Issue #1245, December 7, 2014
1. Mexico: One of Missing Students Confirmed Dead
2. Mexico: Protests Link Ayotzinapa, Ferguson, Garner
3. Costa Rica: State to Compensate Nemagon Victims
4. Chile: Four Women File Sexual Torture Complaint
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Central America, Mexico, Puerto Rico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: One of Missing Students Confirmed Dead
The remains of one of 43 students abducted the night of Sept. 26-27 in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero have been identified by DNA tests, parents of the missing students said on Dec. 6. Technicians in Innsbruck, Austria, established that one of 14 bone fragments sent them by the Mexican government came from the body of Alexander Mora Venancio, a 19-year-old student at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa; gang members and municipal police had detained him along with 42 other Ayotzinapa students in Iguala de la Independencia during attacks which also left three students and three bystanders dead. The bone fragments were found in a dump near Iguala in Cocula municipality after three members of the Guerrero Unidos (“United Warriors”) gang told federal authorities they had helped burn and dispose of the bodies of the missing students there [see Update #1241].
The students’ parents acknowledged the identification of Mora Venancio after talking with a group of independent forensics experts from Argentina; the parents say they don’t trust information from the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto. A notice was posted in the victim’s name on the college’s Facebook page. “Compañeros,” it read, “to all those who have supported us, I am Alexander Mora Venancio…one of the 43 who fell on Sept. 26 at the hands of the narco-government…. I feel proud of you, who have lifted up my voice, courage and freedom-loving spirit. Don’t leave my father alone with his sorrow; for him I mean practically everything—hope, pride, his efforts, his work and his dignity…. I invite you to redouble your struggle. Let my death not be in vain. Make the best decision, but don’t forget me. Rectify if it’s possible, but don’t forgive. This is my message.” (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/7/14)
The DNA identification seems unlikely to end the widespread anti-government protests that have dominated the two months since the Iguala attacks [see Update #1244]. On Dec. 2 the federal Chamber of Deputies voted 292-100 to pass a measure that would amend the Constitution’s Articles 11 and 73 so that the authorities could limit a demonstration if they judge that it violates citizens’ “right of mobility.” The Chamber’s committee on constitutional matters had returned the measure to the full body for voting on Apr. 23, but the deputies didn’t take action until the current crisis. The center-right National Action Party (PAN) proposed the measure, and deputies from President Peña Nieto’s centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and a small PRI satellite party, the Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM), joined them to approve it. The small leftist Labor Party (PT) and two center-left parties, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Citizens’ Movement, opposed the bill, although PRD and Citizens’ Movement deputies on the constitutional committee had backed it in April. The PRD has lost popular support--and even party founder Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano--over the Iguala violence; former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez, accused of ordering the attacks, is a PRD politician.
Rights activists promptly denounced the anti-protest measure. “We are concerned that amid the human rights crisis that the country is going through, the response of the Mexican state is send a message to inhibit social protests,” Carlos Ventura, of the Fray Francisco de Vitoria Human Rights Center, told a press conference in Mexico City on Dec. 3. The measure was received in the Senate on Dec. 4, but it was unclear how soon the senators would schedule a vote. (LJ 12/3/14, 12/5/14; TeleSUR English 12/4/14)
Meanwhile, evidence is mounting that at least some of the violence by alleged anarchists at Ayotzinapa protests has involved agents provocateurs. On Dec. 3 the online Mexican publication Animal Político posted two videos showing officials or police agents from the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), which has been governed by the PRD since 1997, in civilian dress among the protesters at a Dec. 1 march along the city’s Reforma avenue. In one of the videos, a man later identified as an official in a city agency is seen throwing a metal tube during a confrontation at the end of an otherwise peaceful protest. Two police agents seize the official and begin beating him, but other agents say: “Wait, he’s a compañero.” Agents then lead the official away and release him. (VICE 12/3/14)
*2. Mexico: Protests Link Ayotzinapa, Ferguson, Garner
Hundreds of Mexican immigrants and other activists held actions in at least 47 US towns and cities on Dec. 3 to protest the abduction of 43 teachers’ college students by police and gang members in Mexico’s Guerrero state in September; each of the 43 students had one of the actions dedicated to him. The protests were organized by UStired2, a group taking its name from #YaMeCansé (“I’m tired now,” or “I’ve had it”), a Mexican hashtag used in response to the violence against the students, who attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa. The protesters focused on US government financing for the Mexican government--especially funding for the “war on drugs” through the 2008 Mérida Initiative [see Update #952]--but they also expressed outrage over the US court system’s failure to indict US police agents in two recent police killings of unarmed African Americans.
The protest “is a community effort by Mexicans living in the US [to show] that we don’t want our tax money to finance the Mexican government, which is corrupt,” Karla de Anda, one of the organizers of the protest in Miami, told the Associated Press wire service. “They’re giving [Mexican authorities] money for arms,” US writer and activist Roberto Lovato said at a New York vigil. “They’re giving armament for disappearing people, for creating mass graves.” Signs at the various protests called for an end to “Plan Mexico,” comparing the Mérida Initiative to the bloody US-funded Plan Colombia of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The US has given Mexico $1.2 billion under the initiative, according to Maureen Meyer of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).
The Mexican actions were planned just as many people in the US were protesting a grand jury’s decision on Nov. 24 not to indict a white Ferguson, Missouri police agent, Darren Wilson, for the August shooting death of an unarmed African-American youth, Michael Brown. On Dec. 3, as many of the Ayotzinapa actions were starting, a grand jury announced its decision not to indict white New York City police agent Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold-induced death in July of an unarmed African-American street vendor, Eric Garner. Mexican protesters highlighted the parallels with the Mexican killings, which St. Louis University student Ale Vázquez Rubio called “too obvious to ignore.” “The connection is having a government that doesn’t value brown and black bodies,” she said at a protest in St. Louis; Ferguson is a suburb of the city. “The connection is also in the silencing of a lot of voices.” “Our governments are working together to oppress us, so why shouldn’t we be working together?” another St. Louis protester asked. “United we stand” and “Somos unidos,” the participants chanted, alternating English and Spanish.
In New York, UStired2 was holding its scheduled vigil in Times Square in the evening when thousands of people marched to the site in a spontaneous protest of the Garner decision. The Mexican protesters joined in with the chants of “Hands up, don’t shoot,” a reference to the Brown shooting. “Do you hear that?” Lovato asked a reporter. “It’s like an echo.” Lovato noted that USTired2 put together a conference call between the mothers of the missing students and parents of children in Ferguson the evening before. “The most moving moment was when the indigenous mothers who were looking for their sons who [have] been disappeared by the Mexican police were speaking to African-American mothers about what is happening in Ferguson. They were both saying ‘I know what you feel, I know what this is like.’” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch 12/3/14; Univision 12/4/14; Fox News Latino 12/4/14; Voices of NY 12/4/14)
*3. Costa Rica: State to Compensate Nemagon Victims
A decree by Costa Rican president Luis Guillermo Solís authorizing payments to former banana workers sickened by the pesticide Nemagon became official on Dec. 1 with the measure’s publication in the government’s gazette. Under the decree the government’s National Insurance Institute (INS) will pay out from 25% to 100% of the medical bills for workers who suffered physical or psychological damage from Nemagon, with the percentage based on their years of exposure to the pesticide. The decree currently covers 13,925 former banana workers; cases are pending for 9,233 of the workers’ children and 1,742 of the workers’ spouses. More than 11,000 other applications were dismissed.
Nemagon is a brand name for dibromochloropropane (DBCP), a chemical known to cause sterility, cancer, miscarriages, genetic deformities and other health problems. It was formerly in wide use in Central American banana fields; it was applied in Costa Rica from 1967 until the government banned the chemical’s importation in 1979. Affected Central American banana workers have been demanding compensation for decades. Costa Rica passed a compensation law in September 2001 but without setting up a mechanism for paying the workers. Some 780 Costa Ricans already won a separate settlement in 2011 from California-based fruit and vegetable producer Dole Food Company, Inc., which began making payments in September 2012 [see Update #1144]. The agreement with Dole also covered 3,157 Nicaraguans and 1,000 Hondurans. (La Nación (Costa Rica) 12/2/14; Tico Times 12/3/14)
*4. Chile: Four Women File Sexual Torture Complaint
On Dec. 1 Nieves Ayress Moreno, a Chilean-born naturalized US citizen, formally joined a criminal complaint filed earlier by three other Chilean women over sexual political violence that they say they suffered under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Chilean law doesn’t treat sexual violence as a separate complaint; instead, the crimes are considered “illegitimate pressure,” allowing some of the perpetrators to escape justice. The complaint seeks to have the crimes “incorporated into the penal code and those responsible for them to be able to be punished,” according to another of the plaintiffs, Alejandra Holzapfel. Ayress Moreno, who lives in New York, delayed joining Holzapfel and the remaining two plaintiffs, Soledad Castillo and Nora Brito, in the complaint until she could travel to Chile.
After meeting with Santiago Appeals Court president Mario Carroza on Dec. 1, Ayress described some of her experiences to reporters at a press conference. She was abducted by security forces along with her father and 15-year-old brother in the fall of 1973, she said, and was subjected to electric shocks and sexual violence in the Londres 38 torture center of the now-defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA). “Later they brought my father so that he could hear the tortures,” she said, adding that the torturers included Argentines, Brazilians and Paraguayans. “Afterwards they transferred me to Tejas Verdes [a concentration camp], always bound and hooded. The most terrible part was there, because the torture school was there, and the forms of aggressions and sexual violence I was exposed to are unspeakable.” At one point, she said, she witnessed DINA director Manuel Contreras personally directing her torture.
