (Empresa Estatal Petróleos del Ecuador, the state-owned oil company).
In Colombia, unions and retirees’ organizations mobilized thousands of workers with slogans against unemployment, President Alvaro Uribe’s bid for reelection and the ongoing violence against unionists. Marchers also called for a negotiated settlement to the armed conflict with leftist rebels such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “We believe that peace with social justice has to be developed here,” Unitary Workers Central (CUT) president Tarsicio Mora said in Bogotá, calling the government’s neoliberal economic model a failure.
Unions supporting Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez held a massive march in Caracas, which also witnessed confrontations between police agents and opposition unionists at a separate march which the police dispersed with tear gas and water cannons.
Thousands of workers marched in 11 cities in Honduras with slogans against the US-sponsored Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This was the fourth year in a row that the three main labor federations marched together despite their political differences.
Thousands of Cubans took part in the traditional government-sponsored march, headed by President Raúl Castro, to the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. Slogans included calls for economic efficiency and support for the government, established by the 1959 Revolution. (La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
Mexico’s three main labor federations--the centrist Congress of Labor (CT), the independent National Workers Union (UNT) and the more radical Mexican Union Front (FSM)--called off their planned May Day activities in Mexico City following recommendations from health officials trying to control the spread of the H1N1 influenza (“swine flu”). Health Secretary José Angel Córdova Villalobos ordered a suspension of all non-essential services from May 1 to May 5; the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry (CANACINTRA) said its members didn’t have to pay wages to workers during the forced layoffs. (MRzine 5/1/09)
More than 30,000 Mexicans marched on May 1 despite the suspension of May Day activities in Mexico City. The largest march was in Puebla, capital of the eastern central state of Puebla. Some 25,000 people from 15 unions and campesino and activist groups participated in a UNT march to the city’s zócalo (main plaza). “Face masks aren’t enough to silence the conscience of the people” and “More harmful than the influenza—the government without shame” were among the chants. The largest contingent was made up of dissidents from sections 23 and 51 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE). Teachers were also a major force in a march of about 3,000 workers in Tuxtla Gutiérrez in the southeastern state of Chiapas and in a protest by 1,000 workers in Cuernavaca in the central state of Morelos, where teachers fought the government’s Alliance for Quality Education (ACE) program last fall [see Update #968]. Smaller marches were held in other states, including Oaxaca, Guanajuato and Chihuahua. (La Jornada (Mexico) 5/2/09)
Haitian riot police used tear gas to disperse a march of several hundred students, teachers, unionists and others a few blocks from the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, causing panic and minor injuries. The marchers—organized by the Collective for Another May 1 around demands to raise the minimum wage [see Update #984]--regrouped later in the Champ de Mars, the capital’s main plaza, where the government of President René Préval was holding an agricultural and crafts fair around the theme: “solidarity between employers, workers, peasants and artisans to reinforce national production.” “It’s not normal for us to be unable to demonstrate peacefully and freely on May 1,” said a member of the organizing committee of the collective, which is made up of the Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP), Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen ("Small Haitian Peasants Unity"), Batay Ouvriye ("Workers Struggle") and other groups. (AlterPresse 5/1/09, __)
In the French Caribbean department of Guadeloupe, some 20,000 people marked May 1 with a celebration of the 44-day general strike that won an increase in the minimum wage and price reductions for basic necessities earlier in the year [see Update #982]. The demonstrators marched to Petit-Canal, the burial site of unionist Jacques Bino, who was killed on Feb. 17 in a night of violence during the generally peaceful strike. This was the first united May Day march for the island’s leading labor organizations: the General Union of Guadeloupe Workers (UGTG), led by Elie Domota; the General Confederation of Labor of Guadeloupe (CGTG), led by Jean-Marie Nomertin; and the more radical Central of United Workers (CTU). But the march showed signs of tensions in the Collective Against Extreme Exploitation (LKP), the coalition that led the general strike: the CTU’s Alex Lollia denounced the LKP as a “petit bourgeois movement.” (Le Monde (France) 5/2/09)
In Puerto Rico the Broad Front of Solidarity and Struggle (FASyL), a coalition of 22 unions, held a one-day general strike and a march to protest what unionists said was a plan by Gov. Luis Fortuño to respond to the economic crisis by laying off 30,000-60,000 public employees and by “dismantling” the state through “the privatization of the country’s essential public services.” According to the police, 30,000 people participated in demonstrations in San Juan, during which Rafael Feliciano, leader of the militant Teachers’ Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR), shouted “murderer” at Police Superintendent José Figueroa Sancha. (Feliciano said later that Figueroa was involved in the killing of independence activist Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in September 2005.) Gov. Fortuño, of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP), said he was studying alternatives for the workers to be laid off by the law he has proposed; he claimed that 40 states in the US have laid off public employees because of the crisis without giving any thought to situation of the workers. (TeleSUR 5/1/09; El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico) 5/1/09).
