By David L. Wilson, Upside Down World
October 16, 2015
Texas officials have now found a way to circumvent the long-established understanding that children born in the United States are automatically U.S. citizens.
Over the past year some state officials have been refusing to provide copies of Texas-born children’s birth certificates to their undocumented parents. The Texas bureaucrats don’t try to deny that the children are citizens; instead, they simply demand that the parents produce certain types of identification documents—-documents which many unauthorized immigrants from Mexico and Central America are unable to obtain. The result is that the kids are being denied their rights as U.S. citizens—-including, in some cases, the right to enroll in kindergarten—-and may end up stateless.
This subterfuge must sound familiar to many Dominicans of Haitian ancestry. The current threat by the Dominican Republic to expel tens of thousands of Dominican-born Haitian descendants evolved over the past decade out of an unofficial practice very much like the one in Texas.[...]
Read the full article:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/caribbean-archives-45/5495-us-and-dominican-immigration-policies-is-there-a-difference
Showing posts with label Dominican Republic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dominican Republic. Show all posts
Friday, October 16, 2015
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
WNU #1255: Panama Dam Construction Suspended
Issue #1254, February 15, 2015
1. Panama: Barro Blanco Dam Construction Suspended
2. Honduras: AFL-CIO Blames Trade Policies for Crisis
3. Mexico: UN Criticizes Officials on Disappearances
4. Haiti: New General Strike Shuts Down Capital
5. Dominican Republic: Was Haitian Man Lynched?
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Central America, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: As we announced last month, this will be the last regular issue of the Update. We want to thank all the people who have helped over the past 25 years by writing, researching, aiding in distribution and circulation, and sending financial contributions. We plan to go on using the Update's Twitter account (@WeeklyNewsUpdat) for now, and we'll occasionally post items to the Update blog and email list, along with links to stories in other media.
We encourage our readers to keep up to date with news from the Americas through the many English-language publications now covering the region. Twelve are listed below after the links to alternative sources.
*1. Panama: Barro Blanco Dam Construction Suspended
Panamanian vice president and foreign minister Isabel Saint Malo de Alvarado announced on Feb. 9 that the country’s National Environmental Authority (ANAM) had ordered the temporary suspension of work on the $130 million Barro Blanco hydroelectric project, which is being built on the Tabasará river in the western province of Chiriquí [see Update #1254]. ANAM attributed the suspension to the owners’ failure to comply with requirements in an environmental impact study, including those for clear agreements with the affected communities and for a plan approved by the National Culture Institute (INAC) to protect archeological objects likely to be flooded because of the dam. ANAM officials also cited the owners’ handling of hazardous waste without an environmental impact study and the lack of a plan for the management of sediments.
The suspension came four days before preliminary talks between the government and representatives of the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group, which opposes the Barro Blanco project. The Feb. 13 talks were in preparation for a formal dialogue scheduled for Feb. 24. The two parties are seeking “a consensus that takes into account human rights, the protection of the original peoples, the environment [and] sustainable development,” Governance Minister Milton Henríquez said on Feb. 12. The government has invited United Nations (UN) representatives to participate in the discussions. However, the UN itself has come under criticism from international environmental groups for the decision of its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to approve the project. Eva Filzmoser, the director of the Brussels-based Carbon Market Watch, charged on Feb. 10 that the CDM board “approved Barro Blanco when it was clear that the dam would flood the homes of numerous indigenous families. This decision is a warning signal that safeguards must be introduced to protect human rights, including robust stakeholder consultations and a grievance mechanism.” (La Estrella de Panamá 2/9/15, 2/13/15; Intercontinental Cry 2/10/15)
*2. Honduras: AFL-CIO Blames Trade Policies for Crisis
US political and trade policies “play a major role” in worsening the poverty and violence that are root causes of unauthorized immigration to the US by Hondurans, according to a report released by the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation, on Jan. 12. The report, “Trade, Violence and Migration: The Broken Promises to Honduran Workers,” grew out of the experiences of a delegation the union group sent to Honduras in October following a sharp increase in migration from the country by unaccompanied minors the previous spring [see Update #1254]. The report notes that Honduras is now “the most unequal country in Latin America,” with an increase in poverty by 4.5 percentage points from 2006 to 2013. “[T]he percentage of those working full time but receiving less than the minimum wage has gone up by nearly 30%,” according to the report.
One cause of poverty and violence in Honduras, according to the report, was the June 2009 coup that removed former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), with only token objections from the US government. “Since the 2009 coup, the ruling governments have failed to respect worker and human rights or create decent work, and instead have built a repressive security apparatus to put down dissent,” the authors wrote. Another principal cause of the country’s problems was the implementation of the 2004 Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). The delegation found that CAFTA-DR’s “architecture of deregulation coupled with investor protection allowed companies to outsource labor-intensive components of their supply chains to locations with weak labor laws and low wages.” The agreement “accelerated free market devastation,” Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and a participant in the delegation, told a reporter. He noted “constant violations of organizing rights…that included everything from the murder of [union] leaders to the collapse of bargaining rights where they once existed.”
“Failed trade and migration policies continue to exacerbate Honduras’ problems,” the report concludes. “The US government criminalizes migrant children and their families, while pursuing trade deals that simultaneously displace subsistence farmers and lower wages and standards across other sectors, and eliminate good jobs, intensifying the economic conditions that drive migration. This dynamic is enhanced in countries like Honduras, where the government's own policies leave workers and families vulnerable to abuse.” (National Catholic Reporter 1/28/15; The Nation 2/6/15; Equal Times 2/10/15)
Probably the best known of the displacements of subsistence farmers occurred in northern Honduras’ Lower Aguán River Valley, where campesino groups struggling to regain their land have been victims of violence by the military and private security forces since 2009 [see Update #1243]. A recent example was the forced disappearance of Cristian Alberto Martínez Pérez, a young activist in the Gregorio Chávez Campesino Movement (MCGC, also referred to as the Gregorio Chávez Collective), as he was riding his bicycle the evening of Jan. 29 near his home in Panamá community, Trujillo municipality, Colón department.
Human rights groups and several campesino organizations quickly responded to Martínez Pérez’s disappearance by joining together in an intensive search. The youth was found alive--but tied up and dehydrated--a few meters from the Paso Aguán estate the morning of Feb. 1, about 62 hours after his abduction. He said he had been seized by a soldier and a security guard and confined to a vehicle, where he was questioned about his group’s leaders and possible plans for an occupation of the estate. Paso Aguán is owned by Honduran entrepreneur and landowner Miguel Facussé Barjum and is guarded by soldiers and security employers of the powerful Corporación Dinant food-product company, which Facussé founded. At least two deaths have been reported on the estate in the past; the MCGC is apparently named for one of the victims [see Update #1226]. (Defensores en Línea 2/3/15; Honduprensa 2/5/15)
The Aguán campesino movement is the subject of a new documentary, “Resistencia: The Film,” which is premiering in Montreal on Feb. 20. For more information, go to https://www.facebook.com/events/760100744074861
*3. Mexico: UN Criticizes Officials on Disappearances
In a report published on Feb. 13, the United Nations’ Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) called on the Mexican government to prioritize actions to deal with the large number of disappearances taking place in many parts of the country, often with the participation of government functionaries. Although international attention has been focused on the September abduction of 43 students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, located in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa [see Update #1254], the total number of people who have gone missing in Mexico since the militarization of the “war on drugs” began in late 2006 is estimated at 22,600. “[I]n contrast to the thousands of enforced disappearances,” CED member Rainer Huhle told a news briefing, citing the government’s own statistics, “there are exactly six persons put to trial and sentenced for this crime.”
The report was based on an evaluation the CED carried out Feb. 2-3 at the group’s headquarters in Geneva. The CED recognized some advances by the Mexican government, including the ratification of all United Nations human rights treaties and the adoption of a General Law for Victims, but expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s failure even to keep an accurate record of the number of forced disappearances. The committee’s recommendations included creating a national registry of disappearances and the formation of a special unit to search for disappeared persons. (La Jornada (Mexico) 2/14/15; Jurist 2/14/15)
The Ayotzinapa case has brought international attention to Mexico’s record on disappearances. On Jan. 22 the London-based rights group Amnesty International (AI) criticized what it called “the faltering investigations overseen by the Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam.” “The disappearance of [the Ayotzinapa] students is a crime that has shocked the world,” AI Americas director Erika Guevara Rosas said. “This tragedy has changed the distorted perception that the human rights situation has been improving in Mexico since President [Enrique] Peña Nieto took power” in 2012.
Criticism is also starting to increase in the US, whose government and media have strongly backed Peña Nieto in the past. The Mexican government’s account of the Ayotzinapa abductions “isn’t a historical truth,” José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of US-based Human Right Watch (HRW), said recently. “It’s an official version.” The website of the influential weekly The New Yorker has carried five articles so far on the Ayotzinapa case by novelist Francisco Goldman. The latest, posted on Feb. 7, details the many questions raised by the official account of the abduction of the students. (AI press release 1/22/15; New Yorker 2/7/15; Jurist 2/13/15)
In related news, the cousin of a disappearance victim was murdered around noon on Feb. 13 in Iguala de la Independencia, the Guerrero city that was the site of the September attack on the Ayotzinapa students. Two men on a motorcycle gunned Norma Angélica Bruno Román down in front of her three children as they were on the way to a cemetery for the burial of another murder victim, José Ramón Bernabé Armenta, who had been killed two days earlier. Initial reports said Bruno Román was an activist with the local Committee of Forced Disappearance Victims; the committee is also known as “The Other Disappeared,” since it deals with victims other than the missing 43 students. The group clarified later that Bruno Román had participated in the group’s activities in her search for her cousin, Ivette Melissa Flores Román, who has been missing since she was abducted from her home the night of Oct. 24, 2012. However, Bruno Román wasn’t part of the group, and committee members felt her murder wasn’t connected to their work. (Proceso (Mexico) 2/13/15; LJ 2/14/15)
*4. Haiti: New General Strike Shuts Down Capital
A general strike by Haitian transit workers and opposition groups paralyzed Port-au-Prince and some other cities Feb. 9-10 in a protest against high fuel prices and the government of President Michel Joseph Martelly. With most forms of public transportation shut down, the capital’s streets were empty except for rocks and burning tires that strike supporters set up as barricades; some streets were turned into improvised soccer fields. People generally stayed home, and most government offices, businesses, banks and schools were closed. There was little violence, although one police agent, Ravelin Yves André, reportedly received a stab wound in the impoverished Cité Soleil sector while trying to remove burning tires.
Petit-Goâve and Miragoâne in South department observed the strike, while Cap-Haïtien in North department and Les Cayes in South department mostly ignored it the first day, according to media reports. There was more strike activity in Cap-Haïtien the second day, while a few people went back to work in Port-au-Prince, where the government provided some free bus service.