Court president Carroza told the website for the memorial park at Villa Grimaldi, another DINA torture center, that while technically the complaint would have to be treated under Chilean laws in effect at the time of the alleged abuses, Chile had signed on to international human rights conventions that might apply to the cases. “As the judicial power, we need to look at this situation, analyze it and confront it in the shortest possible time,” he said. “We’ve already been condemned in the past by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights [CorteIDH], precisely for not carrying out this type of investigation in depth.” (Fox News Latino 12/1/14; Rebelión 12/1/14)
Nieves Ayress is well known in New York as an activist for immigrants and for human rights. Her husband, Víctor Toro, was a founder of Chile’s Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR); he too was tortured by the Pinochet regime. In 2007 the US government started a seven-year effort to deport Toro as an undocumented immigrant, but on Oct. 23 of this year a US immigration court granted him a work permit and permission to remain in the country, while denying his request for political asylum. (TeleSUR English 10/24/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Central America, Mexico, Puerto Rico
The Water Grab That Powers Predatory Development (Latin America)
https://nacla.org/blog/2014/12/04/water-grab-powers-predatory-development
Shale Oil Fuels Indigenous Conflict in Argentina
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27750-shale-oil-fuels-indigenous-conflict-in-argentina
Six Guantanamo Detainees Leave for Uruguay
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Six-Guantanamo-Detainees-Leave-for-Uruguay-20141207-0005.html
Lessons from Bolivia: re-nationalising the hydrocarbon industry
https://opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/stephan-lefebvre-jeanette-bonifaz/lessons-from-bolivia-renationalising-hydrocarbon-indust
Bolivian women fight back against climate of violence
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5139-bolivian-women-fight-back-against-climate-of-violence
“Indigenous Peoples Are the Owners of the Land” Say Activists at COP20 in Peru
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/5143-indigenous-peoples-are-the-owners-of-the-land-say-activists-at-cop20-in-peru
Andes: repression ahead of Lima climate summit
http://ww4report.com/node/13796
Ecuador indigenous leader found dead days before planned Lima protest
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/06/ecuador-indigenous-leader-found-dead-lima-climate-talks?CMP=twt_gu
Colombia: peace talks resume; Uribe urges 'rebellion'
http://ww4report.com/node/13790
Colombian general captured by FARC resigns
http://ww4report.com/node/13767
Pemon Indigenous Occupy Airport in Venezuela: “We Have Had Enough of Broken Promises”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11053
Community Democracy Confronts Mining in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/5138-community-democracy-confronts-mining-in-el-salvador
Palm Oil and Extreme Violence in Honduras: The Inexorable Rise and Dubious Reform of Grupo Dinant
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27864-palm-oil-and-extreme-violence-in-honduras-the-inexorable-rise-and-dubious-reform-of-grupo-dinant
In Oaxaca, Caravan of Central American Mothers Calls for Unity of Movements
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13825
Central American Mothers Build Bridges of Hope
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/central-american-mothers-build-bridges-of-hope/
Mexican Immigration Authorities Impede Humanitarian Aid to Central American Migrants
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13833
Mexico’s Civic Insurgency
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexicos-civic-insurgency/
Students March for Ayotzinapa and for Their Future (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13802
Ayotzinapa: I read and I share (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5142-ayotzinapa-i-read-and-i-share
The Spectre of Ayotzinapa Haunts the Continent (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/12/07/spectre-ayotzinapa-haunts-continent
Wixarika Leaders to First Majestic Silver: Follow IMD Mining Ltd Example, Abandon Mining Project in Sacred Lands (Mexico)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/wixarika-leaders-to-first-majestic-silver-follow-imd-mining-ltd-example-abandon-mining-project-in-sacred-lands-26285/
Mexico: In the Land of Zapata, a Community Fights Natural Gas Development
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5135-mexico-in-the-land-of-zapata-a-community-fights-natural-gas-development
The Rebirth of an Urban “Dead Zone”? (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-rebirth-of-an-urban-dead-zone/
We Can Pretend Mexico’s War Isn’t ‘Made in the U.S.A.’, But the Numbers Don’t Lie
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13811
How Canada and Mexico Have Become Part of the U.S. Policing Regime
https://nacla.org/blog/2014/12/01/how-canada-and-mexico-have-become-part-us-policing-regime
In Memoriam Juan Flores 1943-2014 (Puerto Rico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2014/12/06/memoriam-juan-flores-1943-2014
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://alainet.org/index.phtml.en
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Showing posts with label Costa Rica. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Costa Rica. Show all posts
Monday, December 8, 2014
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
WNU #1241: Missing Mexican Students Reported Dead
Issue #1241, November 9, 2014
1. Mexico: Missing Students Reported Dead
2. Costa Rica: Port Strike Ends, Issues Remain
3. Dominican Republic: Government Quits OAS Rights Court
4. Cuba: Will US Swap Jailed Agents for Gross?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Missing Students Reported Dead
A group of 43 Mexican teachers’ college students missing since the night of Sept. 26-27 [see Update #1239] were killed by gang members and their bodies were burned and disposed of in Cocula municipality in the southwestern state of Guerrero, federal attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam announced at a Nov. 7 press conference in Mexico City. Three members of the Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”) criminal organization confessed to having participated in the execution of the students and the incineration of their bodies, according to Murillo Karam, who said the remains were so thoroughly burned that it might be difficult to extract DNA for identification. The Mexican government is planning to send the remains to technicians in Austria. The attorney general said he understood the skepticism of the students’ parents about his office’s findings, more than a month after the events: “It’s natural…and it doesn’t surprise me.”
As of Nov. 7 Mexican authorities said 74 people had been arrested in connection with the massacre of the students, who attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa; they were attacked by municipal police and gang members in Iguala de la Independencia the evening of Sept. 26 as they were raising money to attend an Oct. 2 demonstration in Mexico City. Three students and three bystanders were killed in the initial attack, and the municipal police detained another 43 students, apparently turning them over to Guerreros Unidos members to be executed. Former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife, María de los Angeles Pineda, reportedly ordered the attack; they were arrested in Mexico City on Nov. 4 and face charges of participation in organized crime, offenses against health, and illegal privation of liberty. Abarca made no declaration when he was brought before judges on Nov. 6. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/7/14, 11/8/14)
On Nov. 7 a federal court issued a formal order for the imprisonment of seven soldiers charged in another notorious massacre, the execution of suspected gang members on June 30 in Tlatlaya municipality, México state. The government is charging the soldiers with killing eight suspects who had surrendered after a shootout with the soldiers. The government’s semi-autonomous National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) concluded on Oct. 21 that the number executed was 15; a total of 22 suspects died in the incident, including people killed in the shootout. (LJ 11/8/14)
The arrests and criminal charges in the two massacres seem unlikely to stop the wave of protests that started after the Sept. 26 attacks. Thousands of people marched from Los Pinos, the presidential residence, to the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City on Nov. 5 as part of the third National and Global Day of Action for Ayotzinapa; many carried signs blaming Mexico’s three main political parties and charging that the Iguala massacre was the work of “the narco-state.” Students in more than 80 schools and universities carried out strikes that day or planned to carry out strikes later; there were also calls for a nationwide general strike on Nov. 20, the holiday marking the start of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. (LJ 11/6/14, 11/6/14)
Students and others demonstrated again in Mexico City the evening of Nov. 8, the day after Attorney General Murillo announced that the missing Ayotzinapa students had been killed. The march route was from the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) to the Zócalo; when the protest reached the giant plaza, many marchers seized metal police barricades and employed them to batter the doors of the National Palace, a 16th-century building largely used for ceremonies and for housing a group of murals by Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Frustrated protesters set fire to the doors; at least two people were injured and a number were arrested. There were also protests that day in Baja California, Chiapas, Jalisco, México state, Oaxaca, Querétaro and Veracruz. (LJ 11/9/14, 11/9/14)
In the midst of this crisis, Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was scheduled to leave for a Nov. 9-15 trip to China and Australia to attend two international conferences, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Beijing and the Group of 20 (G20) Leaders’ Summit in Brisbane. (Univision 11/9/14, some from unidentified wire services)
The problems in Mexico seemed not to concern some important international investors seeking to take advantage of Peña Nieto’s success in opening up the energy and telecommunication sectors to private capital [see Update #1240]. “We’re very excited with what’s happening in Mexico and with its reform agenda,” Gary Cohn, president of the New York-based multinational Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., investment bank, said during a visit to Mexico in early November. “Our clients are excited about the opportunities opening up in the Mexican economy, whether in the gas and petroleum field or, on the other hand, in telecommunications.” He insisted that what US financial advisers are calling “the Mexican Moment” will go on for some time. Asked about the Ayotzinapa massacre, Cohn replied: “No one is pleased to see these events, no one is happy to see them, but I believe that the Mexicans themselves seem to be the ones who are more focused [on these events] than the rest of the world. I don’t mean to minimize them, but it happens in other parts of the world.” (Terra Mexico 11/5/14 from Reforma, quotations retranslated from Spanish)
*2. Costa Rica: Port Strike Ends, Issues Remain
The Costa Rican government and unionized dockworkers at the city of Limón on the Caribbean coast reached an accord the night of Nov. 5 ending a strike that started on Oct. 22. The strikers agreed to return to work on Nov. 6 in exchange for the government’s promise that the port’s management, the Board of Port Administration and Economic Development of the Atlantic Shelf (JAPDEVA), wouldn’t penalize them for striking; people arrested for damaging containers on Oct. 24 will still be subject to prosecution. The accord did not address the strike’s issue—a 33-year concession for the port granted to the Dutch company APM Terminals, a subsidiary of the giant Danish shipping multinational A.P. Moller-Maersk Group [see Update #1239, which incorrectly gave the time period for the concession as 30 years]. The parties agreed to continue negotiations on this issue, although the government insisted that clause 9.1 of the concession contract, which concerns APM Terminal’s monopoly on handling containers, was not negotiable.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the parties reached the agreement ending the strike. Ronaldo Blear, the secretary general of the JAPDEVA Workers Union (SINTRAJAP), pointed to the role played in the talks by Montserrat Solano, the government’s defender of the habitants (a position equivalent to the ombudsperson in other countries). The leftist Frente Amplio (“Broad Front”) political party reportedly pressured SINTRAJAP to settle; the party is close to the union. The government too was under pressure. Although it managed to keep Limón’s two terminals open with foreign contract labor, shipping companies had been complaining about delays. According to the government the port was operating at 60% capacity, but the union put the number at 40%. There had also been a threat of broader strike support. Union spokesperson José Luis Castillo told a local radio program in early November that SINTRAJAP was negotiating with similar Latin American organizations to keep other ports in the region from receiving ships that had sailed from Limón. (El País (Costa Rica) 11/5/14, some from DPA; La Nación 11/6/14; Tico Times (Costa Rica) 11/6/14)
In related news, relatives of the late US unionist Gilberto Soto issued an open letter on Nov. 5, calling on the Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to reopen its investigation into Soto’s murder, which took place exactly 10 years earlier in Usulután, El Salvador. A Salvadoran-born naturalized US citizen and an organizer for the US-based International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Soto was murdered after he had arrived in the country to meet with port workers from El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, and with Central American drivers who hauled shipping containers; this was in connection with a proposed joint project to document systematic violations of workers’ rights by Maersk [see Update #772]. Citing a publication by the Office of the Prosecutor for the Defense of Human Rights (PDDH), the open letter charged that there were irregularities in the initial investigation. IBT president James Hoffa and Richard Trumka, the president of the largest US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, signed on to the letter, along with a number of labor and human rights organizations. (La Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 11/6/14)
*3. Dominican Republic: Government Quits OAS Rights Court
The Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Tribunal (TC) ruled on Nov. 4 that the country must withdraw from the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CorteIDH), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS). The TC’s ruling, Decision 256-14, was based on a technicality involving a 1999 agreement with the OAS court, but observers assumed that the TC was actually reacting to an Oct. 22 announcement that the human rights court had condemned the Dominican Republic’s treatment of immigrants and their descendants, notably the TC’s controversial Decision 168-13 of September 2013, which declared that no one born to undocumented immigrant parents since 1929 was a citizen [see Update #1221]. The 2013 decision excludes thousands of Haitian-descended Dominicans from citizenship; it has been met with protests from international human rights groups, the Haitian government and many Dominicans, including members of the country’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) [see Update #1213].
The OAS court’s 173-page decision, dated Aug. 28, concerns the treatment of a number of Haitian immigrants some 15 years ago. However, the OAS judges' ruling included a condemnation of Decision 168-13, which they said violated the human rights of the Dominican-born people it deprived of citizenship; the human rights court also ruled that a law the Dominican Congress passed in May to resolve the problem was inadequate. The court expressed “deep concern” after the Dominican Republic announced its decision to withdraw from the court’s jurisdiction.
Dominican legal experts say it is unclear whether the Dominican Republic can withdraw from the OAS court without also withdrawing from the OAS. Constitutional law professor Nassef Perdomo cited the 1998 case of a naturalized Peruvian citizen, Baruch Ivcher Bronstein, who was stripped of his citizenship by the government of President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) [see Update #452]. “The OAS isn’t going to recognize [the decision to withdraw from the court],” Perdomo said, “as it didn’t recognize it with Peru when Alberto Fujimori’s government tried to leave the court, which was recorded in the documentation for the Ivcher Bronstein case.” However, two countries appear to have withdrawn successfully in the past: Trinidad and Tobago in 1999 and Venezuela in 2013. (Hoy (Santo Domingo) 10/22/14; TeleSUR 10/22/14; Washington Post 11/4/14 from AP; 7 Días (Santo Domingo) 11/5/14; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 11/7/14)
*4. Cuba: Will US Swap Jailed Agents for Gross?