*2. Panama: Rightwinger Wins Presidency
Millionaire supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli of the conservative Democratic Change (CD) party easily won Panama’s presidential election on May 3. With 80% of the ballots counted at around 10 pm, Martinelli had 60.62% of the votes, against 36.97% for Balbina Herrera of the governing center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). Under current president Martín Torrijos, Panama has had economic growth rates approaching double digits, but growth has slowed with the global crisis. Media analysts note that Martinelli’s victory goes against the recent trend in Latin America for voters to replace conservative governments with left or center-left governments. The PRD had been losing support from the left; at Panama’s May 1 celebrations, labor and activist organizations urged the thousands of participants to abstain from the voting or leave their ballots blank. Herrera was also hurt by her ties to former dictator Manual Noriega. (Reuters 5/3/09; La Opinión 5/2/09 from AP)
*3. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Curaçao, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba
Argentina: Water is Worth More Than Gold! 300 Organizations Collectively Say "No To Open-Pit Mining"
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1840/1/
Argentine May Day Massacre-100 Years Ago: Simón Radowitzky, Anarchist and Legend
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1843/68/
Paraguay: Protests and Rubber Bullets Greet Return of Dictatorship Criminal
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1842/1/
Webs of intrigue tangle Bolivia conspiracy case
http://ww4report.com/node/7262
Oil, neo-Nazi connections claimed in Bolivian conspiracy
http://ww4report.com/node/7262#comment-317129
Peruvian Indigenous Peoples Mobilize Across the Amazon
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1833/68/
Correa Triumphs in Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1838/68/
Colombia: Paramilitary Chief Says He Helped Finance Uribe’s Campaign
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1834/68/
The US-Colombia FTA and National Insecurity: A Call for Ethical Foreign Policy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1835/1/
Chávez refuses cooperation against FARC guerillas
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7277
Debrief: New Report on Venezuela's Re-Election Referendum
https://nacla.org/node/5741
Curaçao: Hezbollah connection in narco bust?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1840/1/
Nicaraguan workers' case against Dole dismissed
http://ww4report.com/node/3827#comment-317110
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1839/1/
El Salvador’s LGBT Movement Continues the Fight
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1832/1/
Mexico’s Swine Flu and the Globalization of Disease
http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/2009/04/mexicos-swine-flu-and-globalization-of.html
May Day: Juárez workers defy flu curfew
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7279
Rights group urges Mexico to hold soldiers accountable for abuses
http://ww4report.com/node/7266
Juárez femicide cases go before Inter-American Court of Human Rights
http://ww4report.com/node/7264
The Political Opportunism of Drug War "Spillover"
https://nacla.org/node/5745
The Bigger Picture of the Cuban Embargo and Travel Ban
https://nacla.org/node/5769
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
WNU #987: Mexican Copper Strike Heats Up
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #987, April 26, 2009
1. Mexico: Cananea Strike Heats Up
2. Chile: 3 Charged in “Caravan of Death”
3. Nicaragua: Police Sign “Plan Mexico” Pact
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summits
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: Cananea Strike Heats Up
On Apr. 14 Mexico's Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JFCA) declared illegal a strike that the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) has led since July 30, 2007 over safety issues at Grupo México's giant copper mine at Cananea, in the northwestern state of Sonora [see Update #969]. The JFCA ruling cleared the way for the company, owned by billionaire Germán Larrea, to proceed with plans to close the mine and fire all 1,200 workers; it announced the firings the next day. On Apr. 23 the second district judge in labor matters for the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), Antonio Rebollo Torres, issued a temporary injunction suspending the firings and the JFCA decision. [In what was supposed to be a final decision, the JFCA had ruled in the workers’ favor in April 2008; see Update #945.]
The SNTMMSRM responded to Grupo México efforts to fire the Cananea workers by calling on its steelworker members in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, an industrial seaport and steel center on Mexico’s west coast, to take action to block the port. In other cities, such as Taxco, miners blocked highways and seized tollbooths.
The effort to close the mine is the latest development in a three-year struggle between the union and the center-right National Action Party (PAN), which has held Mexico’s presidency since 2000 and strongly backs Grupo México. The fight in early 2006 when the federal government officially removed SNTMMSRM head Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, charging him with corruption. Gómez Urrutia, who fled the country, inherited the union leadership position from his father, but many union members consider him effective in fighting for their rights and continue to support him as he directs the SNTMMSRM from Vancouver, British Columbia. The struggle between the union and the government has included a number of strikes and other actions; the strike at Cananea has lasted the longest.