This was the second general strike in a week over fuel prices [see Update #1254]. A two-day strike called by transit workers for Feb. 2-3 ended after one day when the government agreed to lower gasoline prices from 215 gourdes to 195 gourdes (about US$4.58 to US$4.15) for a gallon, with corresponding reductions for diesel fuel and kerosene. But the second general strike was more political, with support from such opposition groups as the Patriotic Force for Respect for the Constitution (FOPARC), which backs the Family Lavalas (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004). The government refused to consider the protesters’ demand for a price reduction of 100 gourdes (about US$2.17). Officials said the country needed to pay off some of a large debt for the oil it has acquired through Venezuela’s Petrocaribe program. But many people disagreed. “We are poor, we cannot live anymore,” a driver of one of the minibuses known as tap-taps complained to a reporter. “Gasoline prices are falling worldwide, so it should be the same here in Haiti.” (AlterPresse (Haiti) 2/9/15, 2/10/15, 2/10/15; Reuters 2/10/15)
*5. Dominican Republic: Was Haitian Man Lynched?
The body of a Haitian immigrant, Claude (“Tulile”) Jean Harry, was found hanging from a tree in Ercilia Pepín Park in Santiago de los Cabelleros, the capital of the northern Dominican province of Santiago, on Feb. 11. Dominican police spokespeople say they are working on the theory that Jean Harry was killed to prevent him from testifying about the Feb. 9 murder of Altagracia Díaz Ventura. According to the police, Díaz Ventura was killed by her sister-in-law, Annery Núñez, who then stole the victim’s money and furniture. Jean Harry did odd jobs in the area; he may have been paid to help move the furniture and could have found out about the murder. Annery Núñez had turned herself into the police as of Feb. 15.
Haitian immigrants and human rights organization questioned the police version, noting the increase in anti-Haitian sentiment following a September 2013 Constitutional Tribunal (TC) ruling that deprived thousands of Haitian-descended Dominicans of citizenship [see Update #1253]. “Nobody knows yet the reason behind the lynching, but it comes in the context of constant discrimination and violence against Haitians,” the Robert F Kennedy Center for Human Rights’ Santiago Canton said. Jean Harry was murdered just hours after a group of Dominicans publicly burned the Haitian flag in Santiago. As of Feb. 13 the authorities said they had arrested five members of the group. (The Guardian (UK) 2/12/15 from correspondent; AlterPresse (Haiti) 2/13/15; El Nuevo Diario (Dominican Republic) 2/15/15)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Central America, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Latin America: Solidarity and Accompaniment
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Solidarity-and-Accompaniment-20150208-0008.html
Washington’s Prying Eyes (Latin America)
https://nacla.org/article/washington%E2%80%99s-prying-eyes
Editor's Note: last print edition of NACLA's Report on the Americas (Latin America)
https://nacla.org/article/editor%27s-note
Investigation Into Argentine President Will Resume
http://latindispatch.com/2015/02/13/investigation-into-argentine-president-will-resume/
Argentina Wins British Victory in Vulture Funds Battle
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Argentina-Wins-British-Victory-in-Vulture-Funds-Battle-20150214-0013.html
Argentina: Chinese spaceport plan protested
http://ww4report.com/node/13979
Can Bolivia Chart a Sustainable Path Away From Capitalism?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5212-can-bolivia-chart-a-sustainable-path-away-from-capitalism-
Peruvian Youth Celebrates Victory Over Government and Big Business’ Ley Pulpín
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/5213-peruvian-youth-celebrates-victory-over-government-and-big-business-ley-pulpin
Peru’s Media-Friendly Mining Ban Conceals Toxic Inaction
https://nacla.org/article/peru%E2%80%99s-media-friendly-mining-ban-conceals-toxic-inaction
Peru: protests against PlusPetrol turn deadly
http://ww4report.com/node/13974
Deep in the Amazon, a Tiny Tribe Is Beating Big Oil (Ecuador)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5214-deep-in-the-amazon-a-tiny-tribe-is-beating-big-oil-
Colombia: Urgent Action: Afro-descendant leaders threatened
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR23/006/2015/en/60719a46-80d6-4ca7-b4b7-18c6bc6e360a/amr230062015en.html
Venezuela Coup Thwarted
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Evidence-Reveals-Canada-UK-Involvement-in-Venezuela-Coup-Plot-20150213-0035.html
Hector Navarro: I’m Encouraging a Rebellion at the Bases of the PSUV (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11209
How US 'Free Trade' Policies Created the Central American Migration Crisis
www.thenation.com/blog/197313/how-us-free-trade-policies-created-central-american-migration-crisis
UN Registered Barro Blanco Hydroelectric Dam Temporarily Suspended Over Non-Compliance With Environmental Impact Assessment (Panama)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/un-registered-barro-blanco-hydroelectric-dam-temporarily-suspended-non-compliance-environmental-impact-assessment/
Salvadorans Demand Trial for Former Right-Wing President
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Salvadorans-Demand-Trial-for-Former-Right-Wing-President-20150213-0036.html
Did Bill O'Reilly Cover Up a War Crime in El Salvador?
www.thenation.com/blog/197401/did-bill-oreilly-cover-war-crime-el-salvador
Daniel’s Story: A Mother’s Memories of an Ayotzinapa Victim (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/daniels-story-a-mothers-memories-of-an-ayotzinapa-victim/
Mexican Teachers Take to the Streets Again
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexican-teachers-take-to-the-streets-again/
Divisadero: Tierra Nativa Raramuri (Mexico)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/divisadero-tierra-nativa-raramuri/
Paved With Bad Intentions: The Ñatho (Otomí) Struggle Against the Toluca-Naucalpan Super Highway (Mexico)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/paved-bad-intentions/
How to Close Guantanamo (Cuba)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14563
CEP Proposes Legislative Elections in July, Presidential in October (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/cep-proposes-legislative-elections-in-july-presidential-in-october
Americas Program Policy Report: Border Drones a Financial and Policy Bust (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14573
Radically Reshaping Latina/o America (US/immigration)
https://nacla.org/article/radically-reshaping-latinao-america
Washington Police Shooting Ingites a Cross-Border Controversy (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/washington-police-shooting-ingites-a-cross-border-controversy/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Panama: Barro Blanco Dam Construction Suspended
2. Honduras: AFL-CIO Blames Trade Policies for Crisis
3. Mexico: UN Criticizes Officials on Disappearances
4. Haiti: New General Strike Shuts Down Capital
5. Dominican Republic: Was Haitian Man Lynched?
6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Central America, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: As we announced last month, this will be the last regular issue of the Update. We want to thank all the people who have helped over the past 25 years by writing, researching, aiding in distribution and circulation, and sending financial contributions. We plan to go on using the Update's Twitter account (@WeeklyNewsUpdat) for now, and we'll occasionally post items to the Update blog and email list, along with links to stories in other media.
We encourage our readers to keep up to date with news from the Americas through the many English-language publications now covering the region. Twelve are listed below after the links to alternative sources.
*1. Panama: Barro Blanco Dam Construction Suspended
Panamanian vice president and foreign minister Isabel Saint Malo de Alvarado announced on Feb. 9 that the country’s National Environmental Authority (ANAM) had ordered the temporary suspension of work on the $130 million Barro Blanco hydroelectric project, which is being built on the Tabasará river in the western province of Chiriquí [see Update #1254]. ANAM attributed the suspension to the owners’ failure to comply with requirements in an environmental impact study, including those for clear agreements with the affected communities and for a plan approved by the National Culture Institute (INAC) to protect archeological objects likely to be flooded because of the dam. ANAM officials also cited the owners’ handling of hazardous waste without an environmental impact study and the lack of a plan for the management of sediments.
The suspension came four days before preliminary talks between the government and representatives of the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group, which opposes the Barro Blanco project. The Feb. 13 talks were in preparation for a formal dialogue scheduled for Feb. 24. The two parties are seeking “a consensus that takes into account human rights, the protection of the original peoples, the environment [and] sustainable development,” Governance Minister Milton Henríquez said on Feb. 12. The government has invited United Nations (UN) representatives to participate in the discussions. However, the UN itself has come under criticism from international environmental groups for the decision of its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to approve the project. Eva Filzmoser, the director of the Brussels-based Carbon Market Watch, charged on Feb. 10 that the CDM board “approved Barro Blanco when it was clear that the dam would flood the homes of numerous indigenous families. This decision is a warning signal that safeguards must be introduced to protect human rights, including robust stakeholder consultations and a grievance mechanism.” (La Estrella de Panamá 2/9/15, 2/13/15; Intercontinental Cry 2/10/15)
*2. Honduras: AFL-CIO Blames Trade Policies for Crisis
US political and trade policies “play a major role” in worsening the poverty and violence that are root causes of unauthorized immigration to the US by Hondurans, according to a report released by the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation, on Jan. 12. The report, “Trade, Violence and Migration: The Broken Promises to Honduran Workers,” grew out of the experiences of a delegation the union group sent to Honduras in October following a sharp increase in migration from the country by unaccompanied minors the previous spring [see Update #1254]. The report notes that Honduras is now “the most unequal country in Latin America,” with an increase in poverty by 4.5 percentage points from 2006 to 2013. “[T]he percentage of those working full time but receiving less than the minimum wage has gone up by nearly 30%,” according to the report.
One cause of poverty and violence in Honduras, according to the report, was the June 2009 coup that removed former president José Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), with only token objections from the US government. “Since the 2009 coup, the ruling governments have failed to respect worker and human rights or create decent work, and instead have built a repressive security apparatus to put down dissent,” the authors wrote. Another principal cause of the country’s problems was the implementation of the 2004 Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). The delegation found that CAFTA-DR’s “architecture of deregulation coupled with investor protection allowed companies to outsource labor-intensive components of their supply chains to locations with weak labor laws and low wages.” The agreement “accelerated free market devastation,” Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and a participant in the delegation, told a reporter. He noted “constant violations of organizing rights…that included everything from the murder of [union] leaders to the collapse of bargaining rights where they once existed.”
“Failed trade and migration policies continue to exacerbate Honduras’ problems,” the report concludes. “The US government criminalizes migrant children and their families, while pursuing trade deals that simultaneously displace subsistence farmers and lower wages and standards across other sectors, and eliminate good jobs, intensifying the economic conditions that drive migration. This dynamic is enhanced in countries like Honduras, where the government's own policies leave workers and families vulnerable to abuse.” (National Catholic Reporter 1/28/15; The Nation 2/6/15; Equal Times 2/10/15)
Probably the best known of the displacements of subsistence farmers occurred in northern Honduras’ Lower Aguán River Valley, where campesino groups struggling to regain their land have been victims of violence by the military and private security forces since 2009 [see Update #1243]. A recent example was the forced disappearance of Cristian Alberto Martínez Pérez, a young activist in the Gregorio Chávez Campesino Movement (MCGC, also referred to as the Gregorio Chávez Collective), as he was riding his bicycle the evening of Jan. 29 near his home in Panamá community, Trujillo municipality, Colón department.