In a Nov. 2 editorial, the New York Times, possibly the most politically influential US newspaper, called for the US government to free three imprisoned Cuban agents in exchange for the release of US citizen Alan Gross, who has been serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba since 2011 for his work there as a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) [see Update #1216]. The Cubans are three of the “Cuban Five,” a group of agents convicted in 2001 of espionage against the US; they insisted they were spying on Cuban-American terrorists based in southern Florida, not on the US. Two have already been released on probation after serving time, and two more are scheduled for release within the next 10 years, but the group’s leader, Gerardo Hernández, was sentenced to two life terms. In 2012 Cuba indicated that it was open to exchanging Gross for the Cuban agents [see Update #1175].
The Times editorial called an exchange the “only…plausible way to remove Mr. Gross from an already complicated equation.” The paper suggested that US president Barack Obama could arrange the exchange by commuting the remaining three prisoners’ sentences, which “would be justified considering the lengthy time they have served, the troubling questions about the fairness of their trial, and the potential diplomatic payoff in clearing the way toward a new bilateral relationship.” (NYT 11/2/14)
There is no clear evidence that the Obama administration is considering an exchange. However, in a discussion with reporters at the Reuters wire service’s New York office on Oct. 31, an important figure in the US government, UN ambassador Samantha Power, gave an unusual commendation to Cuba. Speaking about her visit to Liberia to observe emergency medical work to contain an Ebola outbreak, she said: “Although I did not encounter them personally, I have to commend Cuba for sending 265 medical professionals early,” she said. “I think they announced that going on almost two months ago, and they are sending another 200 on top of that 265. That is a big gap and a big need.” When the Daily Beast asked whether she was signaling a diplomatic thaw with Cuba, Powers simply answered: “We're working on Ebola side by side.” (Daily Beast 11/1/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Latin America: Gendering Peasant Movements, Gendering Food Sovereignty
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5110-latin-america-gendering-peasant-movements-gendering-food-sovereignty
Canada Accused of Failing to Prevent Mining Abuses in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5114-canada-accused-of-failing-to-prevent-mining-abuses-in-latin-america
The arrest of Cristian Labbé breathes new life into Chile's human rights struggle
https://opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/nick-macwilliam/arrest-of-cristian-labb%C3%A9-breathes-new-life-into-chile%27s-human-rights-st
Sao Paulo Suffering from Historic Water Crisis (Brazil)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Sao-Paulo-Suffering-from-Historic-Water-Crisis-20141108-0015.html
Peru: unrest mounts in Cajamarca
http://ww4report.com/node/13700
FARC fighters face indigenous justice (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/13708
Venezuela: For the Barrios, the Difference Between Repression and Revolution Depends on National Security
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11003
Venezuela: Invisible No More
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5112-venezuela-invisible-no-more
Honduran Army Has Greater Amount of Legal Powers, Report Says
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Honduran-Army-Has-Greater-Amount-of-Legal-Powers-Report-Says-20141108-0022.html
Honduras claims blow against Sinaloa Cartel
http://ww4report.com/node/13711
Indigenous Women in Guatemala Demand End to State of Prevention
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/5113-indigenous-women-in-guatemala-demand-end-to-state-of-prevention
In Guatemala, indigenous communities prevail against Monsanto
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/guatemala-indigenous-communities-prevail-monsanto/
Guatemala: reparations in abuses linked to hydro
http://ww4report.com/node/13712
Ayotzinapa Demands Justice One Month After the Disappearances (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/11/03/ayotzinapa-demands-justice-one-month-after-disappearances
Why the Normalistas Are Still Smiling (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/11/06/why-normalistas-are-still-smiling
Mexican Gang Suspected of Killing 43 Students Admits to Mass Murder
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5117-mexican-gang-suspected-of-killing-43-students-admits-to-mass-murder-
Statement by the Mesoamerican Working Group on the Impact of U.S. Security Assistance on Human Rights in Mexico, Central America, and Colombia (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5116-statement-by-the-mesoamerican-working-group-on-the-impact-of-us-security-assistance-on-human-rights-in-mexico-central-america-and-colombia
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Mexico: Missing Students Reported Dead
2. Costa Rica: Port Strike Ends, Issues Remain
3. Dominican Republic: Government Quits OAS Rights Court
4. Cuba: Will US Swap Jailed Agents for Gross?
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Missing Students Reported Dead
A group of 43 Mexican teachers’ college students missing since the night of Sept. 26-27 [see Update #1239] were killed by gang members and their bodies were burned and disposed of in Cocula municipality in the southwestern state of Guerrero, federal attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam announced at a Nov. 7 press conference in Mexico City. Three members of the Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”) criminal organization confessed to having participated in the execution of the students and the incineration of their bodies, according to Murillo Karam, who said the remains were so thoroughly burned that it might be difficult to extract DNA for identification. The Mexican government is planning to send the remains to technicians in Austria. The attorney general said he understood the skepticism of the students’ parents about his office’s findings, more than a month after the events: “It’s natural…and it doesn’t surprise me.”
As of Nov. 7 Mexican authorities said 74 people had been arrested in connection with the massacre of the students, who attended the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa; they were attacked by municipal police and gang members in Iguala de la Independencia the evening of Sept. 26 as they were raising money to attend an Oct. 2 demonstration in Mexico City. Three students and three bystanders were killed in the initial attack, and the municipal police detained another 43 students, apparently turning them over to Guerreros Unidos members to be executed. Former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife, María de los Angeles Pineda, reportedly ordered the attack; they were arrested in Mexico City on Nov. 4 and face charges of participation in organized crime, offenses against health, and illegal privation of liberty. Abarca made no declaration when he was brought before judges on Nov. 6. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/7/14, 11/8/14)
On Nov. 7 a federal court issued a formal order for the imprisonment of seven soldiers charged in another notorious massacre, the execution of suspected gang members on June 30 in Tlatlaya municipality, México state. The government is charging the soldiers with killing eight suspects who had surrendered after a shootout with the soldiers. The government’s semi-autonomous National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) concluded on Oct. 21 that the number executed was 15; a total of 22 suspects died in the incident, including people killed in the shootout. (LJ 11/8/14)
The arrests and criminal charges in the two massacres seem unlikely to stop the wave of protests that started after the Sept. 26 attacks. Thousands of people marched from Los Pinos, the presidential residence, to the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City on Nov. 5 as part of the third National and Global Day of Action for Ayotzinapa; many carried signs blaming Mexico’s three main political parties and charging that the Iguala massacre was the work of “the narco-state.” Students in more than 80 schools and universities carried out strikes that day or planned to carry out strikes later; there were also calls for a nationwide general strike on Nov. 20, the holiday marking the start of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. (LJ 11/6/14, 11/6/14)
Students and others demonstrated again in Mexico City the evening of Nov. 8, the day after Attorney General Murillo announced that the missing Ayotzinapa students had been killed. The march route was from the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) to the Zócalo; when the protest reached the giant plaza, many marchers seized metal police barricades and employed them to batter the doors of the National Palace, a 16th-century building largely used for ceremonies and for housing a group of murals by Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Frustrated protesters set fire to the doors; at least two people were injured and a number were arrested. There were also protests that day in Baja California, Chiapas, Jalisco, México state, Oaxaca, Querétaro and Veracruz. (LJ 11/9/14, 11/9/14)
In the midst of this crisis, Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was scheduled to leave for a Nov. 9-15 trip to China and Australia to attend two international conferences, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Beijing and the Group of 20 (G20) Leaders’ Summit in Brisbane. (Univision 11/9/14, some from unidentified wire services)
The problems in Mexico seemed not to concern some important international investors seeking to take advantage of Peña Nieto’s success in opening up the energy and telecommunication sectors to private capital [see Update #1240]. “We’re very excited with what’s happening in Mexico and with its reform agenda,” Gary Cohn, president of the New York-based multinational Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., investment bank, said during a visit to Mexico in early November. “Our clients are excited about the opportunities opening up in the Mexican economy, whether in the gas and petroleum field or, on the other hand, in telecommunications.” He insisted that what US financial advisers are calling “the Mexican Moment” will go on for some time. Asked about the Ayotzinapa massacre, Cohn replied: “No one is pleased to see these events, no one is happy to see them, but I believe that the Mexicans themselves seem to be the ones who are more focused [on these events] than the rest of the world. I don’t mean to minimize them, but it happens in other parts of the world.” (Terra Mexico 11/5/14 from Reforma, quotations retranslated from Spanish)
*2. Costa Rica: Port Strike Ends, Issues Remain
The Costa Rican government and unionized dockworkers at the city of Limón on the Caribbean coast reached an accord the night of Nov. 5 ending a strike that started on Oct. 22. The strikers agreed to return to work on Nov. 6 in exchange for the government’s promise that the port’s management, the Board of Port Administration and Economic Development of the Atlantic Shelf (JAPDEVA), wouldn’t penalize them for striking; people arrested for damaging containers on Oct. 24 will still be subject to prosecution. The accord did not address the strike’s issue—a 33-year concession for the port granted to the Dutch company APM Terminals, a subsidiary of the giant Danish shipping multinational A.P. Moller-Maersk Group [see Update #1239, which incorrectly gave the time period for the concession as 30 years]. The parties agreed to continue negotiations on this issue, although the government insisted that clause 9.1 of the concession contract, which concerns APM Terminal’s monopoly on handling containers, was not negotiable.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the parties reached the agreement ending the strike. Ronaldo Blear, the secretary general of the JAPDEVA Workers Union (SINTRAJAP), pointed to the role played in the talks by Montserrat Solano, the government’s defender of the habitants (a position equivalent to the ombudsperson in other countries). The leftist Frente Amplio (“Broad Front”) political party reportedly pressured SINTRAJAP to settle; the party is close to the union. The government too was under pressure. Although it managed to keep Limón’s two terminals open with foreign contract labor, shipping companies had been complaining about delays. According to the government the port was operating at 60% capacity, but the union put the number at 40%. There had also been a threat of broader strike support. Union spokesperson José Luis Castillo told a local radio program in early November that SINTRAJAP was negotiating with similar Latin American organizations to keep other ports in the region from receiving ships that had sailed from Limón. (El País (Costa Rica) 11/5/14, some from DPA; La Nación 11/6/14; Tico Times (Costa Rica) 11/6/14)
In related news, relatives of the late US unionist Gilberto Soto issued an open letter on Nov. 5, calling on the Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to reopen its investigation into Soto’s murder, which took place exactly 10 years earlier in Usulután, El Salvador. A Salvadoran-born naturalized US citizen and an organizer for the US-based International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Soto was murdered after he had arrived in the country to meet with port workers from El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, and with Central American drivers who hauled shipping containers; this was in connection with a proposed joint project to document systematic violations of workers’ rights by Maersk [see Update #772]. Citing a publication by the Office of the Prosecutor for the Defense of Human Rights (PDDH), the open letter charged that there were irregularities in the initial investigation. IBT president James Hoffa and Richard Trumka, the president of the largest US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, signed on to the letter, along with a number of labor and human rights organizations. (La Prensa Gráfica (El Salvador) 11/6/14)
*3. Dominican Republic: Government Quits OAS Rights Court
The Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Tribunal (TC) ruled on Nov. 4 that the country must withdraw from the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CorteIDH), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS). The TC’s ruling, Decision 256-14, was based on a technicality involving a 1999 agreement with the OAS court, but observers assumed that the TC was actually reacting to an Oct. 22 announcement that the human rights court had condemned the Dominican Republic’s treatment of immigrants and their descendants, notably the TC’s controversial Decision 168-13 of September 2013, which declared that no one born to undocumented immigrant parents since 1929 was a citizen [see Update #1221]. The 2013 decision excludes thousands of Haitian-descended Dominicans from citizenship; it has been met with protests from international human rights groups, the Haitian government and many Dominicans, including members of the country’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) [see Update #1213].