For most of the past two years Grupo México seemed willing to wait out the strike despite large losses. Some analysts think the company is forcing the issue now because of its likely loss of the bankrupt US mining company ASARCO LLC, which owns Southern Copper Corporation (formerly Southern Peru Copper Corporation). Grupo México took over ASARCO in 1999 but lost control when the company went bankrupt. US judges have been ruling against the Mexican company in the proceedings, and on Apr. 22 Judge Richard Schmidt of the US bankruptcy court in Corpus Christi, Texas, approved a plan to sell ASARCO to India's Sterlite Industries for $1.7 billion. There is speculation that Grupo México intends to close the Cananea mine to eliminate the SNTMMSRM and then reopen it more profitably with a new, pro-company union.
The confrontation between the SNTMMSRM and the government is heating up just as Mexican unions plan their traditional massive marches for May 1. On Apr. 22 former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the 2006 presidential candidate of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), led a delegation of senators from the PRD, the Workers Party (PT) and the Convergence to Cananea to express support for the union. López Obrador said he was forming a National Committee of Defense and Solidarity with the Miners of Cananea to help to supply basic necessities and medicine to the strikers and their families. In the past he and the PRD have generally avoided taking strong positions in labor struggles. (Mexican Labor News & Analysis April 2009, Vol. 14, No. 4; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/25/09, 4/26/09; Reuters 4/22/09; Milenio (Mexico) 4/23/09; El Universal (Mexico) 4/23/09)
*2. Chile: 3 Charged in “Caravan of Death”
Chilean judge formally charged three retired military officers in Santiago on Apr. 20 with the murder of 14 prisoners in Antofagasta in northern Chile on Oct. 19, 1973, near the beginning of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship. The deaths of the 14 prisoners, mostly members of the Socialist Party, occurred on the “Caravan of Death,” in which a military group headed by Gen. Sergio Arellano Stark executed more than 90 political prisoners as it traveled through the country. The three officers are Gen. Gonzalo Santelices, Maj. Patricio Ferrer and Lt. Pablo Martinez Latorre. Santelices was head of the Santiago garrison, the nation’s largest, in February 2008 when the investigation into the murders resulted in his retirement. (123.cl (Chile) 4/20/09; MS-NBC 4/20/09 from AP; La Tercera (Chile) 4/23/09)
*3. Nicaragua: Police Sign “Plan Mexico” Pact
In a ceremony in Managua on Apr. 24, Nicaraguan National Police director Aminta Granera and US ambassador Robert Callahan signed an agreement making Nicaragua a member of the Mérida Initiative, a program the US government started in 2007 ostensibly to fight drug cartels and organized crime. Nicaragua is to receive $1.5 million in US aid to improve the sharing of fingerprint information among Central American countries, develop a special investigations unit and equip agents better, according to a statement from the US State Department. The government of President Daniel Ortega Saavedra of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) has frequently criticized US policies, but Nicaragua’s only criticism of the Mérida Initiative--expressed at the ceremony by Deputy Foreign Minister Valdrack Jaentschke--was that the aid was inadequate. (AFP 4/24/09; La Prensa (Nicaragua) 4/25/09)
[Most of the program’s aid goes to Mexico. Many Mexican and US activists have opposed the initiative, calling it “Plan México” in reference to the US-sponsored Plan Colombia program; in that program much of the aid has reportedly ended up supporting the military’s counterinsurgency operations. See Update #952.]