Human rights groups and several campesino organizations quickly responded to Martínez Pérez’s disappearance by joining together in an intensive search. The youth was found alive--but tied up and dehydrated--a few meters from the Paso Aguán estate the morning of Feb. 1, about 62 hours after his abduction. He said he had been seized by a soldier and a security guard and confined to a vehicle, where he was questioned about his group’s leaders and possible plans for an occupation of the estate. Paso Aguán is owned by Honduran entrepreneur and landowner Miguel Facussé Barjum and is guarded by soldiers and security employers of the powerful Corporación Dinant food-product company, which Facussé founded. At least two deaths have been reported on the estate in the past; the MCGC is apparently named for one of the victims [see Update #1226]. (Defensores en Línea 2/3/15; Honduprensa 2/5/15)
The Aguán campesino movement is the subject of a new documentary, “Resistencia: The Film,” which is premiering in Montreal on Feb. 20. For more information, go to https://www.facebook.com/events/760100744074861
*3. Mexico: UN Criticizes Officials on Disappearances
In a report published on Feb. 13, the United Nations’ Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) called on the Mexican government to prioritize actions to deal with the large number of disappearances taking place in many parts of the country, often with the participation of government functionaries. Although international attention has been focused on the September abduction of 43 students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, located in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa [see Update #1254], the total number of people who have gone missing in Mexico since the militarization of the “war on drugs” began in late 2006 is estimated at 22,600. “[I]n contrast to the thousands of enforced disappearances,” CED member Rainer Huhle told a news briefing, citing the government’s own statistics, “there are exactly six persons put to trial and sentenced for this crime.”
The report was based on an evaluation the CED carried out Feb. 2-3 at the group’s headquarters in Geneva. The CED recognized some advances by the Mexican government, including the ratification of all United Nations human rights treaties and the adoption of a General Law for Victims, but expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s failure even to keep an accurate record of the number of forced disappearances. The committee’s recommendations included creating a national registry of disappearances and the formation of a special unit to search for disappeared persons. (La Jornada (Mexico) 2/14/15; Jurist 2/14/15)
The Ayotzinapa case has brought international attention to Mexico’s record on disappearances. On Jan. 22 the London-based rights group Amnesty International (AI) criticized what it called “the faltering investigations overseen by the Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam.” “The disappearance of [the Ayotzinapa] students is a crime that has shocked the world,” AI Americas director Erika Guevara Rosas said. “This tragedy has changed the distorted perception that the human rights situation has been improving in Mexico since President [Enrique] Peña Nieto took power” in 2012.
Criticism is also starting to increase in the US, whose government and media have strongly backed Peña Nieto in the past. The Mexican government’s account of the Ayotzinapa abductions “isn’t a historical truth,” José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of US-based Human Right Watch (HRW), said recently. “It’s an official version.” The website of the influential weekly The New Yorker has carried five articles so far on the Ayotzinapa case by novelist Francisco Goldman. The latest, posted on Feb. 7, details the many questions raised by the official account of the abduction of the students. (AI press release 1/22/15; New Yorker 2/7/15; Jurist 2/13/15)
In related news, the cousin of a disappearance victim was murdered around noon on Feb. 13 in Iguala de la Independencia, the Guerrero city that was the site of the September attack on the Ayotzinapa students. Two men on a motorcycle gunned Norma Angélica Bruno Román down in front of her three children as they were on the way to a cemetery for the burial of another murder victim, José Ramón Bernabé Armenta, who had been killed two days earlier. Initial reports said Bruno Román was an activist with the local Committee of Forced Disappearance Victims; the committee is also known as “The Other Disappeared,” since it deals with victims other than the missing 43 students. The group clarified later that Bruno Román had participated in the group’s activities in her search for her cousin, Ivette Melissa Flores Román, who has been missing since she was abducted from her home the night of Oct. 24, 2012. However, Bruno Román wasn’t part of the group, and committee members felt her murder wasn’t connected to their work. (Proceso (Mexico) 2/13/15; LJ 2/14/15)
*4. Haiti: New General Strike Shuts Down Capital
A general strike by Haitian transit workers and opposition groups paralyzed Port-au-Prince and some other cities Feb. 9-10 in a protest against high fuel prices and the government of President Michel Joseph Martelly. With most forms of public transportation shut down, the capital’s streets were empty except for rocks and burning tires that strike supporters set up as barricades; some streets were turned into improvised soccer fields. People generally stayed home, and most government offices, businesses, banks and schools were closed. There was little violence, although one police agent, Ravelin Yves André, reportedly received a stab wound in the impoverished Cité Soleil sector while trying to remove burning tires.
Petit-Goâve and Miragoâne in South department observed the strike, while Cap-Haïtien in North department and Les Cayes in South department mostly ignored it the first day, according to media reports. There was more strike activity in Cap-Haïtien the second day, while a few people went back to work in Port-au-Prince, where the government provided some free bus service.
This was the second general strike in a week over fuel prices [see Update #1254]. A two-day strike called by transit workers for Feb. 2-3 ended after one day when the government agreed to lower gasoline prices from 215 gourdes to 195 gourdes (about US$4.58 to US$4.15) for a gallon, with corresponding reductions for diesel fuel and kerosene. But the second general strike was more political, with support from such opposition groups as the Patriotic Force for Respect for the Constitution (FOPARC), which backs the Family Lavalas (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004). The government refused to consider the protesters’ demand for a price reduction of 100 gourdes (about US$2.17). Officials said the country needed to pay off some of a large debt for the oil it has acquired through Venezuela’s Petrocaribe program. But many people disagreed. “We are poor, we cannot live anymore,” a driver of one of the minibuses known as tap-taps complained to a reporter. “Gasoline prices are falling worldwide, so it should be the same here in Haiti.” (AlterPresse (Haiti) 2/9/15, 2/10/15, 2/10/15; Reuters 2/10/15)
*5. Dominican Republic: Was Haitian Man Lynched?
The body of a Haitian immigrant, Claude (“Tulile”) Jean Harry, was found hanging from a tree in Ercilia Pepín Park in Santiago de los Cabelleros, the capital of the northern Dominican province of Santiago, on Feb. 11. Dominican police spokespeople say they are working on the theory that Jean Harry was killed to prevent him from testifying about the Feb. 9 murder of Altagracia Díaz Ventura. According to the police, Díaz Ventura was killed by her sister-in-law, Annery Núñez, who then stole the victim’s money and furniture. Jean Harry did odd jobs in the area; he may have been paid to help move the furniture and could have found out about the murder. Annery Núñez had turned herself into the police as of Feb. 15.
Haitian immigrants and human rights organization questioned the police version, noting the increase in anti-Haitian sentiment following a September 2013 Constitutional Tribunal (TC) ruling that deprived thousands of Haitian-descended Dominicans of citizenship [see Update #1253]. “Nobody knows yet the reason behind the lynching, but it comes in the context of constant discrimination and violence against Haitians,” the Robert F Kennedy Center for Human Rights’ Santiago Canton said. Jean Harry was murdered just hours after a group of Dominicans publicly burned the Haitian flag in Santiago. As of Feb. 13 the authorities said they had arrested five members of the group. (The Guardian (UK) 2/12/15 from correspondent; AlterPresse (Haiti) 2/13/15; El Nuevo Diario (Dominican Republic) 2/15/15)
*6. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Central America, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Latin America: Solidarity and Accompaniment
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Solidarity-and-Accompaniment-20150208-0008.html
Washington’s Prying Eyes (Latin America)
https://nacla.org/article/washington%E2%80%99s-prying-eyes
Editor's Note: last print edition of NACLA's Report on the Americas (Latin America)
https://nacla.org/article/editor%27s-note
Investigation Into Argentine President Will Resume
http://latindispatch.com/2015/02/13/investigation-into-argentine-president-will-resume/
Argentina Wins British Victory in Vulture Funds Battle
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Argentina-Wins-British-Victory-in-Vulture-Funds-Battle-20150214-0013.html
Argentina: Chinese spaceport plan protested
http://ww4report.com/node/13979
Can Bolivia Chart a Sustainable Path Away From Capitalism?
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5212-can-bolivia-chart-a-sustainable-path-away-from-capitalism-
Peruvian Youth Celebrates Victory Over Government and Big Business’ Ley Pulpín
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/5213-peruvian-youth-celebrates-victory-over-government-and-big-business-ley-pulpin
Peru’s Media-Friendly Mining Ban Conceals Toxic Inaction
https://nacla.org/article/peru%E2%80%99s-media-friendly-mining-ban-conceals-toxic-inaction
Peru: protests against PlusPetrol turn deadly
http://ww4report.com/node/13974
Deep in the Amazon, a Tiny Tribe Is Beating Big Oil (Ecuador)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5214-deep-in-the-amazon-a-tiny-tribe-is-beating-big-oil-
Colombia: Urgent Action: Afro-descendant leaders threatened
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR23/006/2015/en/60719a46-80d6-4ca7-b4b7-18c6bc6e360a/amr230062015en.html
Venezuela Coup Thwarted
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Evidence-Reveals-Canada-UK-Involvement-in-Venezuela-Coup-Plot-20150213-0035.html
Hector Navarro: I’m Encouraging a Rebellion at the Bases of the PSUV (Venezuela)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11209
How US 'Free Trade' Policies Created the Central American Migration Crisis
www.thenation.com/blog/197313/how-us-free-trade-policies-created-central-american-migration-crisis
UN Registered Barro Blanco Hydroelectric Dam Temporarily Suspended Over Non-Compliance With Environmental Impact Assessment (Panama)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/un-registered-barro-blanco-hydroelectric-dam-temporarily-suspended-non-compliance-environmental-impact-assessment/
Salvadorans Demand Trial for Former Right-Wing President
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Salvadorans-Demand-Trial-for-Former-Right-Wing-President-20150213-0036.html
Did Bill O'Reilly Cover Up a War Crime in El Salvador?
www.thenation.com/blog/197401/did-bill-oreilly-cover-war-crime-el-salvador
Daniel’s Story: A Mother’s Memories of an Ayotzinapa Victim (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/daniels-story-a-mothers-memories-of-an-ayotzinapa-victim/
Mexican Teachers Take to the Streets Again
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/mexican-teachers-take-to-the-streets-again/
Divisadero: Tierra Nativa Raramuri (Mexico)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/divisadero-tierra-nativa-raramuri/
Paved With Bad Intentions: The Ñatho (Otomí) Struggle Against the Toluca-Naucalpan Super Highway (Mexico)
https://intercontinentalcry.org/paved-bad-intentions/
How to Close Guantanamo (Cuba)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14563
CEP Proposes Legislative Elections in July, Presidential in October (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/cep-proposes-legislative-elections-in-july-presidential-in-october
Americas Program Policy Report: Border Drones a Financial and Policy Bust (US/immigration)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14573
Radically Reshaping Latina/o America (US/immigration)
https://nacla.org/article/radically-reshaping-latinao-america
Washington Police Shooting Ingites a Cross-Border Controversy (US/immigration)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/washington-police-shooting-ingites-a-cross-border-controversy/
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Monday, February 2, 2015
WNU #1253: Indigenous Panamanians Set Deadline on Dam
Issue #1253, February 1, 2015
1. Panama: Ngöbe-Buglé Set Deadline to Stop Dam
2. Chile: Two Found Guilty in Horman Murder Case
3. Dominican Republic: Thousands to Become Stateless
4. Haiti: President Gives Reporters Xmas Present
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Panama: Ngöbe-Buglé Set Deadline to Stop Dam
Panamanian officials and leaders of the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group were scheduled to meet on Feb. 2 to discuss the controversial Barro Blanco hydroelectric project, which is being built on the Tabasará river in the western province of Chiriquí [see Update #1214]. Ngöbe-Buglé representatives are calling for the cancellation of the dam and say there will be forceful actions if the government doesn’t agree to their demand by Feb. 15. President Juan Carlos Varela has named a committee to represent the government in the talks; it is headed by Vice President Isabel Saint Malo de Alvarado, who is also the foreign relations minister, and includes security minister Rodolfo Aguilera, governance minister Milton Henríquez, labor minister Luis Ernesto Carles and environmental minister Mirei Endara. Some members of the committee held a preliminary meeting with indigenous leaders on Jan. 29, and the government’s technical commission was studying the area around the dam on Jan. 31.