The OAS court’s 173-page decision, dated Aug. 28, concerns the treatment of a number of Haitian immigrants some 15 years ago. However, the OAS judges' ruling included a condemnation of Decision 168-13, which they said violated the human rights of the Dominican-born people it deprived of citizenship; the human rights court also ruled that a law the Dominican Congress passed in May to resolve the problem was inadequate. The court expressed “deep concern” after the Dominican Republic announced its decision to withdraw from the court’s jurisdiction.
Dominican legal experts say it is unclear whether the Dominican Republic can withdraw from the OAS court without also withdrawing from the OAS. Constitutional law professor Nassef Perdomo cited the 1998 case of a naturalized Peruvian citizen, Baruch Ivcher Bronstein, who was stripped of his citizenship by the government of President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) [see Update #452]. “The OAS isn’t going to recognize [the decision to withdraw from the court],” Perdomo said, “as it didn’t recognize it with Peru when Alberto Fujimori’s government tried to leave the court, which was recorded in the documentation for the Ivcher Bronstein case.” However, two countries appear to have withdrawn successfully in the past: Trinidad and Tobago in 1999 and Venezuela in 2013. (Hoy (Santo Domingo) 10/22/14; TeleSUR 10/22/14; Washington Post 11/4/14 from AP; 7 Días (Santo Domingo) 11/5/14; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 11/7/14)
*4. Cuba: Will US Swap Jailed Agents for Gross?
In a Nov. 2 editorial, the New York Times, possibly the most politically influential US newspaper, called for the US government to free three imprisoned Cuban agents in exchange for the release of US citizen Alan Gross, who has been serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba since 2011 for his work there as a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) [see Update #1216]. The Cubans are three of the “Cuban Five,” a group of agents convicted in 2001 of espionage against the US; they insisted they were spying on Cuban-American terrorists based in southern Florida, not on the US. Two have already been released on probation after serving time, and two more are scheduled for release within the next 10 years, but the group’s leader, Gerardo Hernández, was sentenced to two life terms. In 2012 Cuba indicated that it was open to exchanging Gross for the Cuban agents [see Update #1175].
The Times editorial called an exchange the “only…plausible way to remove Mr. Gross from an already complicated equation.” The paper suggested that US president Barack Obama could arrange the exchange by commuting the remaining three prisoners’ sentences, which “would be justified considering the lengthy time they have served, the troubling questions about the fairness of their trial, and the potential diplomatic payoff in clearing the way toward a new bilateral relationship.” (NYT 11/2/14)
There is no clear evidence that the Obama administration is considering an exchange. However, in a discussion with reporters at the Reuters wire service’s New York office on Oct. 31, an important figure in the US government, UN ambassador Samantha Power, gave an unusual commendation to Cuba. Speaking about her visit to Liberia to observe emergency medical work to contain an Ebola outbreak, she said: “Although I did not encounter them personally, I have to commend Cuba for sending 265 medical professionals early,” she said. “I think they announced that going on almost two months ago, and they are sending another 200 on top of that 265. That is a big gap and a big need.” When the Daily Beast asked whether she was signaling a diplomatic thaw with Cuba, Powers simply answered: “We're working on Ebola side by side.” (Daily Beast 11/1/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico
Latin America: Gendering Peasant Movements, Gendering Food Sovereignty
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5110-latin-america-gendering-peasant-movements-gendering-food-sovereignty
Canada Accused of Failing to Prevent Mining Abuses in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/5114-canada-accused-of-failing-to-prevent-mining-abuses-in-latin-america
The arrest of Cristian Labbé breathes new life into Chile's human rights struggle
https://opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/nick-macwilliam/arrest-of-cristian-labb%C3%A9-breathes-new-life-into-chile%27s-human-rights-st
Sao Paulo Suffering from Historic Water Crisis (Brazil)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Sao-Paulo-Suffering-from-Historic-Water-Crisis-20141108-0015.html
Peru: unrest mounts in Cajamarca
http://ww4report.com/node/13700
FARC fighters face indigenous justice (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/13708
Venezuela: For the Barrios, the Difference Between Repression and Revolution Depends on National Security
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11003
Venezuela: Invisible No More
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5112-venezuela-invisible-no-more
Honduran Army Has Greater Amount of Legal Powers, Report Says
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Honduran-Army-Has-Greater-Amount-of-Legal-Powers-Report-Says-20141108-0022.html
Honduras claims blow against Sinaloa Cartel
http://ww4report.com/node/13711
Indigenous Women in Guatemala Demand End to State of Prevention
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/5113-indigenous-women-in-guatemala-demand-end-to-state-of-prevention
In Guatemala, indigenous communities prevail against Monsanto
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/guatemala-indigenous-communities-prevail-monsanto/
Guatemala: reparations in abuses linked to hydro
http://ww4report.com/node/13712
The Blazing Ashes of Ayotzinapa (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-blazing-ashes-of-ayotzinapa/Ayotzinapa Demands Justice One Month After the Disappearances (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/11/03/ayotzinapa-demands-justice-one-month-after-disappearances
Why the Normalistas Are Still Smiling (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/11/06/why-normalistas-are-still-smiling
Mexican Gang Suspected of Killing 43 Students Admits to Mass Murder
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5117-mexican-gang-suspected-of-killing-43-students-admits-to-mass-murder-
Statement by the Mesoamerican Working Group on the Impact of U.S. Security Assistance on Human Rights in Mexico, Central America, and Colombia (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5116-statement-by-the-mesoamerican-working-group-on-the-impact-of-us-security-assistance-on-human-rights-in-mexico-central-america-and-colombia
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
WNU #1239: Strikers Close Costa Rican Port
Issue #1239, October 26, 2014
1. Costa Rica: New Strike Closes Major Port
2. Mexico: Guerrero Governor Goes, Crisis Remains
3. Mexico: Privatization Scandals Multiply
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America/US, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rice, Mexico, the Caribbean, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Costa Rica: New Strike Closes Major Port
A longstanding dispute over the privatization of the port at Limón on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast led unionized dockworkers at the port’s Limón and Moín terminals to walk off the job on Oct. 22 for the second time in two years [see Update #1134]. The open-ended strike left three ships stranded at the two terminals, which handle some 80% of Costa Rica's foreign trade. Facing his first major labor crisis since he took office on May 8, President Luis Guillermo Solís, of the center-left Citizen Action Party (PAC), responded quickly. He sent some 150 police officers to take control of the terminals late on Oct. 22; 68 people were arrested in the operation. The port was reopened the next morning, with foreign contract workers under police guard. Union officials denied that the port was operating normally, and as of Oct. 25 negotiations hadn’t started between the union and the government.
Efforts to privatize the Limón port, which is managed by the Board of Port Administration and Economic Development of the Atlantic Shelf (JAPDEVA), began in 2006 under former president Oscar Arias (1986-1990, 2006-2010), and quickly met with opposition from the JAPDEVA Workers Union (SINTRAJAP), backed by the Frente Amplio (“Broad Front”), a leftist political party. In 2012 the government of former president Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014) granted a 30-year concession to a Netherlands-based container management multinational, APM Terminals, a subsidiary of the giant Danish shipping multinational A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, which also does business in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua [see Update #772]. A court challenge to the APM Terminals contract was rejected by the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) in October of this year, precipitating the current strike. However, the CSJ probably won’t be able to give final approval to the contract until March 2015, since the National Environmental Technical Secretariat (Setena) hasn’t completed its assessment of the project. Legal advisers close to the Setena say there were irregularities in the documents presented by APM Terminals, including corrections by hand and several pages in English.
The situation in Limón was still tense as of Oct. 25, as helicopters and small planes patrolled the skies over the city. Eight people were arrested the morning of Oct. 24 after two shipping containers were set on fire and a police agent was wounded in the foot. SINTRAJAP general secretary Ronaldo Blear said the union wasn’t behind the vandalism but claimed that it showed “part of the dissatisfaction” of Limón’s population. “What it says to us is that Limón’s people hold JAPDEVA in their hearts, and so they’re defending what the government is trying to take from us.” According to Blear, the union’s “struggle is against a contract that imposes unjust rates for the people, an illegal monopoly that impedes free participation and represents the death of JAPDEVA, and against immense damage to the environment which could turn out to be irreversible if we don’t stop it. This isn’t over wages or privileges.” (Tico Times (Costa Rica) 10/23/14; Reuters 10/23/14; Prensa Latina 10/25/14; La Nación (Costa Rica) 10/25/14)
*2. Mexico: Guerrero Governor Goes, Crisis Remains
Protests against Mexican local governments and federal president Enrique Peña Nieto showed no signs of letting up the week of Oct. 20, nearly one month after the Sept. 26-27 killing of six people and the abduction of 43 teachers’ college students in Iguala in the southwestern state of Guerrero [see Update #1238]. Students held a two-day national strike on Oct. 22-23 to demand the return of the missing students, who were all from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa. Tens of thousands of students and teachers marched in a total of 18 Mexican states on the first day of the strike. The protest in Mexico City was reportedly one of the capital’s largest demonstrations in recent years. The Federal District (DF, Mexico City) police estimated the crowd at 50,000, while the Los Angeles Times reported that at one point the march stretched along the broad Paseo de la Reforma from the Angel of Independence to the central Zócalo, a distance of more than 4 kilometers.
The protesters’ disgust with Mexico’s political class and the three major political parties was obvious. “PRI, PAN, PRD=narco-government” was a popular slogan on Oct. 22, in reference to President Peña Nieto’s centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the center-right National Action Party (PAN) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The marchers targeted the federal government for its tolerance of political corruption and organized crime under Peña and under his two predecessors, Vicente Fox Quesada (2000-2006) and Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012), both from the PAN. “Peña out!” was a popular slogan at the demonstrations. But the greatest anger may be at the PRD, the party of Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre Rivero, Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife, María de los Angeles Pineda Villa. Now in hiding, Abarca and Pineda are thought to have ordered the attack on the students by municipal police and members of the Guerreros Unidos gang, while Aguirre’s government seemed to do nothing to stop the killings of leftist activists over the past several years, including the police shooting of two Ayotzinapa students in December 2011 [see Update #1237].
On Oct. 21 some 500 teachers in the militant State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG) left a sit-in the group had been holding since Oct. 8 in the main plaza of Chilpancingo, the state capital, to march on the PRD’s Guerrero headquarters and demand Aguirre’s resignation. They overturned a vehicle outside the building and then invaded the office, setting fire to computers, furniture and files. Two days later, on Oct. 23, the governor finally resigned. The PRD national leadership had been resisting efforts to remove Aguirre, but apparently they changed course on Oct. 22. PRD president Carlos Navarrete reportedly presented the governor with a dossier the federal government had prepared on him. “Angel, it could turn out to be more costly for you,” Navarrete said, according to several PRD politicians. Aguirre responded by offering to resign; he asked the PRD to negotiate immunity for him and for state finance secretary Jorge Salgado.
Observers said the governor’s resignation wasn’t likely to end the crisis. As for the PRD, party officials estimated off the record that the group’s voter approval rating had fallen by 3-4% as a result of the events in Guerrero. The PRD only governs three of Mexico’s 31 states, although it has headed the government in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) since 1997. (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/22/14, 10/23/14, 10/23/14, 10/24/14, 10/25/14; Los Angeles Times 10/25/14 from correspondent)
The North American solidarity organization Rights Action is handling donations for the Ayotzinapa students’ financial committee to help parents and teachers carry on their work for the missing students. More information is available at http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Emergency-Fund-Raising-Appeal-For-Disappeared-Mexican-Students.html?soid=1103480765269&aid=bBeeoLvMRX0.