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summits
Argentina Remembers: Mobilizations Mark 33rd Anniversary of Military Coup
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1825/1/
Bolivia: Unraveling the Conspiracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1831/68/
Peru: indigenous peoples block Amazon tributary to resist oil operations
http://ww4report.com/node/7246
Terminating Food Sovereignty in Ecuador? President Correa Opens Door to Terminator Seeds
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1827/68/
Nineteen Reasons Why Nortec Ventures Should Stay Out of the Intag Region of Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1828/1/
Paramilitary commander appeals to Colombian authorities from US prison
http://ww4report.com/node/7250
San José de Apartado: Colombian Peace Community Stands Up for Humanity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1821/1/
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1826/1/
Military-backed Mapping Project in Oaxaca Under Fire
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1830/1/
Chiapas: Zapatistas protest renewed repression
http://ww4report.com/node/7249
Migrant workers lose out in NAFTA nations: studies
http://ww4report.com/node/7248
Mexico: Piedras Negras police strike to protest militarization
http://ww4report.com/node/7247
Mexico: Tijuana Cartel operative busted —as narco wars grind on
http://ww4report.com/node/7233
The Wrong Solution to Mexico's Security Crisis
http://nacla.org/node/5714
Without Corn There is No Country: Open Letter to President Obama
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1824/68/
"An Equal Partnership" at the Summit: Matching Words with Deeds
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6068
Mr. President: Calderon is not Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6058
Earth Day 2009 Special Report: Fighting to Save Mexico's Mangroves
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6059
Haiti Donors Conference: A New Paradigm or New Packaging?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1823/68/
Haiti: Fanmi Lavalas Banned, Voter Apprehension Widespread
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1820/68/
April Biodiversity Report
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6053
The Declaration of Cumaná
http://nacla.org/node/5723
ALBA Summit Ratifies Regional Currency, Prepares for Trinidad
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1819/68/
Summit: Behind the Smiles and Handshakes
http://nacla.org/node/5718
Mixed Feelings About Obama's First Meeting with Hemispheric Leaders
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1822/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #987, April 26, 2009
1. Mexico: Cananea Strike Heats Up
2. Chile: 3 Charged in “Caravan of Death”
3. Nicaragua: Police Sign “Plan Mexico” Pact
4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summits
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Mexico: Cananea Strike Heats Up
On Apr. 14 Mexico's Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JFCA) declared illegal a strike that the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) has led since July 30, 2007 over safety issues at Grupo México's giant copper mine at Cananea, in the northwestern state of Sonora [see Update #969]. The JFCA ruling cleared the way for the company, owned by billionaire Germán Larrea, to proceed with plans to close the mine and fire all 1,200 workers; it announced the firings the next day. On Apr. 23 the second district judge in labor matters for the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), Antonio Rebollo Torres, issued a temporary injunction suspending the firings and the JFCA decision. [In what was supposed to be a final decision, the JFCA had ruled in the workers’ favor in April 2008; see Update #945.]
The SNTMMSRM responded to Grupo México efforts to fire the Cananea workers by calling on its steelworker members in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, an industrial seaport and steel center on Mexico’s west coast, to take action to block the port. In other cities, such as Taxco, miners blocked highways and seized tollbooths.
The effort to close the mine is the latest development in a three-year struggle between the union and the center-right National Action Party (PAN), which has held Mexico’s presidency since 2000 and strongly backs Grupo México. The fight in early 2006 when the federal government officially removed SNTMMSRM head Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, charging him with corruption. Gómez Urrutia, who fled the country, inherited the union leadership position from his father, but many union members consider him effective in fighting for their rights and continue to support him as he directs the SNTMMSRM from Vancouver, British Columbia. The struggle between the union and the government has included a number of strikes and other actions; the strike at Cananea has lasted the longest.
For most of the past two years Grupo México seemed willing to wait out the strike despite large losses. Some analysts think the company is forcing the issue now because of its likely loss of the bankrupt US mining company ASARCO LLC, which owns Southern Copper Corporation (formerly Southern Peru Copper Corporation). Grupo México took over ASARCO in 1999 but lost control when the company went bankrupt. US judges have been ruling against the Mexican company in the proceedings, and on Apr. 22 Judge Richard Schmidt of the US bankruptcy court in Corpus Christi, Texas, approved a plan to sell ASARCO to India's Sterlite Industries for $1.7 billion. There is speculation that Grupo México intends to close the Cananea mine to eliminate the SNTMMSRM and then reopen it more profitably with a new, pro-company union.