Ngöbe-Buglé activists have demonstrated repeatedly against the Barro Blanco project since 2011, charging that it endangers an archeological site and will displace 2,000 or more indigenous people in the Ngöbe-Buglé comarca (designated indigenous territory). The government of former president Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014) failed to hold a required consultation with the communities, according to the activists, who claim the administration had interests in common with Generadora del Istmo, S.A. (GENISA), the Honduran-owned company building the dam. Indigenous protesters have maintained an encampment at the dam’s site since February 2014, according to Silvia Carrera, the Ngöbe-Buglé comarca’s official leader (cacica). Speaking at a forum in Natá, Coclé province, on Jan. 24, Carrera warned that the government needs to “dialogue with the people of Barro Blanco and the affected communities…before people take to the streets the way it happened in 2011 and 2012.” (La Estrella de Panamá 1/25/15, 1/30/15; Intercontinental Cry 1/27/15 from Servindi; Hora Cero (Panama) 2/1/15)
In related news, former president Martinelli fled to the US on Jan. 29, one day after Panama’s Supreme Court initiated a corruption investigation against him. He flew to Florida from Guatemala, where he was attending a session of the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN). “I fear for my life and my family,” he said. “I’m the target of a political persecution.” He claimed current President Varela “would do the impossible to end” him and his party and is “inventing charges” against him. Varela, who took office last July 1, was Martinelli’s vice president, but he ran against Martinelli’s candidate in the 2014 elections. Martinelli said he had no plans to return to Panama. Meanwhile, thousands marched in Panama City on Jan. 29 chanting slogans against the former president and demanding an end to impunity and jail time for corrupt politicians. (PanAM Post 1/30/15 from La Prensa (Panama))
*2. Chile: Two Found Guilty in Horman Murder Case
Retired Chilean army colonel Pedro Espinoza and former Chilean air force intelligence agent Rafael González Berdugo have been convicted in the murder of US journalist Charles Horman and US graduate student Frank Teruggi during the days after the Sept. 11, 1973 military coup that overthrew leftist president Salvador Allende Gossens [see Update #1226]. Judge Jorge Zepeda sentenced Espinoza--formerly an officer in the now-defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) who has been described as the right-hand man of DINA head Manuel Contreras—to seven years in prison for the two murders. González Berdugo was sentenced to two years of police surveillance as an accomplice in Harmon’s murder. Judge Zepeda ruled in the case on Jan. 9 but the decision wasn’t announced until Jan. 28. Last summer the judge officially ruled that “US military intelligence services played a fundamental role in the murders” by supplying information to the Chilean military. (El Ciudadano (Chile) 1/31/15)
In other news, on Jan. 28 Chile’s Senate approved a law authorizing civil unions for same-sex couples. The Chamber of Deputies had passed the law on Jan. 20 in an 86-23 vote, with two abstentions. The legislation ensures members of same-sex couples rights to receive pensions, enroll in health plans and inherit property from one another; it also provides them with greater standing in child custody cases. President Michelle Bachelet says her long-term goal is full same-sex marriage rights, a position supported by 46% of the population and opposed by 42%, according to a 2013 poll by the US-based Pew Research Center. Same-sex marriage is recognized in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and parts of Mexico; civil unions are recognized in Colombia and Ecuador. Chile tends to be conservative on social issues; divorce wasn’t legalized until 2004, all abortions remain illegal, and sodomy was punishable with prison until 1999. (TeleSUR English 1/21/15; Jamaica Observer 1/28/15 from AFP)
Chile’s Congress has also been working on removing laws and practices imposed during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The Chamber of Deputies voted on Jan. 20 to eliminate the “binominal” electoral formula established by Pinochet’s 1980 Constitution, a formula which opponents say has made it possible for the right to control half the seats in Congress while getting just over a third of the votes; the legislation had already won approval in the Senate. The new proportional voting system should make it easier for smaller parties to compete; the new law also expands the Chamber from 120 to 155 seats and the Senate from 38 to 50 seats. (TeleSUR English 1/21/15; Latin American Herald Tribune 1/20/15)
Legislation that President Bachelet calls the first phase of rolling back the Pinochet-era education system passed the Senate on Jan. 22 and the Chamber of Deputies on Jan. 26. The dictatorship’s highly privatized system was the target of massive student protests from 2011 through 2013; several of the student leaders at that time are now members of Congress [see Update #1219]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/23/15 from correspondent; Reuters 1/27/15)
*3. Dominican Republic: Thousands to Become Stateless
Tens of thousands of Dominicans born to undocumented immigrants were set to become stateless when a deadline to regularize their status passed on Feb. 1, according to the London-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI). “Even if these people are able to stay in the Dominican Republic after the deadline expires, their futures are woefully uncertain,” AI Americas director Erika Guevara Rosas said in a statement. The people at risk are mostly Haitian descendants who were affected by Decision 168-13, a ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal (TC) in September 2013 declaring that no one born to undocumented immigrant parents since 1929 was a citizen. Their situation was supposed to be remedied by Law 169/14, which was passed in May 2014 to set up a process for people to regularize their status [see Update #1221]. AI says the law’s implementation has been inadequate.
The Interior Ministry reported that as of Jan. 9, only 5,345 people had applied for regularization--just 5% of the 110,000 people AI believes should be eligible. The Dominican government has put the number of eligible people at 20,000 and claims it has done its best to help people file their claims. Immigration director José Ricardo Taveras told the El Caribe news site that the government had set up more than 20 offices to handle regularization requests and had launched a big publicity campaign. But the media reported long lines at the offices, and AI charged that even people “who should have been able to have their Dominican nationality returned in a quick procedure have been waiting for months.” “The simple fact is that when the vast majority of these people were born, the Dominican law at the time recognized them as citizens,” Guevara Rosas said. “Stripping them of this right and then creating impossible administrative hurdles to stay in the country is a violation of their human rights.” (AI statement 2/1/15; Terra Argentina 2/1/15 from Reuters)
On Jan. 28 AI reported that the Dominican authorities had deported 51 people to Haiti the day before. The group included 30 children, ages seven to 13, born in the Dominican Republic, along with seven mothers of the children and 14 other adults. They were traveling in two minivans to San Juan de la Maguana, in the western province of San Juan, where they expected to register for the regularization. However, according to AI the vehicles were stopped at a military checkpoint a few kilometers from the city. Officers told the passengers that they had to go to an immigration office in Elias Piña, near the border with Haiti, to get passes before entering San Juan. After arriving at Elias Piña, the entire group was deported to Haiti. The Dominican Interior Ministry claimed it had authorized their reentry, but as of Jan. 28 they were still in Haiti. AI noted the special vulnerability of the Dominican-born children, who were not Haitian citizens and were now in effect stateless. (lainformacion.com 1/28/15 from EFE Verde)
*4. Haiti: President Gives Reporters Xmas Present
The government of Haitian president Michel Joseph Martelly presented a group of reporters with cash gifts during a reception on Dec. 23, according to an open letter published on Jan. 26 by the management of the Radio Kiskeya radio station. Reporters with press credentials for presidential functions were given “envelopes containing 50,000 gourdes [about US$1,065] and 40,000 gourdes [about US$852] respectively,” the station wrote. Recipients said President Martelly had offered them what he called “a little gift whose small size they shouldn’t take offense at,” and then referred them to his spokesperson, Lucien Jura, and Esther Fatal, head of the Communication Office of the Presidency; the two officials gave the journalists the envelopes.
Radio Kiskeya said three of its reporters accepted the cash; they were “severely disciplined,” according to the letter, which didn’t reveal their names or the names of other reporters who accepted the “gifts.” “This isn’t the first time journalists have received bribes,” Franck Séguy, a professor at the State University of Haiti (UEH) and a former journalist himself, told the Haitian news site AlterPresse, although the practice “has never been discussed in the press.” He said a major cause was the fact that Haitian journalists aren’t paid enough to live in dignity and are allowed to “supplement their salary elsewhere.” (Radio Kiskeya 1/26/15; Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 1/27/15; AlterPresse 1/29/15)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Roads are encroaching deeper into the Amazon rainforest, study says (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5201-roads-are-encroaching-deeper-into-the-amazon-rainforest-study-says-
US Further Isolated as CELAC Rejects Regional Intervention (Latin America)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11178
Argentina: Societies in Movement or Politics as Usual?