On Oct. 21, in the midst of the Guerrero crisis, the federal government’s semi-autonomous National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) released its Recommendation 51/2014 concerning the killing of 22 suspected gang members by the military on June 30 in Tlatlaya municipality, México state [see Update #1234]. The soldiers and the state attorney general’s office claimed that the suspects died in a shootout. After investigating the case the CNDH concluded that 15 of the victims were executed by seven soldiers, who beat four of the victims before killing them. The bodies were then rearranged to support the story of a shootout, and state authorities imprisoned, threatened and otherwise mistreated two of the three surviving witnesses in effort to get them to back the cover-up; the two witness are still incarcerated at the Tepic, Nayarit federal women’s prison. The military, state prosecutors and the federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) all came in for criticism in the CNDH’s recommendation. (Excélsior (Mexico) 10/22/14; Jurist 10/22/14)
*3. Mexico: Privatization Scandals Multiply
The Sept. 26-27 killing and abduction of several dozen students in the southwestern state of Guerrero could be creating problems for Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto’s efforts to improve the country’s international image and to continue the opening of its economy to private businesses [see Update #1203]. Los Angeles Times correspondent Tracy Wilkinson reported on Oct. 25 that Peña’s “government is clearly concerned it is losing a finely crafted domestic and international public relations campaign that emphasized major reforms of Mexico's energy sector. Publications in the US and Europe that once lavished praise on the president have turned the tables.” (LA Times 10/25/14)
But Peña’s “energy reform” program has problems of its own. On Oct. 20 Mexican entrepreneur Amado Yáñez Osuna was arrested in Acapulco and charged with money laundering and failure to pay social security taxes. Due to the nature of the charges he is being held without bail. Yáñez Osuna is the sole director of Oceanografía SA de CV, one of the private companies that contract to provide services to Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the giant state-owned oil monopoly, in an arrangement that critics consider a disguised form of privatization. Yáñez has been under house arrest since March, following allegations of massive fraud by the company. (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/21/14, 10/23/14) At the end of February the US banking corporation Citigroup Inc. announced that its Mexican subsidiary, Banco Nacional de México (Banamex), had lent Oceanografía some $400 million based on falsified invoices that Oceanografía claimed it had issued to PEMEX [see Update #1212]. Banamex is Mexico’s second-largest bank; it was privatized under former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) and was bought by Citigroup in 2001.
The Oceanografía case was the first of two major bribery scandals for PEMEX this year; in April the US government fined the California-based technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) for bribing PEMEX officials to sell the oil enterprise hardware, software and licenses worth some $6 million [see Update #1216].
Another of Oceanografía’s creditors is the Monterrey-based Grupo Financiero Banorte (GFNorte), which lent the company 512 million pesos (about US$38 million). The bank’s officials insist that in this case the loans were properly documented. Privatized in 1992, Banorte is the largest Mexican bank not owned by a foreign corporation. During the week of Oct. 20 rumors circulated that Mexican banker Carlos Hank González would soon head Banorte. (LJ 10/24/14) Currently the director general of Grupo Financiero Interacciones, Hank González is the grandson of a former Mexico City mayor of the same name, a notoriously corrupt politician who died in 2001. The younger Hank González’s uncle is the equally notorious Tijuana racetrack owner Jorge Hank Rhon, and his father is billionaire banker Carlos Hank Rhon. A report by the US National Drug Intelligence Center in the late 1990s claimed that Jorge Hank Rhon, Carlos Hank Rhon and the elder Carlos Hank González were so involved in drug trafficking and money laundering that they “pose a significant criminal threat to the United States” [see Update #1082].
Meanwhile, Mexico’s Supreme Court agreed on Oct. 17 to consider a request from the center-left National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) for a national referendum on the energy reform program. Electoral officials have certified that MORENA’s petition has the two million valid signatures required for a referendum. The court has 20 days to decide whether to allow Mexicans to vote on the question: “Do you agree or do you not agree that contracts or concessions should be granted to national or foreign private entities for the exploration of oil, gas, refining, and the petrochemical and electrical industries?” (TeleSUR 10/20/14; LJ 10/21/14)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America/US, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Mexico, the Caribbean, Haiti, US/immigration
Latin America Provides Alternative Paths to Successful Poverty Reduction
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Latin-America-Provides-Alternative-Paths-to-Successful-Poverty-Reduction-20141017-0018.html
Latin American progressives and environmental duplicity
https://opendemocracy.net/daniel-macmillen/latin-american-progressives-and-environmental-duplicity
Argentina sentences 15 to life over La Cacha prison
http://ww4report.com/node/12929#comment-452521
Chile's Untapped Clean Energy Potential
https://nacla.org/blog/2014/10/22/chile-untapped-clean-energy-potential
Uruguay’s Decision Could Come Too Late for Gitmo Detainees
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5096-uruguays-decision-could-come-too-late-for-gitmo-detainees
Brazil’s Rousseff Re-elected Despite Anti-Workers’ Party Sentiment: What Now?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5101-brazils-rousseff-re-elected-despite-anti-workers-party-sentiment-what-now
Economic Issues Could be Decisive in Brazilian Presidential Election
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5100-economic-issues-could-be-decisive-in-brazilian-presidential-election
“Dilma’s loss would be a loss for the world’s working class”: An Interview with Luis Gonzaga “Gegê” da Silva
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/dilmas-loss-would-be-a-loss-for-the-worlds-working-class-an-interview-with-luis-gonzaga-gege-da-silva
How Many Extra Votes Does Brazilian Opposition Candidate Aécio Neves Get from Media Bias?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/how-many-extra-votes-does-brazilian-opposition-candidate-aecio-neves-get-from-media-bias
Interview with Evo Morales on Bolivia's Socio-Economic Transformation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5094-interview-with-evo-morales-on-bolivias-socio-economic-transformation
Bolivia: protests continue against mining law
http://ww4report.com/node/13621#comment-452524
Peru: 'dirty war' remains returned to families
http://ww4report.com/node/13569#comment-452522
Colombia and Peru to 'cleanse' Putumayo
http://ww4report.com/node/13646
Colombia: mass graves exhumed in Cauca
http://ww4report.com/node/13666
Colombia: peasants detain soldiers after arrests
http://ww4report.com/node/13665
Venezuela at the UN, Washington At Bay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5097-venezuela-at-the-un-washington-at-bay
Venezuelan Government Unveils 2015 Budget, Anticipates Drop in Oil Prices
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10978
Venezuela urged to release opposition leader
http://ww4report.com/node/13647
No End in Sight for Costa Rica Port Workers’ Strike
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/No-End-in-Sight-for-Costa-Rica-Port-Workers-Strike-20141025-0035.html
Disappeared Youth Spark Protests in Mexico’s Worst Political Crisis in Decades
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13289
We want them alive — the search for Mexico’s 43 missing students
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/alive-want-search-mexicos-43-missing-students/
Trial for Sexual Slavery During Armed Conflict Opens in Guatemala
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13315
Mexican Youth Remember 1968 Massacre and Mourn Their Own Dead
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13171
Report from Guerrero: The Real Criminals
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13231
Race, Class, and Cannabis in the Caribbean
https://nacla.org/blog/2014/10/23/race-class-and-cannabis-caribbean
Haiti Cholera Victims Get First Hearing in Court
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haiti-cholera-victims-get-first-hearing-in-court
"They are Telling the Story of the Border, But Nobody is Telling it Right" (US/immigration)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/10/23/they-are-telling-story-border-nobody-telling-it-right
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Costa Rica: New Strike Closes Major Port
2. Mexico: Guerrero Governor Goes, Crisis Remains
3. Mexico: Privatization Scandals Multiply
4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America/US, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rice, Mexico, the Caribbean, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Costa Rica: New Strike Closes Major Port
A longstanding dispute over the privatization of the port at Limón on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast led unionized dockworkers at the port’s Limón and Moín terminals to walk off the job on Oct. 22 for the second time in two years [see Update #1134]. The open-ended strike left three ships stranded at the two terminals, which handle some 80% of Costa Rica's foreign trade. Facing his first major labor crisis since he took office on May 8, President Luis Guillermo Solís, of the center-left Citizen Action Party (PAC), responded quickly. He sent some 150 police officers to take control of the terminals late on Oct. 22; 68 people were arrested in the operation. The port was reopened the next morning, with foreign contract workers under police guard. Union officials denied that the port was operating normally, and as of Oct. 25 negotiations hadn’t started between the union and the government.
Efforts to privatize the Limón port, which is managed by the Board of Port Administration and Economic Development of the Atlantic Shelf (JAPDEVA), began in 2006 under former president Oscar Arias (1986-1990, 2006-2010), and quickly met with opposition from the JAPDEVA Workers Union (SINTRAJAP), backed by the Frente Amplio (“Broad Front”), a leftist political party. In 2012 the government of former president Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014) granted a 30-year concession to a Netherlands-based container management multinational, APM Terminals, a subsidiary of the giant Danish shipping multinational A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, which also does business in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua [see Update #772]. A court challenge to the APM Terminals contract was rejected by the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) in October of this year, precipitating the current strike. However, the CSJ probably won’t be able to give final approval to the contract until March 2015, since the National Environmental Technical Secretariat (Setena) hasn’t completed its assessment of the project. Legal advisers close to the Setena say there were irregularities in the documents presented by APM Terminals, including corrections by hand and several pages in English.
The situation in Limón was still tense as of Oct. 25, as helicopters and small planes patrolled the skies over the city. Eight people were arrested the morning of Oct. 24 after two shipping containers were set on fire and a police agent was wounded in the foot. SINTRAJAP general secretary Ronaldo Blear said the union wasn’t behind the vandalism but claimed that it showed “part of the dissatisfaction” of Limón’s population. “What it says to us is that Limón’s people hold JAPDEVA in their hearts, and so they’re defending what the government is trying to take from us.” According to Blear, the union’s “struggle is against a contract that imposes unjust rates for the people, an illegal monopoly that impedes free participation and represents the death of JAPDEVA, and against immense damage to the environment which could turn out to be irreversible if we don’t stop it. This isn’t over wages or privileges.” (Tico Times (Costa Rica) 10/23/14; Reuters 10/23/14; Prensa Latina 10/25/14; La Nación (Costa Rica) 10/25/14)
*2. Mexico: Guerrero Governor Goes, Crisis Remains
Protests against Mexican local governments and federal president Enrique Peña Nieto showed no signs of letting up the week of Oct. 20, nearly one month after the Sept. 26-27 killing of six people and the abduction of 43 teachers’ college students in Iguala in the southwestern state of Guerrero [see Update #1238]. Students held a two-day national strike on Oct. 22-23 to demand the return of the missing students, who were all from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa. Tens of thousands of students and teachers marched in a total of 18 Mexican states on the first day of the strike. The protest in Mexico City was reportedly one of the capital’s largest demonstrations in recent years. The Federal District (DF, Mexico City) police estimated the crowd at 50,000, while the Los Angeles Times reported that at one point the march stretched along the broad Paseo de la Reforma from the Angel of Independence to the central Zócalo, a distance of more than 4 kilometers.
The protesters’ disgust with Mexico’s political class and the three major political parties was obvious. “PRI, PAN, PRD=narco-government” was a popular slogan on Oct. 22, in reference to President Peña Nieto’s centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the center-right National Action Party (PAN) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The marchers targeted the federal government for its tolerance of political corruption and organized crime under Peña and under his two predecessors, Vicente Fox Quesada (2000-2006) and Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012), both from the PAN. “Peña out!” was a popular slogan at the demonstrations. But the greatest anger may be at the PRD, the party of Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre Rivero, Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife, María de los Angeles Pineda Villa. Now in hiding, Abarca and Pineda are thought to have ordered the attack on the students by municipal police and members of the Guerreros Unidos gang, while Aguirre’s government seemed to do nothing to stop the killings of leftist activists over the past several years, including the police shooting of two Ayotzinapa students in December 2011 [see Update #1237].