The confrontation between the SNTMMSRM and the government is heating up just as Mexican unions plan their traditional massive marches for May 1. On Apr. 22 former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the 2006 presidential candidate of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), led a delegation of senators from the PRD, the Workers Party (PT) and the Convergence to Cananea to express support for the union. López Obrador said he was forming a National Committee of Defense and Solidarity with the Miners of Cananea to help to supply basic necessities and medicine to the strikers and their families. In the past he and the PRD have generally avoided taking strong positions in labor struggles. (Mexican Labor News & Analysis April 2009, Vol. 14, No. 4; La Jornada (Mexico) 4/25/09, 4/26/09; Reuters 4/22/09; Milenio (Mexico) 4/23/09; El Universal (Mexico) 4/23/09)
*2. Chile: 3 Charged in “Caravan of Death”
Chilean judge formally charged three retired military officers in Santiago on Apr. 20 with the murder of 14 prisoners in Antofagasta in northern Chile on Oct. 19, 1973, near the beginning of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship. The deaths of the 14 prisoners, mostly members of the Socialist Party, occurred on the “Caravan of Death,” in which a military group headed by Gen. Sergio Arellano Stark executed more than 90 political prisoners as it traveled through the country. The three officers are Gen. Gonzalo Santelices, Maj. Patricio Ferrer and Lt. Pablo Martinez Latorre. Santelices was head of the Santiago garrison, the nation’s largest, in February 2008 when the investigation into the murders resulted in his retirement. (123.cl (Chile) 4/20/09; MS-NBC 4/20/09 from AP; La Tercera (Chile) 4/23/09)
*3. Nicaragua: Police Sign “Plan Mexico” Pact
In a ceremony in Managua on Apr. 24, Nicaraguan National Police director Aminta Granera and US ambassador Robert Callahan signed an agreement making Nicaragua a member of the Mérida Initiative, a program the US government started in 2007 ostensibly to fight drug cartels and organized crime. Nicaragua is to receive $1.5 million in US aid to improve the sharing of fingerprint information among Central American countries, develop a special investigations unit and equip agents better, according to a statement from the US State Department. The government of President Daniel Ortega Saavedra of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) has frequently criticized US policies, but Nicaragua’s only criticism of the Mérida Initiative--expressed at the ceremony by Deputy Foreign Minister Valdrack Jaentschke--was that the aid was inadequate. (AFP 4/24/09; La Prensa (Nicaragua) 4/25/09)
[Most of the program’s aid goes to Mexico. Many Mexican and US activists have opposed the initiative, calling it “Plan México” in reference to the US-sponsored Plan Colombia program; in that program much of the aid has reportedly ended up supporting the military’s counterinsurgency operations. See Update #952.]
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summits
Argentina Remembers: Mobilizations Mark 33rd Anniversary of Military Coup
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1825/1/
Bolivia: Unraveling the Conspiracy
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1831/68/
Peru: indigenous peoples block Amazon tributary to resist oil operations
http://ww4report.com/node/7246
Terminating Food Sovereignty in Ecuador? President Correa Opens Door to Terminator Seeds
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1827/68/
Nineteen Reasons Why Nortec Ventures Should Stay Out of the Intag Region of Ecuador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1828/1/
Paramilitary commander appeals to Colombian authorities from US prison
http://ww4report.com/node/7250
San José de Apartado: Colombian Peace Community Stands Up for Humanity
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1821/1/
What We Want: Voices from the Salvadoran Left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1826/1/
Military-backed Mapping Project in Oaxaca Under Fire
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1830/1/
Chiapas: Zapatistas protest renewed repression
http://ww4report.com/node/7249
Migrant workers lose out in NAFTA nations: studies
http://ww4report.com/node/7248
Mexico: Piedras Negras police strike to protest militarization
http://ww4report.com/node/7247
Mexico: Tijuana Cartel operative busted —as narco wars grind on
http://ww4report.com/node/7233
The Wrong Solution to Mexico's Security Crisis
http://nacla.org/node/5714
Without Corn There is No Country: Open Letter to President Obama
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1824/68/
"An Equal Partnership" at the Summit: Matching Words with Deeds
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6068
Mr. President: Calderon is not Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6058
Earth Day 2009 Special Report: Fighting to Save Mexico's Mangroves
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6059
Haiti Donors Conference: A New Paradigm or New Packaging?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1823/68/
Haiti: Fanmi Lavalas Banned, Voter Apprehension Widespread
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1820/68/
April Biodiversity Report
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6053
The Declaration of Cumaná
http://nacla.org/node/5723
ALBA Summit Ratifies Regional Currency, Prepares for Trinidad
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1819/68/
Summit: Behind the Smiles and Handshakes
http://nacla.org/node/5718
Mixed Feelings About Obama's First Meeting with Hemispheric Leaders
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1822/1/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
WNU #986: Indigenous Peruvians Occupy Airport
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #986, April 19, 2009
1. Peru: Indigenous Occupy Airport
2. Haiti: Violence, Abstention Mar Election
3. Dominican Republic: Police Attack Medical Workers
4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summit of the Americas
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Peru: Indigenous Occupy Airport
On the morning of Apr. 16 at least 200 indigenous Yashínanka and Yines occupied the airport in Atalaya, capital of Atalaya province, Ucayali region, in Peru’s Amazonian area. The Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep) had been leading a strike since Apr. 13 (or earlier, according to one source) around demands for the repair of environmental damage and for an end to illegal cutting and to the granting of land for mining and oil drilling without consultation with the local communities. The protesters also demanded that the government drop the proposed Law 840/2006, known as the “Law of the Forest,” which would increase private investment in the development of state-owned forests.