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Argentina-Societies-in-Movement-or-Politics-as-Usual-20150127-0029.html
Chile’s LGBT movement wins historic victory with approval of civil unions
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2015/01/chiles-lgbt-movement-wins-historic-victory-approval-civil-unions/
In Memoriam: Pedro Lemebel's Chronicles of the Pinochet Dictatorship (Chile)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/5204-in-memoriam-pedro-lemebels-chronicles-of-the-pinochet-dictatorship
German Couple Kidnapped, Shot Dead in Paraguay; Guerrilla Group Suspected
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/30/german-couple-kidnapped-shot-dead-in-paraguay-guerrilla-group-suspected/
The Power of the Spectacle: Evo Morales’ Inauguration in Tiwanaku, Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/5199-the-power-of-the-spectacle-evo-morales-inauguration-in-tiwanaku-bolivia
Ex-Colombian Intelligence Chief Surrenders to Authorities
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Ex-Colombian-Intelligence-Chief-Surrenders-to-Authorities-20150131-0008.html
Venezuela to nuke New York... Not!
http://ww4report.com/node/13937
Venezuela approves use of force against protesters
http://ww4report.com/node/13944
Panama: Vice President and Ministers to Meet Ngäbe Buglé Before Indigenous Ultimatum
https://intercontinentalcry.org/panama-vice-president-ministers-meet-ngabe-bugle-indigenous-ultimatum/
Ayotzinapa Calls for Mexico’s Transformation
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14537
More Femicide Victims Identified from Border Graveyard (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/more-femicide-victims-identified-from-border-graveyard/
Cuban President: Return of Guantanamo Bay Needed to Normalize Relations
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/29/cuban-president-return-of-guantanamo-bay-needed-to-normalize-relations/
Raúl Castro demands that US return Guantánamo base to Cuba
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5205-raul-castro-demands-that-us-return-guantanamo-base-to-cuba-
Is the Absence of Parliament Clearing the Way for Lamothe to Run for President? (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/is-the-absence-of-parliament-clearing-the-way-for-lamothe-to-run-for-president
Journalists Denounce Attempts by Haitian Government to Silence Criticism
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/journalists-denounce-attempts-by-haitian-government-to-silence-criticism
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
1. Panama: Ngöbe-Buglé Set Deadline to Stop Dam
2. Chile: Two Found Guilty in Horman Murder Case
3. Dominican Republic: Thousands to Become Stateless
4. Haiti: President Gives Reporters Xmas Present
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
Note: The Update is ceasing publication on Feb. 15. In each of the remaining issues we will try to include some updated information on stories we covered in the past.
*1. Panama: Ngöbe-Buglé Set Deadline to Stop Dam
Panamanian officials and leaders of the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group were scheduled to meet on Feb. 2 to discuss the controversial Barro Blanco hydroelectric project, which is being built on the Tabasará river in the western province of Chiriquí [see Update #1214]. Ngöbe-Buglé representatives are calling for the cancellation of the dam and say there will be forceful actions if the government doesn’t agree to their demand by Feb. 15. President Juan Carlos Varela has named a committee to represent the government in the talks; it is headed by Vice President Isabel Saint Malo de Alvarado, who is also the foreign relations minister, and includes security minister Rodolfo Aguilera, governance minister Milton Henríquez, labor minister Luis Ernesto Carles and environmental minister Mirei Endara. Some members of the committee held a preliminary meeting with indigenous leaders on Jan. 29, and the government’s technical commission was studying the area around the dam on Jan. 31.
Ngöbe-Buglé activists have demonstrated repeatedly against the Barro Blanco project since 2011, charging that it endangers an archeological site and will displace 2,000 or more indigenous people in the Ngöbe-Buglé comarca (designated indigenous territory). The government of former president Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014) failed to hold a required consultation with the communities, according to the activists, who claim the administration had interests in common with Generadora del Istmo, S.A. (GENISA), the Honduran-owned company building the dam. Indigenous protesters have maintained an encampment at the dam’s site since February 2014, according to Silvia Carrera, the Ngöbe-Buglé comarca’s official leader (cacica). Speaking at a forum in Natá, Coclé province, on Jan. 24, Carrera warned that the government needs to “dialogue with the people of Barro Blanco and the affected communities…before people take to the streets the way it happened in 2011 and 2012.” (La Estrella de Panamá 1/25/15, 1/30/15; Intercontinental Cry 1/27/15 from Servindi; Hora Cero (Panama) 2/1/15)
In related news, former president Martinelli fled to the US on Jan. 29, one day after Panama’s Supreme Court initiated a corruption investigation against him. He flew to Florida from Guatemala, where he was attending a session of the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN). “I fear for my life and my family,” he said. “I’m the target of a political persecution.” He claimed current President Varela “would do the impossible to end” him and his party and is “inventing charges” against him. Varela, who took office last July 1, was Martinelli’s vice president, but he ran against Martinelli’s candidate in the 2014 elections. Martinelli said he had no plans to return to Panama. Meanwhile, thousands marched in Panama City on Jan. 29 chanting slogans against the former president and demanding an end to impunity and jail time for corrupt politicians. (PanAM Post 1/30/15 from La Prensa (Panama))
*2. Chile: Two Found Guilty in Horman Murder Case
Retired Chilean army colonel Pedro Espinoza and former Chilean air force intelligence agent Rafael González Berdugo have been convicted in the murder of US journalist Charles Horman and US graduate student Frank Teruggi during the days after the Sept. 11, 1973 military coup that overthrew leftist president Salvador Allende Gossens [see Update #1226]. Judge Jorge Zepeda sentenced Espinoza--formerly an officer in the now-defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) who has been described as the right-hand man of DINA head Manuel Contreras—to seven years in prison for the two murders. González Berdugo was sentenced to two years of police surveillance as an accomplice in Harmon’s murder. Judge Zepeda ruled in the case on Jan. 9 but the decision wasn’t announced until Jan. 28. Last summer the judge officially ruled that “US military intelligence services played a fundamental role in the murders” by supplying information to the Chilean military. (El Ciudadano (Chile) 1/31/15)
In other news, on Jan. 28 Chile’s Senate approved a law authorizing civil unions for same-sex couples. The Chamber of Deputies had passed the law on Jan. 20 in an 86-23 vote, with two abstentions. The legislation ensures members of same-sex couples rights to receive pensions, enroll in health plans and inherit property from one another; it also provides them with greater standing in child custody cases. President Michelle Bachelet says her long-term goal is full same-sex marriage rights, a position supported by 46% of the population and opposed by 42%, according to a 2013 poll by the US-based Pew Research Center. Same-sex marriage is recognized in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and parts of Mexico; civil unions are recognized in Colombia and Ecuador. Chile tends to be conservative on social issues; divorce wasn’t legalized until 2004, all abortions remain illegal, and sodomy was punishable with prison until 1999. (TeleSUR English 1/21/15; Jamaica Observer 1/28/15 from AFP)
Chile’s Congress has also been working on removing laws and practices imposed during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The Chamber of Deputies voted on Jan. 20 to eliminate the “binominal” electoral formula established by Pinochet’s 1980 Constitution, a formula which opponents say has made it possible for the right to control half the seats in Congress while getting just over a third of the votes; the legislation had already won approval in the Senate. The new proportional voting system should make it easier for smaller parties to compete; the new law also expands the Chamber from 120 to 155 seats and the Senate from 38 to 50 seats. (TeleSUR English 1/21/15; Latin American Herald Tribune 1/20/15)
Legislation that President Bachelet calls the first phase of rolling back the Pinochet-era education system passed the Senate on Jan. 22 and the Chamber of Deputies on Jan. 26. The dictatorship’s highly privatized system was the target of massive student protests from 2011 through 2013; several of the student leaders at that time are now members of Congress [see Update #1219]. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/23/15 from correspondent; Reuters 1/27/15)
*3. Dominican Republic: Thousands to Become Stateless
Tens of thousands of Dominicans born to undocumented immigrants were set to become stateless when a deadline to regularize their status passed on Feb. 1, according to the London-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI). “Even if these people are able to stay in the Dominican Republic after the deadline expires, their futures are woefully uncertain,” AI Americas director Erika Guevara Rosas said in a statement. The people at risk are mostly Haitian descendants who were affected by Decision 168-13, a ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal (TC) in September 2013 declaring that no one born to undocumented immigrant parents since 1929 was a citizen. Their situation was supposed to be remedied by Law 169/14, which was passed in May 2014 to set up a process for people to regularize their status [see Update #1221]. AI says the law’s implementation has been inadequate.
The Interior Ministry reported that as of Jan. 9, only 5,345 people had applied for regularization--just 5% of the 110,000 people AI believes should be eligible. The Dominican government has put the number of eligible people at 20,000 and claims it has done its best to help people file their claims. Immigration director José Ricardo Taveras told the El Caribe news site that the government had set up more than 20 offices to handle regularization requests and had launched a big publicity campaign. But the media reported long lines at the offices, and AI charged that even people “who should have been able to have their Dominican nationality returned in a quick procedure have been waiting for months.” “The simple fact is that when the vast majority of these people were born, the Dominican law at the time recognized them as citizens,” Guevara Rosas said. “Stripping them of this right and then creating impossible administrative hurdles to stay in the country is a violation of their human rights.” (AI statement 2/1/15; Terra Argentina 2/1/15 from Reuters)
On Jan. 28 AI reported that the Dominican authorities had deported 51 people to Haiti the day before. The group included 30 children, ages seven to 13, born in the Dominican Republic, along with seven mothers of the children and 14 other adults. They were traveling in two minivans to San Juan de la Maguana, in the western province of San Juan, where they expected to register for the regularization. However, according to AI the vehicles were stopped at a military checkpoint a few kilometers from the city. Officers told the passengers that they had to go to an immigration office in Elias Piña, near the border with Haiti, to get passes before entering San Juan. After arriving at Elias Piña, the entire group was deported to Haiti. The Dominican Interior Ministry claimed it had authorized their reentry, but as of Jan. 28 they were still in Haiti. AI noted the special vulnerability of the Dominican-born children, who were not Haitian citizens and were now in effect stateless. (lainformacion.com 1/28/15 from EFE Verde)
*4. Haiti: President Gives Reporters Xmas Present
The government of Haitian president Michel Joseph Martelly presented a group of reporters with cash gifts during a reception on Dec. 23, according to an open letter published on Jan. 26 by the management of the Radio Kiskeya radio station. Reporters with press credentials for presidential functions were given “envelopes containing 50,000 gourdes [about US$1,065] and 40,000 gourdes [about US$852] respectively,” the station wrote. Recipients said President Martelly had offered them what he called “a little gift whose small size they shouldn’t take offense at,” and then referred them to his spokesperson, Lucien Jura, and Esther Fatal, head of the Communication Office of the Presidency; the two officials gave the journalists the envelopes.
Radio Kiskeya said three of its reporters accepted the cash; they were “severely disciplined,” according to the letter, which didn’t reveal their names or the names of other reporters who accepted the “gifts.” “This isn’t the first time journalists have received bribes,” Franck Séguy, a professor at the State University of Haiti (UEH) and a former journalist himself, told the Haitian news site AlterPresse, although the practice “has never been discussed in the press.” He said a major cause was the fact that Haitian journalists aren’t paid enough to live in dignity and are allowed to “supplement their salary elsewhere.” (Radio Kiskeya 1/26/15; Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 1/27/15; AlterPresse 1/29/15)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, US/immigration
Roads are encroaching deeper into the Amazon rainforest, study says (Latin America)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5201-roads-are-encroaching-deeper-into-the-amazon-rainforest-study-says-
US Further Isolated as CELAC Rejects Regional Intervention (Latin America)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11178
Argentina: Societies in Movement or Politics as Usual?