On Oct. 21 some 500 teachers in the militant State Organizing Committee of Education Workers in Guerrero (CETEG) left a sit-in the group had been holding since Oct. 8 in the main plaza of Chilpancingo, the state capital, to march on the PRD’s Guerrero headquarters and demand Aguirre’s resignation. They overturned a vehicle outside the building and then invaded the office, setting fire to computers, furniture and files. Two days later, on Oct. 23, the governor finally resigned. The PRD national leadership had been resisting efforts to remove Aguirre, but apparently they changed course on Oct. 22. PRD president Carlos Navarrete reportedly presented the governor with a dossier the federal government had prepared on him. “Angel, it could turn out to be more costly for you,” Navarrete said, according to several PRD politicians. Aguirre responded by offering to resign; he asked the PRD to negotiate immunity for him and for state finance secretary Jorge Salgado.
Observers said the governor’s resignation wasn’t likely to end the crisis. As for the PRD, party officials estimated off the record that the group’s voter approval rating had fallen by 3-4% as a result of the events in Guerrero. The PRD only governs three of Mexico’s 31 states, although it has headed the government in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) since 1997. (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/22/14, 10/23/14, 10/23/14, 10/24/14, 10/25/14; Los Angeles Times 10/25/14 from correspondent)
The North American solidarity organization Rights Action is handling donations for the Ayotzinapa students’ financial committee to help parents and teachers carry on their work for the missing students. More information is available at http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Emergency-Fund-Raising-Appeal-For-Disappeared-Mexican-Students.html?soid=1103480765269&aid=bBeeoLvMRX0.
On Oct. 21, in the midst of the Guerrero crisis, the federal government’s semi-autonomous National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) released its Recommendation 51/2014 concerning the killing of 22 suspected gang members by the military on June 30 in Tlatlaya municipality, México state [see Update #1234]. The soldiers and the state attorney general’s office claimed that the suspects died in a shootout. After investigating the case the CNDH concluded that 15 of the victims were executed by seven soldiers, who beat four of the victims before killing them. The bodies were then rearranged to support the story of a shootout, and state authorities imprisoned, threatened and otherwise mistreated two of the three surviving witnesses in effort to get them to back the cover-up; the two witness are still incarcerated at the Tepic, Nayarit federal women’s prison. The military, state prosecutors and the federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) all came in for criticism in the CNDH’s recommendation. (Excélsior (Mexico) 10/22/14; Jurist 10/22/14)
*3. Mexico: Privatization Scandals Multiply
The Sept. 26-27 killing and abduction of several dozen students in the southwestern state of Guerrero could be creating problems for Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto’s efforts to improve the country’s international image and to continue the opening of its economy to private businesses [see Update #1203]. Los Angeles Times correspondent Tracy Wilkinson reported on Oct. 25 that Peña’s “government is clearly concerned it is losing a finely crafted domestic and international public relations campaign that emphasized major reforms of Mexico's energy sector. Publications in the US and Europe that once lavished praise on the president have turned the tables.” (LA Times 10/25/14)
But Peña’s “energy reform” program has problems of its own. On Oct. 20 Mexican entrepreneur Amado Yáñez Osuna was arrested in Acapulco and charged with money laundering and failure to pay social security taxes. Due to the nature of the charges he is being held without bail. Yáñez Osuna is the sole director of Oceanografía SA de CV, one of the private companies that contract to provide services to Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the giant state-owned oil monopoly, in an arrangement that critics consider a disguised form of privatization. Yáñez has been under house arrest since March, following allegations of massive fraud by the company. (La Jornada (Mexico) 10/21/14, 10/23/14) At the end of February the US banking corporation Citigroup Inc. announced that its Mexican subsidiary, Banco Nacional de México (Banamex), had lent Oceanografía some $400 million based on falsified invoices that Oceanografía claimed it had issued to PEMEX [see Update #1212]. Banamex is Mexico’s second-largest bank; it was privatized under former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) and was bought by Citigroup in 2001.
The Oceanografía case was the first of two major bribery scandals for PEMEX this year; in April the US government fined the California-based technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP) for bribing PEMEX officials to sell the oil enterprise hardware, software and licenses worth some $6 million [see Update #1216].
Another of Oceanografía’s creditors is the Monterrey-based Grupo Financiero Banorte (GFNorte), which lent the company 512 million pesos (about US$38 million). The bank’s officials insist that in this case the loans were properly documented. Privatized in 1992, Banorte is the largest Mexican bank not owned by a foreign corporation. During the week of Oct. 20 rumors circulated that Mexican banker Carlos Hank González would soon head Banorte. (LJ 10/24/14) Currently the director general of Grupo Financiero Interacciones, Hank González is the grandson of a former Mexico City mayor of the same name, a notoriously corrupt politician who died in 2001. The younger Hank González’s uncle is the equally notorious Tijuana racetrack owner Jorge Hank Rhon, and his father is billionaire banker Carlos Hank Rhon. A report by the US National Drug Intelligence Center in the late 1990s claimed that Jorge Hank Rhon, Carlos Hank Rhon and the elder Carlos Hank González were so involved in drug trafficking and money laundering that they “pose a significant criminal threat to the United States” [see Update #1082].
Meanwhile, Mexico’s Supreme Court agreed on Oct. 17 to consider a request from the center-left National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) for a national referendum on the energy reform program. Electoral officials have certified that MORENA’s petition has the two million valid signatures required for a referendum. The court has 20 days to decide whether to allow Mexicans to vote on the question: “Do you agree or do you not agree that contracts or concessions should be granted to national or foreign private entities for the exploration of oil, gas, refining, and the petrochemical and electrical industries?” (TeleSUR 10/20/14; LJ 10/21/14)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America/US, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Mexico, the Caribbean, Haiti, US/immigration
Latin America Provides Alternative Paths to Successful Poverty Reduction
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Latin-America-Provides-Alternative-Paths-to-Successful-Poverty-Reduction-20141017-0018.html
Latin American progressives and environmental duplicity
https://opendemocracy.net/daniel-macmillen/latin-american-progressives-and-environmental-duplicity
Argentina sentences 15 to life over La Cacha prison
http://ww4report.com/node/12929#comment-452521
Chile's Untapped Clean Energy Potential
https://nacla.org/blog/2014/10/22/chile-untapped-clean-energy-potential
Uruguay’s Decision Could Come Too Late for Gitmo Detainees
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5096-uruguays-decision-could-come-too-late-for-gitmo-detainees
Brazil’s Rousseff Re-elected Despite Anti-Workers’ Party Sentiment: What Now?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5101-brazils-rousseff-re-elected-despite-anti-workers-party-sentiment-what-now
Economic Issues Could be Decisive in Brazilian Presidential Election
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5100-economic-issues-could-be-decisive-in-brazilian-presidential-election
“Dilma’s loss would be a loss for the world’s working class”: An Interview with Luis Gonzaga “Gegê” da Silva
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/dilmas-loss-would-be-a-loss-for-the-worlds-working-class-an-interview-with-luis-gonzaga-gege-da-silva
How Many Extra Votes Does Brazilian Opposition Candidate Aécio Neves Get from Media Bias?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/how-many-extra-votes-does-brazilian-opposition-candidate-aecio-neves-get-from-media-bias
Interview with Evo Morales on Bolivia's Socio-Economic Transformation
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5094-interview-with-evo-morales-on-bolivias-socio-economic-transformation
Bolivia: protests continue against mining law
http://ww4report.com/node/13621#comment-452524
Peru: 'dirty war' remains returned to families
http://ww4report.com/node/13569#comment-452522
Colombia and Peru to 'cleanse' Putumayo
http://ww4report.com/node/13646
Colombia: mass graves exhumed in Cauca
http://ww4report.com/node/13666
Colombia: peasants detain soldiers after arrests
http://ww4report.com/node/13665
Venezuela at the UN, Washington At Bay
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5097-venezuela-at-the-un-washington-at-bay
Venezuelan Government Unveils 2015 Budget, Anticipates Drop in Oil Prices
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10978
Venezuela urged to release opposition leader
http://ww4report.com/node/13647
No End in Sight for Costa Rica Port Workers’ Strike
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/No-End-in-Sight-for-Costa-Rica-Port-Workers-Strike-20141025-0035.html
Disappeared Youth Spark Protests in Mexico’s Worst Political Crisis in Decades
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13289
We want them alive — the search for Mexico’s 43 missing students
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/alive-want-search-mexicos-43-missing-students/
Trial for Sexual Slavery During Armed Conflict Opens in Guatemala
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13315
Mexican Youth Remember 1968 Massacre and Mourn Their Own Dead
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13171
Report from Guerrero: The Real Criminals
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13231
Race, Class, and Cannabis in the Caribbean
https://nacla.org/blog/2014/10/23/race-class-and-cannabis-caribbean
Haiti Cholera Victims Get First Hearing in Court
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/haiti-cholera-victims-get-first-hearing-in-court
"They are Telling the Story of the Border, But Nobody is Telling it Right" (US/immigration)
https://nacla.org/news/2014/10/23/they-are-telling-story-border-nobody-telling-it-right
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
WNU #1187: Mexican Environmental Activist Murdered
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1187, August 4, 2013
1. Mexico: Veracruz Environmental Activist Murdered
2. Costa Rica: Eight Arrested in Turtle Defender’s Killing
3. Honduras: Attacks on Human Rights Activists Increase
4. Colombia: US Court Throws Out Suit Against Drummond
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, US/policy, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Veracruz Environmental Activist Murdered
Mexican environmental activist Noé Salomón Vázquez Ortiz was murdered the early afternoon of Aug. 2 in his hometown, Amatlán de los Reyes, in the eastern coastal state of Veracruz. The killing came one day before the town was to host the Tenth National Meeting of the Mexican Movement Against Dams and in Defense of Rivers (MAPDER). Vázquez Ortíz and a minor were gathering flowers and seeds for a floral tribute to be used at the conference when a group of men appeared, ordered the minor to leave and began stoning Vázquez Ortíz. His body was found later with the hands and legs bound and the throat slit. State police arrested four men the day of the murder; they reportedly said they had personal differences with the murdered man.
Vázquez Ortíz, a construction worker who also painted pictures and created handicrafts, started doing environmental work while in high school. During the last two years he was active with the organization Green Defense: Nature Forever and fought against construction of a local dam by Hidroeléctrica El Naranjal SAPI de CV, a company owned by Guillermo González Guajardo. Vázquez Ortíz also worked in opposition to another hydroelectric project, the Bandera Blanca Project.
“This wasn’t a common crime, or about a quarrel,” Rosalinda Hidalgo, an activist in The Veracruz Assembly of Environmental Defense Initiatives (Lavida), said at Vázquez Ortíz’s funeral on Aug. 3. “The killing follows a series of threats against other Green Defense: Nature Forever members; we’ve documented at least 10 in the area.” She added that the four men arrested had been watching Vázquez Ortiz’s home, had visited his family’s store and were seen right before an informational meeting by the group. Lavida and MAPDER spokespeople said the conference would go ahead as scheduled. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/3/13, 8/4/13)
*2. Costa Rica: Eight Arrested in Turtle Defender’s Killing
In six raids in the early morning of July 31, agents from Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) arrested six men and two women in the eastern province of Limón in connection with the murder of environmental worker Jairo Mora Sandoval the night of May 30-31. The authorities were planning to charge the men—four Costa Ricans and two Nicaraguans—with participating in the murder; the women, the wives of two of the men, reportedly would be charged with the possession of stolen property and with stealing eggs of the leatherback turtle, an endangered species. The raids came amid growing pressure for action in the two-month-old case, including a protest in San José and statements by a United Nations human rights official, John Knox, and a US Congress member, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA).