Aidesep vice president Daysi Zapata Fasabi said Prime Minister Yehude Simon had promised to hold a dialogue with the indigenous groups on Apr. 16, but the government announced on Apr. 13 that the meeting was postponed until Apr. 20. “The government is laughing at the indigenous people,” she told the media. “We’ve been disrespected again.” The occupation of the airport was said to be disrupting operations by the Repsol, Pluspetrol and Petrobras oil companies since it kept employees from reaching the companies’ camps. Aidesep leaders said 1,350 indigenous communities supported the strike, which could escalate to include the blockage of rivers like the Urubamba if the government doesn’t pay attention to the demands. (El Comercio (Peru) 4/16/09; La Primera (Peru) 4/17/09; La República (Peru) 4/20/09)
According to a report released in March by the government’s Office of the Ombudsperson (the Defensoría del Pueblo), during the past year conflicts over mining and drilling have grown to make up 49% of the country’s social conflicts; 13% were over local government issues and 9% concerned labor issues. Sociologist Nelson Manrique says the increase in conflicts about environmental issues resulted both from the government’s style of encouraging development and from a growing awareness of the issue in the population. He predicted that these conflicts would continue but that labor disputes would increase sharply over the next few months because of the economic crisis affecting Peru. (Adital 4/17/09 from Ecoportal)
2. Haiti: Violence, Abstention Mar Election
Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) suspended voting for senators on Apr. 19 in the Central Plateau department after violence disrupted the process there in at least three cities. A candidate and his supporters occupied a polling place in Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau near the Dominican border. Armed men in five vehicles disrupted voting at two polling place in downtown Mirebalais, and an election worker received a bullet wound early in the day. Local electoral authorities suspended voting in Saut d’eau after people threw rocks at a voting center and charged into others.
Senator Edmonde Supplice Beauzile, who took refuge in Mirebalais’ Mirage hotel with the candidate of her Fusion Center party, charged that there was a plot by President René Préval’s Lespwa (“Hope”) party and the Haitian Citizens Union for Democracy, Development and Education (UCADDE) to prevent the likely victory of the Fusion candidate. The UCADDE’s Willot Joseph was reportedly carrying a Galil assault rifle and threatening to kill Beauzile if he saw her.
Voting continued in the rest of the country; 12 of the 30 seats in the national Senate were up for renewal. “The people have voted,” CEP president Frantz-Gérard S. Verret said at the end of the day, “but not massively.” “[W]e’ve done our duty,” he added. “We’ve carried out good elections.” There were no official figures on turnout nationwide, but observers said it was very low. The CEP had rejected the candidates of Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004), who refused to file paperwork from his exile in South Africa [see Updates #978, 979, 980], and the party called for a boycott of the election. Verret complimented FL members for their “citizen-like behavior” and said they had not been blamed for any of the violence. (AlterPresse 4/19/09, __, __; Radio Kiskeya 4/19/09)
[Low turnout has been the norm in recent Haitian legislative elections. International observers said turnout was as low as 15% in runoff elections in April 2006; see Update #848.]
Correction: This item originally gave Aristide’s first term as 1990-1996; Aristide was elected in December 1990 and was inaugurated in February 1991.
3. Dominican Republic: Police Attack Medical Workers
Six striking doctors were lightly injured on Apr. 15 when Dominican police suppressed a peaceful march by doctors and nurses near the Darío Contreras hospital in eastern Santo Domingo. Police agents hurled tear-gas grenades at the protesters and attacked them with nightsticks. Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) president Waldo Ariel Suero said the agents also used pistols. The injuries weren’t serious, he added, but “the consequences could have been greater.” The commander of the police operation, Ventura Hilario, said he tried to stop the march because the medical workers didn’t have a permit and because they were blocking traffic.
Doctors and nurses had called a four-day strike starting on Apr. 15, halting consultations and surgery at the country’s 126 hospitals. The doctors’ demands included a pay raise from the current rate of $500–$1,000 a month to about $1,700 a month; the creation of positions for interns; and improvements in the pension system for medical workers. This was the 16th strike by the medical workers in a year and a half; there are about 16,300 doctors in the CMD.