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Argentina-Societies-in-Movement-or-Politics-as-Usual-20150127-0029.html
Chile’s LGBT movement wins historic victory with approval of civil unions
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2015/01/chiles-lgbt-movement-wins-historic-victory-approval-civil-unions/
In Memoriam: Pedro Lemebel's Chronicles of the Pinochet Dictatorship (Chile)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/5204-in-memoriam-pedro-lemebels-chronicles-of-the-pinochet-dictatorship
German Couple Kidnapped, Shot Dead in Paraguay; Guerrilla Group Suspected
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/30/german-couple-kidnapped-shot-dead-in-paraguay-guerrilla-group-suspected/
The Power of the Spectacle: Evo Morales’ Inauguration in Tiwanaku, Bolivia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/5199-the-power-of-the-spectacle-evo-morales-inauguration-in-tiwanaku-bolivia
Ex-Colombian Intelligence Chief Surrenders to Authorities
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Ex-Colombian-Intelligence-Chief-Surrenders-to-Authorities-20150131-0008.html
Venezuela to nuke New York... Not!
http://ww4report.com/node/13937
Venezuela approves use of force against protesters
http://ww4report.com/node/13944
Panama: Vice President and Ministers to Meet Ngäbe Buglé Before Indigenous Ultimatum
https://intercontinentalcry.org/panama-vice-president-ministers-meet-ngabe-bugle-indigenous-ultimatum/
Ayotzinapa Calls for Mexico’s Transformation
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/14537
More Femicide Victims Identified from Border Graveyard (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/more-femicide-victims-identified-from-border-graveyard/
Cuban President: Return of Guantanamo Bay Needed to Normalize Relations
http://latindispatch.com/2015/01/29/cuban-president-return-of-guantanamo-bay-needed-to-normalize-relations/
Raúl Castro demands that US return Guantánamo base to Cuba
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5205-raul-castro-demands-that-us-return-guantanamo-base-to-cuba-
Is the Absence of Parliament Clearing the Way for Lamothe to Run for President? (Haiti)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/is-the-absence-of-parliament-clearing-the-way-for-lamothe-to-run-for-president
Journalists Denounce Attempts by Haitian Government to Silence Criticism
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/journalists-denounce-attempts-by-haitian-government-to-silence-criticism
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://org.salsalabs.com/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/index.php
http://nacla.org/
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://wagingnonviolence.org/
http://ww4report.com/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
Your support is appreciated. Back issues and source materials are available on request. Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as “Weekly News Update on the Americas” and include a link.
Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
WNU #1242: Brazilian Police Unit Suspected in Massacre
Issue #1242, November 16, 2014
1. Brazil: Police Unit Suspected in Belém Massacre
2. Mexico: Students Wounded as Protests Continue
3. Mexico: US Elite Starts to Doubt “Mexican Moment”
4. Latin America: GAO Reports on FTA Labor Violations
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. 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. Brazil: Police Unit Suspected in Belém Massacre
At least 10 people were shot dead by a group of masked men on motorbikes accompanied by two cars the early morning of Nov. 5 in several impoverished suburbs of Belém, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Pará. Residents reported on the massacre by social media while it was in progress, warning people to stay indoors. Some of the killings may have been targeted, but in other cases the attackers apparently shot randomly at people on the streets. The incident came just hours after the Nov. 4 shooting death of Antônio Marco da Silva Figueiredo, a corporal in an elite military police unit, the Metropolitan Tactical Patrol (ROTAM). “There is a big probability that if there was not active police involvement” in the subsequent massacre, “then there were people who already passed through the police,” Anna Lins, a lawyer from Pará Society for the Defense of Human Rights (SDDH), told a reporter. “It was summary execution.”
Da Silva Figueiredo, the ROTAM agent whose murder seemed to provoke the massacre, reportedly headed a “militia”—a paramilitary group of former and off-duty police agents—in the suburb of Guamá. He and his gang were suspected of carrying out executions of local youths, and some sources indicated that the group was trying to take over the drug trade in the suburbs. Area residents celebrated as news spread of Da Silva Figueiredo’s death the evening of Nov. 4, but members of his police unit reacted by posting internet messages such as: “The chase has started” and “ROTAM has blood in its eyes.” Sgt. Rossicley Silva used his Twitter account to call for “the maximum number of friends to give a response.” Several federal agencies joined state authorities on Nov. 6 in an investigation into the killings. (Wall Street Journal 11/6/14 from correspondent; Adital (Brazil) 11/7/14; Portal Brasil 11/7/14; Time 11/10/14 from correspondent)
On Nov. 11, one week after the Belém massacre, the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety (FBSP), a São Paulo-based nongovernmental organization (NGO), released its annual report on violence in Brazil. The researchers found that in the five years from 2009 to 2013 Brazilian police agents killed 11,197 people. It took police in the US 30 years, from 1983-2012, to kill a similar number, 11,090; the US population is half again as large as Brazil’s. Brazilian police agents are also killed; according to the report, 1,770 died violently in the five-year period, but 75.3% of them were killed while off duty, while 81.8% of the killings of civilians were by agents on duty.
There was also a clear racial disparity in the killings by police. A report released in April by the São Carlos Federal University (UFSCar) found that based on their share in the population, African-descended people were killed by police in São Paulo state at three times the rate that whites were killed; 79% of the police involved were white. Of the 944 state police agents investigated in São Paulo from 2009 to 2011, 94% were let off without charges. (Washington Post 11/11/14 from AP; BBC Mundo 11/12/14 from correspondent)
*2. Mexico: Students Wounded as Protests Continue
Two students were wounded on Nov. 15 at the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in the Coyoacán section of the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), when a police agent fired his pistol at a group of youths. Witnesses said the incident started when two men from the DF judicial police and two women from the DF prosecutor’s office arrived in a car and began photographing students near the Che Guevara Auditorium; student activists have been meeting in the auditorium to plan actions protesting the killing of six people and the abduction of 43 teachers’ college students in Iguala de la Independencia in the southwestern state of Guerrero the night of Sept. 26-27 [see Update #1241]. When a group of students challenged the four officials, one of the two agents responded by assaulting a student and then firing his pistol at the ground. The same agent fired again, several times, as all four officials fled the campus on foot, pursued by a group of students. The shots wounded one student in the foot and grazed another student’s knee; a dog was also injured.
Students searched the officials’ car, finding an ID for Rodolfo Lizárraga Rivera, the agent they said fired at them. They then smashed the car and set it on fire. In the evening some 300 DF riot police agents entered the campus and blocked off access while crane operators removed the burned vehicle. The DF has been governed since 1997 by the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which was already in trouble with its left-leaning base: José Luis Abarca Velázquez, the former Iguala mayor who allegedly ordered the September massacre and abduction, was a PRD politician. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/16/14)
The UNAM attack came the same day as a suggestion by Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto that his government may be planning to use more force in dealing with the protests that have followed the Iguala killings. Returning on Nov. 15 from a week attending summits in China and Australia, Peña Nieto warned that the government has the ability to use police action “when other mechanisms to reestablish order have been exhausted.” He added that he hoped “that we don’t arrive at this extreme of having to use law enforcement.” (LJ 11/16/14)
Demonstrations focused on the massacre have in fact been constant since late September. Marches occurred almost every day in the DF during the week of Peña Nieto’s trip abroad, tying up traffic but generally remaining peaceful. Demonstrations in Guerrero, often led by teachers and teachers’ college students, were much more militant. On Nov. 1o hundreds of protesters blocked access to Juan N. Alvarez International Airport at the resort city of Acapulco for four hours. “Understand our rage, tourist ladies and gentlemen,” the activists chanted; 11 state police agents were injured when they tried to keep the demonstrators from reaching the airport. On Nov. 11 protesters set fire to the state headquarters of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Peña Nieto’s party, in Chilpancingo, Guerrero’s capital. The next day protesters set fire to the offices of the state legislature and the education secretariat, also in Chilpancingo. (LJ 11/11/13; 11/12/14, 11/13/14; New Yorker 11/12/14)
Meanwhile, parents of the missing 43 students, who all attended the traditionally radical Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa, set out with in two caravans on Nov. 13 to bring their message to other parts of Mexico. One caravan, composed of three buses and one minibus, headed north toward Chihuahua state, with stops planned along the way in the states of Zacatecas, Jalisco and Michoacán. The second caravan left later in the day for the southeastern state of Chiapas, with the intention of going from there to the states of Oaxaca, Morelos and Tlaxcala. In Chiapas the parents met with leaders of the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in the autonomous community of Oventic on Nov. 15. “We had a pleasant reception,” a participant told reporters. The EZLN commanders “listened to us the whole time, and they said that as always they have to consult with their bases of support on the form in which they can support us going forward.” A third caravan was to leave on Nov. 15 or 16 to visit communities in Guerrero. The three caravans plan to converge in Mexico City for a large protest action set for Nov. 20, the holiday commemorating the start of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. (LJ 11/14/14, 11/15/14)
Although federal authorities say they are certain the 43 missing students were all executed by gang members associated with Iguala’s mayor, investigators have yet to identify the remains of any of the students in the various mass graves they have found in different parts of Guerrero. One victim who has been identified, however, was a Catholic priest from Uganda, Father John Ssenyondo, who had been living in Mexico for five years. The authorities used dental records for the identification. Unknown gunmen had blocked a road and forced Ssenyondo into their car on Apr. 30; the reason for the abduction is unknown. His remains were found in a village called Ocotitlán; it is apparently in Zitlala municipality, more than 150 kilometers from Iguala. (BBC News 11/14/14)
*3. Mexico: US Elite Starts to Doubt “Mexican Moment”
Although some US investors still seem confident about their economic opportunities in what they have called the “Mexican Moment” [see Update #1241], concern is growing in US ruling circles as militant protests continue in Mexico in response to a Sept. 26-27 massacre and mass abduction in the southwestern state of Guerrero. “Violence, impunity and corruption are once again dominating the news about Mexico in the US, tarnishing, if not cancelling, the image so successfully cultivated by the government of [President] Enrique Peña Nieto over the past two years,” David Brooks, the US correspondent for the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada, wrote on Nov. 16.
Brooks noted that the US State Department felt compelled to comment on the Mexican crisis two days in a row, with spokesperson Jen Psaki calling on Nov. 12 for a transparent investigation into the “heinous and barbaric crime” in Guerrero. “We certainly urge all parties to remain calm through the process,” she added. Sources close to the US Congress told the newspaper that some Congress members were monitoring the situation and were expected to make their concerns public soon.
Some US media seem to share these concerns. After repeatedly promoting Peña Nieto’s neoliberal reform agenda, the New York Times admitted in an editorial published on Nov. 12 that Mexico had reached “a tense point.” “Two years ago, when he took office…Peña Nieto pledged to revise the penal code, give more attention to crime victims and focus on Mexico's economic growth as a means of reducing drug-related violence. What limited progress has been made still has not repaired a criminal justice system unable to properly investigate crimes, end the corruption or stop the killings.”