Mora worked for the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST) trying to keep poachers from stealing eggs from the turtles’ nests. A group of men seized Mora and four volunteers—three from the US and one from Spain—as they were patrolling the beach. The volunteers managed to escape and call the police, but Mora was killed. OIJ officials theorized that the men were a gang of common criminals that had kidnapped a tourist couple on May 18, raping the woman and beating the man. But the authorities also suggested that WIDECAST had brought the attack on itself by attempting to buy off the poachers, who became angry when the organization ran out of money to pay them.
Vanessa Lizano, a longtime friend of Mora’s who patrolled the beach with him, and Didiher Chacón, WIDECAST’s Costa Rica director, both disputed the official theories. “Poaching in Limón is a big organization,” Lizano told the English-language online newspaper Tico Times. “I think [the murder] does have to do with poaching, and it wasn’t just a criminal gang.” According Lizano, she and Mora had employed 10 former poachers in 2012 to help with the patrols but couldn’t afford to continue the program. She denied that they were trying to buy the poachers off. “This was our way of giving these guys a second chance. Police told us they think the particular poachers that we hired in 2012 are not involved with this group.” Lizano noted the connection between poaching and the level of poverty in the area: “These poachers are living in huts, they have no electricity, they have no water.” (Tico Times 7/31/13; New York Times Dot Earth blog 8/2/13)
*3. Honduras: Attacks on Human Rights Activists Increase
Some 10 armed men identified as security guards from a mining project threatened and detained two foreign volunteers for the Honduras Accompaniment Project (PROAH) for more than two hours on July 25 in the Nueva Esperanza community in the northern Honduran department of Atlántida. Area communities have faced threats and harassment for at least a year while organizing in opposition to open-pit mining by Minerales Victoria, part of the Alutech metal company owned by Lenir Pérez [see Update #1182]. The two international volunteers, one French and one Swiss, went to Nueva Esperanza hoping that their presence would deter further aggression by the mining company. Less than 24 hours later security guards and a group of mineworkers threatened them and forced them to leave the community.
The Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish) has issued precautionary measures for two community leaders in the area, César Alvarenga and Roberto García, members of the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice (MADJ), because of death threats texted by Lenir Pérez in August 2012. Catholic priest César Espinoza and a group of nuns received threats in January, and armed men assaulted and threatened community residents in June. “The terror we lived for two hours is the tragic everyday life in this town,” Orlane Vidal, one of the detained volunteers, told the Lista Informativa Nicaragua y Más (LINyM) blog in an interview. On July 26 some 250 people marched to Nueva Esperanza in support of the community’s peaceful opposition to the mine and of the work of international human rights observers. (LINyM 7/27/13, English translation at Upside Down World 7/31/13; Friendship Office of the Americas urgent action 7/29/13)
On July 29 the London-based rights organization Amnesty International (AI) issued a statement “condemn[ing] the recent killings of people defending justice, equality and human rights” in Honduras. The organization noted that at least three were killed in less than two weeks in July.
The first was Tomás García Domínguez, a leader of the indigenous Lenca who was killed by the military on July 15 in Intibucá department in western Honduras during a demonstration at the headquarters for the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project [see Update #1185]. On July 21 Herwin Alexis Ramírez Chamorro, an Afro-Honduran transsexual also known as “Africa Noxema Howell,” was found dead in La Ceiba, Atlántida department; he was active in the Ceiba Pro-Union Organization (OPROUCE), which works for HIV prevention and LGBT rights, and the Ethnic Community Development Organization (ODECO), which works for the development of Afro-Honduran communities. On July 24 armed men on a motorbike shot and killed Judge Mireya Efigenía Mendoza Peña in El Progreso, in the northern department of Yoro. Mendoza was a judge in the El Progreso Trial Court and also a member of the Association of Judges for Democracy (AJD), a nongovernmental organization working to strengthen the Honduran justice system. AI said it “call[ed] on the Honduran authorities to conduct a prompt, impartial and effective investigation” into each of the killings. (AI 7/29/13; Adital (Brazil) 7/30/13)
On July 27 the authorities arrested a man named Bairon Martínez for Judge Mendoza’s murder, citing evidence from a surveillance camera that they said captured the incident. Mendoza’s killing brought to 64 the number of attorneys and judges murdered since President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa took office in January 2010, according to the government’s own Human Rights Commission (CONADEH). (EFE 7/27/13 via Latin American Herald Tribune)
In related news, on Aug. 1 a criminal court in Tegucigalpa sentenced each of four former police agents to at least 43 years in prison for the Oct. 22, 2011 murder of two university students, Alejandro Rafael Vargas Castellanos and Carlos David Pineda Rodríguez; Vargas Castellanos’ mother, Julieta Castellanos, is the rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH). The crime exposed the level of corruption and other criminal activity in the Honduran police force; after the four agents were first detained in October 2011, the Tegucigalpa police chief released them, allowing them to escape temporarily [see Updates #1104, 1107]. (AP 8/1/13 via New York Times; El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 8/2/13)
*4. Colombia: US Court Throws Out Suit Against Drummond
On July 25 US District Judge David Proctor in Birmingham, Alabama, dismissed a 2009 lawsuit seeking to hold the Alabama-based Drummond Co. Inc. coal company liable for killings by rightwing paramilitaries near a Drummond mine in Colombia. The suit, Balcero Giraldo v. Drummond Co., charged that the company had been paying the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which the US listed as a terrorist organization in 2001, to protect a rail line used to ship Drummond coal. Judge Proctor based his decision on the US Supreme Court’s Apr. 17 decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which sharply restricted the use of the 1789 Alien Tort Statute for foreign nationals to sue for human rights violations that took place outside the US [see Update #1173]. Proctor ruled that under the Kiobel decision the plaintiffs would need to present sufficient evidence that the alleged crimes were planned in the US; the judge said they had failed to do so.
This was labor rights attorney Terry Collingsworth’s third failure in an effort to have US federal courts act on evidence that Drummond was responsible for the murders of Colombians, including unionists working for the company in Colombia. In January a Colombian court found former Drummond contractor Jaime Blanco guilty in the 2001 murders of two union members; Blanco has charged that Drummond senior managers ordered the murders, and the judge that convicted Blanco asked Colombian authorities to investigate Drummond’s role [see Update #1163]. (Birmingham Business Journal 7/31/13; Bloomberg News 8/1/13)
As of Aug. 2 Drummond was still confronted with an open-ended strike that miners in the company’s Colombian mines started on July 23 over wage issues [see World War 4 Report 7/24/13]. Labor Ministry officials were trying to organize direct talks between the two sides in Santa Marta in the Caribbean department of Magdalena; the company’s Pribbenow and La Loma mines are located in the nearby department of Cesar. A union negotiator, Humberto Suárez, told Bloomberg News that a deal might be made “in the next few days.” (Business Week 8/2/13 from Bloomberg) Meanwhile, a group of former Drummond employees with health problems occupied the cathedral in Santa Marta on Aug. 2 and began a hunger strike to protest the lack of attention by the company and the government to their situation. (El Tiempo (Bogotá) 8/2/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, US/policy, US/immigration
Argentina: Millions Against Monsanto
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4403-argentina-millions-against-monsanto
Battle Over Seeds Heats Up in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4402-battle-over-seeds-heats-up-in-argentina
UN expert urges Chile to stop using anti-terror law
http://ww4report.com/node/12503
Benjamin Kohl, Temple professor, expert on Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4405-benjamin-kohl-temple-professor-expert-on-bolivia
Bolivian education vice-minister charges 'racism'
http://ww4report.com/node/11967#comment-451544
Peru: Culture Ministry halts Camisea expansion
http://ww4report.com/node/12500
Mine-affected campesinos have elevated levels of metal in blood (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/11326#comment-451546
Victory for campesina in Cajamarca land dispute case (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/12466#comment-451545
Peru: pro-coca lawmaker ordered imprisoned
http://ww4report.com/node/12492
Peru: police 'death squad' leader absolved
http://ww4report.com/node/12504
'We have made mistakes, some serious': FARC (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/12495
Colombian town expels mining company
http://ww4report.com/node/12496
Maduro’s First 100 Days in Office Marked by Street Government, Latin American Integration, Economic Debate (Venezuela)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4398-maduros-first-100-days-in-office-marked-by-street-government-latin-american-integration-economic-debate
Extraction-ism, Movements, and Revolution (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/9899
Venezuela gets a 'birther' conspiracy theory
http://ww4report.com/node/12499
This American Life Whitewashes U.S. Crimes in Central America, Wins Peabody Award
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/7/29/this-american-life-whitewashes-us-crimes-central-america-wins-peabody-award
Nicaragua: indigenous groups challenge canal plan
http://ww4report.com/node/12505
Amid Repression, Honduran Congress Fast Tracks Resource Development
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/amid-repression-honduran-congress-fast-tracks-resource-development
Mining Company's Security Threatens International Human Rights Observers, Terrorizes Communities in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4400-mining-companys-security-threatens-international-human-rights-observers-terrorizes-communities-in-honduras
Mexico’s Guilt by Omission
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10154
Denver-based Mining Company Retreats from Oaxaca (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10168
The Mothers’ Long Road to Justice (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-mothers-long-road-to-justice/
Haitian Grassroots Groups Wary of “Attractive” Mining Law
http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2013/8/1/haitian-grassroots-groups-wary-of-attractive-mining-law.html
Controversy Follows Death of Prominent Haitian Judge
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/8/2/controversy-follows-death-prominent-haitian-judge
USAID Takes Step Toward Increased Transparency but Limits Remain (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/
Wealthy Nations Thwart Hopes of World's Landless Peoples (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4397-wealthy-nations-thwart-hopes-of-worlds-landless-peoples
Analysis from National Endowment for Democracy Used in The Atlantic, with Significant Errors and Omissions (US/policy)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/analysis-from-national-endowment-for-democracy-used-in-the-atlantic-with-significant-errors-and-omissions
What Bradley Manning Taught Us about US Policy in the Americas (US/policy)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/what-bradley-manning-taught-us-about-us-policy-in-the-americas
Immigrants: Much More Than an Abstract Number (Part II) (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/7/30/immigrants-much-more-abstract-number-part-ii
Immigrant Advocates Score Major Legal Wins (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/immigrant-advocates-score-major-legal-wins/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Issue #1187, August 4, 2013
1. Mexico: Veracruz Environmental Activist Murdered
2. Costa Rica: Eight Arrested in Turtle Defender’s Killing
3. Honduras: Attacks on Human Rights Activists Increase
4. Colombia: US Court Throws Out Suit Against Drummond
5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, US/policy, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Veracruz Environmental Activist Murdered
Mexican environmental activist Noé Salomón Vázquez Ortiz was murdered the early afternoon of Aug. 2 in his hometown, Amatlán de los Reyes, in the eastern coastal state of Veracruz. The killing came one day before the town was to host the Tenth National Meeting of the Mexican Movement Against Dams and in Defense of Rivers (MAPDER). Vázquez Ortíz and a minor were gathering flowers and seeds for a floral tribute to be used at the conference when a group of men appeared, ordered the minor to leave and began stoning Vázquez Ortíz. His body was found later with the hands and legs bound and the throat slit. State police arrested four men the day of the murder; they reportedly said they had personal differences with the murdered man.
Vázquez Ortíz, a construction worker who also painted pictures and created handicrafts, started doing environmental work while in high school. During the last two years he was active with the organization Green Defense: Nature Forever and fought against construction of a local dam by Hidroeléctrica El Naranjal SAPI de CV, a company owned by Guillermo González Guajardo. Vázquez Ortíz also worked in opposition to another hydroelectric project, the Bandera Blanca Project.