On Apr. 15 Health Minister Bautista Rojas Gómez denied that the strike was effective, but the newspaper Listin Diario reported widespread complaints from patients on Apr. 17. Rafaela Figueroa, president of the National Union of Nursing Services, warned that the government’s efforts to suppress the strike would just radicalize the strikers. CMD president Suero said that on Apr. 20 the medical workers would announce plans for more actions. (Univision 4/15/09 from AP; LD 4/18/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summit of the Americas
Brazil: New Offensive for Faster Land Reform
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1816/68/
Bolivia: Croatian militants in Evo Morales assassination plot?
http://ww4report.com/node/7212
Morales Ends Hunger Strike
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1811/68
Mining Co. Bailout Eclipses Environmental Disaster in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1809/1/
Peru: Sendero pledges more attacks; army uses child soldiers?
http://ww4report.com/node/7189
Proof and Consequence: Peru Convicts Fujimori
http://nacla.org/node/5707
Colombia: top kingpin "Don Mario" captured
http://ww4report.com/node/7190
Venezuela: opposition leader goes into hiding
http://ww4report.com/node/7191
Thailand's Thaksin to take refuge in Nicaragua?
http://ww4report.com/node/7213
The Left Triumphs in El Salvador
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5989
False Charges on San Salvador Vendors Dismissed
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1813/1/
Guatemala: Popular resistance to Xalala Dam finds international law on its side
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1815/68/
Social Movements Reject the EU-Central America Free Trade Agreement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1812/68/
Obama moves against Mexican cartel finances
http://ww4report.com/node/7194
Mexico: Obama met with protests demanding immigration reform
http://ww4report.com/node/7193
Mexico debates marijuana legalization
http://ww4report.com/node/7192
Indigenous Community Radio in Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5977
Mexico: eight federales dead in Nayarit narco-ambush
http://ww4report.com/node/7215
The IDB—50 Years, Zero Reflection
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6008
Obama in Latin America: How The Nation Magazine Saved the American Empire
http://nacla.org/node/5709
Latin America Changes: Hunger Strikes in Bolivia, Summits in the Caribbean
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1814/1/
Summit of the Americas: Obama Should Begin Working with Castro and Chavez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1818/1/
Latin leftists bash Obama at Caribbean confab
http://ww4report.com/node/7216
March Monthly Biodiversity Report from the Americas Program
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5990
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events;
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
Issue #986, April 19, 2009
1. Peru: Indigenous Occupy Airport
2. Haiti: Violence, Abstention Mar Election
3. Dominican Republic: Police Attack Medical Workers
4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summit of the Americas
ISSN#: 1084‑922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Peru: Indigenous Occupy Airport
On the morning of Apr. 16 at least 200 indigenous Yashínanka and Yines occupied the airport in Atalaya, capital of Atalaya province, Ucayali region, in Peru’s Amazonian area. The Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep) had been leading a strike since Apr. 13 (or earlier, according to one source) around demands for the repair of environmental damage and for an end to illegal cutting and to the granting of land for mining and oil drilling without consultation with the local communities. The protesters also demanded that the government drop the proposed Law 840/2006, known as the “Law of the Forest,” which would increase private investment in the development of state-owned forests.
Aidesep vice president Daysi Zapata Fasabi said Prime Minister Yehude Simon had promised to hold a dialogue with the indigenous groups on Apr. 16, but the government announced on Apr. 13 that the meeting was postponed until Apr. 20. “The government is laughing at the indigenous people,” she told the media. “We’ve been disrespected again.” The occupation of the airport was said to be disrupting operations by the Repsol, Pluspetrol and Petrobras oil companies since it kept employees from reaching the companies’ camps. Aidesep leaders said 1,350 indigenous communities supported the strike, which could escalate to include the blockage of rivers like the Urubamba if the government doesn’t pay attention to the demands. (El Comercio (Peru) 4/16/09; La Primera (Peru) 4/17/09; La República (Peru) 4/20/09)
According to a report released in March by the government’s Office of the Ombudsperson (the Defensoría del Pueblo), during the past year conflicts over mining and drilling have grown to make up 49% of the country’s social conflicts; 13% were over local government issues and 9% concerned labor issues. Sociologist Nelson Manrique says the increase in conflicts about environmental issues resulted both from the government’s style of encouraging development and from a growing awareness of the issue in the population. He predicted that these conflicts would continue but that labor disputes would increase sharply over the next few months because of the economic crisis affecting Peru. (Adital 4/17/09 from Ecoportal)
2. Haiti: Violence, Abstention Mar Election
Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) suspended voting for senators on Apr. 19 in the Central Plateau department after violence disrupted the process there in at least three cities. A candidate and his supporters occupied a polling place in Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau near the Dominican border. Armed men in five vehicles disrupted voting at two polling place in downtown Mirebalais, and an election worker received a bullet wound early in the day. Local electoral authorities suspended voting in Saut d’eau after people threw rocks at a voting center and charged into others.