The newsweekly Time showed how sharply the media have shifted. Last February the magazine had a picture of Peña Nieto on its cover with the caption: “Saving Mexico: How Enrique Peña Nieto’s sweeping reforms have changed the narrative in his narco-stained nation.” On Nov. 6 Time ran an article headlined: “Mexico’s Nightmare: How the disappearance of 43 students in September has forced the country to once again confront the scourge of drug violence.” (LJ 11/16/14; Time 11/6/14; NYT 11/12/14; AFP 11/13/14)
Further tarnishing Mexico’s image—and Peña Nieto’s—was the revelation on Nov. 9 by a team of reporters led by Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui that when not staying at the official presidential residence, Los Pinos, Peña Nieto and his wife, telenovela star Angélica Rivera Hurtado, have been living in a $7 million mansion belonging to a major government contractor. Rivera told the celebrity magazine ¡Hola! that she and her husband owned the mansion, located in the exclusive Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood in western Mexico City. But Peña Nieto never included it in the statement of assets he’s required to supply each year; in fact, the house technically belongs to an engineering company that is part of Grupo Higa, which according to Aristegui’s report is owned by Mexican entrepreneur Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantú.
Companies in Grupo Higa won building contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars in México state during Peña Nieto’s 2005-2011 term as governor there. On Nov. 3 of this year, a Chinese-led consortium won an uncontested bid for a $4 billion federal project for a bullet train; a Grupo Higa division was part of the consortium. The government suddenly cancelled the contract on Nov. 7, shortly before Aristegui’s story was to be published. (Los Angeles Times 11/9/14 from correspondent)
*4. Latin America: GAO Reports on FTA Labor Violations
On Nov. 13 the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), an agency that investigates federal spending for Congress, released a report on the US government’s handling of labor violations in countries with which it has “free trade” agreements (FTAs). Recent FTAs, such as the 2004 Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), have requirements for participating countries to meet certain standards in labor practices. The GAO claimed to find progress in this area in the partner countries--but also “persistent challenges to labor rights, such as limited enforcement capacity, the use of subcontracting to avoid direct employment, and, in Colombia and Guatemala, violence against union leaders.”
“US and foreign officials said that El Salvador and Guatemala—both partners to CAFTA-DR—as well as Colombia, Oman, and Peru have acted to change labor laws,” according to the report. There was also progress in fighting anti-union violence in Colombia. Data from the nonprofit National Union School (ENS) indicated that murders of union members and labor activists fell from 102 killings in 2003 to 35 in 2013. However, the violence continues, and the report notes that according to observers “although murders of unionists are a serious concern, threats of violence against union members also create a significant deterrent to workers organizing.” The report gave no evidence for improvements in Guatemala. “[T]he extent of the problem is unclear because disaggregated statistics on violence against unionists are not collected,” the GAO wrote. One union cited 63 cases of union leaders or members being killed from 2007 through 2013 because of their union activities; labor activists said the Guatemalan government hasn’t acted adequately on these cases.
The FTA labor clauses require the US to have a mechanism for filing complaints about alleged labor violations by member countries. The GAO found that “[s]ince 2008, the Department of Labor (DOL) has accepted five formal complaints…and has resolved one, regarding Peru.” The unresolved complaints are from Guatemala (2008), Bahrain (2011), Honduras (2012) and the Dominican Republic (2012). One likely reason there are so few complaints is that “union representatives and other stakeholders GAO interviewed in partner countries often did not understand the submission process, possibly limiting the number of submissions filed.” The failure to resolve the complaints quickly, according to people interviewed, “may have contributed to the persistence of conditions that affect workers and are allegedly inconsistent with the FTAs.”
US agencies have provided $275 million in labor-related technical assistance and capacity-building activities for FTA participants since 2001. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) responded to the report with a Nov. 13 statement charging that “[w]hile the words and promises may be put on paper, this report demonstrates that we are unable to hold countries responsible when they break those standards.” She cited the poor results as a reason not to pursue the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive FTA that would include Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru and the US, along with Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. (GAO announcement 11/13/14; Politico 11/14/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba
New Priorities for South American Integration
http://alainet.org/active/78758
State violence and human rights (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13482
Latin America: The irregular path of progressive governments
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5124-latin-america-the-irregular-path-of-progressive-governments
The failures of Latin America's left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5119--the-failures-of-latin-americas-left-
Military Personnel Trained by the CIA Used Napalm Against Indigenous People in Brazil
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27294-military-personnel-trained-by-the-cia-used-napalm-against-indigenous-people-in-brazil
Brazilian Truth Commission: 400 People Killed Under Dictatorship
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazilian-Truth-Commission-400-People-Killed-Under-Dictatorship-20141115-0007.html
On Bolivia’s new child labour law
https://opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/neil-howard/on-bolivia%E2%80%99s-new-child-labour-law
Colombia: crime lord falls, para links revealed
http://ww4report.com/node/13717
Colombia: peace talks off as FARC capture general
http://ww4report.com/node/13728
Venezuela Receives Over 100 Palestinian Medical Students in Scholarship Program
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11012
Nicaragua: opposition mounts to canal scheme
http://ww4report.com/node/13726
El Salvador Commemorates Jesuit Priests
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/El-Salvador-Commemorates-Jesuit-Priests-20141116-0006.html
Legal Vacuum Fuels Conflicts Over Water in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/5125-legal-vacuum-fuels-conflicts-over-water-in-el-salvador
Conceiving While Poor, Imprisoned for Murder (El Salvador)
https://nacla.org/article/conceiving-while-poor-imprisoned-murder-0
Blood for Gold: The Human Cost of Canada’s ‘Free Trade’ With Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/5123-blood-for-gold-the-human-cost-of-canadas-free-trade-with-honduras
Mexico in Crisis: U.S. Drug War Funding, Ayotzinapa and Human Rights Violations
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13396
Excerpts from Congressional Briefing on the Impact of U.S. Security Assistance on Human Rights in Mexico, Central America and Colombia
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/excerpts-from-congressional-briefing-on-the-impact-of-us-security-assistance-on-human-rights-in-mexico-central-america-and-colombia
Mexico: Ayotzinapa’s Uncomfortable Dead
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5121-mexico-ayotzinapas-uncomfortable-dead
Ayotzinapa and the New Civic Insurgency (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5122-ayotzinapa-and-the-new-civic-insurgency-
Ayotzinapa Resistance: "This is just getting started" (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5120-ayotzinapa-resistance-qthis-is-just-getting-startedq
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-
Ciudad Juarez and Ayotzinapa (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/ciudad-juarez-and-ayotzinapa/
The Yaqui Water War (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13463
Sonora and Arizona’s Uncertain Water Futures (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13485
Cuba’s Retired Population Struggles With Economic Reforms
https://nacla.org/news/2014/11/10/cuba%E2%80%99s-retired-population-struggles-economic-reforms
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. Brazil: Police Unit Suspected in Belém Massacre
2. Mexico: Students Wounded as Protests Continue
3. Mexico: US Elite Starts to Doubt “Mexican Moment”
4. Latin America: GAO Reports on FTA Labor Violations
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. 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. Brazil: Police Unit Suspected in Belém Massacre
At least 10 people were shot dead by a group of masked men on motorbikes accompanied by two cars the early morning of Nov. 5 in several impoverished suburbs of Belém, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Pará. Residents reported on the massacre by social media while it was in progress, warning people to stay indoors. Some of the killings may have been targeted, but in other cases the attackers apparently shot randomly at people on the streets. The incident came just hours after the Nov. 4 shooting death of Antônio Marco da Silva Figueiredo, a corporal in an elite military police unit, the Metropolitan Tactical Patrol (ROTAM). “There is a big probability that if there was not active police involvement” in the subsequent massacre, “then there were people who already passed through the police,” Anna Lins, a lawyer from Pará Society for the Defense of Human Rights (SDDH), told a reporter. “It was summary execution.”
Da Silva Figueiredo, the ROTAM agent whose murder seemed to provoke the massacre, reportedly headed a “militia”—a paramilitary group of former and off-duty police agents—in the suburb of Guamá. He and his gang were suspected of carrying out executions of local youths, and some sources indicated that the group was trying to take over the drug trade in the suburbs. Area residents celebrated as news spread of Da Silva Figueiredo’s death the evening of Nov. 4, but members of his police unit reacted by posting internet messages such as: “The chase has started” and “ROTAM has blood in its eyes.” Sgt. Rossicley Silva used his Twitter account to call for “the maximum number of friends to give a response.” Several federal agencies joined state authorities on Nov. 6 in an investigation into the killings. (Wall Street Journal 11/6/14 from correspondent; Adital (Brazil) 11/7/14; Portal Brasil 11/7/14; Time 11/10/14 from correspondent)
On Nov. 11, one week after the Belém massacre, the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety (FBSP), a São Paulo-based nongovernmental organization (NGO), released its annual report on violence in Brazil. The researchers found that in the five years from 2009 to 2013 Brazilian police agents killed 11,197 people. It took police in the US 30 years, from 1983-2012, to kill a similar number, 11,090; the US population is half again as large as Brazil’s. Brazilian police agents are also killed; according to the report, 1,770 died violently in the five-year period, but 75.3% of them were killed while off duty, while 81.8% of the killings of civilians were by agents on duty.
There was also a clear racial disparity in the killings by police. A report released in April by the São Carlos Federal University (UFSCar) found that based on their share in the population, African-descended people were killed by police in São Paulo state at three times the rate that whites were killed; 79% of the police involved were white. Of the 944 state police agents investigated in São Paulo from 2009 to 2011, 94% were let off without charges. (Washington Post 11/11/14 from AP; BBC Mundo 11/12/14 from correspondent)
*2. Mexico: Students Wounded as Protests Continue
Two students were wounded on Nov. 15 at the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in the Coyoacán section of the Federal District (DF, Mexico City), when a police agent fired his pistol at a group of youths. Witnesses said the incident started when two men from the DF judicial police and two women from the DF prosecutor’s office arrived in a car and began photographing students near the Che Guevara Auditorium; student activists have been meeting in the auditorium to plan actions protesting the killing of six people and the abduction of 43 teachers’ college students in Iguala de la Independencia in the southwestern state of Guerrero the night of Sept. 26-27 [see Update #1241]. When a group of students challenged the four officials, one of the two agents responded by assaulting a student and then firing his pistol at the ground. The same agent fired again, several times, as all four officials fled the campus on foot, pursued by a group of students. The shots wounded one student in the foot and grazed another student’s knee; a dog was also injured.