“This wasn’t a common crime, or about a quarrel,” Rosalinda Hidalgo, an activist in The Veracruz Assembly of Environmental Defense Initiatives (Lavida), said at Vázquez Ortíz’s funeral on Aug. 3. “The killing follows a series of threats against other Green Defense: Nature Forever members; we’ve documented at least 10 in the area.” She added that the four men arrested had been watching Vázquez Ortiz’s home, had visited his family’s store and were seen right before an informational meeting by the group. Lavida and MAPDER spokespeople said the conference would go ahead as scheduled. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/3/13, 8/4/13)
*2. Costa Rica: Eight Arrested in Turtle Defender’s Killing
In six raids in the early morning of July 31, agents from Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) arrested six men and two women in the eastern province of Limón in connection with the murder of environmental worker Jairo Mora Sandoval the night of May 30-31. The authorities were planning to charge the men—four Costa Ricans and two Nicaraguans—with participating in the murder; the women, the wives of two of the men, reportedly would be charged with the possession of stolen property and with stealing eggs of the leatherback turtle, an endangered species. The raids came amid growing pressure for action in the two-month-old case, including a protest in San José and statements by a United Nations human rights official, John Knox, and a US Congress member, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA).
Mora worked for the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST) trying to keep poachers from stealing eggs from the turtles’ nests. A group of men seized Mora and four volunteers—three from the US and one from Spain—as they were patrolling the beach. The volunteers managed to escape and call the police, but Mora was killed. OIJ officials theorized that the men were a gang of common criminals that had kidnapped a tourist couple on May 18, raping the woman and beating the man. But the authorities also suggested that WIDECAST had brought the attack on itself by attempting to buy off the poachers, who became angry when the organization ran out of money to pay them.
Vanessa Lizano, a longtime friend of Mora’s who patrolled the beach with him, and Didiher Chacón, WIDECAST’s Costa Rica director, both disputed the official theories. “Poaching in Limón is a big organization,” Lizano told the English-language online newspaper Tico Times. “I think [the murder] does have to do with poaching, and it wasn’t just a criminal gang.” According Lizano, she and Mora had employed 10 former poachers in 2012 to help with the patrols but couldn’t afford to continue the program. She denied that they were trying to buy the poachers off. “This was our way of giving these guys a second chance. Police told us they think the particular poachers that we hired in 2012 are not involved with this group.” Lizano noted the connection between poaching and the level of poverty in the area: “These poachers are living in huts, they have no electricity, they have no water.” (Tico Times 7/31/13; New York Times Dot Earth blog 8/2/13)
*3. Honduras: Attacks on Human Rights Activists Increase
Some 10 armed men identified as security guards from a mining project threatened and detained two foreign volunteers for the Honduras Accompaniment Project (PROAH) for more than two hours on July 25 in the Nueva Esperanza community in the northern Honduran department of Atlántida. Area communities have faced threats and harassment for at least a year while organizing in opposition to open-pit mining by Minerales Victoria, part of the Alutech metal company owned by Lenir Pérez [see Update #1182]. The two international volunteers, one French and one Swiss, went to Nueva Esperanza hoping that their presence would deter further aggression by the mining company. Less than 24 hours later security guards and a group of mineworkers threatened them and forced them to leave the community.
The Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish) has issued precautionary measures for two community leaders in the area, César Alvarenga and Roberto García, members of the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice (MADJ), because of death threats texted by Lenir Pérez in August 2012. Catholic priest César Espinoza and a group of nuns received threats in January, and armed men assaulted and threatened community residents in June. “The terror we lived for two hours is the tragic everyday life in this town,” Orlane Vidal, one of the detained volunteers, told the Lista Informativa Nicaragua y Más (LINyM) blog in an interview. On July 26 some 250 people marched to Nueva Esperanza in support of the community’s peaceful opposition to the mine and of the work of international human rights observers. (LINyM 7/27/13, English translation at Upside Down World 7/31/13; Friendship Office of the Americas urgent action 7/29/13)
On July 29 the London-based rights organization Amnesty International (AI) issued a statement “condemn[ing] the recent killings of people defending justice, equality and human rights” in Honduras. The organization noted that at least three were killed in less than two weeks in July.
The first was Tomás García Domínguez, a leader of the indigenous Lenca who was killed by the military on July 15 in Intibucá department in western Honduras during a demonstration at the headquarters for the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project [see Update #1185]. On July 21 Herwin Alexis Ramírez Chamorro, an Afro-Honduran transsexual also known as “Africa Noxema Howell,” was found dead in La Ceiba, Atlántida department; he was active in the Ceiba Pro-Union Organization (OPROUCE), which works for HIV prevention and LGBT rights, and the Ethnic Community Development Organization (ODECO), which works for the development of Afro-Honduran communities. On July 24 armed men on a motorbike shot and killed Judge Mireya Efigenía Mendoza Peña in El Progreso, in the northern department of Yoro. Mendoza was a judge in the El Progreso Trial Court and also a member of the Association of Judges for Democracy (AJD), a nongovernmental organization working to strengthen the Honduran justice system. AI said it “call[ed] on the Honduran authorities to conduct a prompt, impartial and effective investigation” into each of the killings. (AI 7/29/13; Adital (Brazil) 7/30/13)
On July 27 the authorities arrested a man named Bairon Martínez for Judge Mendoza’s murder, citing evidence from a surveillance camera that they said captured the incident. Mendoza’s killing brought to 64 the number of attorneys and judges murdered since President Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa took office in January 2010, according to the government’s own Human Rights Commission (CONADEH). (EFE 7/27/13 via Latin American Herald Tribune)
In related news, on Aug. 1 a criminal court in Tegucigalpa sentenced each of four former police agents to at least 43 years in prison for the Oct. 22, 2011 murder of two university students, Alejandro Rafael Vargas Castellanos and Carlos David Pineda Rodríguez; Vargas Castellanos’ mother, Julieta Castellanos, is the rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH). The crime exposed the level of corruption and other criminal activity in the Honduran police force; after the four agents were first detained in October 2011, the Tegucigalpa police chief released them, allowing them to escape temporarily [see Updates #1104, 1107]. (AP 8/1/13 via New York Times; El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 8/2/13)
*4. Colombia: US Court Throws Out Suit Against Drummond
On July 25 US District Judge David Proctor in Birmingham, Alabama, dismissed a 2009 lawsuit seeking to hold the Alabama-based Drummond Co. Inc. coal company liable for killings by rightwing paramilitaries near a Drummond mine in Colombia. The suit, Balcero Giraldo v. Drummond Co., charged that the company had been paying the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which the US listed as a terrorist organization in 2001, to protect a rail line used to ship Drummond coal. Judge Proctor based his decision on the US Supreme Court’s Apr. 17 decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which sharply restricted the use of the 1789 Alien Tort Statute for foreign nationals to sue for human rights violations that took place outside the US [see Update #1173]. Proctor ruled that under the Kiobel decision the plaintiffs would need to present sufficient evidence that the alleged crimes were planned in the US; the judge said they had failed to do so.
This was labor rights attorney Terry Collingsworth’s third failure in an effort to have US federal courts act on evidence that Drummond was responsible for the murders of Colombians, including unionists working for the company in Colombia. In January a Colombian court found former Drummond contractor Jaime Blanco guilty in the 2001 murders of two union members; Blanco has charged that Drummond senior managers ordered the murders, and the judge that convicted Blanco asked Colombian authorities to investigate Drummond’s role [see Update #1163]. (Birmingham Business Journal 7/31/13; Bloomberg News 8/1/13)
As of Aug. 2 Drummond was still confronted with an open-ended strike that miners in the company’s Colombian mines started on July 23 over wage issues [see World War 4 Report 7/24/13]. Labor Ministry officials were trying to organize direct talks between the two sides in Santa Marta in the Caribbean department of Magdalena; the company’s Pribbenow and La Loma mines are located in the nearby department of Cesar. A union negotiator, Humberto Suárez, told Bloomberg News that a deal might be made “in the next few days.” (Business Week 8/2/13 from Bloomberg) Meanwhile, a group of former Drummond employees with health problems occupied the cathedral in Santa Marta on Aug. 2 and began a hunger strike to protest the lack of attention by the company and the government to their situation. (El Tiempo (Bogotá) 8/2/13)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, US/policy, US/immigration
Argentina: Millions Against Monsanto
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4403-argentina-millions-against-monsanto
Battle Over Seeds Heats Up in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4402-battle-over-seeds-heats-up-in-argentina
UN expert urges Chile to stop using anti-terror law
http://ww4report.com/node/12503
Benjamin Kohl, Temple professor, expert on Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4405-benjamin-kohl-temple-professor-expert-on-bolivia
Bolivian education vice-minister charges 'racism'
http://ww4report.com/node/11967#comment-451544
Peru: Culture Ministry halts Camisea expansion
http://ww4report.com/node/12500
Mine-affected campesinos have elevated levels of metal in blood (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/11326#comment-451546
Victory for campesina in Cajamarca land dispute case (Peru)
http://ww4report.com/node/12466#comment-451545
Peru: pro-coca lawmaker ordered imprisoned
http://ww4report.com/node/12492
Peru: police 'death squad' leader absolved
http://ww4report.com/node/12504
'We have made mistakes, some serious': FARC (Colombia)
http://ww4report.com/node/12495
Colombian town expels mining company
http://ww4report.com/node/12496
Maduro’s First 100 Days in Office Marked by Street Government, Latin American Integration, Economic Debate (Venezuela)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4398-maduros-first-100-days-in-office-marked-by-street-government-latin-american-integration-economic-debate
Extraction-ism, Movements, and Revolution (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/9899
Venezuela gets a 'birther' conspiracy theory
http://ww4report.com/node/12499
This American Life Whitewashes U.S. Crimes in Central America, Wins Peabody Award
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/7/29/this-american-life-whitewashes-us-crimes-central-america-wins-peabody-award
Nicaragua: indigenous groups challenge canal plan
http://ww4report.com/node/12505
Amid Repression, Honduran Congress Fast Tracks Resource Development
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/amid-repression-honduran-congress-fast-tracks-resource-development
Mining Company's Security Threatens International Human Rights Observers, Terrorizes Communities in Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4400-mining-companys-security-threatens-international-human-rights-observers-terrorizes-communities-in-honduras
Mexico’s Guilt by Omission
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10154
Denver-based Mining Company Retreats from Oaxaca (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/10168
The Mothers’ Long Road to Justice (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-mothers-long-road-to-justice/
Haitian Grassroots Groups Wary of “Attractive” Mining Law
http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2013/8/1/haitian-grassroots-groups-wary-of-attractive-mining-law.html
Controversy Follows Death of Prominent Haitian Judge
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/8/2/controversy-follows-death-prominent-haitian-judge
USAID Takes Step Toward Increased Transparency but Limits Remain (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/
Wealthy Nations Thwart Hopes of World's Landless Peoples (US/policy)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4397-wealthy-nations-thwart-hopes-of-worlds-landless-peoples
Analysis from National Endowment for Democracy Used in The Atlantic, with Significant Errors and Omissions (US/policy)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/analysis-from-national-endowment-for-democracy-used-in-the-atlantic-with-significant-errors-and-omissions
What Bradley Manning Taught Us about US Policy in the Americas (US/policy)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/what-bradley-manning-taught-us-about-us-policy-in-the-americas
Immigrants: Much More Than an Abstract Number (Part II) (US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2013/7/30/immigrants-much-more-abstract-number-part-ii
Immigrant Advocates Score Major Legal Wins (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/immigrant-advocates-score-major-legal-wins/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
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