Senator Edmonde Supplice Beauzile, who took refuge in Mirebalais’ Mirage hotel with the candidate of her Fusion Center party, charged that there was a plot by President René Préval’s Lespwa (“Hope”) party and the Haitian Citizens Union for Democracy, Development and Education (UCADDE) to prevent the likely victory of the Fusion candidate. The UCADDE’s Willot Joseph was reportedly carrying a Galil assault rifle and threatening to kill Beauzile if he saw her.
Voting continued in the rest of the country; 12 of the 30 seats in the national Senate were up for renewal. “The people have voted,” CEP president Frantz-Gérard S. Verret said at the end of the day, “but not massively.” “[W]e’ve done our duty,” he added. “We’ve carried out good elections.” There were no official figures on turnout nationwide, but observers said it was very low. The CEP had rejected the candidates of Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004), who refused to file paperwork from his exile in South Africa [see Updates #978, 979, 980], and the party called for a boycott of the election. Verret complimented FL members for their “citizen-like behavior” and said they had not been blamed for any of the violence. (AlterPresse 4/19/09, __, __; Radio Kiskeya 4/19/09)
[Low turnout has been the norm in recent Haitian legislative elections. International observers said turnout was as low as 15% in runoff elections in April 2006; see Update #848.]
Correction: This item originally gave Aristide’s first term as 1990-1996; Aristide was elected in December 1990 and was inaugurated in February 1991.
3. Dominican Republic: Police Attack Medical Workers
Six striking doctors were lightly injured on Apr. 15 when Dominican police suppressed a peaceful march by doctors and nurses near the Darío Contreras hospital in eastern Santo Domingo. Police agents hurled tear-gas grenades at the protesters and attacked them with nightsticks. Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) president Waldo Ariel Suero said the agents also used pistols. The injuries weren’t serious, he added, but “the consequences could have been greater.” The commander of the police operation, Ventura Hilario, said he tried to stop the march because the medical workers didn’t have a permit and because they were blocking traffic.
Doctors and nurses had called a four-day strike starting on Apr. 15, halting consultations and surgery at the country’s 126 hospitals. The doctors’ demands included a pay raise from the current rate of $500–$1,000 a month to about $1,700 a month; the creation of positions for interns; and improvements in the pension system for medical workers. This was the 16th strike by the medical workers in a year and a half; there are about 16,300 doctors in the CMD.
On Apr. 15 Health Minister Bautista Rojas Gómez denied that the strike was effective, but the newspaper Listin Diario reported widespread complaints from patients on Apr. 17. Rafaela Figueroa, president of the National Union of Nursing Services, warned that the government’s efforts to suppress the strike would just radicalize the strikers. CMD president Suero said that on Apr. 20 the medical workers would announce plans for more actions. (Univision 4/15/09 from AP; LD 4/18/09)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Biodiversity, Summit of the Americas
Brazil: New Offensive for Faster Land Reform
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1816/68/
Bolivia: Croatian militants in Evo Morales assassination plot?
http://ww4report.com/node/7212
Morales Ends Hunger Strike
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1811/68
Mining Co. Bailout Eclipses Environmental Disaster in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1809/1/
Peru: Sendero pledges more attacks; army uses child soldiers?
http://ww4report.com/node/7189
Proof and Consequence: Peru Convicts Fujimori
http://nacla.org/node/5707
Colombia: top kingpin "Don Mario" captured
http://ww4report.com/node/7190
Venezuela: opposition leader goes into hiding
http://ww4report.com/node/7191
Thailand's Thaksin to take refuge in Nicaragua?
http://ww4report.com/node/7213
The Left Triumphs in El Salvador
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5989
False Charges on San Salvador Vendors Dismissed
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1813/1/
Guatemala: Popular resistance to Xalala Dam finds international law on its side
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1815/68/
Social Movements Reject the EU-Central America Free Trade Agreement
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1812/68/
Obama moves against Mexican cartel finances
http://ww4report.com/node/7194
Mexico: Obama met with protests demanding immigration reform
http://ww4report.com/node/7193
Mexico debates marijuana legalization
http://ww4report.com/node/7192
Indigenous Community Radio in Mexico
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5977
Mexico: eight federales dead in Nayarit narco-ambush
http://ww4report.com/node/7215
The IDB—50 Years, Zero Reflection
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6008
Obama in Latin America: How The Nation Magazine Saved the American Empire
http://nacla.org/node/5709
Latin America Changes: Hunger Strikes in Bolivia, Summits in the Caribbean
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1814/1/
Summit of the Americas: Obama Should Begin Working with Castro and Chavez
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1818/1/
Latin leftists bash Obama at Caribbean confab
http://ww4report.com/node/7216
March Monthly Biodiversity Report from the Americas Program
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5990
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream andalternative sources:
http://nacla.org/articles
For immigration updates and events;
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com/
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