Students searched the officials’ car, finding an ID for Rodolfo Lizárraga Rivera, the agent they said fired at them. They then smashed the car and set it on fire. In the evening some 300 DF riot police agents entered the campus and blocked off access while crane operators removed the burned vehicle. The DF has been governed since 1997 by the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which was already in trouble with its left-leaning base: José Luis Abarca Velázquez, the former Iguala mayor who allegedly ordered the September massacre and abduction, was a PRD politician. (La Jornada (Mexico) 11/16/14)
The UNAM attack came the same day as a suggestion by Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto that his government may be planning to use more force in dealing with the protests that have followed the Iguala killings. Returning on Nov. 15 from a week attending summits in China and Australia, Peña Nieto warned that the government has the ability to use police action “when other mechanisms to reestablish order have been exhausted.” He added that he hoped “that we don’t arrive at this extreme of having to use law enforcement.” (LJ 11/16/14)
Demonstrations focused on the massacre have in fact been constant since late September. Marches occurred almost every day in the DF during the week of Peña Nieto’s trip abroad, tying up traffic but generally remaining peaceful. Demonstrations in Guerrero, often led by teachers and teachers’ college students, were much more militant. On Nov. 1o hundreds of protesters blocked access to Juan N. Alvarez International Airport at the resort city of Acapulco for four hours. “Understand our rage, tourist ladies and gentlemen,” the activists chanted; 11 state police agents were injured when they tried to keep the demonstrators from reaching the airport. On Nov. 11 protesters set fire to the state headquarters of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Peña Nieto’s party, in Chilpancingo, Guerrero’s capital. The next day protesters set fire to the offices of the state legislature and the education secretariat, also in Chilpancingo. (LJ 11/11/13; 11/12/14, 11/13/14; New Yorker 11/12/14)
Meanwhile, parents of the missing 43 students, who all attended the traditionally radical Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa, set out with in two caravans on Nov. 13 to bring their message to other parts of Mexico. One caravan, composed of three buses and one minibus, headed north toward Chihuahua state, with stops planned along the way in the states of Zacatecas, Jalisco and Michoacán. The second caravan left later in the day for the southeastern state of Chiapas, with the intention of going from there to the states of Oaxaca, Morelos and Tlaxcala. In Chiapas the parents met with leaders of the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in the autonomous community of Oventic on Nov. 15. “We had a pleasant reception,” a participant told reporters. The EZLN commanders “listened to us the whole time, and they said that as always they have to consult with their bases of support on the form in which they can support us going forward.” A third caravan was to leave on Nov. 15 or 16 to visit communities in Guerrero. The three caravans plan to converge in Mexico City for a large protest action set for Nov. 20, the holiday commemorating the start of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. (LJ 11/14/14, 11/15/14)
Although federal authorities say they are certain the 43 missing students were all executed by gang members associated with Iguala’s mayor, investigators have yet to identify the remains of any of the students in the various mass graves they have found in different parts of Guerrero. One victim who has been identified, however, was a Catholic priest from Uganda, Father John Ssenyondo, who had been living in Mexico for five years. The authorities used dental records for the identification. Unknown gunmen had blocked a road and forced Ssenyondo into their car on Apr. 30; the reason for the abduction is unknown. His remains were found in a village called Ocotitlán; it is apparently in Zitlala municipality, more than 150 kilometers from Iguala. (BBC News 11/14/14)
*3. Mexico: US Elite Starts to Doubt “Mexican Moment”
Although some US investors still seem confident about their economic opportunities in what they have called the “Mexican Moment” [see Update #1241], concern is growing in US ruling circles as militant protests continue in Mexico in response to a Sept. 26-27 massacre and mass abduction in the southwestern state of Guerrero. “Violence, impunity and corruption are once again dominating the news about Mexico in the US, tarnishing, if not cancelling, the image so successfully cultivated by the government of [President] Enrique Peña Nieto over the past two years,” David Brooks, the US correspondent for the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada, wrote on Nov. 16.
Brooks noted that the US State Department felt compelled to comment on the Mexican crisis two days in a row, with spokesperson Jen Psaki calling on Nov. 12 for a transparent investigation into the “heinous and barbaric crime” in Guerrero. “We certainly urge all parties to remain calm through the process,” she added. Sources close to the US Congress told the newspaper that some Congress members were monitoring the situation and were expected to make their concerns public soon.
Some US media seem to share these concerns. After repeatedly promoting Peña Nieto’s neoliberal reform agenda, the New York Times admitted in an editorial published on Nov. 12 that Mexico had reached “a tense point.” “Two years ago, when he took office…Peña Nieto pledged to revise the penal code, give more attention to crime victims and focus on Mexico's economic growth as a means of reducing drug-related violence. What limited progress has been made still has not repaired a criminal justice system unable to properly investigate crimes, end the corruption or stop the killings.”
The newsweekly Time showed how sharply the media have shifted. Last February the magazine had a picture of Peña Nieto on its cover with the caption: “Saving Mexico: How Enrique Peña Nieto’s sweeping reforms have changed the narrative in his narco-stained nation.” On Nov. 6 Time ran an article headlined: “Mexico’s Nightmare: How the disappearance of 43 students in September has forced the country to once again confront the scourge of drug violence.” (LJ 11/16/14; Time 11/6/14; NYT 11/12/14; AFP 11/13/14)
Further tarnishing Mexico’s image—and Peña Nieto’s—was the revelation on Nov. 9 by a team of reporters led by Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui that when not staying at the official presidential residence, Los Pinos, Peña Nieto and his wife, telenovela star Angélica Rivera Hurtado, have been living in a $7 million mansion belonging to a major government contractor. Rivera told the celebrity magazine ¡Hola! that she and her husband owned the mansion, located in the exclusive Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood in western Mexico City. But Peña Nieto never included it in the statement of assets he’s required to supply each year; in fact, the house technically belongs to an engineering company that is part of Grupo Higa, which according to Aristegui’s report is owned by Mexican entrepreneur Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantú.
Companies in Grupo Higa won building contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars in México state during Peña Nieto’s 2005-2011 term as governor there. On Nov. 3 of this year, a Chinese-led consortium won an uncontested bid for a $4 billion federal project for a bullet train; a Grupo Higa division was part of the consortium. The government suddenly cancelled the contract on Nov. 7, shortly before Aristegui’s story was to be published. (Los Angeles Times 11/9/14 from correspondent)
*4. Latin America: GAO Reports on FTA Labor Violations
On Nov. 13 the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), an agency that investigates federal spending for Congress, released a report on the US government’s handling of labor violations in countries with which it has “free trade” agreements (FTAs). Recent FTAs, such as the 2004 Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), have requirements for participating countries to meet certain standards in labor practices. The GAO claimed to find progress in this area in the partner countries--but also “persistent challenges to labor rights, such as limited enforcement capacity, the use of subcontracting to avoid direct employment, and, in Colombia and Guatemala, violence against union leaders.”
“US and foreign officials said that El Salvador and Guatemala—both partners to CAFTA-DR—as well as Colombia, Oman, and Peru have acted to change labor laws,” according to the report. There was also progress in fighting anti-union violence in Colombia. Data from the nonprofit National Union School (ENS) indicated that murders of union members and labor activists fell from 102 killings in 2003 to 35 in 2013. However, the violence continues, and the report notes that according to observers “although murders of unionists are a serious concern, threats of violence against union members also create a significant deterrent to workers organizing.” The report gave no evidence for improvements in Guatemala. “[T]he extent of the problem is unclear because disaggregated statistics on violence against unionists are not collected,” the GAO wrote. One union cited 63 cases of union leaders or members being killed from 2007 through 2013 because of their union activities; labor activists said the Guatemalan government hasn’t acted adequately on these cases.
The FTA labor clauses require the US to have a mechanism for filing complaints about alleged labor violations by member countries. The GAO found that “[s]ince 2008, the Department of Labor (DOL) has accepted five formal complaints…and has resolved one, regarding Peru.” The unresolved complaints are from Guatemala (2008), Bahrain (2011), Honduras (2012) and the Dominican Republic (2012). One likely reason there are so few complaints is that “union representatives and other stakeholders GAO interviewed in partner countries often did not understand the submission process, possibly limiting the number of submissions filed.” The failure to resolve the complaints quickly, according to people interviewed, “may have contributed to the persistence of conditions that affect workers and are allegedly inconsistent with the FTAs.”
US agencies have provided $275 million in labor-related technical assistance and capacity-building activities for FTA participants since 2001. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) responded to the report with a Nov. 13 statement charging that “[w]hile the words and promises may be put on paper, this report demonstrates that we are unable to hold countries responsible when they break those standards.” She cited the poor results as a reason not to pursue the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive FTA that would include Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru and the US, along with Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. (GAO announcement 11/13/14; Politico 11/14/14)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba
New Priorities for South American Integration
http://alainet.org/active/78758
State violence and human rights (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13482
Latin America: The irregular path of progressive governments
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5124-latin-america-the-irregular-path-of-progressive-governments
The failures of Latin America's left
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5119--the-failures-of-latin-americas-left-
Military Personnel Trained by the CIA Used Napalm Against Indigenous People in Brazil
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27294-military-personnel-trained-by-the-cia-used-napalm-against-indigenous-people-in-brazil
Brazilian Truth Commission: 400 People Killed Under Dictatorship
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazilian-Truth-Commission-400-People-Killed-Under-Dictatorship-20141115-0007.html
On Bolivia’s new child labour law
https://opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/neil-howard/on-bolivia%E2%80%99s-new-child-labour-law
Colombia: crime lord falls, para links revealed
http://ww4report.com/node/13717
Colombia: peace talks off as FARC capture general
http://ww4report.com/node/13728
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11012
Nicaragua: opposition mounts to canal scheme
http://ww4report.com/node/13726
El Salvador Commemorates Jesuit Priests
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/El-Salvador-Commemorates-Jesuit-Priests-20141116-0006.html
Legal Vacuum Fuels Conflicts Over Water in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/5125-legal-vacuum-fuels-conflicts-over-water-in-el-salvador
Conceiving While Poor, Imprisoned for Murder (El Salvador)
https://nacla.org/article/conceiving-while-poor-imprisoned-murder-0
Blood for Gold: The Human Cost of Canada’s ‘Free Trade’ With Honduras
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/5123-blood-for-gold-the-human-cost-of-canadas-free-trade-with-honduras
Mexico in Crisis: U.S. Drug War Funding, Ayotzinapa and Human Rights Violations
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13396
Excerpts from Congressional Briefing on the Impact of U.S. Security Assistance on Human Rights in Mexico, Central America and Colombia
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/excerpts-from-congressional-briefing-on-the-impact-of-us-security-assistance-on-human-rights-in-mexico-central-america-and-colombia
Mexico: Ayotzinapa’s Uncomfortable Dead
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5121-mexico-ayotzinapas-uncomfortable-dead
Ayotzinapa and the New Civic Insurgency (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5122-ayotzinapa-and-the-new-civic-insurgency-
Ayotzinapa Resistance: "This is just getting started" (Mexico)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5120-ayotzinapa-resistance-qthis-is-just-getting-startedq
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-
Ciudad Juarez and Ayotzinapa (Mexico)
http://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/ciudad-juarez-and-ayotzinapa/
The Yaqui Water War (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13463
Sonora and Arizona’s Uncertain Water Futures (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/13485
Cuba’s Retired Population Struggles With Economic Reforms
https://nacla.org/news/2014/11/10/cuba%E2%80%99s-retired-population-struggles-economic-reforms
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, 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/
Subscribe to:
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